Full-Time Public Enemy

Time rewound to when Chen Gu and the special operations team were at the Pumountain Secret Prison.

Hou Yinan listened to Chen Gu's analysis. It was well-articulated, but with no substantial progress, he felt quite disdainful. Just when he thought Chen Gu would also end up empty-handed like himself, Chen Gu suddenly called out, "Bring the prisoner from the cell next to Wei Jiangqi for interrogation."

Hou Yinan was very cooperative, immediately ordering several prisoners to be brought out for them to question as they saw fit.

Such a simple matter. Hadn't we thought of it before? We'd already interrogated them. But Wei Jiangqi had very little communication with them, and repeated questioning yielded no valuable information.

In fact, in a high-security prison like Pumountain Secret Prison, inmates were kept strictly isolated, barely seeing each other a few times a year. Moreover, the cells here weren't like those in traditional prisons, where they stood one next to another. Here, they were all independent units, making it impossible for inmates to knock on walls to greet those in adjacent cells.

What communication could there possibly be?

However, what made Hou Yinan shake his head in disapproval was that Chen Gu not only interrogated the prisoners whose cells were close to Wei Jiangqi's but also specifically reviewed all surveillance footage of Wei Jiangqi since he entered Pumountain Secret Prison.

During the four and a half months Wei Jiangqi was detained here, he only left his cell twice. The first time was for the prison's quarterly collective recreation period; the second time was when Wei Jiangqi reported feeling "uncomfortable" and went to the prison infirmary for a check-up.

On the first occasion, Wei Jiangqi spoke briefly with four inmates, no more than three sentences to each.

On the second, he only spoke two sentences to a nurse.

Chen Gu not only interrogated the four inmates but also brought in that nurse! Although Hou Yinan remained cooperative throughout, he shook his head in private. What was the point of all this?

Hou Yinan's exceptional cooperation stemmed from a desire to shift blame. It's true, I let the prisoner escape, and I found out nothing. But it's not because I'm incompetent; it's because the enemy is too cunning! Look at this so-called special operations team, the elite of the elite. I gave them everything they wanted, and in the end, they found out nothing either, did they?

After interrogating these people, Chen Gu, instead of reflecting on any perceived mistakes, redoubled his efforts. He contacted, through the Director-General, all prisons that had ever detained Wei Jiangqi. He demanded that inmates from adjacent cells, those who had significant communication with Wei Jiangqi, or even prison guards, all be brought in for questioning. Of course, it was remote video questioning. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

He also assertively demanded that the local Bureau of Mystic Security have special agents present to assist. If he felt an interviewee was withholding information, he would instantly order the special agents to use "unconventional" interrogation methods—regardless of whether the subject was a prisoner or a guard!

This is utter madness! Hou Yinan thought. Yet Chen Gu did it anyway, and faced no repercussions; the Director-General absorbed all the pressure for him.

Hou Yinan could only sigh internally. So this is what it means to be the Director-General's confidant. Just look at the treatment he gets!

In fact, Hou Yinan was completely mistaken; at best, Chen Gu was nothing more than a "big headache" for the Director-General.

Interrogating all relevant personnel was an incredibly tense process. Chen Gu went full throttle, not resting for a minute. If he hadn't been a Professional, he truly wouldn't have been able to withstand it.

Then, Chen Gu began analyzing all the collected information, relying on the powerful computational ability of a Brain Domain Hacker.

From the start, he knew he couldn't obtain any direct or conclusive intelligence from these people. Wei Jiangqi was cunning and calculating; he wouldn't disclose any specific information to unrelated individuals. However, Wei Jiangqi had a particular trait—not quite a weakness: as a cult leader, he, like many such individuals, possessed an irrepressible urge to proselytize. Given any chance to communicate, they invariably tried to impart some of their beliefs to anyone nearby. And the more he spoke, the more he was bound to reveal something.

Even an ordinary Brain Domain Hacker could have reached this stage, similar to what Chen Gu was doing: analyzing these trivial, complex conversations—which spanned vast amounts of time and seemed utterly unrelated—for keywords, specific time nodes, or locations, and so forth. But at this point, the Brain Domain Hacker would have come to a standstill, because what they would have obtained would still just be some clues of unclear significance and uncertain truth.

To confirm which of these clues needed to be focused on and in which direction to pursue them, a Quantum Wizard would have to use Quantum Divination to decide. And if the Quantum Wizard hadn't participated in the initial information gathering, their understanding of the entire event would be shallower than Chen Gu's, making it difficult to achieve accurate divination results.

Wei Jiangqi was no ordinary person. The divination method of finding a hair from his prison bed, which might work on common people, was utterly ineffective on him. Even if a Brain Domain Hacker and a Quantum Wizard cooperated with perfect synergy, they couldn't match the accuracy Chen Gu achieved working alone.

So, when Chen Gu said that perhaps no one else could find Wei Jiangqi but him, it wasn't boasting but the plain truth. And it was precisely this unboastful truth that made the impact of his statement so devastating...

Chen Gu used Quantum Divination to identify three clues, and he split the special operations team into three groups, each responsible for one.