On this cold night, Chiba stood on a high place and looked down. To her, the crowds were just small figures one after another. She listened with interest to every word spoken by the bishop, a wonderful perspective of God. unfolding in her mind.
An invisible protection net is opened at this moment. After Rich commits a crime, the evidence he left in the physical world will be erased by his cronies, while the sins in the spiritual world will be directly pardoned by the bishop. ...All the great virtues of mankind: unity, tolerance and cooperation are always vividly displayed in these people.
Chiba looked at the back of the bishop's head, wondering what the news would be tomorrow.
"You are indeed here." Si Lei's voice came from behind. Qianye turned her head. Si Lei had quickly walked to the window next to Qianye and stood side by side with her.
Si Lei searched the crowd for a while, "Is Stella down there?"
"Probably not," Chiba replied, "She will not come to such an occasion. Even if she is chasing hot topics, she doesn't like to chase the comments of these old men."
——After all, you can guess what these people will say, so you don’t have to rush to the scene.
"She must be very busy these two days."
"Well," Chiba nodded, "I guess tonight she will be preparing an article for two days later - either Rishi's obituary, or a summary of the events after the murderer was arrested. It depends on the progress the day after tomorrow."
"Are you busy tonight?"
"It depends on what you want from me." Qianye looked sideways, "What happened? You disappeared all day?"
"I went to the province of Nia."
Only then did Qianye notice the haggard look on Si Lei's face. Her eye sockets were sunken deeper than before, and her eye sockets were a green-black color - but these details were not conspicuous in the dim corridor.
Chiba raised his head and thought for a while, "It seems that there is only one train to Nigeria today... and it's still at five o'clock in the evening."
"Yes, I drove there in the early hours of this morning. There happened to be a train back to Tan Yi from Nepal at three o'clock in the afternoon, so I took the bus back."
"...You work so hard," Chiba retracted his gaze and looked at the crowd below, "Stella will probably like working with you."
"Why have you suddenly become so idle now?" Si Lei looked over, "I still remember the first few days when you arrived in Tan Yi, you were obsessed with everything. You wanted to read every meeting record and related materials. Once again—"
"At this moment," Chiba made a rather serious expression, which looked a bit funny on her always cynical face, "I fully trust the strength of my colleagues."
"So you're actually fine tonight, right?"
"I haven't told you everything. It depends on what you want from me -"
"Tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, the night when the murderer will theoretically show up, don't you have to stay here to guard him?"
"……What do you want to do?"
"Come with me on a trip to a livable place, if you don't have to stay here."
"where to?"
"Go to Short Call Alley first."
Chiba narrowed his eyes, "You know that Hesta's suspicion has been theoretically eliminated, right?"
"Of course," Si Lei nodded confidently, "but who said she is the only Hestad in District 3?"
As Si Lei spoke, he flipped through the pages of his notebook and stretched it out in front of Qianye, "Fernand, do you remember this man? He recruited Hercules in six wastelands in 4617, 4618 and 4619. Among the red-haired women of the Star tribe, the recruitment in 4618 was the most massive. He even issued a recruitment order with a reward of two hundred thousand robbies.
"But just a year later, in the summer of 4619, Fernan suddenly announced that he was no longer looking for him, and all rewards were void."
Under the moonlight, Qianye looked at Si Lei's notes, "...it seems they have found it."
"Yes, I think so too." Si Lei nodded, "Do you still remember Li Xi's testimony? He claimed that he had met a Hestad on the outskirts of Tan Yi twelve years ago - that is, in 4619. Miko.
"I guess the 'encounter in the suburbs' story they claimed was probably the other way around: they didn't meet a red-haired Hesta woman, but they went to great lengths to find her.
"In this way, the whole thing is like this: Twelve years ago, five people, Rich, Hofmann, Schmidt, Danglars, and Villefort, found this woman together. Twelve years later, when they One by one, they died, and several people suggested without any doubt that this woman came back to take their lives - what do you think they did back then?"
Chiba groaned meaningfully, "But why are you going to Short Call Alley? Is it related to Hesta?"
"Not yet, but who knows?" Si Lei flipped the notebook in Qianye's hand and turned it back four pages, "I found a woman from Stella's interview record who also came from Short Ming Lane. Maya.
"She was given to Rishi by Fernan in 4615, when the girl named Maya was 10 years old. She stayed with Rixi for two years, and then was sent back to Fernan by Rixi - this I found out everything from Fernand's other mistress. Before I left in the afternoon, I met with Fernand's old servant Foye, and this statement was confirmed.
"According to Foye's recollection, Maya was kicked out of the house by Fernand in 4621 because she accidentally broke a marble statue that Fernand was planning to give to another nobleman. As punishment, Fernand directly had her After being driven out of the livable area, Foye was not sure where she was sent in the end - although the order was to throw her back to Short Call Alley, Fernand couldn't actually control her after leaving the livable area. It was very possible that the people below He just sold the person casually.”
"So you went to Short Call Alley to find this woman named Maya?"
"right."
Chiba briefly evaluated the possibility of this incident in his mind - with a name and an abstract personal experience, it is basically impossible to find a specific person in the wasteland, not to mention that so many years have passed. , Si Lei was not even sure whether this Maya was still alive now, or which wilderness she was in specifically.
"What are you doing with her?"
"Foye said that at the end of the summer of 4619, Maya took care of a special patient. She was a woman of unknown origin. It was said that she was not mentally normal. I say 'allegedly' here because Foye had nothing to do with her. I only met this woman once on the night she first arrived.
"Despite this, Foye still had a deep impression on this person because her condition was very horrific - there were many circles of bandages wrapped around the woman's eye sockets, and some blood and tissue fluid seeped through the gauze and turned into two black stains. He I thought the woman had an eye disease, but later I found out that her eyes had been gouged out."
After saying this, Si Lei paused and said, "Do you still remember that teaser photo where Rixi was sprinkled all over the street?"
