Chapter 129

Chapter 129: The Last One

As soon as Du De Sheng finished speaking, Du Qi Chang quickly got up with a big grin and said: “We are all family, and the situation is urgent, so I won’t waste time with polite words. That day when Bi Xiao came to your birthday party, she immediately canceled her leave and went back to the bureau. She told all the things you told her to her colleagues.”

“After that we started emergency checks at all the big malls in City B. But there are quite a few malls in City B that fit the conditions, and we really don’t know much. We ran around for a whole week and still only managed to narrow it down to nine malls that might be the crime scene. So I thought I should come in person and ask this child to help me take a look. Maybe she can give us some more exact information and help us confirm which mall it is.”

Du An Rao was a little surprised when she heard this.

[Wait, this is such a big thing, and you just believe it like that? Aren’t you afraid I’m a con artist from the streets?]

Her expression was so easy to read that even though Du Qi Chang could not hear her inner voice, he could still guess what she was thinking.

“You don’t need to be nervous,” he said. “I don’t mean anything else. People in our line of work meet all kinds of people every day. We know there are many people in this world with real skills. We have no prejudice against people like you, and we know well what we should believe and what we shouldn’t.”

“Besides, for something this big, even if it turns out to be fake, we still have to be fully prepared. I would rather be tricked and put in extra work than see something really happen and let innocent people die.”

What he said sounded grand and righteous. At first, Du An Rao also felt that she had used the heart of a petty person to judge a gentleman and had been too shallow.

But her gut kept telling her that this man was not as upright as he looked, and his name sounded very familiar.

So after listening to him, Du An Rao decisively flipped through the story in her mind, and then she found…

[Crap, it’s him. The Du Qi Chang who was quickly pushed out of the fight early in the plot, but then somehow survived all the way to the end, joined in splitting the inheritance, and got burned to death with everyone else?]

As soon as this judgment came out, the way everyone in the room looked at him became strange.

Du Qi Chang: “???”

This Du Qi Chang could not be called pure evil, but he was greedy and sly, smooth and worldly, good at flattering everyone. He looked easy to talk to and helped everyone, but in fact he never truly opened his heart to anyone. To put it bluntly, he was a wallflower. Whenever the wind blew, he would lean to that side. As long as it brought him benefits, he could make friends with anyone.

[This man might have no bottom line, but he can always see the wind before anyone else and jump ship before it sinks. His eye for things is really sharp. No wonder he could drag things out and live until the finale. As for why he got kicked out at the start… it seems it was because…]

Her inner voice cut off all of a sudden, and everyone turned to look at her on instinct.

And when they looked, they saw that her face had gone pale. Her eyes were wide with shock and fear.

“An An, what’s wrong? Why do you look so bad?”

Du An Rao worked hard to steady herself and said hoarsely: “I really did see something new from this…”

“Uncle,” Du Qi Chang cut in. “I’m a few years younger than your father. I count as your uncle.”

“I really did see some things on this uncle’s physiognomy that I didn’t notice before,” Du An Rao corrected herself. “Mom, what day is it today?”

“Today is the 1st, December 1st,” Mother Du answered.

[Ahhh, that’s right, it’s today! The huge criminal bombing case in City B that caused such a stir happened in Du Qi Chang’s district. The casualties were terrible. As the main person in charge, he of course couldn’t escape blame. Afterward he was removed from his post and treated as a discarded pawn by other competitors, and pushed out of the fight for power for a while.]

In the book, this event had only been brushed over in a single line, so no wonder Du An Rao hadn’t noticed it before.

But now she knew that the man in front of her was Du Bi Xiao’s supervisor. When the author wrote about Du Qi Chang’s big fall, they had even arranged for one of his rivals to kick him while he was down, running over to mock him. To step on him, that person had even cruelly brought up the people who had died back then as they went in to save others.

The most striking line was: “I heard one of the people who died had the same surname as you. She was still very young, not even thirty. Maybe she was even from your own clan. What a pity.”

When she first read it, Du An Rao hadn’t thought much of it. But now that she connected all the dots, that person could only be Du Bi Xiao.

The Du family members all jumped in shock when they learned that today was the day of the explosion that Du An Rao had predicted at her birthday banquet.

Back then, she had even specially mentioned that the explosion would happen around two thirty-nine in the afternoon. And right now…

Everyone turned at the same time to look at the clock not far away. It was already… almost one o’clock!

That meant that in a little more than one hour, the explosion would happen.

Realizing this, Du An Rao shot to her feet, and the others also stood up without thinking.

“This is urgent. I’ll call cousin first,” Du An Rao said. Then she turned to Du Qi Chang. “Cousin should be in City B right now, right?”

“Yes, yes, she is,” Du Qi Chang said quickly. “She’s in one of the inspection teams right now.”

“Good.”

With that clear answer, Du An Rao quickly dialed Du Bi Xiao’s number.

Du Bi Xiao usually almost never answered private calls at work. But she had been worrying about how things were going for Du An Rao, so she had been keeping an eye on her phone these days. That was the only reason she could answer Du An Rao’s call at once.

“An An?”

“Cousin, this is urgent, so write down what I’m about to say,” Du An Rao said. “It’s Jiangyu Plaza. The explosion will happen at Jiangyu Plaza.”

“Jiangyu Plaza?!” Du Bi Xiao was shocked.

Jiangyu Plaza had also been on their original list. But it had been among the first batch they ruled out, because this plaza targeted high-income customers, used a membership system to get in, and had the best security of all the malls.

Under those conditions, bringing dangerous items inside was much harder than at other malls. No one had thought that the place that seemed least likely was actually the one they had been looking for the whole time.

“Is it really Jiangyu Plaza?!” Du Bi Xiao took a deep breath. “Alright, I’ll send people over right away.”

“Cousin, you have to move fast. He’s going to act today,” Du An Rao said.

“Today?” Du Bi Xiao was shocked again. “That means…”

“Yes, there isn’t much time left. I suspect he’s already planted the bombs in the mall and is hiding in the dark, waiting for a good chance to grab hostages. So you must act quickly. There are seven time bombs in total in the mall. Two are at the main entrances, one is in the basement supermarket, one is in the theater on the fifth floor, one is at the emergency exit on the second floor, and one is in a restroom on the third floor. I don’t know if it’s the men’s room or the women’s room. You’ll have to search that yourselves.”

Du Bi Xiao worked hard to remember every word Du An Rao said. She realized that the bombs were all placed in key spots, in either escape routes or places where people gathered. But when she counted…

“It seems like there’s still one more,” she said.

“Right. The last bomb…” Du An Rao took a deep breath. “…is on him.”