Chapter 535: Chapter 249: Amazing, My Junior Brother

"No problem," Yang Qi agreed readily.

"We can go now, but we shouldn’t take too many people. We need to avoid disturbing the scene and the scent."

Yang Qi glanced at the sky. Though it was only afternoon, the winter sun set early.

"Alright."

Hong Jianfei was decisive. He chose two police officers, Lao Zhang and Xiaoliu. Including himself and Yang Qi, that made a total of four people.

Their equipment was simple: high-intensity flashlights, evidence bags, body cameras, and necessary protective gear.

Yang Qi walked to the woodshed and beckoned to Bai Wan.

Bai Wan immediately trotted out.

The four men and one dog entered the mountains directly from the path in the backyard.

The mountain forest was desolate in winter. The leaves had all fallen, with only the evergreen pines and cypresses providing a splash of green.

The ground was covered in a thick layer of dead leaves that rustled underfoot.

Bai Wan walked at the very front, its nose close to the ground. It would occasionally lift its head to sniff the air, its ears perked and its expression focused.

Its pace wasn’t fast. It moved in fits and starts, carefully discerning the various lingering scents in the air.

Hong Jianfei and Lao Zhang flanked it from behind, their eyes fixed on its movements and reactions.

Yang Qi and Xiaoliu walked a little further back.

The mountain path was difficult, but Bai Wan had a clear objective.

It first followed the path where they had encountered Jiang Fugui that morning and found the scene of the incident.

It was a relatively flat slope where faint signs of a struggle and a few long-dried, dark red bloodstains were still visible on the ground.

Bai Wan stopped there, circling the spot and sniffing it carefully several times. A low whine escaped its throat, as if it were confirming and reinforcing the memory.

Then, it lifted its head, its nostrils flaring rapidly, and began to search in an expanding spiral pattern outward from that central point. Its nose nearly touched every inch of ground, every rock, and every clump of withered grass.

Hong Jianfei and Lao Zhang exchanged a glance, each seeing approval in the other’s eyes.

Bai Wan’s search method was highly professional. It wasn’t just running around blindly but systematically eliminating areas and pinpointing the target.

Yang Qi also followed behind, but his method was more like cheating.

While Bai Wan was sniffing the ground, his Divine Sense, covering a seven-hundred-meter radius, had already silently swept through the surrounding woods like the most precise scanner.

The texture of the rocks, the insects under the soil, the squirrels in the tree hollows, even the outline of an underground cavity deeper down...

Everything was revealed in minute detail before his "eyes."

Suddenly, about two hundred meters away, on the shaded side of a sunny slope, the tendrils of his Divine Sense detected an anomaly.

It was a man-made, vertical shaft-like hole, partially buried by dirt and rocks. The opening wasn’t large, about half a meter in diameter, and was haphazardly covered by several thick, dead branches and some vines, making it look like a pile of naturally fallen debris.

But the edge of the opening showed recent signs of being stepped on and scraped, completely different from the surrounding moss-covered rocks.

A thought struck Yang Qi; he vaguely remembered this hole.

When he was a child, his grandmother had brought him here to store things in it. They called it a sweet potato cellar, used during the cold winters to store harvested sweet potatoes and taro, keeping them insulated and preventing them from freezing.

The one before him—its location, size, and crude concealment—was exactly like one of the long-abandoned sweet potato cellars from his memory.

’Jiang Fugui hid the drugs in a place like this? A pretty good choice, actually.’

Yang Qi glanced at Bai Wan, still searching meticulously not far away, and didn’t immediately point out the direction.

He needed Bai Wan to discover it "naturally."

So, while following the group, he used his mental will to inform Bai Wan.

’Bai Wan, search about a hundred meters to your front-left. There’s a hidden hole there.’

Bai Wan, who was busy trying to distinguish scents, received the prompt, and its ears twitched slightly.

It didn’t turn immediately. Instead, it sniffed the scent trail at its paws again before lifting its head and sniffing more earnestly in the direction Yang Qi had indicated.

Although the scent trail in the air was faint and intermittent, now that it had a general direction, Bai Wan’s search immediately became much more efficient.

It deviated from its original path and began heading toward the shaded slope with determined steps.

The closer it got, the slower its pace became. Its nostrils flared faster, and an excited whimper started to rumble in its throat.

Hong Jianfei’s and Lao Zhang’s spirits lifted. They immediately followed, their hands already reaching for the high-intensity flashlights and evidence collection tools at their waists.

Xiaoliu also scanned the surroundings vigilantly.

Bai Wan finally stopped in front of a pile of seemingly natural dead branches and vines.

It stopped moving forward, sat down on the spot, tilted its head back, and let out a clear bark at the obstruction.

At the same time, it pawed at the ground a few times with its front paws, appearing very excited.

"It found it?!"

Hong Jianfei suppressed his excitement and asked Lao Zhang in a low voice.

Lao Zhang observed Bai Wan’s reaction closely and nodded in confirmation.

"Pretty much a sure thing."

"The alert signal is textbook. The target is clearly behind this pile of stuff."

Only then did Yang Qi act as if he had "just" noticed the corner. He walked forward, sized up the dead branches and vines, glanced at the faint outline of the opening and the surrounding terrain, and put on an expression of sudden realization.

"Huh? This looks like a sweet potato cellar my family dug a long time ago. My grandma used to bring me here to store sweet potatoes when I was a kid. It’s been abandoned for years. Why is the entrance covered up like this?"

"A sweet potato hole? A cellar?"

Hong Jianfei’s eyes grew even brighter. "A place like this couldn’t be more perfect for hiding something!"

"Let’s clear it and take a look."

Hong Jianfei was decisive.

The four of them immediately got to work, carefully clearing away the dead branches and vines covering the opening.

As the cover was removed, a pitch-black, vertical opening about half a meter in diameter was revealed.

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