69novels Chapter 18 Investigation and Dungeon Cooldown End
Chapter 18 Investigation and Dungeon Cooldown End
As Li En pondered the hunter's last whereabouts, he suddenly realized something.
Although he is a hardcore gamer, his knowledge of superheroes is limited to a few movies.
But he also knew that in the Marvel superhero world, there was a department called S.H.I.E.L.D.
This is the department in the Marvel universe that specializes in handling supernatural matters.
He had searched for Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters in the search bar, but he had never searched for S.H.I.E.L.D.
This name appeared so frequently in the movies I watched before I time-traveled that I didn't need to look it up specifically.
But this isn't a movie.
S.H.I.E.L.D. exists, and their people will appear where they are supposed to be.
Two people died on West 38th Street. The cause of death was suffocation. There were no external injuries, no poisoning, and no physical signs of death.
Such a case would be an unsolved case in the hands of ordinary police officers, but it becomes a model for S.H.I.E.L.D.
Will they come?
Or have they already been here?
Li En stood up, the chair leg scraping against the ground with a short creak, and walked towards Cherry.
Cherry was sitting in front of the computer, her coat hanging on the back of the chair.
The screen displays surveillance footage from several intersections around West 38th Street.
Cherry used the mouse to drag the progress bar frame by frame, her eyes fixed on the figures passing by in each frame.
Li En walked to his side, bent down, and lowered her voice.
"Isn't the cause of death for these two people quite strange?"
Cherry didn't look up; the mouse slid across the desk mat.
The camera pauses at an intersection, and a man in a dark jacket walks past the edge of the frame.
He dragged it back and looked at it again, saying as he read:
"Of course it's strange; people suffocate on the street every year."
He released the mouse and turned his chair to face Li En.
"However, most of those guys are on drugs, or they're blocked by nausea, or they've developed muscle problems."
He turned back and switched the surveillance footage to another angle.
"But these two guys didn't." He tapped his finger on the keyboard, the screen paused, and he added, "At least not during the autopsies."
Li En understood what he meant.
Those two robbers had most likely touched things they shouldn't have before, but that wasn't the cause of their deaths.
A clean body, a clean respiratory tract, clean blood.
There was nothing there, and people just suffocated like that.
Li En asked directly:
"Such a strange case, isn't there a specific department to handle it?"
Cherry's hand stopped on the mouse.
He turned to look at Li En, his gaze lingering for about two seconds, then raised an eyebrow and said:
"That's true, with grades like yours, you're bound to hear some rumors."
Li En pulled over a folding chair and sat down next to Cherry.
The chair cushion is very thin, and you can feel the iron frame underneath digging into your legs when you sit on it.
He placed his hands on his knees, leaned forward, and adopted a serious, inquiring posture.
"Could you elaborate?"
Cherry moved her chair half an inch closer to Li En, their shoulders almost touching, and they lowered their voices to the lowest possible level.
"I've worked in Hell's Kitchen for decades, so of course I've encountered a lot of strange cases." He held up two fingers.
"But only twice was it taken over by another department."
He pulled two fingers back and slapped his knee with his palm.
"I can't talk about the specific cases, but compared to those two, this is just a little strange."
He reached out and patted Li En on the shoulder twice.
"At least, the suspect can be identified from the surveillance footage."
"That's not special."
Li En nodded.
He understood the unspoken meaning behind Cherry's words.
The special departments handle cases that are impossible to trace.
In this world, there are superpowered individuals, mutants, advanced technology, and aliens.
There are simply too many ways to commit crimes silently and without leaving any trace.
In contrast, at least the two robbers on West 38th Street had their backs seen in the photos.
It also allows police officers to sit in front of the computer and flip through the pages one by one.
Thinking about this, Li En suddenly became curious.
This hunter is a very cautious fellow.
Although they share some commonalities in their behavior, there have been no clues whatsoever.
Li En leaned back in her chair and looked up at the yellowish light on the ceiling.
Seeing this, Cherry didn't disturb them and continued to check the surveillance footage.
Ta-da.
Li En tapped her fingers rhythmically on the armrest of the seat and closed her eyes.
He had seen case files from more than a dozen states on the wall in the darkroom, spanning most of the United States and several years.
Each case involved the entire family committing suicide, leaving no traceable clues, and on the surface, there seemed to be no problem.
Why would someone like that attack two thugs on a run-down street next to Times Square?
Why were images captured by the camera preserved?
Why let those two robbers die on the street instead of manipulating them to some deserted corner and jump into the Hudson River?
Li En pushed the chair back half an inch, leaned back against the chair, and looked up at the yellowish light tube on the ceiling.
The two ends of the light tube were black, while the middle section was dazzlingly bright, leaving a white afterimage on the retina.
Cherry didn't disturb him and turned back to continue dragging the monitoring progress bar.
The sound of mouse clicks echoed repeatedly in the quiet office area.
Da, da, da.
Li En tapped her fingers twice on the armrest of the chair in rhythm, then stopped.
He closed his eyes.
In his mind, he imagined himself standing in Times Square, following behind the hunter.
The line of sight gradually descended until it overlapped with the hunter's.
He scanned the street, finding the noisy crowd around him only annoying.
Invitations from heavily made-up, scantily clad women only disgusted him.
He was a noble hunter with very clear requirements for his prey.
The prey must be clean, tidy, full of hope, and preferably happy and content.
He wants something clean and unpolluted, something that still has light in its eyes.
Ideally, it should be a complete family.
A photo of a father, mother, and child laughing unguardedly in front of a white fence.
He wanted to see them crumble little by little in despair.
Such people wouldn't prey on those in Times Square steeped in lights, alcohol, and cheap perfume.
Those things weren't prey to him, just trash and weeds, not worth bending down to pick up.
He walked past those people at a moderate pace, his eyes showing no emotion.
Then he turned into West 38th Street.
The lights went out.
The light from the streetlights leaked out from their stark white shades, casting halos of light across the sidewalk.
Two figures darted out from the shadows.
One in front of the other.
One was thin and bony, the other was fat.
A dagger and a hammer.
Robbers.
His expression remained unchanged.
These two people simply didn't exist in his eyes.
Or rather, it exists, but it's no different from the iron fence of a roadside sewer.
He is waiting for the ability to take effect.
Wait until these two pieces of trash collapse and die on their own, disappearing from the world.
Just use it to kill some time.
He took out his wallet...
Li En suddenly opened his eyes, reached out and took the two victim files from Cherry's desk, and opened them.
Description of the posture as the gaze sweeps over the two corpses.
The skinny man lay on his side, one hand under his body, the other pointing to the sky.
The fat man lay on his back with his limbs outstretched.
The cause of death was suffocation, the hunter's method.
But before that, both of them had impact injuries.
The thin man's right arm was broken at the elbow joint, while the fat man's torso had multiple stress points, distributed across his chest and abdomen.
This is the power of a third person.
A person with extraordinary strength.
She can break an adult male's arm with her bare hands and throw a body weighing over 200 pounds across the street like trash.
This person appeared at the intersection of West 38th Street and reacted before the hunter could act.
She returned the valuables to the hunter.
They faced each other.
Li En closed the document and put it back on the table in front of Yingtao.
"Check how many other people were at the intersection of West 38th Street in the 15 minutes before and after the suffocation incident."
Cherry stopped using her mouse, turned her head, and squinted her eyes.
"You mean, this guy has accomplices?"
"Very likely." Li En's tone was very confident. "In short, anyone who was at the scene during this time period could be involved."
Cherry didn't ask any further questions. Instead, she turned back and extended the time frame of the surveillance footage, from fifteen minutes before and after the incident to thirty minutes.
There were twice as many figures on the screen, and the scene transitions were much faster.
Li En stood behind him, her gaze sweeping over the images that had been opened with the mouse.
He finally figured things out through mental simulation.
The hunter left his mark on West 38th Street because his mindset was off at that moment.
A person who had never made a mistake, left no trace, and never let anyone see their face for years lost control in that one moment.
The reason for the loss of control was the appearance of a new third person.
The man who can break an arm and throw a strong man away.
What did that person show the hunter?
Perhaps it's the clear look in their eyes, or perhaps it's the untainted aura they possess.
Perhaps it's something he's been searching for but has never found.
The perfect prey.
Li En's fingers brushed against the seam of his pants.
The walls of the darkroom depict a dark red line drawn across more than a dozen states, from Arkansas to New York, showing the families of the victims.
The hunter always manipulates a happy family, torments them until they are desperate, and then kills them.
Every family is a selection process.
He was always looking for the perfect prey.
Until last night.
The man appeared on West 38th Street, returned the valuables to him, and then turned and left.
From that moment on, the hunter was no longer a hunter.
He became like a hunter who had lost his prey, and his mindset was no longer balanced.
So he killed the two robbers because he couldn't control himself.
Li En took a deep breath and slowly exhaled.
Cherry tapped her finger on the keyboard, zooming in on a screenshot.
In the video, several figures cast long shadows under the streetlights, their faces obscured.
"Not many people have been to West 38th Street lately," Cherry said with a hint of frustration. "But we really can't glean any useful information from it."
Li En leaned closer to look at the screen.
In the scene, some people are wrapped in thick coats, some are walking quickly with their necks hunched, and some are standing by the roadside lighting cigarettes.
Most people's faces were either exposed to the bright light of the streetlights, turning them completely white, or were completely obscured by the shadows of their hoods.
This world has aliens and advanced technology, but the resolution of surveillance cameras is still stuck in the last century.
The person who could throw a burly man weighing over 200 pounds might be an unremarkable, thin figure.
Everyone who passes by in the scene could be that person.
Cherry turned off the screenshot and switched back to the photo she had initially locked.
The back view of a tall person.
"Let's focus on investigating this tall guy first." Cherry printed out the photo and put it in a folder.
"At least this person has some distinguishing features: height, a suit, and direction."
"it is good."
Li En nodded, walked back to his desk, sat down, his fingers resting on the keyboard but not typing.
A person with mind control abilities.
A superhuman with superpowers.
Two people appeared at the same time on the same street in Manhattan, on the same night, at the same time.
The hunter's mindset is currently unbalanced, and unbalanced people make mistakes.
All he needs to do is seize on that mistake.
Li En withdrew his fingers from the keyboard and placed them on the table.
Suddenly, several lines of white characters appeared on my retina, hovering in the center of my field of vision.
[Instance: Resident Evil 2, Cooldown complete]
[Number of attempts remaining: 2]
[Rewards: Awarded based on completion rating]
Please choose any door to start the dungeon.
Li En stood up from the chair, pushed it aside, and walked towards the restroom at the end of the corridor.
Two of the light tubes in the corridor were flickering, one on and one off.
He pushed open the bathroom door, went inside, and closed the door.
The door lock clicked shut.
……