Chapter 106: A Different Look

Translator: Atlas Studios  Editor: Atlas Studios

When Xiang Wan arrived at the hotel, apart from the four of them, several police officers from the nearest police station were also at the scene.

The area outside the hotel was originally quite spacious. Now, it was surrounded by a huge crowd of onlookers. With the addition of police cars parked outside, as well as the uniformed security personnel of the hotel and the filming set surrounding the entrance, it gave off the impression of ‘something big has happened here’ at that location.

Bai Muchuan stood out from the crowd.

Even if she was at quite a distance, Xiang Wan could already see him.

His tall stature made him stand out from the crowd. He was wearing a loose, casual black t-shirt, casual black pants, a pair of clean sneakers as well as a hip-hop style cap that covered the area above the eyes, making his handsome, chiseled face even more pronounced. He looked so fashionable that he didn’t resemble a detective at all but instead looked like the lead singer of a band or the leading male actor of a certain filming crew…

“Boss!” Tang Yuanchu called out to him after hesitating for a moment.

Apparently, Bai Muchuan’s clothes were too youthful; even Tang Yuanchu’s youthfulness couldn’t hold a candle to him. He had hesitated to call him in case that person wasn’t his boss.

“You’re here? Let me fill you in on the case first.” Bai Muchuan walked over and patted Tang Yuanchu’s shoulders. Next, he glanced at Xiang Wan and suddenly furrowed his brows. “What did you do last night?”

Xiang Wan: … Wait, this sentence sounds really familiar, didn’t I ask him this the other day?

Tang Yuanchu: … Wasn’t Boss going to give an account of the case first?

In the end, when he prepared himself to listen attentively about the case he only heard the two of them… flirting?

This young man smiled awkwardly and sneaked a peek at Xiang Wan. “Boss, Teacher Xiang isn’t feeling well…”

Bai Muchuan glared at him. “I’m not asking you.”

Tang Yuanchu: “…”

Why is my life so tough? Tang Yuanchu thought.

Without a word, he took a step back to give the position closest to Bai Muchuan to Xiang Wan.

However, Xiang Wan wasn’t in the mood to chit chat with him. “I’m fine.”

Her reply was just a few simple words without much emotion.

Bai Muchuan eyeballed her up and down, raising an eyebrow. “Really?”

Xiang Wan frowned and spoke impatiently, “Captain Bai, we’re here for the case, right?”

She stretched up to look at the crowd behind Bai Muchuan, who were giving their opinions about the case. “So are we going to talk about official business?”

She asked this in a very casual way, but each word seemed to stab at his weak spot.

They were here for business of course; how could he use official time for private matters?

Bai Muchuan swept a glance at her then beckoned to a police officer who was talking to a security guard not so far away.

“Little Deng!”

“Yes!” The police officer smiled as he came over to them, “Captain Bai!”

Bai Muchuan seemed to have lost his mood to give an account of the case.

“Tell him what you know.” He pointed at Tang Yuanchu.

“Okay.” Little Deng pointed at the entrance of the hotel behind them. “It was early morning around four o’clock. Zhang Hao and I rushed over when we received the report. When we arrived, the injured security guard had already been sent to the hospital. There weren’t any eye witness at all, only a pool of blood stains. We didn’t find any signs of a brawl either. The hotel receptionist heard the casualty’s cries for help, but when she rushed over, she didn’t see the assailant. The injured soon fell into a coma and is currently still in the operation room…”

He stopped and took a look at Bai Muchuan.

“We’ve seen the surveillance footage of the hotel. The thief wore all black with a hood that covered his head as well as a mask that covered the remaining part of his face. From the surveillance, we’re unable to distinguish his facial features… The hotel staff said they didn’t see this person checking in and had no other information about him. However, we did not exclude the fact that he could be one of the guests.”

“The lift doesn’t have a surveillance camera?” Tang Yuanchu asked, “Which floor did he come down from?”

Little Deng took a look at Bai Muchuan and lowered his voice. “A filming crew came to Jin City and booked all the rooms from the 35th floor and above. The hotel accommodated the crew’s request to deactivate all the surveillance cameras from those floors in order to respect the privacy of the cast and crew…”

“Does that mean the thief came down from the 35th floor and above?”

“It’s hard to say,” said Little Deng. “The hotel has other blind spots.”

Bai Muchuan nodded his head and looked at Xiang Wan with a chilly expression. “What do you think, Teacher Xiang?”

“The thief stabbed the security guard out of impulse!” Xiang Wan said expressionlessly. “His target was not the security guard…”

“…”

That goes without saying, wasn’t it?

Bai Muchuan creased his eyebrows. “Continue.”

Xiang Wan: “That’s all.”

Bai Muchuan: “…”

Xiang Wan looked at him helplessly. “There’s so little information here, what else can I say?”

Bai Muchuan acknowledged her statement, “Very well.”

There was nothing in their speech that suggested something was wrong, but Tang Yuanchu could somehow feel the opposing aura around him.

These two are at daggers drawn!

And the other two were keeping silent.

Bai Muchuan thought for a while. “Follow me!”

Xiang Wan followed quietly without a word.

Bai Muchuan took a few steps when he suddenly turned back to look at Tang Yuanchu with a gloomy expression.

“You come too!”

A policeman couldn’t handle a case by himself; even the statements that he obtained wouldn’t be recognized in the court of law.

Xiang Wan wasn’t considered a part of the police force, so he had to bring Tang Yuanchu along to see Xie Wanwan.

“Boss, this is my first time seeing a celebrity in person. I’m so excited about it!” The moment Tang Yuanchu stepped inside the lift, he couldn’t stop gushing. “I only see celebrities on TV, or on the movie screens. I can’t believe that I’ll actually get to see Xie Wanwan in person because of a case…”

“Why do you have so much to say today?”

Bai Muchuan berated him.

Xiang Wan curled her lips and looked elsewhere.

In her opinion, Detective Bai should be cross at Tang Yuanchu for having lewd thoughts about his “secret lover”. She sympathized with Tang Yuanchu for being ignorant about it…

“I…” Tang Yuanchu felt distressed. “Boss, I’ve always been like this? On the first day we met, you pointed at my nose and said, ‘Young man, why are you so noisy?’. At the time, I felt that you were actually fine with me being like this? In fact, I even thought you liked me.”

Xiang Wan: “…”

She blinked and looked at the advertisements inside the lift.

Bai Muchuan’s gaze was on her. “Shut up!”

“Alright!” Sandwiched between the two of them, Tang Yuanchu was affected by the cold air and sneezed. “When the emperor fights, the commoners suffer. If you two continue to be like this… I’m going to suffer from hormonal imbalance.”

Pffft! Xiang Wan happened to be looking at the advertisement on curing hormonal imbalances. Such unexpected words made her lose her cool, and she laughed uncontrollably.

She never thought that she could stand up to Bai Muchuan’s cold looks, yet couldn’t maintain her composure in the face of Tang Yuanchu’s deadpan humor.

“Detective Tang, you’re really funny!”

When the beauty showed a smile, flowers seemed to blossom inside the lift at that moment.

“Heheh!” Tang Yuanchu laughed as well. “Well, I’m nearly frozen to death seeing your emotionless and lifeless faces. Will the two of you please take care of little animals? Single dogs are pitiful…”

“Cut it out, who’s not a single dog…” Xiang Wan then thought of Detective Bai who already had a girlfriend and cleared her throat. “I’m referring to myself,” she said softly.

“You?” Tang Yuanchu’s eyes curved as he took a glance at Bai Muchuan and said teasingly. “That can’t be right, Teacher… Xiang…”

His playful look was meant to tease Xiang Wan and Bai Muchuan, but he kept chatting with Xiang Wan, totally leaving his Captain out of the picture. Moreover, the topic clearly had nothing to do with Bai Muchuan as well…

“Tang Yuanchu.” With a cold face, Bai Muchuan was fiercely making his presence known. “Since you love to have fun so much, you might as well sell yourself to the filming crew and crack jokes all day long?”

“No, no, no, no, I’m not selling myself to them! I belong to Captain Bai… If I want to sell myself, I’ll only sell me to you.”

Bai Muchuan grunted coldly while Xiang Wan kept on laughing.

As for the pitiful Tang Yuanchu, he was waving his hands frantically and had to zip up his mouth.

The 26th floor, 27th floor, 28th floor…

Tang Yuanchu swore in his heart that this was the longest lift ride he had ever taken…

So slow! Slow like a snail!

The atmosphere is suffocating.

The stress is tremendous.

The pressure is too strong to bear!

Ding!

We’ve reached the 38th floor!

Tang Yuanchu was the first one to dash out of the lift just to get away from the two.

“Someone stepped on your toes today?” Bai Muchuan asked Xiang Wan in a low voice, standing before the lift.

Nonetheless, Xiang Wan ignored him, acting like she hadn’t heard anything as she walked past him.

Bai Muchuan: “…”

…

When Tang Yuanchu entered the presidential suite, he was feeling jittery about it.

“You’re only meeting a celebrity,” Xiang Wan remarked, “It’s not like you’re meeting the President of the United States!”

Tang Yuanchu breathed out to calm himself down. “Well, I wouldn’t be as nervous meeting the President of the United States…”

Xiang Wan raised an eyebrow when the young lad continued talking honestly. “After all, the President of the United States is a man. Now I’m going to meet a beautiful woman…”

Clack! The door to the presidential suite swung open and interrupted Tang Yuanchu’s words.

His mouth was open when it happened, and he had to swallow down what he’d originally wanted to say.

“Hello!”

The woman behind the door wore a loose Korean-style dress which was as big as a pair of pajamas. Her shoulder-length hair fell loosely around her shoulders, and her bright eyes were half-open as if she wasn’t yet fully awake. However, her makeup was exquisite to the extent that it could be seen as too heavy. Her dark and long eyeliner made her look as if she had an indifferent and haughty attitude towards people. “Come in!”

The next moment, she walked back inside the room.

She wasn’t tall and was around Xiang Wan’s height.

Definitely not 172 centimeters which the media claimed to be… This was Xiang Wan’s first thought.

Xie Wanwan’s real personality was definitely not the pure and lovely girl that was portrayed to the public. That faint smell of cigarette in the air completely toppled the image that Xiang Wan knew of her. The ‘sweet, lovely girl’ image presented to everyone was all a pretense. The real her possessed the demeanor of a social butterfly.

Hm, she seems like the woman of a boss-like figure. She’s got character… This was Xiang Wan’s second thought.

Thus, she took a look at Bai Muchuan.

She noticed that they actually matched in terms of appearance.

—Both don’t seem to be kind people!

“What do you want to know?”

Xie Wanwan sat on the sofa lazily, her tone didn’t sound as gentle as her name suggested.

“Tell us about how the doll got stolen.” Bai Muchuan furrowed his eyebrows as he looked at her.

“How the doll got stolen?” Xie Wanwan gave him a sidelong glance. “Hmph! Don’t you already know everything?”

Thump! It felt like something had crashed against Xiang Wan’s heart and then tightly squeezed together.

That prickly and numb feeling came all of a sudden, as if she got cut by a sharp knife. She hadn’t felt the pain, yet the blood was already gushing out of the wound.

Xie Wanwan didn’t say much, but the information she revealed was too plentiful…

Bai Muchuan knew everything? In what kind of situation would he know everything? Of course, it had to be because the two of them were together in the same room.

She held her breath and was desperately telling herself that all of this was none of her business…

Nonetheless, when she managed to overcome that feeling, Xie Wanwan continued talking with a soft sigh, “It’s so troublesome to talk to the police. Asking the same thing over and over again… Didn’t I tell you earlier? I hugged the doll when I went to sleep and when I woke up, the doll was gone.”

Xiang Wan was slightly surprised.

Oh, so they didn’t sleep in the same room? Xiang Wan thought inside her head.

Tang Yuanchu scratched his head as well, recovering from her earlier suggestive sentence. He smiled before he finally noticed something wasn’t quite right…

This Xie Wanwan somehow seemed familiar?

Plus, she and the boss seemed to know each other…

“Oh my goodness!” Tang Yuanchu suddenly shouted, “I remember now, it’s you—”

He looked at Xie Wanwan with excitement, as if he’d discovered a new world.

“Miss Xie, you were there with us that day when we had hotpot at Ocean Sky, right?”

Xie Wanwan had already recognized him from the start.

Hearing his excited cries, she narrowed her eyes. “Hm.”

“Wow, I almost couldn’t recognize you! You-you look so different!”

“!” What an honest and straightforward boy.

Women with makeup on and having no makeup on can appear very different.

A person with slightly higher emotional intelligence wouldn’t have mentioned this fact.

Xiang Wan looked at Detective Tang and worried about his emotional intelligence. But at the next moment, she was worried about her own IQ.

… It’s none of my business, why should I be concerned?

She managed to control her wandering mind and focused on the case at hand.

Nevertheless, there was really very limited information from Xie Wanwan. She was just a woman who was unconscious when her doll got stolen.

The scariest part was, her mobile phone, purse, laptop, jewelry… Anything that could be exchanged into cash was left intact, but a doll that she was hugging in her sleep was gone. That was really bizarre, wasn’t it?

“Could it be a crazed celebrity stalker?” Xiang Wan asked Bai Muchuan. She’d contemplated this idea for a moment as she looked around the hotel suite. “Did you find anything else?”

Bai Muchuan gave her a glance. “I entered this room the same time as you.”

Hm? Didn’t Xie Wanwan say that she’d been questioned already?

Bai Muchuan didn’t explain but continued to say, “She got up in the morning and rummaged through the whole room searching for the doll. After that, she got her manager, assistant, planner, director, assistant director, the props team, costume team… Well, there’s also the hotel manager, the concierge and more. There should have been around thirty—at the very least twenty—people who searched the room. The ‘crime’ scene is more or less ruined.”

“…”

Nobody talked. Bai Muchuan got up from the seat and looked at Tang Yuanchu.

“Make a call and ask where Cheng Zheng is now.”

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