Strange game designer.

Chapter 734 Where Did the Money Go?
What's the difference between the world captured by a camera and the world seen by the eyes? If we consider flesh and blood as a dark box imprisoning the soul, then perhaps there's no difference between the two.

After looking at the photos in the sixth row, Gao Ming had a question that he couldn't understand: who was taking the photos of Li Sansi?
All the photos in the sixth row were taken by other people, showing Li Sansi. Someone followed him into the underground water network. Who was that person?

The kidnapped younger brother? The aunt suffering from a hereditary mental illness? The adoptive father who used to be a plumber? Or perhaps Li Sansi had set up the camera in advance and was taking pictures from a fixed position?
"Perhaps I should go and check out the underground water network."

Taking a deep breath, Gao Ming still felt a tightness in his chest. He genuinely resisted staying in this room and looked at the top of the wall, the seventh row, where the last photo was posted.

The camera seemed to extend into a deep pool where the city's sewage converged, where all the city's filth and grime had accumulated, creating a dark void where no light could reach.

After putting away all the photos, Gao Ming searched through the darkroom again. He tapped on every tile, touched every piece of plaster, and even checked the ceiling, but he still couldn't find the most crucial thing—Li Sansi's camera.

"He left the camera in the underground water system? He only took the film out?"

The Li Sansi in the photo and the Li Sansi whose memories were merged by Gao Ming are completely different people. He can sense some of Li Sansi's dark thoughts, but compared with his childhood experiences and the things recorded in the photo, he is so mentally healthy that he could be a moral education teacher.

"How did Li Sansi escape the underground water network? Did he hide that memory in the camera's darkroom? Or did he bury it in the deep pool of sewage?"

Gao Ming couldn't figure it out, and Li Sansi didn't give him an answer either. As he was struggling with where to go next, footsteps came from the paint-splattered stairwell.

The security door was slammed hard, the banging sound like the building was about to be demolished.

"Li Sansi! Paying back debts is a matter of course. I know you're in there! Unless you jump out of the window today, you're not leaving!" A rough voice and rude actions—the debt collectors had come knocking.

However, it was these external voices that pulled Gao Ming out of his reverie. He finally looked away from Li Sansi's photo and walked out of the darkroom.

The moment he stepped out of the darkroom, his breathing became easy, his memories became clear, and many things about Li Sansi in his mind could no longer affect him.

"Li Sansi! Open the door!"

The hammer and axe slammed into the door lock. Gao Ming walked through the living room and opened the bedroom door.

The debt collectors outside never expected Li Sansi to open the door so easily. They were banging on the door with all their might when Gao Ming suddenly opened it. The two people at the front couldn't stop in time and fell into the house.

Covered in dust and looking utterly disheveled, he lay sprawled at Gao Ming's feet, his earlier imposing manner greatly diminished.

"You've got guts! You actually dared to open the door!"

With two cigarettes dangling from his lips, a thug with an afro and a metal skull pendant around his neck, he looked like a rock musician.

"The loan shark has already packaged and sold your debts to our Skull Group. If you don't pay up today, this house is ours." The thug spoke arrogantly, but Gao Ming had never heard of the Skull Group. Besides, he didn't expect that anyone would actually take on his bad debts.

“My house has been mortgaged to Zhuchuan Society and Wansheng multiple times. You can stay here as long as you want, but other debt collectors will be here soon.” Gao Ming acted as if he had nothing to lose.

"Damn it, you're playing hard to get with me!" The thug took a deep drag on his cigarette, which burned quickly, before exhaling a large cloud of smoke. "Is smoking two cigarettes your specialty? That's pretty brain-dead." Gao Ming thought to himself, but perhaps because he had just seen too many pictures of Li Sansi, he hadn't quite recovered from the shock and blurted it out.

Upon hearing his words, the thug, whether choked by the smoke or something else, turned bright red and yelled, "You son of a bitch!"

The two men who had rammed the door got up. One of them was fat and looked strong, but he didn't seem to have much fighting experience and had poor coordination. The other looked to be over sixty years old, old enough to be the grandfather of a thug. All three of them had shiny black metal skulls hanging around their necks, making them look somewhat unconventional.

“还愣着干什么？给我上！揍他！给我往死里打！”吐掉嘴里两根没抽完的烟，混混从口袋里掏出一个戴着尖刺的拳套，可能是因为不常用的原因，在取出拳套的时候，上面的尖刺挂到了裤子，他猛地用力，刺啦一声破开了一个大洞。

Upon hearing their boss's words, the two henchmen hesitated for a moment, then assumed their fighting stances, just like the free-fighting starting positions taught by those online celebrities.

Leaving their axes aside, the two approached Gao Ming very cautiously from the left and right, as if this was their first real battle.

"Give him a good lesson! Let him know his place!" The thug stood behind his two henchmen, his fists clenched, a sinister smile on his face, looking fierce.

"This city shrouded in darkness is truly diverse, with demons like the Takekawa-sha who experiment on children, and simple-minded fools like you."

Before the other party could get close, Gao Ming pulled out the unnumbered black gun from his back waist and aimed it at the light above the thug's head.

"Oh!"

Inside the enclosed room, gunshots ripped through eardrums, the pungent smell of gunpowder assaulted the nostrils, and shards of glass from the lampshade flew everywhere, landing on the thug's explosive head.

The "smirk" on his face froze. A gunshot made the thug's eyes clear, pulling him back from the wrong path.

"Why not learn something else? Why learn how to navigate the underworld?"

The gun barrel, scorched by shrapnel, moved toward the thug's head. The three debt collectors didn't dare to move, as if they were the ones who owed the debt.

"You... don't be impulsive." The thug's face twitched slightly, and after a long while, he managed to squeeze out a sentence: "This money doesn't necessarily have to be paid back today. We are now handling debt collection flexibly, focusing on persuasion."

“My debt is a trap, involving the Black Hounds of the Takekawa Society. No one is willing to risk Wansheng’s wrath to take it on. You’ve been scammed by the debt company.” Gao Ming gleaned some information from the thug’s words.

"This is the first time I've heard someone analyze not paying back money in such a refreshing and sophisticated way," the thug muttered under his breath, no longer uttering any profanities.

"I can pay you back, and I can give you the house, but I need you to do one thing for me." Gao Ming raised the muzzle of his gun slightly: "I want to find out exactly how much money I borrowed from the lending company, and what I did with all that money?"

Li Sansi has no bad habits, doesn't gamble, isn't addicted to drugs, and his lustful thoughts are only in his mind. Apart from making movies, he has no other money-burning hobbies. He once checked the accounts at the film studio and found that the money spent on making movies was actually from the black mastiffs.

(End of this chapter)