392: Chapter 380 (Anti-theft chapter; main text will be updated in a few hours)

After following his instincts and having a brief conversation with someone who came from who knows where, Liu San took a full ten seconds to snap out of it; there should only be himself in the room.

His instinct kicked in again, and he subconsciously asked himself, "Huh, how could there be someone else in the room?"

"Did he come in through the front door? Why didn't I hear the door open? Is it the hotel staff... no, that's not right..."

"The way this person speaks sounds a lot like the people in the Mountain Gate videos released by the Special Investigation Bureau. Uh, someone from the Mountain Gate? No way..."

Liu San's whole body stiffened, hesitating whether to turn his head and confirm if his guess was true. "It should, it should be impossible. If the Mountain Gate wanted to handle this, why would they wait over a month? But..."

He tried desperately to comfort himself, but the reality unfolding before his eyes rendered all his efforts futile, and the heaviness in his heart was not alleviated in the slightest.

"It's fake, it must be fake, maybe I haven't woken up yet..."

"Have you lost your mind? Why are you talking to yourself?"

A familiar voice came from behind. Realizing the truth of the situation, Liu San knew he was likely finished.

His brain raced, thinking of ways to escape. Countless brilliant plans flashed through his mind, but in the end, he lowered his head in despair. There was no way to run.

He turned around slowly. A figure wearing robes with long hair tied up stood by the door.

"Who are you? We don't know each other. Did you find the wrong person?" He put on a confused expression, attempting to play dumb and get away with it.

Senior Brother Zhou smiled and said, "You spend your days committing fraud in my name, how could you not know me?"

"It's a misunderstanding, there must be some mis..."

Senior Brother Zhou had no interest in listening to his fabrications. He flashed in front of him, grabbed him by the back of his collar, flew out the window, and sped through the air towards China.

Liu San had been in the sky before, but only using transportation. He had never experienced flying with his own body like this before, and he was so scared that he didn't even dare to open his eyes.

Perhaps it was also the fear of the coming punishment; he kept his eyes tightly shut to resist the strong wind, and incidentally, to escape reality. However, reality was still reality; there was no escaping it.

When the cold wind hitting his face disappeared, he understood that he had probably arrived, and tentatively opened his eyes.

Before him was a spacious room with a long table in the center, where four people sat facing each other in pairs.

The pair on the right was a bit strange, dressed as a monk and a Taoist priest. The two on the left, Liu San recognized, and was even very familiar with, though the other party likely didn't know him—Team Leader Zhao Qi of the Special Investigation Bureau and Team Leader Ye Ming of the Special Investigation Bureau.

Seeing the two of them clearly, then looking back at Senior Brother Zhou, who was standing by the door with his hands behind his back, Liu San almost burst into tears.

"Is this necessary? Huh? Is it necessary? In terms of fraud amount, I'm not the highest; in terms of social impact, others have gangs while I work alone. Even if you're going to make an example of someone, it shouldn't be me!"

"You two, excuse yourselves." After finding a casual excuse to let the old Taoist and the monk leave, and waiting for them to obediently walk out of the room, Zhao Qi gestured with his chin toward the wooden chair opposite him. "Stop looking around, sit down."

"Team Leader Zhao." Liu San said with a fawning expression, "Please listen to my explanation, I had my reasons."

"Enough with the nonsense, sit down and then talk."

"Oh." Liu San hung his head and sat on the wooden chair.

"Tell me, how much money did you defraud in total? I advise you to confess honestly and strive for lenient treatment."

"It wasn't that much..." Seeing Zhao Qi's increasingly gloomy gaze, Liu San felt a bit nervous and didn't dare to continue dodging the question. "I haven't tallied the exact number, but I estimate it's... just under twenty million."

Zhao Qi and Ye Ming kept their faces expressionless, but inwardly they gasped.

So much?

According to the files, he wasn't even a professional fraudster, just an amateur who started midway. Yet, even this amateur could defraud millions in just one month. How much must those professional gangs be stealing?

Ye Ming placed his right hand on the table and tapped his index finger gently. "Where did the stolen money go?"

"I spent ten million of it, and the rest is in my bank account."

Both of them felt their hearts sink. This was trouble. There were definitely no small number of cases similar to Liu San's, and these squandered stolen funds were likely unrecoverable.

The deed was done, and anger couldn't solve the problem, so Zhao Qi continued to ask about the details of the crime. Liu San's attitude, however, was a bit strange. He was very cooperative, but his gaze kept drifting toward the door of the room.

Zhao Qi turned his head to look; Senior Brother Zhou was standing by the door. Liu San was indeed eyeing Senior Brother Zhou.

He understood that his fate was sealed, and instead, he felt a sense of relief. His mind, having broken free from the panic, returned to its normal level, naturally giving rise to curiosity about Senior Brother Zhou.

A living transcendent; previously, he could only see them in videos.

Zhao Qi was so angry his mouth almost twisted. He slammed his hand on the table. "You're quite relaxed, aren't you!"

"Sorry, sorry, you ask, please ask." Startled into a shiver, Liu San hurriedly apologized awkwardly.

The interrogation returned to the right track. The two of them questioned him for all the details and then walked out of the room with Senior Brother Zhou.

"Senior Brother Zhou." In the hallway, Ye Ming said with a headache, "Things are troublesome."

"How so?"

"Most fraudsters don't have the habit of saving money; they spend it as soon as they get it. Even if we catch the people, the defrauded money cannot be recovered."

Zhao Qi added, "In this way, even if we keep our arrest operations consistent, we cannot save the public's losses."

Both of them sounded grave, but Senior Brother Zhou smiled easily. "Why is this difficult?"

"You have a way?"

"According to my understanding, the places where these fraudsters hide are nothing more than two locations: domestic and overseas."

"Correct."

"Then it is easy to handle. Overseas, I only need to make a grand show of arresting criminals once. I imagine the fraudsters who realize they cannot escape the pursuit of the Mountain Gate will surely restrain themselves. Domestically, it is even easier; the Mountain Gate just needs to set up an office in China."

"I understand the former, but what does the latter mean?"

"You will know when the time comes."

Ye Ming seemed to understand and realized, "This can indeed solve the problem, but... wouldn't that be too much trouble for the Mountain Gate?"

"It is no trouble."

Hearing this, the two asked no further questions and immediately went their separate ways to arrange the matter. Zhao Qi was responsible for collecting identity and location information on the fugitives, while Ye Ming set about handling the publicity work for the Mountain Gate office.

The transcendent world had been revealed for over a year, and the whole world knew it. Humanity's fantasies about the transcendent had never ceased, and now that it had become true, the conversation naturally revolved around it.

Those who felt it most deeply were undoubtedly the young people at the forefront of the era. They discovered that not only were their colleagues at work discussing the transcendent, but even in their family group chats, people no longer reposted science videos from marketing accounts, but instead passionately discussed the transcendent.

The previously unremarkable elders all transformed into "Sweeping Monks," earnestly recounting strange occurrences from their youth, with content consisting of nothing more than "ancestors appearing in dreams," "dragons in the well," or "ancestral graves smoking with blue smoke."

In the past, the younger generation would inevitably argue, trying hard to explain that this was feudal superstition and not to be believed.

Most of the time, it ended with the victory of the latter, although the former was not convinced, muttering "This is what my friend told me, could they lie?" while holding their teacups and walking away.

After all, talk of ghosts and gods lacked solid evidence, and the occasional photo claiming to be ironclad proof was mostly blurry and unconvincing. It was just like the joke, "Ever since humans had high-definition cameras, UFOs have disappeared."

But today is different from the past. The younger generation rarely lost the argument, only because of the elder's line, "That must be the trace of the transcendent."

Currently, means beyond human understanding, such as moving mountains and filling seas, appearing in dreams, etc., seemed to be something the transcendent could do, and the younger generation really had no way to refute it.

Of course, verifying it wasn't difficult; just find a transcendent and ask. Then the question came: how to find a transcendent?

Although the existence of the transcendent was widely known, there were few who had actually had close contact, or even spoken to one. Even within the Special Investigation Bureau, which was specifically responsible for contacting the Mountain Gate, only a dozen people had ever talked to a transcendent, and the rest at most caught a glance of them from near or far.

Facing the elders shaking their legs in triumph, the younger generation was very unconvinced, thinking it impossible for a transcendent to be so bored as to go and appear in dreams, but they were frustrated by the inability to verify it. Fortunately, when the young people woke up today and habitually clicked on the Special Investigation Bureau's official website to browse the news on the homepage, they discovered a turning point.

"Holy crap! China is going to set up a Mountain Gate embassy!" The young person sent a message excitedly in the colleague chat group.

"I saw it too, isn't it an office?"

"What's the difference?"

"Uh, the name is different?"

"Is your perspective a bit skewed? A Mountain Gate embassy in China! The person in charge sent must be from the Mountain Gate, a transcendent! A living transcendent! Don't you want to go and see?"

"I saw Immortal Xu from afar near NH last year, but I've never had face-to-face contact. I want to go, is anyone teaming up?"

"Team up to see the transcendent, current number 1/100."

"I want to go too, 2/100."

"I might not have leave."

"Ask for leave!"

"I'm going too, I just want to ask if the transcendent really appears in people's dreams. I'm almost driven crazy by my dad's ghost stories."

"Let's do it, let's do it!"

"Don't just focus on this, did you see the second headline?"

"The one about catching fraudsters?"

"They should have acted long ago; those people are animals, they even defraud sick elderly people!"

"The authorities seem to have been catching them, but it's hard to act overseas."

"No choice, it involves national sovereignty issues, and we aren't America, who likes to play the rogue."

"But I read the news text, it says they will arrest those overseas too."

"That's just talk. If nearby countries are really tough, we can't interfere, but what about places further away, like America?"

"Not necessarily, I guess the Mountain Gate might participate."

"Does the Mountain Gate handle this?"

"They definitely wouldn't care about normal fraud; that's China's internal affair. But this time the fraudsters are using the Mountain Gate's name, so it's hard to say."

"There's a date at the end of the news, half a month later, we'll know then."

Similar discussions were happening simultaneously in various social circles. The public had long suffered from fraud, and with some arrogant fraudsters filming videos to openly provoke them while nothing could be done, everyone had long been holding in a belly of anger.

Now that they knew the authorities were going to take thunderous action, they cheered and celebrated, as if the New Year had arrived early.

And the fraudsters who learned of this didn't seem panicked, whether it was bravado or they knew they couldn't turn back and just gave up on themselves. Not only did they not show any signs of returning home to surrender, but they became even more frequent in posting rampant remarks on online platforms.

"Everyone is acting like it's New Year, there are so many all over the world, can they catch them all?"

"Don't just talk tough, show some real action. Half a month, right? I'm waiting. If I'm fine by then, there will be a joke to watch."

"Hahaha, Grandpa is in the Middle East, come and catch me."

The authorities, very strangely, did not ban these accounts, maintaining an indifferent attitude, and some of the smarter leaders sensed something wrong.

They weren't afraid of China making a big scene, because that was usually all thunder and no rain. But the current calm atmosphere usually meant a storm was brewing.

These leaders began to seek a way out. Some disbanded their organizations on the spot and fled with the money to remote small countries, trying to avoid the authorities' sight. Some fabricated excuses to abdicate and let others take over, picking a scapegoat from their subordinates to replace their position.

As for those who were slow to react, or who were fearless and thought China couldn't conduct cross-border arrests, they continued to commit crimes on a large scale without restraint.

December 27th, sunny. Su City. Inside the renovated "embassy," Ye Ming and Zhao Qi received Fellow Daoist Liu, who had rushed there.

Ye Ming was a bit surprised when he saw him: "Fellow Daoist Liu?"

"What's wrong?"

"Isn't Senior Brother Zhou out of the mountain? I thought..."

"Hahaha..." Fellow Daoist Liu laughed a few times, then explained, "Having stayed at the Mountain Gate for a long time, one also needs to go down the mountain to train. So, after hearing about this, I asked my Martial Uncle for this assignment."

Having one more person from the Mountain Gate stationed in China, Zhao Qi thought it was very good and said happily, "That's great. Last time Fellow Daoist Liu treated us to food from the Mountain Gate, this time I'll host, let's try China's hotpot."

"Hotpot?"

"It's just making a pot of soup base, and then putting the dishes you like to eat in to cook."

Fellow Daoist Liu realized: "A hodgepodge?"

"Uh..." Ye Ming and Zhao Qi looked at each other, and the latter replied, "Not quite the same. Eh~ don't worry about that, you'll know once you taste it."

"Junior Brother Liu." Senior Brother Zhou walked into the room.

"Senior Brother."

Ye Ming took a stack of documents out of his briefcase, and as he walked toward Senior Brother Zhou, he said, "This is the information on the fugitives we investigated. However, it is not complete, mainly because there are too many people, so we can only focus on the leaders. There are also some who are hidden behind the scenes, controlling organizations through agents, which is quite difficult to investigate. Information on these people can only be obtained by trying to interrogate them from the first batch of arrested criminals."

Senior Brother Zhou took the file and stuffed it into his robe sleeve. "No problem, I have my own clever methods."

Zhao Qi looked at the sleeve that didn't show any bulging at all. "Senior Brother Zhou, this..."

"This is the standard storage magic treasure of the Mountain Gate," Fellow Daoist Liu said.

Ye Ming had seen similar items and wasn't too curious, so he was more concerned about the "clever method" Senior Brother Zhou mentioned. "Senior Brother Zhou, could you explain the 'clever method' you just mentioned in more detail?"

Senior Brother Zhou smiled, didn't say much, and disappeared on the spot.

Ye Ming was stunned, thinking his question had offended a taboo.

Fortunately, Fellow Daoist Liu spoke up to explain, "The Mountain Gate has gone through over ten thousand battles, large and small, and has quite a lot of experience in how to interrogate enemies."

His tone was very flat, but Ye Ming and Zhao Qi caught a hint of cruelty in it, and they felt a chill in their hearts.