What It's Like Being a Vampire

Chapter 467: 467: Investigation

Chapter 467: Chapter 467: Investigation

The taxi stopped, and Zhao Feng had the female interpreter pay the starting fee to the driver. They got out of the car together and walked back to Mao Qiang.

Wang De’an knew this old friend and old roommate well. He knew there must be a reason for him to do this, so he kept quiet and followed without saying a word.

The female interpreter was puzzled, but her primary job and task was to assist Zhao and Wang. Naturally, she didn’t raise any objections. She quickly paid the money and continued to perform her translation duties, assisting Zhao Feng and Mao Qiang in communication.

Returning to Mao Qiang, she exchanged a few more words with the Burmese teenager. Then the interpreter, a frown on her face, relayed to Zhao Feng, “Mao Qiang said that when we just left, he saw a Caucasian man wearing sunglasses across the street from the door… Over there, the man had asked him about the illusion yesterday, and he had a bad feeling about him. You decided to go ask him a few questions, so we crossed the road together and started a conversation with that white man. After we talked for a while, we directly hailed a cab to leave. That white man had left in a cab before we hailed ours.”

Wang De’an suddenly said, “Now that I think about it, after we had lunch and paid the bill, my memory skips directly to hailing the cab and saying goodbye to Mao Qiang. I don’t remember how we left the restaurant, how we crossed the road to get here, nothing.”

Listening to him, the female interpreter also seemed to have a sudden realization, “It seems that way…”

Zhao Feng asked the interpreter, “Does his father remember anything?”

After asking Mao Qiang’s father, she said, “He also has no impression. He remembers that we were ready to leave after lunch and doesn’t remember any white man.”

Seeing their conversation and the interpreter’s questioning of his father, Mao Qiang seemed to realize something and quickly said a few words to the interpreter.

After hearing him out, the interpreter said to Zhao Feng, “He said that person’s voice was strange. When he was communicating with us, he seemed to be speaking something other than English, but we didn’t react as if we understood him. That person might be able to hypnotize, and he could have hypnotized all of us.”

Zhao Feng asked them about the location where they had stopped the white man to talk to him. Then he went there and looked around to see if there were any cameras nearby.

But unlike in China, where almost every store has a surveillance camera and sometimes more than one, there weren’t many cameras in Burma that could capture the area near the store entrance.

However, after observing for a while, they found a camera in a nearby store that captured the area. They asked the female interpreter to use her “money power” to negotiate with the store owner and gained permission to view the surveillance footage.

They rewound the footage and saw the images of a group of five people passing by the storefront. Rewinding further, under Mao Qiang’s identification, they saw the “white man”.

However, due to the angle of the video, they could only see his lower half, which was clad in dark slacks and what appeared to be expensive leather shoes.

Though they couldn’t see the images of the five of them talking to the man, the surveillance video showed that they were indeed pursuing the white man. And of this, they had no memory.

“Were we really hypnotized by that man?” Wang De’an quietly asked Zhao Feng.

Zhao Feng nodded slightly, “I’m afraid so.” He then asked Mao Qiang, through the interpreter, why he had said that sentence in English by the car. The sentence gave him a peculiar feeling as if he had heard Mao Qiang say it before.

Knowing that the sentence in English was what Mao Qiang had said to him during their brief conversation at the restaurant door, they returned to the restaurant entrance and had the restaurant pull up the lobby surveillance video. The video showed Zhao Feng and Mao Qiang standing by the door and talking while the female interpreter was paying the bill.

Zhao Feng asked in detail about what was said in their conversation. Then he and Mao Qiang returned to the scene and replayed their dialogue.

When he heard Mao Qiang’s accented English, saying, “I feel he is not good,” and pointing vaguely across the street, Zhao Feng recalled some images and a very strong sense of familiarity.

“I’ve recalled something, that white man is very suspicious,” Zhao Feng definitively said.

The fact that the white man had such an ability to completely subvert common sense itself was illogical. His act of hypnotizing so many people on a public street was even more so. Plus, he had asked Mao Qiang about the “Eight-Armed, Eight-Eyed Giant Illusion” the day before. Naturally, Zhao Feng’s team wouldn’t overlook this clue right in front of them – they had come to Myitkyina exactly for this purpose.

The female interpreter took out her phone and said, “I’ll contact Old Fan.” In the face of such a peculiar and bizarre situation, she remained calm. By entrusting her with Zhao and Wang’s reconnaissance mission in Myitkyina, it was fairly clear she was from the secret department of “Divine Technology”, not merely an interpreter or guide.

Zhao Feng continued to chat with Mao Qiang in broken English: “Are you ok?”

As soon as he spoke, Wang De’an started laughing beside him.

“What?” asked Zhao Feng, “Is my grammar wrong?”

“No, no,” agreed Wang De’an. “You guys keep chatting, I was just reminded of a video I watched a while ago.” He quickly stopped laughing.

Then Zhao Feng continued, “Why you remember him?”

He knew Mao Qiang understood his meaning. He was asking why he hadn’t been hypnotized and lost his memory.

Mao Qiang shook his head. “I don’t know why.”

After observing his expression and demeanor for a moment, Zhao Feng asked again, “Are you scared?”

Theoretically, when encountering such strange circumstances and strange people, he and De’an, being former police officers who have seen a lot, felt a chill in their hearts. This young Burmese man shouldn’t have been so calm; he showed no sign of fear or terror. Instead, after confirming that they had talked to the white man and been briefly hypnotized, he seemed to have breathed a sigh of relief.

Mao Qiang very confidently replied, “NO.”

Then he opened his mouth as if to say something, but he seemed to struggle with his limited English vocabulary. Seeing the interpreter finishing her call and walking over, he rapidly spoke a long sentence in Burmese to her.

The interpreter was taken aback after listening, but she relayed to Zhao Feng anyway, “He said he knows what he’s truly scared of, so he fears nothing else. He says as long as he knows what to do and what not to do, it doesn’t matter whether he’s scared or not, nothing will change.”

After she finished speaking, she paused briefly, frowning, “I’m not quite sure what he means. Basically, he’s saying he’s scared of something else, so he feels there’s no need to be scared of other things?”

In fact, Zhao Feng and Wang De’an understood almost instantly what Mao Qiang was trying to convey, because they had heard similar statements from suspects during their investigation of two cases in their home country where the suspects saw hallucinations of the “eight-armed, eight-eyed monster”.

So, the fact that Mao Qiang was unaffected was related to his having seen the hallucination?

In that case, considering the fact that the white man had questioned Mao Qiang about the hallucinations yesterday, the white man probably had no direct connection to the mass hallucination that occurred in Myitkyina on the night of the 8th, and like them, he was also here to investigate the matter.

But why did he hypnotize them? Was it because he inadvertently revealed something?

After receiving the call from the female translator, it didn’t take long for Fan Peng to arrive in his car with two others.

After exchanging a few words with Zhao Feng and Wang De’an and briefly observing the situation on the street, Fan Peng confidently said, “We will find that man.”

Zhao Feng had no doubt about this since the female translator had previously told him that Divine Technology’s capital influence was quite strong in several Southeast Asian countries and they have sufficient local resources to assist with investigations.

Zhao Feng looked towards Mao Qiang and his son who were not far away, expressing to the female translator his concern for their safety, fearing that the white man might realize the failure of his hypnosis and cause them trouble.

The female translator replied, “We will arrange for their safety. Don’t worry.”

As they were driving Mao Qiang and his son home and preparing to track down the white man’s whereabouts, Fan Peng received a call and told Zhao Feng, “Mr. Liang is looking for you.”

Taking the communication device, which looked much heavier than an average mobile phone, and hearing the deep, hoarse voice, which sounded like metal particles rubbing against one another, Zhao Feng was temporarily taken aback. The image that formed in his mind was that of Bane from the movie ‘The Dark Knight’, notorious for his masked face.

Mr. Liang first asked about the appearance of the white man, information derived from Mao Qiang. Although Zhao Feng later recalled part of his own memory, the major part of that memory was still vague and chaotic.

Then, Mr. Liang asked about the sensation following hypnosis and Zhao’s personal judgment of the white man.

Zhao Feng answered truthfully and also mentioned Mao Qiang’s seeming immunity to the hypnosis by the white man, which is likely related to the “Eight-armed, Eight-eyed Giant Hallucination.”

Mr. Liang naturally transitioned to discussing their investigation about the “Eight-armed, Eight-eyed monster hallucination” in China, praising their astuteness, and then asked them about the possible connection between the widespread “Eight-Armed Giant Hallucination” that appeared in Myitkyina on the night of the 8th, and similar hallucinations back home.

Zhao Feng had about a twenty-minute conversation with Mr. Liang. Initially, he was startled by the voice, but after getting used to it, he found Mr. Liang to be a good communicator and not as condescending as most leaders. He felt more like a technical person, focusing mainly on the issue at hand. He left a good impression on Zhao Feng.

However, at the end of the conversation, Mr. Liang told him not to pursue the white man and to avoid any direct contact should they meet again. He was simply to report to him.

Not just Zhao Feng and Wang De’an, but also Fan Peng and the female translator, were all instructed to refrain from pursuing the matter.

However, Mr. Liang assured them not to worry, explaining that the reason the white man hypnotized them on the street was because he realized their identities. As he was more afraid of them, he normally wouldn’t provoke them.

This directive made Zhao Feng realize that Mr. Liang perhaps knew the white man’s background and how he managed to make all four of them temporarily lose their memories. However, Mr. Liang did not disclose anything about these matters.

With the pursuit of the white man off the table, Zhao Feng and the rest continued their investigation of the “Eight-armed, Eight-eyed Giant Hallucination.”

They went to a hotel in Myitkyina where a local person who experienced the mass hallucination on the night of the 8th was staying.

However, this middle-aged man named Jiang Chun had been missing for over 48 hours. Moreover, he didn’t go missing on the night of the 8th. He returned to the hotel on the morning of the 9th but left at noon and never returned. The hotel was unable to reach him through the contact number he provided, and the emergency contact number turned out to be invalid.

Zhao Feng and the team were here to investigate, trying to see if Jiang Chun’s disappearance was in any way connected to the hallucination.

However, they stopped their inquiry after receiving a medical record from Fan Peng which indicated that Jiang Chun was suffering from a terminal illness and didn’t have much time left. He hadn’t sought treatment but sold off all his assets in China, started travelling around half a year ago, and depleted his savings. He had clear suicidal tendencies and may have chosen a deserted place to end his life.

Hence, Zhao Feng and the team continued to visit other locals and Chinese tourists who were still in Myitkyina and had experienced the mass hallucination on the night of the 8th. Two days later, they left Myitkyina to go to another port city in southern Burma to question another Chinese national, a suspect under criminal investigation.

This suspect and other fugitives from China had kidnapped a Chinese businessman. After an internal conflict where all the kidnappers except the suspect and the kidnapped businessman died, it was the kidnapped man who drove the boat back to the port and sent the surviving kidnapper to the hospital.

Zhao Feng and team intended to interrogate this suspect because Divine Technology learned through certain channels that the surviving criminal had told the Burmese police before the quarrel among the criminals on the boat, they had seen a humanoid sea creature with many arms and eyes climb onto the boat.

His description had many similarities with the “Eight-armed, Eight-eyed Giant Hallucination” seen by the residents of Myitkyina.

A few days later, when Zhao Feng and the others met the suspect on his sickbed, the blond, white man who had briefly interacted with them had already entered China.

In Liushi, near a botanical garden far away from the city, a skinny white man with wavy golden hair and wearing sunglasses squatted down in a desolate wasteland just on the other side of the bend. He was caressing the weed-infested ground gently with his left hand.

After a moment, he took off his sunglasses and put them in his pocket. He then took out a small white porcelain knife and began strolling leisurely around the area.

If Xiang Kun saw this scene, he would definitely be on high alert.

Because this was the exact location where he had his final showdown with Guo Tianxiang, and the small white porcelain knife held by the white man looked strikingly similar to Guo Tianxiang’s.