Chapter 033: What Is a Red Scarf?

[Detected a loss of life force. Would you like to recover it?]
“Yes!”
[Life Force +42]
The system’s recovery prompt flashed by.
Tang Mubai narrowed his eyes slightly.
He believed what Xie Hongyun said—he really didn’t know how the beastmen had crossed the domain wall.
His sixth sense told him that much; it could distinguish truth from lies in matters like this.
However!
Tang Mubai did not believe that Xie Hongyun was innocent or compelled by circumstance!
If he were truly forced, how could Xie Hongyun have commanded two beastmen to come kill him?
If anyone was innocent, it was Tang Mubai!
All he wanted was to quietly recover the dissipated life force when livestock were slaughtered.
But fate had him stumble upon beastmen hiding in a warehouse, which put him squarely in Xie Hongyun’s crosshairs. Now it was a fight to the death—only with Xie Hongyun dead would it end.
Compared to his earlier shortcut, when he had run into beastmen and been attacked, this disaster was utterly unwarranted and overwhelming.
The most frustrating part was that Tang Mubai had nowhere to seek justice!
And Xie Hongyun had the gall to claim innocence?
He could die for all Tang Mubai cared!
He’d already sent people to kill Tang Mubai, yet still dreamed of surrendering himself to the Anwu Bureau?
Such wishful thinking!
With a cold snort, Tang Mubai crouched, took Xie Hongyun’s index finger, and, before the blood had dried, wrote a few more lines on the “blood letter.”
Afterward, he hoisted Xie Hongyun’s corpse and melted into the darkness, heading back to where he’d parked.
From the car, he fetched a body bag, placed Xie Hongyun inside, then returned to the hillside where the other body was buried. He unearthed the corpse of the beast-formed middle-aged man and the wolf’s head, took both back, and put them all in the body bag together.
Only then did Tang Mubai load the bag into the trunk and drive back to the city.
All the way, he pondered how to deliver the body bag to the Anwu Bureau’s Eastern Branch without revealing his identity.
Just as before—whether driving off the car that had carried the middle-aged man and woman, or shooting the three beastmen with Xie Hongyun, or making Xie Hongyun write the “blood letter”—he’d always kept his back to the road cameras mounted on the lampposts.
When he got home, he’d burn the clothes he’d worn that morning.
He did all this to avoid exposure.
Tang Mubai knew very well that his “Grandmaster-level” martial artist status was a sham.
Even if it were real, he could never afford to get mixed up in something as monumental as the Red Lake Group’s collusion with beastmen.
So, he needed to alert the Anwu Bureau while keeping himself hidden—a perfect solution was required!

...

After the car returned to the city, he drove slowly toward the Anwu Bureau’s Eastern Branch headquarters.
Unexpectedly, just one street away from the Bureau, Tang Mubai caught a glimpse—out of the corner of his eye—of several familiar figures preparing to leave a restaurant.
It seemed fortune favored the prepared!
At the sight of these people, a plan flashed through Tang Mubai’s mind.
Excited, he turned the wheel sharply and quickly drove into a narrow alley.
Parking the car, he pulled the body bag from the trunk and carried it in hand.
With a light tap of his toes and the use of “Floating on Grass,” he vaulted up a six-story building beside him, then dashed across the rooftops as if walking on level ground, swiftly heading toward the restaurant where those familiar figures were.
...

Chen Hai, picking his teeth with a toothpick, walked out of the restaurant feeling relaxed.
After a day’s work, finally sitting down to dinner left him thoroughly content.
The three team members behind him felt much the same—some rubbing round bellies, others loosening belts, all ambling out of the restaurant.
“Captain, uh—are we going to the factory district again tomorrow?” The slightly plump young man burped as he patted his stomach.
“Probably not, right?” The woman with shoulder-length hair wrinkled her nose, stepping away from the plump youth and waving her hand. “We’ve nearly finished combing the factories. If there were any beastmen, we’d have found them by now.”
“That’s not necessarily true.”
Ahead of her, the bespectacled young man pushed his special glasses up his nose and said calmly, “The closer we get to the end, the more careful we need to be. Beastmen blend into crowds—until the last moment, no one can be sure if someone is human.”
“That’s all well and good,” the plump youth said, wobbling as he walked, “but if I were a beastman, I’d have run long ago rather than waiting for us to search.”
“And that’s why you always mess things up!” the woman snapped.
“Hey, I was just—”
“All right, enough,” Chen Hai interjected, raising a hand to stop them. “We still need to search the factories. Until the beastmen are found, our vigilance can’t waver!”
“But this way isn’t working,” the bespectacled man said coolly. “Our equipment has a hard time distinguishing beastmen from humans. First we suspect, then probe, and finally take action. It’s too slow and too risky.”
“Risk is secondary. Nothing we do at the Anwu Bureau is ever safe,” the plump youth declared proudly, puffing out his chest. “My worry is hurting the innocent. Once a beastman transforms, they become maniacs!”
“Yes, we must protect the innocent,” Chen Hai said gravely. “We must continue the investigation, but—”
Swish!
As Chen Hai spoke, he abruptly stepped back, nearly bumping into the plump youth behind him.
“Whoa, Captain, did you get shocked?” the plump youth cried, startled into stopping. “If I hadn’t been out of your line, then—”
Whoosh!
Bang—

A sudden gust fell from above, accompanied by a dull thud, cutting the plump youth’s words short.
The woman with shoulder-length hair and the bespectacled man both jumped at the object dropping from the sky.
The plump youth’s legs shook, his mouth gaping for so long he forgot to close it, sweat pouring down his face.
“Who—who the hell threw that?”
Regaining his senses with difficulty, the plump youth leapt back, cursing as he looked up.
The thing that had fallen from the sky had landed less than a meter from him!
“Damn it, don’t you know dropping things from up high can kill people?”
Still fuming, he pointed up at the upper stories of the nearby building, hurling angry shouts.
The woman and the bespectacled man were both pale with shock.
Only Chen Hai’s face remained solemn. He stepped forward, squatted down, and slowly unzipped the long black bag that had fallen from above.
He recognized this type of black bag.
A body bag!
Someone had just thrown a body bag in front of him!
Who—or what—was inside?
Chen Hai’s expression grew even more serious as he unzipped the bag all the way down.
A blood-soaked, misshapen wolf’s head emerged first, baring its fangs.
“Holy—!”
The plump youth, who had just bent over to look, sprang back with a yelp.
“It’s the wolf-headed beastman!” the bespectacled man said, voice grave.
“There are two bodies. Who’s the other?”
The woman’s face was grim as she checked the bag’s contents thoroughly.
“I don’t know, but these clothes will tell us,” Chen Hai replied, pulling a “blood letter” from the bag. He walked a few steps under a streetlamp, reading the words one by one in its light.
Before long, his face had turned extremely serious—growing darker as he read further.
By the end, his expression turned puzzled and he murmured, “What’s a Red Scarf?”
For at the end of the “blood letter,” there was a line that read:
“No need to thank the Red Scarf!”