The words he said were basically pointless.
“What I want to hear is the details of what happened.”
“That was what happened.”
“It was completely like a maze inside, how could you have come out so easily?”
“That’s why I took such a long time to get out, from afternoon to night.”
Hearing his vague response, An Xiaoning felt rather overwhelmed with emotions. She was well aware of the amount of effort it took to get out of there. Moreover, he had to do so without any source of light to help him. It was almost like the blind walking! He wouldn’t have been able to see a thing.
“I thought you would leave first. I didn’t think you would go in to find me.” She flashed him a smile. “How touching.”
Henry replied casually, “I was just afraid you would die inside.”
“I know.” She picked up some vegetables for him with her chopsticks. “Eat more.”
Henry looked at the vegetables in his bowl, then darted a glance at her, hesitating to speak his mind. Eventually, he still did not say a word.
After their meal, she comfortably took a hot bath in the tub.
Having gained a few blisters on her feet, she sat on the bed and used a sterilized needle to pop them, thereafter putting on some medicine and placing a few bandaids.
After everything was settled, her phone had been charged for some time already.
She then took it and gave Pan Zhenghui a call. “Have you sent him home?”
“He alighted at Mingyuan Road.”
“Okay. Get someone to check his personal information. This Zong Jingyi should be around the same age as me.”
“Alright. I’ll get my men to check and return a call to you.”
“Also, there’s something very suspicious about the tomb at the lake. Get Ma Jianguo to find out whose territory that place belonged to a few decades ago or even way back.”
“Oh, Xiaoning, I haven’t gotten to asking you. What did you find inside the tomb?”
An Xiaoning lay down on the bed and responded, “I’ll tell you tomorrow at the station. Just do according to what I’ve said and call me when you get anything.”
Since she had said it like this, Pan Zhenghui did not probe any further as well. “Okay.”
Two hours later, when the search on Zong Jingyi’s information had been done, he gave her a call back.
“We’ve checked all the names with a similar pronunciation to his, and they’re all different from what you’ve described. Their ages can’t match his either. They’re either between ten to twenty years old or in their forties to sixties. Even if there are some in their thirties, their height differ from his. The man we saw tonight was definitely taller than 1.8 meters.”
“There isn’t a profile match for him?” An Xiaoning’s suspicion was aroused. Could he have given her a false name?
It probably shouldn’t have been the case.
If he had not wanted to give her his name, he could have simply not told her. Why would he have made up a name?
Or was it that she had heard his name wrongly?
It couldn’t have been the case, since she remembered his name by heart when she heard it.
Then what exactly was going on?
How could there be no profile match for him?
Someone from the military could not possibly have no household register.
Unless he didn’t have a proper identity or wasn’t from the military.
But no matter how she looked at it, he did not seem like someone like that.
An Xiaoning sat upright and said to Pan Zhenghui on the other end of the line, “No matter what, this doesn’t seem possible. Is it possible for the page showing the search results in the system to be hacked?”
“Of course not.”
“Alright, I got it. Send me an email with the surveillance footage of the area where he alighted from the car. I’ll see where he lives specifically. Let’s talk about other things tomorrow.”
“Sure, okay.”
An Xiaoning got down from the bed, her legs and neck about to break any time.
Every step that she took was as heavy and painful as if she were about to head to an execution ground.
She went upstairs to the bedroom and found that Henry had fallen asleep on the bed without even changing his clothes.
He remained sound asleep even when she entered the room.
After taking her laptop, she switched off the lights and went out of the room again.
She logged in to her email account and finally received a new email after waiting for some time.
The document that was attached was the surveillance footage retrieved tonight.
With her laptop resting on her lap, she clicked on the attachment and gathered all her energy to watch the footage carefully.
In the footage, she saw that the police car had pulled over and Zong Jingyi had alighted from it.
After walking away from the police car, he walked along the pavement and headed in the southward direction.
An Xiaoning did not fast-forward the footage and continued to watch him walk, as if she were accompanying him. After more than ten minutes, he arrived before the entrance of a hotel.
If she had not guessed wrongly, that hotel was one of multiple chains belonging to the Gu family.
Without an identification card, there was no way he could have checked in there to stay.
But why was he going to a hotel instead of going home?
With this new discovery, An Xiaoning hurriedly gave Gu Beicheng a call. “Call the front desk of one of the hotels you own at Mingyuan Road and get them to check the details of a man who entered at around 7:40 pm.”
Gu Beicheng did not hang up the phone but picked up the telephone beside him to call the hotel manager. Very soon, he was able to get the specific details from that side.
However, what An Xiaoning completely did not expect was that Zong Jingyi did not check in at the front desk but simply entered the hotel lift and went to room 409 at the fourth floor. The room was registered under someone called Liu Dasheng, and it had been booked a few days ago. Tonight was the last night the room was booked until.
An Xiaoning’s curiosity was aroused and, without hesitation, she called Pan Zhenghui and got him to check Liu Dasheng’s personal information.
The results that came out made her jaw drop.
It turned out that this Liu Dasheng was the captain of the elite military commando unit of B City’s special forces.
But, from the picture that Pan Zhenghui had sent, An Xiaoning confirmed that he was not the same man.
Once one became curious of something, they would resort to every method to find out what they want to.
An Xiaoning then received news from B City’s military that, amongst all the subordinates under Liu Dasheng, there wasn’t anyone called Zong Jingyi. Also, in the military database, there was no such name to be found.
She originally did not think there was anything wrong about Zong Jingyi, but from how things looked now, she actually felt that he was not a simple person.
She was obviously feeling very fatigued already and did not want to move anymore, yet her brain refused to give it a rest.
At the thought that this was the last night he would be staying in that hotel room, she felt that if she did not go to see him tonight, it would put her in a disadvantageous position if she wanted to see him in the future.
At last, after thinking for some time, An Xiaoning put on her clothes again and took her car keys with her before heading to the garage to get her car.
She had to personally go and ask him who he was.
She would not let it go easily if she did not find out the truth.
Unless he actually confesses that he had given her a fake name, the mystery in her heart could not be resolved.
When her car arrived at Mingyuan Road, there were very few people and cars on the streets because it was raining.
An Xiaoning pulled the car over at the entrance of the hotel and alighted with an umbrella in hand.
After taking the lift to the fourth floor, she soon arrived at room 409.
Standing before the door, she pressed on the doorbell.
Very soon, the door was opened. Looking at her standing before him, Zong Jingyi did not seem surprised at all. “I didn’t think we would meet so soon. I thought we would see each other tomorrow.”
An Xiaoning tried to look more natural. “You seemed to have expected… that I would come and find you.”
“Come on in.” He did not answer her directly and turned to head back into the room.
An Xiaoning went in after him and closed the door behind her.
