HBWnovel Chapter 325
Chapter 325
Chapter 325
The nights in the jungle can be beautiful and moving, or full of hidden dangers.
Jian Jing occupied the lazy person's sofa, her bare feet resting on the back of the dog - taking advantage of someone when they need it most. She yawned as she watched Plague of the Pythons.
Kang Mu Cheng sat next to her, replying to emails while watching the movie with her.
"Go back if you're sleepy. I'll be fine here." Kang Mu Cheng knew very well that she was worried something would happen, which was why she insisted on staying with him.
But the Paris incident had happened a long time ago. How often did a person experience similar incidents in their lifetime? He didn't think anything unusual would happen.
Although they had mostly been on the boat today, they had also done some walking. His mother was already too tired and had gone to bed. It would be too tiring for Jian Jing to wait until the others got back.
Kang Mu Cheng urged her to leave, "I'm going to sleep soon too. You should go back."
Jian Jing thought for a moment and asked, "Let Knight stay with you."
"If anything happens, won't it be faster for it to come find you?" he retorted.
That made sense to her, so she accepted it. She grabbed the German Shepherd's big ears, "Then we're going back to sleep."
Knight: "Whine." Having big ears wasn't for the owner to pull.
"Good boy," Jian Jing rubbed the dog's head and took it back to the room with her.
It was already ten o'clock by this point. Professor Lao and the others had left around seven, over two hours ago. She lowered the curtains and saw that the lights were still on in the rooms of both Li Journalist and Cha Li Doctor.
Maybe I'm overthinking this.
That unknown animal they saw was probably injured after losing a fight, and they rushed over to treat it.
Jian Jing yawned and went to bed.
Knight: "Woof~"
Reluctantly, she asked, "Where's the towel?"
Knight brought over his own Superman beach towel.
Jian Jing spread it on the floor next to the bed and allowed the dog to come up and sleep there for the night.
Half an hour later, she kicked the dog off the bed.
Knight: "Whine~"
Jian Jing turned over and pretended not to hear - sleeping next to a person was still very different from sleeping next to a dog.
At eleven, just as she was starting to drift off, Knight suddenly sat up and put his nose against her hand, poking her awake.
Jian Jing was jolted fully awake.
Knight would never bother her while she was sleeping unless he was hungry. For him to wake her now, something must have happened.
She listened carefully.
In the distance, she could hear hurried footsteps, then not long after, Fei Na came running over crying, yelling, "Doctor Cha Li!"
On the other side, Cha Li Doctor rushed out in his clothes, "What happened?"
"My dad..." Tears streamed down Fei Na's face. "Hurry, look at my dad!"
Jian Jing also went over. She saw that Chen was carrying a bloody corpse on his back, drenched in sweat. "Save him!"
Cha Li Doctor quickly examined the situation, but almost instantly determined the outcome. "I'm sorry..." He said with difficulty, "The professor is already dead."
"Oh my god." Fei Na collapsed to her knees, covering her face as she wept bitterly.
[System: New mission released]
[Mission name: Murder in the Jungle]
[Content description: In the primordial jungle millions of years ago, humans shared the land with wild animals and plants. The blistering sun, lakes, forests, hunting - the bloody dangers lurking beneath the surface. Please uncover the truth and defend the dignity of life.]
He definitively told Jian Jing that the most commonly used gun around here was the Type 56 semi-automatic rifle and the Type 97 assault rifle.
So if there were no surprises, it would be the Type 56.
The Type 56 semi-automatic rifle was Chinese made and had flooded Southeast Asia in large quantities at the end of the last century. The gun was 1,025mm long with an effective shooting range of 400m, and a magazine capacity of 10 rounds.
Jian Jing asked again, "Earlier you said you were going to call someone. Did you? What's the situation?"
Chen stiffly answered, "I asked the border guards and police stations. They all said they haven't seen any suspicious people recently. The only ones who escaped last time were two people. One was arrested half a month ago, and the other one might still be hiding somewhere. I don't know if it was him."
Jian Jing fell silent in contemplation.
Slowly, her gaze shifted to the cabinet next to them where Chen had casually left a Type 56.
She said, "If you don't mind, could you please go through everything that happened tonight from the beginning?"
Chen agreed and gave a simple English account: "We went into the forest, following the GPS navigation, halfway through, the signal was lost, but we split up to look around. After some time, I heard gunshots and went to check it out. The professor was already dead."
Jian Jing: "Could you...be a bit more specific?"
"Let me tell you," Fei Na walked into the room, her eyes as red as a rabbit's, "at dinner, my father suddenly said there was a problem with Number 21..."
Jian Jing interrupted her: "What is Number 21?"
"It's an ID number," Fei Na hesitated for a moment, and probably felt there was no point hiding it anymore. She told her, "pseudoryxnghetinhensis, hmm, let me think of the Chinese translation, yes, the Chinese mid-saiga antelope."
Jian Jing immediately searched for it.
The Chinese mid-saiga antelope, also known as the Saiga tatarica, and called the Asian unicorn, is a critically endangered species, rare and precious. Since its discovery in 1992 until now, it has only appeared a few times.
No wonder they were so anxious back then.
Fei Na said: "Number 21 is extremely precious. Three years ago, my father cooperated with the local government and hired professional hunters to find it before catching Number 21 and putting a tracking device on it. We never made this public, afraid that poachers would find out and come to hunt it."
"Today, a little after 7pm, my father noticed Number 21's GPS had stayed still for a long time. He was worried it had fallen into a trap or gotten stuck somewhere, so he hurried to go find it."
"I see. What happened next?"
"At first, we followed the GPS. The route was familiar, no problems. But halfway there (Jian Jing: Around what time was this?), 9pm? Sorry, I didn't check the time. The signal disappeared. This was a very bad situation. We didn't know what happened and lost our direction."
At this point, Fei Na's tone suddenly became somber.
"We were all very nervous, but my father said it was probably just an accidental malfunction of the tracking device, and insisted we go to the original location. But when we got there, we only found this."
She handed Jian Jing a silver tracking device. There was a dent on it. "I'm not sure how this got damaged, but it definitely can't be used anymore."
Jian Jing wasn't very knowledgeable about electronics either. She checked it briefly then set it aside.
"What happened next?"
"My father suggested we split up to search, and meet back at Spot 3 in an hour." Fei Na said, "Spot 3 is one of the observation points we set up in the woods. Sometimes we observe animals there."
"Is that where the body was found?"
Fei Na nodded, looking grieved. "I heard gunshots and thought my dad found them. But when I rushed over, he was already..."
"From when you split up to when you found the body, how much time passed total?"
Fei Na hesitated. "40-50 minutes, but definitely less than an hour."
Jian Jing nodded and probed as if inadvertently. "Speaking of which, you all brought guns, right? What guns?"
Still immersed in grief, Fei Na didn't notice the implication and absentmindedly answered her: She had a revolver, Professor Lao and Chen had Type 56 rifles, and Mrs. Lao used a [blank].
Jian Jing said, "I saw another Type 56 hanging outside."
"Type 56s are most common. My dad and Chen know how to use them, and we'd sometimes prepare a spare at the observation points too."
"Was there one at Spot 3?"
Fei Na thought about it, uncertain. "Probably, I think."
Jian Jing wanted to go to the crime scene even more now.