Chapter 1457 — Setting Out

"Mm..." Tang Yun nodded. She would have to study harder — at the very least, she could not let the young miss and Little Shu look down on her!

Wu Chengtian was lodging for the time being in the guest room of the Gu family villa, serving as its temporary bodyguard. He was quite well behaved about it: he said nothing all day, took the meals Uncle Qing brought, carried his own portion back to his room to eat, and took no part whatever in the affairs of the young miss and her circle.

Yet on the very night Wei Zhao left, another robbery struck a bank. The suspect who robbed it was once again driving a Land Rover with no license plates, and once again he wore a mask — only this time he seemed not to care in the least that the surveillance cameras were recording his every move, as though the police learning his height and build could affect him not at all.

Otherwise, with this man's skills, wrecking the bank's surveillance cameras would have been no more than the lift of a hand — truly, one raised arm, a coin or a pebble tossed idly, and they would have been shattered.

What was new this time was the target: the robber had chosen a bank that stayed open twenty-four hours. Until now he had always worked in daylight; striking at night was a first.

Qiu Lingshan was going to go mad. What manner of man was this? She had already pulled the files of every registered cultivator and compared them one against another, yet had not found a single person who resembled him...

"Captain Song, the other side is cunning indeed — there is no pattern to speak of in where or when he strikes!" Liu Wangli said in some vexation.

This was precisely what gave Qiu Lingshan a headache as well: today the robber hit this district, tomorrow he struck another; he might go for days without a single job after one, or he might rob a bank on this side of town and a shop on that side in the same breath. In short, you had no idea what he was going to do next!

Qiu Lingshan had no other course open to her. Having reported to Yang Huaijun, she was forced to post large numbers of police in stakeouts and patrols around every bank in the city. This time, at least, it worked: no further bank robberies occurred...

But even as Qiu Lingshan breathed a momentary sigh of relief, one night the robber struck more than ten luxury star-rated hotels in succession and made off with enormous sums of cash.

And the man's skills were formidable indeed — the speed of his robberies was simply beyond belief, as though the location of every hotel's cash had been cased in advance. Once inside a hotel he did not utter a single word before beginning; he tore open the cash drawers and safes by brute force, and if anyone tried to stop him, one violent punch sent the man flying, grievously wounded.

By now, even when such a robbery unfolded before them, the hotel staff dared not resist. Everyone knew this robber was terrifying — a single punch could cripple a man. Who would dare provoke him?

With no other way out, Qiu Lingshan once again sought instructions and requisitioned large numbers of officers from neighboring cities to patrol luxury hotels, shopping malls, gold dealers, luxury boutiques, property sales offices — everywhere a great deal of cash changed hands.

Clearly, the robber had eyes of his own watching the police's every move. The moment they reinforced their patrols, he changed his method and went straight to robbing armored cash-transit vans!

And so van after van was robbed across the city, the method identical every time: he blocked the van's path by force, knocked the driver senseless with a single punch, climbed aboard and began his looting. Before the armed guards could even react, their guns had been kneaded into scrap iron in the robber's hands!

Against such violence there was truly nothing to be done.

An Jianwen gazed at his swiftly mounting wealth and smiled until his whole face bloomed.

"Not bad, not bad! At this rate the money really does come in fast — in such a short time I have already grabbed this much!" An Jianwen said to Da Luazi with a laugh. "The branch master of the Fire Wolf Gang's northern division called me personally to offer his congratulations — he means to promote me to special consultant of the Fire Wolf Gang, with authority to command its members directly!"

"Congratulations, Young Master Wen! Congratulations!" Da Luazi said quickly. "But the police have widened their patrol range — if we want to keep working, there is no opening left to use. Besides, Zero One should be exposed before long. We were not overtly careless, but his identity will soon come under suspicion."

"No matter — we have already grabbed more than enough money to call it even. The whole point of Zero One is that the police discover him; if they never do, how are we going to frame Wei Zhao?" An Jianwen waved his hand, entirely unperturbed. "Dr. Yin has any number of test subjects as strong as Zero One, and can build plenty more. Once Zero One is exposed, we simply send the next batch out to rob."

"But right now we have no chance to act!" Da Luazi asked. "If Zero One goes out to rob again, the police will certainly take him down. He is strong, I grant it, but he is only the equal of an outer-style expert of the Yellow Tier — and Qiu Lingshan of the police is a genuine expert!"

"That I know perfectly well. No robberies for the time being — let us suspend the plan." An Jianwen said it airily enough. "The money I raked in over the past while is already more than enough. Even if I did nothing but play about for a year, no one in the Fire Wolf Gang would have a word to say against me."

"That is true enough!" Who else in the Fire Wolf Gang could match An Jianwen's speed at pulling in money? Da Luazi had heard tell of some of An Jianwen's exploits as well — kidney harvesting, underground boxing rings; every one of them a trade that devoured fortunes.

"For now, Zero One does no more robbing. Let him rest a while — then send him straight out onto the streets to rob passersby for me. Let us stir up some vicious public-security incidents!" An Jianwen said. "Our chief aim from here on is to ruin Wei Zhao utterly, to make him a villain whose crimes fill a lifetime!"

"Yes, sir — for the time being we will rest and regroup first," Da Luazi said, nodding.

Wei Zhao had now been away for three days, and for most of them he had been on the highway, driving on toward the extreme and frozen north.

Because Wei Zhao was a cultivator he needed no rest; he could travel the roads twenty-four hours a day, pausing only now and then to check on Feng Xiaoxiao.

Fortunately, Feng Xiaoxiao's ice coffin had run perfectly the whole way, with nothing amiss about it. It seemed Feng Tianlong's technology was sound after all.

The further north he drove, the fewer people there were, and the highway gave way to a winding, tortuous goat track. Fortunately Wei Zhao's vehicle was an off-roader, which had no trouble with such roads.

Had Zhang Liju's medical notes not marked the coordinates with such certainty, Wei Zhao would have concluded he had taken a wrong turn.

Yet by the coordinates on the map, the position was correct. Ancient maps and modern ones might differ, and it was only natural that the roads ended and people grew scarce out here — it was simply that the weather was growing colder by the day.

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