Chapter 18 The New Abilities of Tablet Spirit

"Fake death?" Gary's face was filled with disbelief, but at this moment, due to his previous rapport with Wolf, he wasn't as aggressive as he had been at the beginning. "Are you serious? With that level of explosion, the fox staying in the car would definitely die, and according to the surveillance, there was no sign of the fox before or after the explosion."

Wolf agreed with Gary's words, although he also felt that Jiang Shu's words made sense. It was exactly because he suspected that the fox had faked his death that he had come to the scene.

"Show me the surveillance video," Jiang Shu continued.

Wolf then looked at Jiang Shu with a strange gaze. "Didn't I send it to you? It's in the folder we shared, haven't you watched it? What were you doing sitting in the back?"

"Just listening to you guys talk…" Jiang Shu said somewhat embarrassedly, but he quickly pointed defiantly at him, "Don't tell me you've seen it! Weren't you chatting with Gary as soon as you got out?"

Wolf tapped his prosthetic eye helplessly, "I did play it through my prosthetic eye…"

"Then let's watch it again together." Jiang Shu naturally moved away from the topic of the prosthetic eye and opened the video on his wristwatch, but as he did so, the surroundings suddenly changed.

Suddenly it was daytime, and the busiest time at that. Cars flowed like streams and horses like dragons, people coming and going, bustling with activity.

"This is…" He was startled, then turned his head to see the alpha, beta, gamma, and delta situated in four directions, their bodies emitting colorful lights, interacting with each other to form a real AR scene.

"Even has this function; your tablet isn't bad, huh?" Wolf had just come to his senses. Not to mention, the car that suddenly sped past him gave him quite a scare.

After a brief moment of astonishment, the three of them calmed down and began to watch this VR version of the surveillance.

As Gary had said, it was just during commuting hours; the street was very crowded with vehicles big and small, then suddenly, from some location, a dozen smoke bombs were thrown, plunging the scene into chaos, and vehicles crashed into each other, making a thunderous noise.

Jiang Shu turned back to look and remembered the direction from which the smoke bombs had come; it was from the rooftop of a mid-rise residential building.

The traffic stilled for a moment, then exploded into an even greater noise, the sound of the crowd mixed with the sirens of vehicles sweeping over.

"Keep it down." Jiang Shu yelled at little alpha, astonished that such a small tablet could produce such loud noise; it could even be used as a sonic weapon. Being howled at by this thing at close range would basically cause immediate deafness.

The VR scenario continued. In the midst of the smoke, a middle-aged policeman stood on top of a police car, but even so, only his half face wearing a smoke mask was visible.

He was holding a megaphone, shouting orders for the officers to prioritize evacuating the citizens. With the police's command, the crowd quieted down somewhat, but at the same moment, another voice came from the smoke.

"There's a bomb in the car! Run!"

This shout again disrupted the order at the scene, and the crowd once again plunged into chaos, everyone frantically running out of the smoke.

If the crowd were allowed to scatter in such a congested road without visibility, a serious stampede would certainly occur, but in a critical moment, the middle-aged officer again played a pivotal role. He directed the police to use their cars to break through the other vehicles, swiftly clearing a relatively open road.

Three minutes later, the public and the officers had all evacuated, and in the center of the smoke, a fireball lit up, emitting a bright light, followed by a loud explosion.

The video ended there, and a huge crater was left in the middle of the road.

"Why the fake death?" As soon as the video ended, Gary immediately asked Jiang Shu, his tone slightly softened but still particularly sharp.

"Don't rush, have you checked the source of the smoke bomb?" Jiang Shu didn't reply directly but pointed to the location he had just noted down.

"We checked. That place isn't within the surveillance range, but we carefully screened the building's entrance and exit monitoring and found a frame showing the back of the person," Gary pulled up the footage.

It was a person wearing a black hoodie, around 178 cm tall, carrying what looked like a guitar case on his back, which was probably the grenade launcher. The person was slim, notably with squared shoulders.

"That's not much help either," Jiang Shu remarked after a glance. People like that could number in the hundreds of thousands in Lonely City.

"Indeed, this lead has indeed hit a dead end," Gary acknowledged. "Now the only lead we have left is the transport van driver. The handover procedures for him are already being prepared, and he is expected to be transferred to Thirteen District for interrogation tomorrow."

"It has nothing to do with him," Jiang Shu shook his head, then took another look at the deep pit, "I told you, the fox faked his death."

"Why?" Gary and Wolf asked simultaneously.

"Those same two words, motive," Jiang Shu continued. "I can't imagine who would have a motive to kill him at this time."

"Motive?" Gary scoffed at the notion. "You're not the murderer, how would you know the motive? Deception Group, the fox's past enemies, those relatives of his experimental subjects, or those who disliked him—many people might have motives to kill him."

Jiang Shu glanced at him; regardless, such a lack of criminal investigation awareness coming from a police officer was not a good sign.

That reminded him of the somewhat mediocre capabilities of the police officers in the Conan world.

"Deception Group had no need; Fox's social interactions are clean, he has no enemies; he used Wanderers for his experiments, and if there were truly relatives, it's unlikely that Seventh Police Station would have had no reports for so long; as for disliking him, would you kill someone you dislike with a Hot-Melt Bomb? Besides, he was already in prison, isn't that enough for you to gloat over his misfortune?" Jiang Shu refuted each point, but obviously, on this matter, neither he nor Gary could convince the other.

"Keep talking," Wolf interjected, stopping their argument and letting Jiang Shu continue.

"What still puzzles me is this smokescreen," Jiang Shu slowly started, "If the Hot-Melt Bomb was really used to kill the fox, then this smokescreen was absolutely superfluous."

"A smokescreen... to create chaos?" Gary suggested.

"Create chaos for what? To let the fox die without noise?" Jiang Shu chuckled. "But they chose the most earth-shattering method—a bomb."

"I just went online to check the characteristics of a Hot-Melt Bomb," he looked at the Simulated Light Screen and read out, "Large size, small blast radius, high temperature and brightness, objects within the range are directly melted."

"Translated, that means a small kill radius and it can destroy the body without traces," Jiang Shu explained. "You see, they used such a difficult-to-place bomb to limit the kill radius, proving they didn't want to cause civilian casualties, yet a smokescreen could easily trigger a stampede, creating a deep contradiction."

"Tell me, why wouldn't they just use another type of bomb that's smaller and has a larger area of effect?" he asked. "What exactly is the purpose of the smokescreen?"

Gary couldn't come up with an answer, just stubbornly furrowing his brow.

"It's a smokescreen, only false things need masking, like Magic," he answered his question himself, pulling out a deck of cards with his left hand, the first card showing the nine of spades, then swiftly waving his right hand from top to bottom in front of the nine of spades—

And startlingly, the nine of spades turned into the king of hearts.