When Jin returned to the recovery instance to calm the quarantined military vendors once more, Yun informed him in his thoughts that the police were here.
“Ahhh, Jin what have you done this time around?” Inspector Lee An whined as he entered the premise of the shop instance with Se Lang and Deng Long. Usually, for police calls, it would just be Se Lang, who would take the call as the policeman on duty, so it was rather odd that Lee An was with him.
“Hey! I swear this time is different…” Jin then found out, that Lee An’s visit was merely a coincidence. He had been around the corner on his way to work and Se Lang wanted to offer him a quick one minute ride to the police station noticing how tired he was. Who could have predicted that as soon as Lee An had entered the car, there was a police radio call? Lee An decided to tag along because they heard the emergency call was a breach of security concerning Dungeons and Pandas.
Jin offered the tired inspector and policemen some coffee (which they ‘reluctantly’ took) and explained the situation to them. All three almost spit out their coffee simultaneously when they heard the word “assassin”. Their shock only increased once they also heard “Royal Zodiac”. Afterwards, he brought the police to the confined area of the military vendors with the System’s permission to enter the recovery instance, where they took their statements down.
“Thank you, System. I was afraid you would never allow us to re-enter the recovery instance.” Jin sent his thought.
“This was a unique situation, and the condition of the patients are stable. The shop was closed too, and there is no apparent breach of confidentiality for this current situation.” The System stated and only then did Jin understand how the System was protecting the identities of the patients by not allowing any random customers to enter the recovery instance for curiosity sake.
“Yea… I guess we should call the Military Police in. An assassination attempt on someone from a direct family of the Royal Zodiac would be plenty big on itself. It even targeting the head… that is totally out of our jurisdiction.” Lee An shook his head, hardly believing that such a thing could happen in this laidback shopping district.
“I’ve already contacted someone I know from the MSS (Ministry of State Security), they will be here soon. The Boss is just following protocol by calling the police in first.” Hou Fei informed them.
“By the way, where is Tiger Lord Yuan Ba?” Inspector Lee asked as he looked around the recovery instance unable to find him. “Is he in a separate room? Are his injuries that severe?”
“‘Tiger Lord’? Oh shit.” Jin finally realised that since the beginning he had been forgetting to address Yuan Ba with his formal title.
“Oh? Were you not close with Tiger Lord Yuan Ba? I assumed you knew him well enough, judging by the way you called him so informally?” Hou Fei had been paying special attention, ever since he learnt that Jin was Ming’s grandson.
“Yea, I did not know him before today…” Jin admitted rather awkwardly, but Hou Fei laughed.
“I do not think he minds. Especially since you and your companions ultimately rescued him and-”
“And even saved my life.” Yuan Ba entered the room slightly awake in a wheelchair before the others turned their attention to him. There were bandages and a neck support because of the wound, though Milk’s magic would make sure that the injuries disappeared within a day. Milk was able to close the neck wound without too much trouble thanks to the corruption poison getting transferred and contained within the poison isolation core after the surgical process.
“The surgery was a success?” Jin was fairly surprised it was already done. The System told him that the time dilation for the surgery was extended because the bellators were able to take the strain better than him. In the meantime, Yang Ling, who was walking with the help of Gearbox V3 came over.
“Urgh so tired.” Milk yawned as she walked towards a bed and crashed almost immediately. The nurses did not lose any time and closed the curtains around her, reassuring Jin that she was just exhausted. “Eh…what about the rest of the military vendors?” Jin wondered, and the senior Panda Nurse told him that Peppers was already collecting the data from the surgical operation. She would proceed to create a miniature version that could be injected, without requiring any surgery to contain those minor poison corruption within the military vendors.
“Well, that is good news. There will be much to do once the MSS arrives.” Hou Fei pointed out with a sigh of relief. Eventually, the authorities from the MSS arrived and noted down the same statement as the police did earlier, leaving shortly before the store’s opening hours. During that amount of time, Peppers and the Panda Nurses had injected the modified version of the Poison Isolation Core into the vendors. Their versions looked like a golden thumbtack pin secured on the side of the upper arm, compared to Yuan Ba’s large disk.
“The amount of corruption poison is minimal. Possibly because it merely acted as a catalyst to break their chi circulation a little in order to absorb their chi powers. This should have allowed the assassin to create the monster face on him. Kraft concluded that the monster face was to make him immune to the terrifying Psionic magic that Yang Ling possessed. And that was all the information I have received from Kraft so far.” Peppers told Jin in a telepathic message. Jin guessed he would rather keep that information to himself than to tell the MSS authorities about it.
Still, the MSS authorities did not just rule out Jin as a possible conspirator and questioned him thoroughly, even though Yuan Ba and Hou Fei provided their assurance to them. Thankfully with Kraft around, the MSS authorities “low levelled” psionic abilities did not affect Jin at all. Kraft even manipulated the information intake slightly to make the MSS authorities believe, that while Jin was hiding something, that it was only concerning some of his store’s trade secrets, but nothing regarding or connecting him to the assassin.
When asked for the assassin, Jin brought the authorities to a room where Kraft had already prepared a wrapped up present for them to pick up. “Got to make it look like he struggled in the tentacles, plus those bigger injuries? Just collateral damage from the fight. No one will know.” Kraft who was beside Jin briefed him, as the authorities picked it up.
After the military vendors and the MSS authorities exited through the back door, Hou Fei stayed back, while Yuan Ba was still in the recovery instance resting. “So what information did you get?” Hou Fei asked when no one else was around, yet Jin continued to feint ignorance.
“Sigh. Anyone ever tells you, that you can be too careful. Well, given the situation I can understand, but what about this? Will this change your mind?” Hou Fei raised his arm and opened his palm. In no time, an emblem magically appeared on his hand, which caused Jin to be on his guard until Yun patted him on his shoulder to signal him to stand down.
“Jin, he is an ally of Ming…and ours,” Yun explained as she raised her arm and repeated the same thing like Hou Fei. Her hand was shining with the same symbol, that had made Jin confused at Yun’s actions until she took a breath before she said it to his face.
“He is a Panda Clan Remnant.”
