Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 237 Judra

"If I tell you that I am God," the woman suddenly asked, "will you believe it?"

The boy stared at the smiling woman on top of the ruins with his eyes wide open. For a moment, he felt as if his thoughts had stopped...

"You dead kid! I told you to worship Buddha, why are you running here?!" The middle-aged woman's scolding pulled the boy out of his dazed state. He shuddered all over, and a creepy chill climbed directly from his coccyx along his spine to his neck, followed by a burning pain as if he was slapped in the face.

The boy shuddered. He did not look at his angry mother at first, but turned to look at the top of the ruins - he did not know when, the woman had disappeared, as if she had never appeared.

It was as if everything was just the boy's illusion.

Faintly, the boy felt as if something was missing in his heart...but he couldn't tell what it was for the time being.

"Still in a daze! Still in a daze!" Seeing the boy's dazed expression, the middle-aged woman was even more furious. She grabbed the boy's collar and slapped him on the head several times. "You just ran out to play! Do you know how difficult it is for me to raise you guys alone? I asked you to worship the Buddha but you didn't. What if your old man died in the emergency room? I ask you what you would do!"

The middle-aged woman cried, beat and scolded the boy, but the boy seemed completely indifferent and just stared at the ruins stupidly.

“Come here!” The middle-aged woman seemed to have run out of energy to scold him. She pulled the boy over and made him kneel down in front of the bronze statue of the Bodhisattva. “Hurry up! Kowtow to the Bodhisattva and tell him that you were ignorant and you won’t do this again. Tell him not to blame our family! Hurry up!”

The boy hesitated for a few seconds, then slowly bent down and kowtowed to the bronze statue.

However, another little girl next to him noticed his abnormality, walked up to the middle-aged woman, tugged at her sleeve, and whispered, "Mom... why do I feel like my brother has lost his soul... It's so strange."

"What's so strange about that? He's just pretending to be afraid that I will hit him!" The middle-aged woman said indifferently. After staring at the boy kowtowed three times, she put away the bronze statue of Guanyin Bodhisattva with satisfaction, wrapped it carefully with a piece of relatively clean linen, and respectfully put it into the shoulder bag she brought.

……

……

A week later.

Tianfu City, construction site of comprehensive training base.

The underground palace discovered by Sun Hang and his team has been completely sealed off, and the number of troops stationed near the construction site has increased threefold. In addition, the workers who rushed back also built a "temporary research center" on top of the pit using modular building materials.

Sun Hang was sitting in the office on the second floor of the research center at this time, with his legs crossed, enjoying the newly installed heating, while waiting for Ye Jiu to report to him the information gathered from various places.

This job was not originally Ye Jiu's job, but at Sun Hang's deliberate request, Ye Jiu had to walk into his office with a stack of documents.

"You bastard!" Ye Jiu slammed the pile of documents onto the desk. "You did this on purpose, didn't you?"

"Yes." Sun Hang nodded with a smile. "Isn't it because I see you fighting all day long that I want you to do some clerical work to change things up?"

"Do you know that I'm very busy? Even if you can help me solve the problem of recruiting soldiers temporarily, I still have a lot of things to deal with every day, right?" Ye Jiu complained with a look of disdain, "What about an idle person like you who does nothing all day long and is surrounded by a bunch of beautiful women... Tsk, comparing yourself to others is really annoying!"

"This 'large group of beautiful girls' you mentioned also includes your sister Ye Xuan." Sun Hang teased, "Aren't you afraid that you might accidentally become my uncle?"

"Tsk, I know Xuan'er's personality. She won't like a lazy guy like you." Ye Jiu waved his hand disdainfully, "I feel very confident about her."

"So what type of men does your sister like?" Sun Hang sat up and asked in a serious tone, "Tell me so I can learn. Then I'll find a chance to steal your precious daughter from the Ye family."

"Haha, she prefers power to men." Ye Jiu gave Sun Hang a middle finger, "I even wonder if she was born the wrong gender."

"Okay, I'm not kidding you anymore." Sun Hang stood up and walked to the window. He glanced at the construction site outside which had resumed normal work and said, "I asked you to come here mainly because of the conscription. I need to discuss some details with you."

"Then how do you explain these things?" Ye Jiu angrily slapped the pile of documents on the table, "You even specifically asked them to print them out as paper documents... I think you are just doing this to entertain me and waste my precious time!"

"It's just a piece of cake." Sun Hang said, "Besides, aren't paper documents safer?"

"Safety is bullshit!" Ye Jiu said, "You insist on printing tens of thousands of sheets of paper for something that can be stored on a chip the size of a fingernail. This is a serious waste!"

"Let's get down to business. Please report this summary information so that we can discuss the conscription issue." Sun Hang said.

"..." Ye Jiu glared at Sun Hang, then walked around to the back of the desk, sat down on Sun Hang's chair, and said, "That Val Judela, although there is no criminal record in Xiazhou, but in France and Sicily, this guy is definitely a notorious guy."

“Oh? Is this guy famous in the West?”

"He's not famous, but his name can be found on wanted lists in various European countries... Oh, and his real name is not Val Judela, but Logos Judela. He is not a Frenchman, but from the United States across the Atlantic."

"I'm curious, what did he do in Europe to be wanted by all the countries?" Sun Hang asked. "This guy is quite capable. He went to the Vatican and looted the church's treasury." Ye Jiu said, "But this guy was unlucky. When he was driving away from the crime scene, he hit a drunk Ferrari. His van was directly hit by the Ferrari into a store on the street. He was also injured and had to abandon the car and run away."

"Oh my god, a drunkard has accomplished something great?"

"This kind of thing is indeed very abstract. The Sicilian sheriffs initially thought it was just an ordinary traffic accident, but when they opened the truck's compartment, they found it was filled with all kinds of treasures - it was not until this time that the Vatican realized that the church's treasury had been stolen." Ye Jiu said.

"This church is more abstract..."

"Things quickly escalated, and Judra had to flee Sicily under an assumed name... The Vatican sent people to recover the stolen items in the car, and released a list of the stolen items to the public, announcing that all the stolen treasures, including the 'reliquary' that is regarded as a national treasure, have been recovered and properly placed in the newly built vault of St. Peter's Basilica."

"I always feel that this matter is not over yet." said Sun Hang.

"That's right. Although the Vatican claims that all stolen items have been recovered, the wanted amount for Judra is constantly increasing. All European countries have mobilized a large amount of manpower and resources to search for his whereabouts... It's as if he didn't steal the church's treasury, but assassinated the current Pope."

"This means that not all of the things he stole have been recovered, and those things that have not been recovered cannot be made public for some reason... Hiss, don't tell me that he stole that red cube crystal from the Vatican's treasury, right?"

"No one knows what he took from the Vatican... Although according to our guess, it is most likely the red crystal, but because there is no definite evidence, so..." Ye Jiu paused, "The clues about Logos Judela are cut off here. After the car accident, no one in Europe has seen him again... If the photo on the wanted poster is not very similar to Val Judela, and their ages, disappearance and appearance times are also consistent, we can't connect the two together."

"After he was wanted by various European countries, he fled to Xiazhou?"

"He didn't flee to Xiazhou right away. There was a blank period of about nine months, and we couldn't track his movements at all. It wasn't until the ninth month after the car accident that the French missionary 'Val Judela' entered from Nepal and began his missionary activities in the Xiazhou Federation."

"Then how did he collude with Shang Dalin?"

"I don't know." Ye Jiu shrugged straightforwardly. "Val Judela has stayed in various places in the Xiazhou Federation for a period of time. In the fifth year after he came to Xiazhou, he went to Chang'an City, and in the same month, he and Shang Dalin registered that fake company."

"So, there's no mention of how the red cube crystal came about?"

"Don't worry." Ye Jiu smiled, "The information provided by Professor Du did not mention the subsequent whereabouts of Val Judela, Shang Dalin and others, as well as the secrets within the Phoenix Factory..."

"Don't keep me in suspense. I know that some of the infected people rescued from the underground palace have regained their consciousness." Sun Hang raised his foot and kicked Ye Jiu. "What did they say?"

"I told you to stop, why did you still attack?" Ye Jiu dodged Sun Hang's attack and continued, "The first one to regain consciousness was the one who was hit by the crossbow. Her real name is Shang Hongxiu, and she is Shang Dalin's sister... uh, and also Shang Dalin's wife."

"…What orthopedic plot?"

"Or, to use Shang Dalin's own words, Shang Hongxiu is one of his many imperial concubines..."

"Imperial Concubine? This guy is really dreaming of becoming an emperor... What about the other infected people? Don't tell me that the people we rescued are his entire harem?" Sun Hang's mouth twitched involuntarily.

In fact, he already had the answer in his heart.

"Ha, congratulations, you got it right!" Ye Jiu patted the stack of documents, "Including Shang Hongxiu, the sixteen infected people are all women, and they are all Shang Dalin's 'imperial concubines'!"

"Since she is both Shang Dalin's sister and his woman, then Shang Hongxiu should know a lot of things, right?"

"Yes." Ye Jiu nodded. "But Shang Hongxiu is not Shang Dalin's biological sister, but Shang Dalin's distant cousin. She is not from Chang'an, but a native of Tianfu. After Shang Dalin and Jude left Chang'an, they came to Tianfu... As Shang Dalin's distant cousin, Shang Hongxiu actually doesn't know Shang Dalin's real occupation. She only knows that her cousin is doing business in Chang'an. Jude from Shuzhou, who came with Shang Dalin this time, also confirmed the statement of 'foreign trade business'."

"go on."

"Shang Dalin told Shang Hongxiu that he came to Tianfu City to investigate investment projects, but because of the urgent schedule, he couldn't book a hotel, so he wanted to stay at her house... Shang Hongxiu naturally agreed, but she never expected that this beast would covet Shang Hongxiu's beauty and forcibly violate her on the night he moved in."

"What a beast."

"Shang Hongxiu said that during that time, Shang Dalin tied her up in the bedroom, and he and Jude went out early and came back late every day, as if they were planning something important... But one night, the two of them suddenly quarreled after returning home. Jude grabbed the fruit knife on the coffee table and stabbed Shang Dalin, but Shang Dalin's physical fitness was much better than Jude's. He easily dodged Jude's attack and swung the vase to crack Jude's head."

"Infighting?"

"The person in charge of recording the statement also asked the same question, but Shang Hongxiu said she didn't know why the two quarreled. After Jude was knocked unconscious by the vase, Shang Dalin picked up the fruit knife on the ground and stabbed Jude over a dozen times... Shang Hongxiu said she was almost scared at the time, and thought that after Shang Dalin killed Jude, he would come to kill her next. As for the content of the quarrel between the two, she had no intention of listening..."

"What a pity. This information was originally very important... Then what happened later? After Shang Dalin killed someone, did he continue to live in Shang Hongxiu's house?"

"According to Shang Hongxiu's description, after Shang Dalin disposed of Judela's body, he brought her to this underground palace and told her that the Pope in the Vatican was an impostor and that he was the real Pope... In the days that followed, Judela would bring a woman to the underground palace from time to time... Like Shang Hongxiu, these women were also his 'imperial concubines'. Some of them were forced by Shang Dalin, while others were devoted to him and even helped Shang Dalin monitor other 'imperial concubines'..."

(End of this chapter)