Who hid my body?

Gerald turned and left.

……

Carol closed the shop door and walked to the back room humming a little tune.

Today's turnover has reached the target. I'll take a day off tomorrow and spend time with my wife and son.

Carol took out a family photo from his arms. Looking at his son's silly smile in the photo, he couldn't help but smile the same way.

Then he heard someone speak behind him.

"Good evening, Carol."

……

Gerard entered the station.

He hadn't felt his body so relaxed for a long time. After Carol's maintenance and inspection, he felt like he had returned to ten years ago, with his steps firm but not heavy.

But his heart was the opposite, heavy and uneasy.

Bai Wei’s previous words were still echoing in his mind.

"Why do you think that you can fight against a force that has been hiding from you for ten years just by being prepared to die alone?"

Gerard felt something was wrong.

"Let me give you a piece of advice. No matter what you decide to do, you don't have much time left."

Gerard's pace slowed down little by little.

"If you miss this opportunity, will you wait another ten years?"

He stopped and suddenly realized something, and cold sweat instantly broke out.

"Visas...did you see anything with that eye of yours?"

Bai Wei didn't say anything.

But a deafening explosion answered him.

Gerard turned his head sharply and saw thick smoke rising from the direction of Carol's shop.

After a brief moment of daze, he pushed away the frightened passengers like a madman and ran towards the direction of the white smoke.

This maintained metal body allowed him to run back to Carol's shop within five minutes.

But it's still too late.

A big fire had already engulfed the shop, and passers-by were standing outside the shop, watching.

"what's up?"

"I don't know. It just exploded suddenly."

No one dared to enter, only Gerard pushed everyone away and broke in alone.

Then, he saw Carol in the corner.

His body was pierced by six metal bars, and next to him was a collapsed machine, from which the metal bars had fallen.

So it looks like the machine went haywire and killed Carol.

It was like an accident.

Gerard stood in front of Carol, looking down at the metal bar that pierced his heart, as well as a photo of Carol's family.

Silence, long silence.

The shop was so quiet that the only sound you could hear was the crackling sound of the fire devouring objects.

It was unknown how long it had been before Gerard slowly spoke: "Visas, you've seen all this a long time ago, right?"

"Not completely." Bai Wei said calmly, "but there is a rough idea."

"Who did it?"

"This is not included in the transaction." Bai Wei said, "Do you want to start a new transaction?"

Jellal gently closed his eyes. "In our current deal, I can use your eyes, right?"

"Yes."

"How far can your eyes see?"

Bai Wei understood what Gerard meant. After a moment of silence, he said, "You've already opened your eyes once this morning. If you open them again, I'm not sure what will happen to your body. If you really want to kill that guy, let me do it."

"No." Gerard reached out his hand, grasped the metal bar that pierced Carol's heart, and then slowly pulled it out, "I want to do it myself."

"...As I recall, you were not allowed to take action in Tianqin City, right?"

Gerard didn't say anything, he just threw the blood on the metal bar into the flames beside him.

The fire devoured the blood and instantly became stronger.

"...Heh, since you've made up your mind." Bai Wei said softly, "Then, open your eyes."

……

Ocott hummed a song while wiping the blood off his hands with a towel, then threw the blood-stained tissue into the trash can beside him and walked into the station.

"Hello." He walked to the ticket office very easily and said to the ticket seller with a smile on his face, "Please give me a ticket to Babel Station..."

Halfway through his words, the smile suddenly froze, and then he immediately turned around, trying to look for something.

"Sir...what's wrong with you?" The ticket seller looked at Ocott with some confusion, "Do you want a ticket?"

Ocott withdrew his gaze. He didn't see anything, but he still broke out in a cold sweat.

After a long silence, he said to the ticket seller, "Let's not go to the Tower of Babel. Let's get a ticket to District 5. The sooner the better."

(End of this chapter)

Chapter 81 Twelve But This Is Not a Weapon

Twenty minutes later, Kud entered the shop where the fire had gone out.

"What happened?" Kud looked at Chalmers who had arrived in the store earlier and asked, "Why is there such a big commotion?"

"Well... it's hard to describe, but the initial judgment is that it was an accident." Chalmers shrugged, and then couldn't help complaining, "Really, we just returned to the city and our vacation wasn't over yet, and this happened. You know, when the accident happened, I was doing prosthetic maintenance two blocks away. Damn, the sudden explosion scared the mechanic's hand and almost welded my little prosthetic off. Next time I will definitely go to that shop to check and see if that guy has a formal mechanic license."

Coode ignored the chattering Chalmers. He knew that he was just a bit of a chatterbox and his work attitude was still very serious. After the accident, he was the first one in their team to arrive and cordon off the scene.

"Is anyone injured?" Kud asked Chalmers with a little concern as he stepped over the scattered mechanical wreckage. "From what I know, the population density on this street is not low."

"Strictly speaking, there were no injured people, only one dead person." Chalmers shrugged and said, "The dead person was the owner of this store. The accident also happened in the store. The store was closed at that time, so he was the only victim... Look, there he is."

After turning a corner, Kud finally saw the details of the accident.

The most eye-catching thing was a blown-up machine, with the exposed part showing the remains of a giant beast that had been eaten, and underneath the remains was a middle-aged man in a mechanic's uniform. There were five metal bars stuck upside down in his body, and it was obvious that this was the culprit that took his life, and those horrible wounds had drained his blood.

He still had his eyes wide open and his mouth open, as if he wanted to say something, but the accident happened too quickly, freezing his not-so-old life at that moment.

Kud lowered his head slightly, expressing a tiny bit of condolences to the unfortunate deceased.

"Have you made a preliminary assessment of the accident?" Soon, Kud raised his head and continued to ask Chalmers.

"Yes, as I said before, this is most likely an accident." Chalmers asked Cooder to look back. "Look, the accident is this machine."

Kud also turned around and looked at the hideous machine. Although more than half of it had been destroyed by the explosion, he still recognized the general model: "Gwei-type prosthetic replacement machine?"

"It's still a G-Way III," Chalmers said. "It's an old model, so it's not surprising that it had an accident."

Kud thought about it for a while, then shook his head: "No, the Gwei III is only a model from eight years ago. Its service life should be more than 20 years. It is far from being an old model."

"So, Captain, you are not keeping up with the times." Chalmers said with a smile, "Nowadays, a machine that has been used for three years is considered old, and this seven-year-old one can really be called an antique."

Coode glanced at Chalmers and said calmly, "When did our judgments become based not on facts but on trends?"

Chalmers fell silent immediately.

This time, Kud was able to continue observing the scene.

In fact, judging from the scene alone, there really aren't too many suspicious points. It should be that when the boss was repairing the machine, an accident suddenly occurred and the machine exploded. The metal bars inside the machine instantly killed the boss who had no time to react.

But Kud still felt something was wrong.

It's not just that this machine is far from reaching the end of its service life.

"Have you found out the identity of the deceased?" asked Kud.

"I checked. His name is Carol. He is 38 years old. He has a son and a wife." Chalmers said, "He is also a third-level mechanic."

"Has he had any other job before?"

Chalmers was slightly stunned: "Other work?"

At this time, a "skeleton" knight came out from outside the house: "Captain! The deceased has another identity. We just got the information from the Tower of Babel. Before becoming the store manager, the deceased was a maintenance worker of the Tower of Babel!"

Coode and Chalmers' expressions changed immediately.

Before the knight arrived, Kud immediately stepped forward, took the information from the knight's hand, and glanced at it quickly.

"Sure enough, it's the maintenance worker of the Tower of Babel."

Chalmers couldn't help scratching his head. "A maintenance worker of the Tower of Babel? How could such an accident happen? I thought he was just a low-level mechanic."

Before he finished speaking, he saw Kud raised his head from the information with a sullen face.

"What are you worried about?" Chalmers couldn't help asking, "Even if he was a maintenance worker, it has nothing to do with him now, right? This is Tianqin, and there can't be any murder."

Cooder glanced at Chalmers and said, "This maintenance worker left the company in 236 years."

Chalmers' expression suddenly froze.

After all, this year is really special.

"Is this... a coincidence?" Chalmers couldn't help but ask.

Kud didn't say anything, he just felt that there was something wrong with the file in his hand.

But it wasn't that the file itself was wrong, but... How come this file had already been passed to them after such a short time since the accident? Logically speaking, the files of the maintainers should be confidential.

"Captain!" Before Kud could figure it out, a team member who was checking the body immediately spoke up, "Look here."

Coode immediately turned around and saw the team member pulling open Carol's clothes on his chest. Then they saw that there was a noticeable wound in the area of ​​his heart.

"Logically, there should be a metal bar here," the team member said, "but we didn't find it at the scene."

Kud's brows immediately frowned.

Then another team member came in hurriedly from outside the house: "Captain, people outside said that someone entered the scene before and after the explosion."

"Who?" Coode asked immediately.

But when he asked this question, he actually had a vague guess in his heart.

Then, the speculation was confirmed.

"According to the description of the witnesses." The team member slowly unfolded the portrait in his hand, "It should be... Gerard."

At this moment, the whole scene fell silent.

Chalmers' eyes widened little by little. He took several deep breaths and spoke after a long while: "This... is impossible? Could it be that he did it? But, that's not right. The 'lock' shouldn't have disappeared. How could he..."

Coode raised his hand to stop the incoherent Chalmers.

Very quickly, really quickly.

All the clues pointed to Gerald in an instant.

This was so quick and deliberate that Kud couldn't help but wonder what had happened.

Therefore, the only thing he can do now is...

"Find Gerald's whereabouts." Kud said slowly, "Immediately."

……

The cog train was speeding along the track.

It is rush hour now, and normally there should be a lot of people on the train, but this train is an exception, with only a few people in the entire carriage.

Because the final destination of this train... is District 5.

The fifth zone is used to fight against polluted areas.