The journey from Puxi to Pudong takes about an hour. Fortunately, the rush hour has passed, and Gao Ang can take the elevated road directly, which shortens the journey by nearly 20 minutes. He arrived at his destination at around 11 o'clock.
Vanke Apartments rents rooms from the Four Seasons Hotel, so many Four Seasons Hotel guests also park in this community.
Gao Ang originally planned to pretend that he was there to stay, but to his surprise, the security guard saw him and let him through, probably thinking that Gao Ang was still a resident.
Having saved himself the trouble of explaining, Gao Ang parked the car and, with Xiao Hua in tow, headed towards the scene of the incident.
To avoid arousing suspicion from security guards, he walked to the vending machine, underwent facial recognition, and began selecting cold drinks.
When choosing cold drinks, Gao Yang unleashed all his senses—hearing, smell, and sight—to the fullest extent, covering only a 10-meter radius around the building where he used to live.
The night was as bright as day, and everything was crystal clear in his mind.
Two rooms on the first floor were empty. The remaining five rooms were occupied by two couples and three single men. The two couples were office workers from the neighborhood. Their scent was extremely similar to that of the pharmaceutical factory that Gao Ang had passed by. Judging from their conversation, they were probably talking about company matters. One of the three single men was a tourist from Northeast China who was visiting Shanghai. He spoke with a strong Northeastern accent and seemed to be video chatting with his family.
He "strolled" from the first floor to the seventh floor, and even carefully observed the room he had rented before. There was nothing unusual, and no one seemed to have any mutated abilities.
After gaining the ability to mutate, I would talk to myself and sometimes inadvertently reveal surprise and fear.
But none of these people showed any abnormalities; they behaved like ordinary people all the time: turning on the air conditioner, drinking cold drinks, and residents on the third floor and below were afraid of mosquitoes, and would even subconsciously swat away mosquitoes in their sleep from time to time.
Considering that he had not found any trace of Xiaohua at the time, Gao Ang felt that there should be a mutual exclusion between him and his kind.
Just like now, if it weren't for Little Flower perched on his shoulder, he could feel its weight, but by smell alone, he wouldn't be able to sense its presence at all.
The scent emanating from the little flower seemed to be immune to his olfactory nerves; he couldn't hear any sound it emitted except for the obvious cries it was trying to make.
It's as if there's an invisible device that filters out everything emanating from it, turning it into nothingness before it reaches Gao Feng.
But logically speaking, forces are reciprocal. Since Xiaohua could track him down from a great distance, why couldn't he detect her?
The question now resurfaced in Gao Yang's mind. He wasn't sure if there were other mutants in the building, so after taking out his cold drink, he returned to his car, reclined his seat, lay down, and began to explore the empty rooms again.
After another half hour, he finally confirmed that those rooms were indeed empty.
To keep the apartments clean, Vanke Apartments has a common practice of leaving the doors open for ventilation after guests check out, regardless of the season.
While listening to those rooms, Gao Ang could clearly hear the sound of the summer breeze blowing through the doors and windows, the sound of the curtains rustling against the walls, and even the chirping of insects that had sneaked inside.
These sounds wouldn't come from occupied rooms, so he could conclude that there were no people like him he was looking for in this building.
"Sigh, I thought I could find a clue, but now I'm even more confused."
While petting the little flower, Gao Feng began to talk to himself.
There was nothing around the trash can except the smell of garbage. Xiao Hua's food bowl had been taken away by the management. They probably thought someone had adopted Xiao Hua since they hadn't seen her for a long time.
"Xiaohua, let me ask you, when did you start looking for me?"
Gao Ang decided to start with Xiao Hua, hoping to find some clues. Although it couldn't speak, it could understand his meaning. He could just ask questions and get it to answer "yes" or "no".
"Was it yesterday?" Considering that it might not understand the concept of yesterday, Gao Ang decided to rephrase the question.
"Was it before you went to sleep last time?" He then made a sleeping gesture with his eyes half-closed, hoping that Xiaohua would understand.
Little Flower tilted her head, watching Gao Long's performance with curiosity. She blinked her cat eyes a few times and continued to lie in the passenger seat licking her paws.
"I'm talking to you seriously, stop fooling around and hurry up. If it's from yesterday, bark once, if not, bark twice. If you behave well, I'll make you something delicious later." He picked the guy up and started petting him.
"Meow." Perhaps hearing that there was something delicious, Xiao Hua meowed twice in response.
It seems this guy can understand the concept of days, or maybe he can read my mind?
"It wasn't yesterday, it was the day before yesterday?"
And so, the human and the cat began a strange conversation inside the car.
After asking several times, I finally heard a single meow from a cat.
"Are you sure it was three days ago? If so, call out three times."
"Meow...meow...meow." By the end, Xiao Hua was really impatient. She struggled out of Gao Ang's arms and jumped to the back seat, rummaging around for no apparent reason.
"Three days ago, that should have been the 23rd."
In other words, Xiao Hua wandered for three whole days from Pudong to Puxi. No wonder when I first saw it, it was covered in mud and looked like a little mud ball.
"Since you've come all this way to find me, then we must be destined to meet. I promise you'll live a life of luxury from now on."
He moved to Xia Weiwei's place on the 22nd, which means that Xiao Hua discovered his disappearance the next day, or that he only awakened his mutation ability on the 23rd.
"Xiaohua, let me ask you, did you come to me as soon as you sensed something was wrong, or did you wait a while before coming to me?"
Xiao Hua, who was fiddling with the backrest pillow, stopped immediately upon hearing Gao Ang's question. Her confused eyes conveyed her meaning: What are you talking about? It's too complicated, I don't understand.
Gao Ang was helpless. He originally thought that Xiao Hua could understand the concept of days and should also be able to understand his current problem. It seems that he overestimated the intelligence of a cat, even if it was a mutant cat.
Of course, another possibility is that the flower did not have enough time to mutate, or that the effect of this mutation factor is different for humans and animals.
The answer is unknown; we can only explore it step by step.
As for my own exploration, it's fine. After all, I'm a human being, and I can record any discomfort or new discoveries in a timely manner.
But what about Xiaohua? She can't talk or write. At most, she meows a couple of times when she's hungry. The rest of the time, she's a normal cat and still plays around with her fluffy toys.
However, he couldn't bring himself to make Gao Feng do any cutting or research on it.
Putting aside the fact that Xiaohua went through three days of hardship, traveling across most of Shanghai to find him, her affection was stronger than gold; just the fact that it could draw blood from him made him think twice.
After spending nearly an hour at the Vanke Apartment, the cat and I still couldn't find anything. It seems that the cause of Xiaohua's mutation is nowhere to be found, or perhaps it existed before but has disappeared over the past few days.
"Let's go home, I'll cook you something delicious."
Upon hearing that there was something delicious to eat, Xiaohua immediately jumped from the back seat to the passenger seat and stayed there obediently, staring intently at the high profile.
"Am I so handsome that you're jealous?"
"Meow."
"What would you like to eat? Braised fish, steamed fish, boiled fish, or sashimi?"
"Meow?"
Gao Ang could tell that this was a question, and it seemed that Xiao Hua still didn't understand the differences in how these different ways of eating fish were.
Okay, let's just treat it as a cat.
If you treat it as a person, Gao Feng feels extremely depressed, but if you treat it as an ordinary cat, he would be overjoyed.
The higher the expectations, the greater the disappointment; that's roughly the idea.
Back home, Xia Weiwei was already resting. She prepared some fish heads for Xiaohua and let it roam freely in the bedroom, while Gao Ang opened his diary:
Nothing was found in the apartment; the trail went cold.
The little flower's intelligence is insufficient to express everything it knows, and I myself am unable to communicate with it clearly.
Little Flower seems to understand some of my simple commands very easily, but I have no sense of its thoughts at all. Apart from its calls, I can clearly judge its emotions.
From a scientific point of view, I should dissect the flower or conduct a cutting experiment, but I really can't bear to. It's the only mutated one of its kind that I've discovered so far... I really can't bear to.
Let's keep what happened to it a secret. As long as we keep a close eye on it, it should be safe.
After closing his diary, Gao Ang whistled at Xiao Hua, which drew a disdainful laugh from her: "What the hell are you whistling for? It makes me want to pee."
He lifted his leg and reached for the bedside table to turn on the water.
"Holy crap, big brother, you're my big brother, please don't!"
In a swift movement, he grabbed Little Flower and dragged her to the toilet. "Let me tell you, you can only pee and poop here. Don't you know cat pee smells awful?"
Watching Gao Ang finish urinating in front of the toilet, Xiao Hua followed suit and jumped up as well. Unfortunately, the edge of the toilet was too smooth, and she couldn't stand up at all, nor could she lift her leg to urinate.
"Alright, stop doing such difficult moves, come here."
He put it in the sink, picked up a towel and went to take a shower, observing its every move through the glass mirror.
"What are you looking at? Turn around, aren't you ashamed?"
"Meow." You could tell it was a tone of disdain.
"Tch, it's longer than yours when you pull it out..."
"Meow!" It was an angry tone; Xiaohua felt insulted.
The cat and the person had a long verbal battle. When Gao Ang came out after drying himself off, he discovered that there were several missed phone calls.
It's from Senior Brother Cao Kun. It's past midnight already. He must be working so hard.
"Senior brother, what's the matter?" He called back and got straight to the point.
"Lao Fang asked me to pass on a message to you."
"who?"
"Lao Fang, that's the female fugitive we caught a few days ago... no, at the Vanke Apartments..."
"I don't know her well!"
Gao Ang was slightly nervous. Could this female thief be framing him because she coveted his good looks or wanted to take revenge on him?
"She said just one sentence..."
Upon hearing Cao Kun's words, Gao Ang froze on the spot, even feeling a chill run down his spine.
——————
P.S.
Okay, it was a false alarm. It was just a bunch of bubble-like promotional red envelopes from some big shots...
Honestly, it's really unnecessary, and it's also a waste of money;
The key issue is that it might make people think the author manipulated the data, which isn't appropriate.
Thanks again to Bubbles for the recommendation, but please, please don't give out referral bonuses!!!
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