Chapter 467 - Chapter 467: Chapter 467: Investigation (1/2)

Chapter 467: Chapter 467: Investigation

The taxi stopped, and Zhao Feng had the female interpreter pay the starting fee to the driver. They got out of the car together and walked back to Mao Qiang.

Wang De’an knew this old friend and old roommate well. He knew there must be a reason for him to do this, so he kept quiet and followed without saying a word.

The female interpreter was puzzled, but her primary job and task was to assist Zhao and Wang. Naturally, she didn’t raise any objections. She quickly paid the money and continued to perform her translation duties, assisting Zhao Feng and Mao Qiang in communication.

Returning to Mao Qiang, she exchanged a few more words with the Burmese teenager. Then the interpreter, a frown on her face, relayed to Zhao Feng, “Mao Qiang said that when we just left, he saw a Caucasian man wearing sunglasses across the street from the door… Over there, the man had asked him about the illusion yesterday, and he had a bad feeling about him. You decided to go ask him a few questions, so we crossed the road together and started a conversation with that white man. After we talked for a while, we directly hailed a cab to leave. That white man had left in a cab before we hailed ours.”

Wang De’an suddenly said, “Now that I think about it, after we had lunch and paid the bill, my memory skips directly to hailing the cab and saying goodbye to Mao Qiang. I don’t remember how we left the restaurant, how we crossed the road to get here, nothing.”

Listening to him, the female interpreter also seemed to have a sudden realization, “It seems that way…”

Zhao Feng asked the interpreter, “Does his father remember anything?”

After asking Mao Qiang’s father, she said, “He also has no impression. He remembers that we were ready to leave after lunch and doesn’t remember any white man.”

Seeing their conversation and the interpreter’s questioning of his father, Mao Qiang seemed to realize something and quickly said a few words to the interpreter.

After hearing him out, the interpreter said to Zhao Feng, “He said that person’s voice was strange. When he was communicating with us, he seemed to be speaking something other than English, but we didn’t react as if we understood him. That person might be able to hypnotize, and he could have hypnotized all of us.”

Zhao Feng asked them about the location where they had stopped the white man to talk to him. Then he went there and looked around to see if there were any cameras nearby.

But unlike in China, where almost every store has a surveillance camera and sometimes more than one, there weren’t many cameras in Burma that could capture the area near the store entrance.

However, after observing for a while, they found a camera in a nearby store that captured the area. They asked the female interpreter to use her “money power” to negotiate with the store owner and gained permission to view the surveillance footage.

They rewound the footage and saw the images of a group of five people passing by the storefront. Rewinding further, under Mao Qiang’s identification, they saw the “white man”.

However, due to the angle of the video, they could only see his lower half, which was clad in dark slacks and what appeared to be expensive leather shoes.

Though they couldn’t see the images of the five of them talking to the man, the surveillance video showed that they were indeed pursuing the white man. And of this, they had no memory.

“Were we really hypnotized by that man?” Wang De’an quietly asked Zhao Feng.

Zhao Feng nodded slightly, “I’m afraid so.” He then asked Mao Qiang, through the interpreter, why he had said that sentence in English by the car. The sentence gave him a peculiar feeling as if he had heard Mao Qiang say it before.

Knowing that the sentence in English was what Mao Qiang had said to him during their brief conversation at the restaurant door, they returned to the restaurant entrance and had the restaurant pull up the lobby surveillance video. The video showed Zhao Feng and Mao Qiang standing by the door and talking while the female interpreter was paying the bill.

Zhao Feng asked in detail about what was said in their conversation. Then he and Mao Qiang returned to the scene and replayed their dialogue.

When he heard Mao Qiang’s accented English, saying, “I feel he is not good,” and pointing vaguely across the street, Zhao Feng recalled some images and a very strong sense of familiarity.

“I’ve recalled something, that white man is very suspicious,” Zhao Feng definitively said.

The fact that the white man had such an ability to completely subvert common sense itself was illogical. His act of hypnotizing so many people on a public street was even more so. Plus, he had asked Mao Qiang about the “Eight-Armed, Eight-Eyed Giant Illusion” the day before. Naturally, Zhao Feng’s team wouldn’t overlook this clue right in front of them – they had come to Myitkyina exactly for this purpose.

The female interpreter took out her phone and said, “I’ll contact Old Fan.” In the face of such a peculiar and bizarre situation, she remained calm. By entrusting her with Zhao and Wang’s reconnaissance mission in Myitkyina, it was fairly clear she was from the secret department of “Divine Technology”, not merely an interpreter or guide.

Zhao Feng continued to chat with Mao Qiang in broken English: “Are you ok?”

As soon as he spoke, Wang De’an started laughing beside him.

“What?” asked Zhao Feng, “Is my grammar wrong?”

“No, no,” agreed Wang De’an. “You guys keep chatting, I was just reminded of a video I watched a while ago.” He quickly stopped laughing.

Then Zhao Feng continued, “Why you remember him?”

He knew Mao Qiang understood his meaning. He was asking why he hadn’t been hypnotized and lost his memory.

Mao Qiang shook his head. “I don’t know why.”

After observing his expression and demeanor for a moment, Zhao Feng asked again, “Are you scared?”

Theoretically, when encountering such strange circumstances and strange people, he and De’an, being former police officers who have seen a lot, felt a chill in their hearts. This young Burmese man shouldn’t have been so calm; he showed no sign of fear or terror. Instead, after confirming that they had talked to the white man and been briefly hypnotized, he seemed to have breathed a sigh of relief.

Mao Qiang very confidently replied, “NO.”

Then he opened his mouth as if to say something, but he seemed to struggle with his limited English vocabulary. Seeing the interpreter finishing her call and walking over, he rapidly spoke a long sentence in Burmese to her.