Hidden Moth-Chapter 472 - 267: A Thousand Faces and Still Counting (Part 2)

Chapter 472: Chapter 267: A Thousand Faces and Still Counting (Part 2)

He Kao: "Someone has taken over the noodle shop. The new boss might also have some issues."

Qian Guran couldn’t help but laugh: "That Boss Mei is actually Mei Wenhua. He also lives in Sesame Apartment, and he’s a person from the Ancestral Hall. In fact, he’s also a Tier Five Heart Stealer of the Xingshen Sect. Let me tell you a joke..."

Boss Mei Wenhua often sits at the counter with a large tea mug. Many customers greet him warmly and politely as soon as they enter, and almost have all three meals there, probably just to make a good impression.

The noodle shop isn’t big, with a total of just thirteen tables, each could fit up to four people at most, often without an empty seat in sight.

This kind of noodle shop isn’t like a restaurant in a mall, with concepts like queuing for a number. Boss Mei often apologizes to the guests without a seat, suggesting they eat at other nearby places.

Someone, in order to get close to the boss and leave a good impression, secretly hired some thug to stir up trouble, planning to step in as a hero saving the day.

However, the employer didn’t even get a chance to act. The thug, seeing no space inside the shop, shouted once trying to find trouble with the boss, but was immediately pinned down by five customers.

Why five? Because the space around the thug was limited, more people couldn’t get involved.

This story made He Kao laugh out loud, but after that, he frowned: "If someone hired thugs to cause trouble at the noodle shop, then many of the recent tenants moving into Sesame Apartment might have been deliberately planted by someone."

Qian Guran nodded in agreement: "The best way for those truly with problems to hide themselves is to muddy the waters and confuse the Ancestral Hall, making it impossible for them to know where to start investigating."

He Kao: "The manpower of the Ancestral Hall is limited. Elder Li only sent dozens to Qi Yuan, and recently they took some away to investigate other matters."

Qian Guran: "The Ancestral Hall probably has a plan. The more clues there are, the more things they can dig out, but it will just take more time."

He Kao: "Causing such a big commotion must not be just to annoy people. They might be planning something big and want to act before the Ancestral Hall can find out the truth. Their target is Elder Mei!"

Qian Guran: "If you can think of this, the Ancestral Hall surely can too. We just need to do our own work.

By the way, not only the noodle shop, the little supermarket by the entrance, the barbecue stall, the printing and copying shop also changed owners after the Spring Festival. The new owners are all people from the Ancestral Hall, keeping watch over any situation.

Elder Li let me know I can tell you these things."

He Kao: "What else did Elder Li instruct?"

Qian Guran: "These are all confidential, outsiders don’t know. Elder Li instructed me that if you’re just hiding out in Pugang Town and don’t want to get involved with Sesame Apartment affairs, then I shouldn’t tell you.

But if you are back and you asked about the situation, then I can tell you... that’s the situation. Are you going back to your apartment in Building No. 3 later?"

He Kao: "Since I’m here, of course, I’ll go. At the very least, I need to clean up a bit."

Qian Guran fished out a canister of tea leaves from under the coffee table: "You asked to borrow this from me when you came in, take it with you, you don’t have to return it!"

He Kao took the tea leaves and went back up to his rented unit, No. 2016, Building No. 3. A thin layer of dust had already settled on the table inside the room. He extended his Divine Sense over every corner, suddenly discovering something extra in the cupboard.

Someone had been here recently, and although they didn’t take anything, they left behind a box. It was a cardboard archive box, full of paper documents.

He Kao took the box out, opened the lid, and on top was a sheet of white paper with a sentence written on it: "If you don’t want to bother, don’t look!"

Although there was no signature, He Kao felt it was Elder Li who wrote it, because the handwriting was left by using a paintbrush dipped in oil paint. He saw Elder Li doing sketches on the street before the New Year.

Judging by the note, Elder Li seemed a bit unhappy, but they just met a couple of nights ago, and the old man didn’t say anything... Maybe it was just He Kao himself feeling a bit guilty.

He tidied up the room a bit and moved all the files to the table.

A pack of 500 sheets of A4 printing paper is about five centimeters thick. Completed files would be even thicker. The materials stacked up on the desk were nearly two feet high, likely more than five thousand sheets.

He Kao sat down and started to flip through them, discovering they contained information about the new tenants who moved into Sesame Apartment after December 25th last year, including color-printed life photos, names, ID photocopies, move-in dates, brief introduction of their situation, etc.

The files were arranged in chronological order, starting from December 25th last year, which was the date when Qian Guran helped Mei Guyu rent the place.

Why were there ID photocopies? Because they are required when renting, as an attachment to the contract, and these contracts are kept in the rental and sales office of Sesame Apartment.

The rental office also has electronic spreadsheets which are convenient for queries.

The level of detail in the information varied, like Xiaoliang’s family of three, only had the father’s ID photocopy, Li Gongcheng, because only his ID was needed for the lease contract.

Turns out Old Li’s name is Li Gongcheng, Xiaoliang’s mother is Zhao Qingfang, and the file specifically noted that her father, Zhao Huai’en, is a Tier Two Sorcerer of the Alchemy Sect.

But most other people’s data wasn’t as detailed as this family’s since the information available in a short time is limited, and the manpower and effort from the Ancestral Hall are also limited.

Such a thick stack of materials would take some effort just to print out, right? Fortunately, the Ancestral Hall took over the print and copy shop at the entrance of the complex.

While flipping through, He Kao also found footprints from Magic Sect disciples, those he "knows" or can recognize, are all low-tier sorcerers whose cultivation registered in the Magic Sect doesn’t exceed Tier Three.

But the disciples Sect Leader He can recognize are in the minority, most others are unfamiliar.

There’s another situation in the data where sometimes the tenant wasn’t the one renting the place, for example, the person bringing documents to sign the contract was Zhang San, but the person actually moving in with the key was Li Si.

He Kao flipped through the files at an impressive speed like a human scanner, memorizing every page of information with his strong Primordial Spirit cultivation, in a sober state of Fixed Realm.

But no matter how fast, he still had to look carefully. After nearly an hour, he’d only flipped through a few hundred pages, averaging five or six pages per minute, then stopped to take a break.

It was also high-intensity mental work, consuming Divine Qi and Mana, and He Kao couldn’t help but frown.

The reason for his frown wasn’t that there was too much data; even for over five thousand pages, he could probably read and memorize them all in one or two days. Rather, he felt that these materials weren’t enough!

To be precise, the information gleaned from the printed materials wasn’t sufficient to let him use his Primordial Spirit Travel technique to track and lock onto the corresponding target.

**