Hunter of Mysterious Creature-Chapter 576 - 137: Borderland Town

Sun Hang opened a picture on his phone. It was a real photo of Qiao Liu's "Qingzhu Bar" before it was burnt down.

This was a bar with a postmodern design. The main color was gray, and much like the bar's owner, it exuded an aloof detachment. Even the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling emitted cold-toned lights.

Warm wooden furniture was almost absent in the bar. The cold metal textures and sharp-edged decorations complemented each other, and the menu was simply a list of the drinks' names and prices in black and white. The drink names were straightforward, unlike most bars that give fancy names to common drinks.

The most striking part of the bar had to be the two floor-to-ceiling windows facing the street. There was a gap of about forty centimeters between them, and two huge ecological aquariums were embedded in that gap. Standing in front of the windows gave a feeling like being inside an aquarium.

Against the backdrop of lighting, the bubbles used for oxygenation in the ecological aquariums appeared incredibly dreamy. Colorful fish swam among the water plants and fake rocks. One could even see an octopus hiding under a large decorative shell, with a few soft tentacles drifting along the currents.

Wait, an octopus?

Sun Hang zoomed in on the picture for another look. He could confirm that what was hiding under the shell was indeed an octopus, a living one, not an octopus doll made of soft plastic.

Whether it's an octopus, squid, or cuttlefish, all cephalopods without exception are marine animals.

Cephalopods cannot survive in a freshwater environment, which means the ecological aquarium at Qingzhu Bar simulates a marine ecosystem rather than the more common freshwater one?

Are those colorful little fish actually all marine fish?

"Interesting," Sun Hang murmured to himself.

A marine ecological aquarium is much more complex than a freshwater one. Besides the need for seawater with the right salinity, there are high requirements for temperature and water pressure… Unless one is a die-hard aquarium enthusiast, ordinary people definitely wouldn't choose the more expensive and harder-to-maintain marine ecological aquariums just for decoration in a shop.

"Does Qiao Liu's file mention any hobbies?" Sun Hang asked.

"Hobbies?" Yang Qi seemed slightly taken aback. "She goes to the gym three times a week and has signed up for yoga and Pilates classes. Besides that, she enjoys cycling and has a big-brand road bike worth over seventy thousand. She also self-taught French and buys English and French books to read..."

"Does she like the ocean?"

"The ocean?" Faced with Sun Hang's seemingly random question, Yang Qi visibly paused, then instinctively shook her head, "The file doesn't mention it."

"The ecological aquarium in Qingzhu Bar is filled with marine fish," Sun Hang added. "There shouldn't be many aquariums capable of installing a marine ecology aquarium in Tianfu City... By the way, did you find out what I asked you to investigate earlier?"

"Yes, I did," Yang Qi replied. "The renovation project for Qingzhu Bar was entirely contracted to 'Tianfu Youjia Decoration and Construction Company.' Colleagues from the Public Security Bureau have already contacted the company's head. He admitted to having business dealings with Qiao Liu. But when the company's head found the designer responsible for Qingzhu Bar, the designer said that the ecological aquarium on the exterior wall was not part of his design."

Yang Qi paused momentarily, then continued: "The designer said the entire bar follows a postmodern design. Embedding ecological aquariums in the glass wall facing the street certainly attracts the attention of passersby, but it clashes with the overall design language and doesn't highlight the bar's features. According to his original design plan, the two side floor-to-ceiling windows would be made into recessed transparent wine cabinets and decorated with cold-toned metal artworks. However, the client insisted on turning these two windows into ecological aquariums..."

"The client insisted?" Sun Hang repeated the six words, "And they just changed it for her?"

"The client's request is the highest priority. That was exactly what the designer said," Yang Qi replied.

"So did this decoration company help Qiao Liu install the marine ecological aquarium? Regular decoration companies shouldn't be able to handle such work; it probably needed to be contracted to some aquarium store, right?"

"No, they didn't install it. But the aquarium store responsible for installing the ecological aquarium wasn't contacted by them either. The client went out and found it herself."

"Which aquarium store?" Sun Hang continued to ask, "Even if it wasn't someone from the decoration company, when cooperating, some information must have been left behind, right?" 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

Ye Xuan, standing in front of the one-way glass, looked at Sun Hang with a puzzled expression. She couldn't quite fathom why Sun Hang was so fixated on the ecological aquariums… The bartender might have just mentioned it casually. After all, when people are daydreaming, they tend to stare at something absentmindedly.

If Qiao Liu liked to stare at tables in a daze, would Sun Hang then investigate the company that made this batch of tables and chairs?

In Ye Xuan's eyes, investigating the true cause of Qiao Liu's death seemed far more important than looking into these two ecological aquariums.