"I have to say, your freehand composite sketching skills are not great," Officer Meng said, holding up the suspect sketch.
His colleague, the only one at the local precinct with any amateur training in forensic art, had been brought in to sketch the suspect based on the witness's description.
The other officer shrugged. "It's not my fault. The kid's descriptive ability is terrible. All he could say was 'scary' and 'really scary.' How am I supposed to draw that?"
As they spoke, they got back into their car just as two more vehicles pulled into Havenwood Village, from which six people emerged.
"Whoa." Meng and his colleague immediately stood at attention. Though the newcomers weren't in a marked car and were wearing plain clothes, they recognized them as detectives from the criminal investigation division.
The man in the lead surveyed the area before heading into the village chief's house, gesturing for Meng and his colleague to follow him into the courtyard. Clearly, this was a conversation that couldn't be had on the street.
But even in the courtyard, their hushed tones couldn't evade Elias.
From his vantage point on a small hill over 600 meters away, Elias looked down at the chief's house. The lights were on inside, giving him a clear view of the upper half of the officers' bodies. At this distance, no normal person could possibly eavesdrop. But Elias could. For him, to see was to hear. His vision was his hearing.
"That note means the criminals are still in Havenwood," the lead detective, a middle-aged man, said. "Are there any remote or hidden places around here where someone could hide?"
"You're locals, you know the area best," a younger detective with a buzz cut added.
"Captain Chen, there's no one in our village named Rhys," Officer Meng reported.
Captain Chen's expression was grim. "Of course not. Rhys is a cybersecurity expert for a major cosmetics corporation in the capital."
"You know their e-commerce site? He's one of their security specialists," the buzz-cut detective added.
Meng scratched his head. "Could it be someone with the same name? Why would a corporate employee from the capital come all the way out here to kidnap someone?"
Captain Chen shook his head. "It's not a coincidence. We tracked his travel records. He flew into the provincial capital the day before yesterday, then checked into a hotel in the county seat yesterday. Early this morning, around 3 AM, he left the hotel and hasn't returned. The timeline fits perfectly for him to be in Havenwood by 7 AM to carry out the kidnapping."
The buzz-cut detective chimed in again. "The key thing is, we found photos of Evelyn Liang in his hotel room."
Meng was stunned. Photos of Evelyn? They weren't supposed to know each other. This was definitive. It was all too bizarre—a man traveling hundreds of miles from the capital to a rural village to kidnap a doctor. There had to be a hidden reason.
Elias, on the hill, already knew that reason.
"It's about the money," he muttered to himself.
No one in Havenwood knew Dr. Liang better than he did. It was already strange for a top medical graduate from the capital to be working in the countryside. Since his awakening last week, Elias had observed Dr. Liang's information multiple times and knew she was hiding here to evade someone.
She had been a member of a cultural artifact smuggling ring, dragged into it by her parents—or rather, her adoptive parents. She was an orphan, a fact that was very basic information for Elias to perceive. Her adoptive parents had raised her well and supported her education, and she had hoped to become a doctor. But during her university years, they had returned to their old criminal ways and pulled her in with them. At first, she only treated minor injuries. Then they had her prepare anesthetics. Seeing her compliance, they eventually had her help transport the goods.
Evelyn's dream was to be a doctor, not a smuggler, and she was miserable. After she resisted, her parents promised to retire after one last big score. That "big score" was a double-cross. The couple stole over four million in cash and a Tang Dynasty golden Buddha statue from their own organization and fled. Evelyn had participated in the plan, drugging the other members with anesthesia before calling the police as they left.
In that organization, most members used aliases. Only those with close family ties knew each other's true identities. When the police raided the scene, the arrested criminals could only provide physical descriptions of the fugitives. Ultimately, three men escaped: Zhen, Feng, and Rhys. Zhen and Feng were physically fit and managed to escape before the police arrived. Rhys, one of the masterminds, was never at the scene to begin with.
Knowing three members were still at large, the couple had taken the money and hidden in this remote village, planning to flee the country once things cooled down. They forced Evelyn to stay with them, where she practiced as the local doctor—a role she embraced as it was her true calling.
Elias had known her story for days but had kept it to himself. Dr. Liang had been genuinely good to him, and he believed she was, at her core, a good person. But now the secret was out. She had been kidnapped by the very same criminals who had escaped justice years ago.
Back in the courtyard, Officer Meng stroked his chin. "As for hiding places, there are a few abandoned houses over on Cemetery Hill. They're just old bungalows, no one's lived there for years."
"Uncle, have those houses always been there?"
The chief nodded. "Yes. An old fortune-teller used to live there. After he died, the houses were left empty. It's been years."
Hearing this, Elias turned his gaze toward Cemetery Hill. He could just make out the roofline of a house in the distance. He queried its information and sensed four people inside.
"They really are there," he smiled.
At this point, his involvement should have been over. Captain Chen had already pulled out a map for the village chief to mark the locations. The chief pointed out a few other spots, including other abandoned houses and an old air-raid shelter. The detectives were impressed by the local knowledge and began planning their search. They would surely find the house on Cemetery Hill soon.
Elias, however, was already moving, arriving near the scene long before them. He found a concealed spot to observe, unwilling to leave until he knew Dr. Liang was safe. He quickly discovered several small, hidden tripwire alarms around the old house. For him, they were meaningless; a trap's information clearly announced, I am a trap. But he knew the detectives, working in the dark, might stumble into them and alert the kidnappers.
"Good thing I got here first," Elias grinned. He crept forward silently and dismantled the traps. They weren't dangerous, just designed to trigger a loud, blaring alarm. Having seen their entire mechanism, he disarmed them without a sound.
With the path cleared for the police, Elias crouched about twenty meters from the house. It was dark inside, but the kidnappers were using a cell phone for light. Through the faint glow of the screen, he could make out their silhouettes. It was them: Zhen, Feng, and Rhys.
Observing them directly, Elias could access almost all of their information. Including their memories.
Of course, the information was immense. His processing speed wasn't fast enough to "download" it all at once. He had once tried to perceive thirty seconds of a person's memory in a single second. The resulting information overload gave him a splitting headache and caused him to black out instantly. The human brain was too fragile; fainting was its self-preservation mechanism. At his current level, perceiving the entire lifetime of a twenty-year-old would require him to observe them continuously for twenty years.
Instead, he performed targeted queries. He could retrieve a person's most terrifying memory, their greatest sorrow, their favorite thing, the person they loved most, or their most cherished memory. This allowed him to understand a person deeply without needing to observe them for long. With his ability, he could see right through anyone.
"So it's not about the money, it's the Buddha statue. And Zhen and Feng are wanted fugitives…"
Elias was a bit speechless. Zhen and Feng had been on the run for years, living in fear. Only Rhys, whose involvement in the original crime was unknown to the police, had been living well. But now, for that statue, he had personally stepped into the fray. He was meticulous, wearing a mask, changing his hairstyle, and even hiring a petty thief named Lin to steal the van as a decoy. If not for Elias, the police might not have even filed a case yet. And even if they did, they would still be chasing the decoy van. By the time they caught the driver, Rhys would be long gone.
But Rhys could never have imagined that someone would identify him from a footprint, then impersonate him to write a ransom note signed with his real name.
"Cough, cough…" Inside, Dr. Liang was tied up, a cloth over her face. Zhen was pouring a bucket of water over her.
After the bucket was empty, Rhys pulled the cloth away. She gasped for air, coughing violently.
"Still not talking? The police know you're missing, little Liang. I'm running out of patience," Rhys said coldly.
"I really don't know!" she cried, broken. "I never touched the money… and I know nothing about the statue…"
Rhys looked at her with disappointment, and a murderous intent bloomed in his mind.
Seeing this, Elias nearly stood up. He could clearly perceive Rhys's killing intent. He also knew with absolute certainty that she was telling the truth. The money and the statue were with her adoptive parents, who had abandoned her and fled the moment they heard she'd been taken. Rhys had made a major miscalculation by going after her first, assuming she knew where the valuables were. They had tortured her for ten hours—he could see they had cut her face, burned her hands and feet, whipped her, waterboarded her, and even cut off one of her fingers—but she couldn't tell them what she didn't know.
Elias clenched his fists. He sized up his own small frame. He might be able to take on Rhys, but Zhen and Feng were powerfully built. He was no match for them.
"What's taking the police so long?"
He was just an ordinary person, except… he could see information. Right now, all he could do was keep observing the three men, his mind racing to find a way out.