Records of the Halls of Ten Thousand Affairs: Chapter 77: The Hopeless Romantic (Part 7)

The night was thick and dark. Chen Jiu followed the route she had calculated and made her way into Zheng Kai’s home.

This area was an old renovation project. Zheng Kai lived alone in a standalone three story house. Chen Jiu hadn’t looked into his parents’ information yet, but a person living alone made it easier to search through his things.

Chen Wu waited nervously for Chen Jiu’s message. She was still anxious, afraid of running into a passing neighbor when entering, afraid that if things blew up, the two of them would get taken in for questioning.

A few minutes later, Chen Jiu’s message came through. She was much faster than Chen Wu had imagined.

Chen Wu got out of the car wearing a hat and walked carefully toward Zheng Kai’s front door. Whenever the occasional passerby cast a glance her way, she would flinch. In nervous situations, stepping on her own left foot with her right foot was a common occurrence for her.

By the time she got inside, she was already dirty in several spots.

“…” Chen Jiu couldn’t believe it: “Such a short stretch of road, what did you go through?”

Chen Wu clutched her chest and said fearfully: “A girl came over and asked if I was okay when I fell just now. She won’t remember my face, right?”

Chen Jiu found it amusing: “No, it’s nothing worth mentioning. She’ll forget in the blink of an eye. Don’t overthink it.”

Most importantly, she was willing to bet that even if Zheng Kai discovered something was missing, he wouldn’t dare call the police. Right now, the person who least wanted to make a scene was himself. Calling the police would do him no good at all. If someone had been in his house, he would just have to suck it up.

Having successfully infiltrated the target location, Chen Jiu assigned tasks: “You go to the third floor, I’ll take the second floor. We split up and search. Be thorough. The target item is a phone, or any other evidence. If you think it’s useful, grab it.”

Chen Wu: “Roger that!”

The first floor of Zheng Kai’s house was the kitchen, dining room, and storage room. Chen Jiu didn’t think a normal person would casually leave something they considered important in these places, so she went straight up to the second floor.

The second floor opened into a living room. The living room was completely untouched, very much fitting Chen Jiu’s stereotype of a single man living alone. The cushions on the sofa were arranged crookedly. The coffee table still held a cup of unfinished water that seemed to have been sitting there for some time, slightly yellowed. Next to the TV sat a picture frame, face down.

Chen Jiu went over and picked it up. It was a group photo of Zheng Kai and another woman.

To her surprise, this woman was neither Xu Wei nor the woman they had tailed before. Good grief… this beast had ruined more than two women.

Chen Jiu frowned, put the frame down, and returned it to its original position.

Then she started searching from under the sofa cushions, the TV cabinet drawers, under the coffee table, the tea cabinet… She practically turned the place upside down, but didn’t find any phone or USB drive or other electronic device.

So she gave up on this area and turned into the bedroom.

The moment she entered, she pinched her nose. The smell in the bedroom also fit her stereotype of a single man living alone. The bedsheet and quilt had been halfheartedly pulled straight and spread out, but they were still wrinkled. Against the wall, a desk held a laptop.

Chen Jiu slowly raised one eyebrow. Zheng Kai must have made an impromptu decision to take a short trip this time, which was why he hadn’t brought the laptop.

She walked over and opened the computer. The screen lit up, showing a password prompt.

For an extreme egoist like Zheng Kai, even something as minor as setting a password probably wouldn’t involve thinking about others.

Chen Jiu entered Zheng Kai’s four digit birthday. It showed incorrect. She thought for a moment, then added the birth year in front. This time it worked.

“…”

She really hadn’t expected the password to actually be this simple. After logging in smoothly, she immediately opened the browser and various apps to browse the history. Multi device login would likely trigger a notification in Zheng Kai’s phone apps, so her time was limited. She had to hurry.

While Chen Jiu was busy working away at this end, Chen Wu was bumping into things upstairs, knocking into this and that. This made her have to start wondering whether this month was her unlucky month.

Maybe she should go find a Taoist temple to pray at tomorrow? She pondered to herself.

The third floor was Zheng Kai’s study and storage room. There was another computer in the study, a desktop. A webcam sat on the desktop shelf.

Chen Wu stood at the doorway somewhat fearfully, staring down that webcam for a good while. After confirming it wasn’t a rotating surveillance camera, she finally let out a breath and realized her back was drenched in cold sweat.

“He doesn’t look like someone who reads books either.” She walked into the study, looking at the rows of biographies, books on human nature, history, finance, and psychology on the shelves, and muttered: “These days even beasts have to read this many books?”

“Beast…” Downstairs, Chen Jiu had a telepathic moment and cursed the same thing at the computer screen.

The browser history had actually been cleaned up in time, so she didn’t find any usable evidence for now. But Chen Jiu saw through a trick Zheng Kai had used in a very niche place. In one of his music apps, several records of hypnosis background music still sat there.

That’s right, hypnosis, not sleep aid.

What kind of person would specially download several hypnosis background tracks for backup?

Although this couldn’t serve as strong evidence yet, it was after all the only new discovery so far. Chen Jiu decisively screen recorded and saved this scene.

Then she opened Zheng Kai’s chat app. This was a somewhat risky move.

Other apps wouldn’t necessarily notify of remote login right away, but chat apps were highly private. The moment you logged in on desktop, the phone would immediately receive a notification.

Chen Jiu thought about it and decided to log in a bit later. If Zheng Kai had fallen asleep, she would have more time to check the chat history.

Just as she was planning to continue turning this bedroom upside down, Chen Wu’s footsteps came clomping closer, and she called out with some delight: “Xiao Jiu, Xiao Jiu, look what I found.”

Chen Jiu turned around. Chen Wu was actually holding a phone. It had power, and it could turn on.

Both of them were delighted. They huddled together and started scrolling through this phone’s contents. But unfortunately, this phone had already been formatted. Chen Jiu looked at the phone’s appearance. It wasn’t any new model, and it was on the feminine side. This should be the phone Zheng Kai had snatched from Xu Wei’s mother.

“How could this be… We finally found it.” Chen Wu pouted.

Chen Jiu patted her shoulder: “You finding this phone is already a huge contribution.”

Chen Wu asked unwillingly: “Is there still a way?”

“There is.” Chen Jiu said: “Money makes the devil push the millstone.”

She put the phone into her own bag, planning to leave after checking the desktop chat history.

In the following two hours, the two practically turned this three story standalone house upside down. But the results were rather disappointing. They still hadn’t found any strong evidence.

Chen Wu sat on the sofa waving her hands repeatedly, panting: “I can’t do it anymore, I can’t keep searching. Xiao Jiu, let’s rest a bit. I really want something to drink…”

“Here.” Chen Jiu pulled out a bottled water like a magic trick and tossed it to her.

Chen Wu barely caught it and said with delight: “Xiao Jiu! You’re just like Doraemon!”

After waiting a while longer, approaching midnight, Chen Jiu opened Zheng Kai’s chat app and went straight to the pinned contacts.

The result once again exceeded both of their imaginations.

Chen Wu yelled: “How many women is he chatting with?!”

Chen Jiu shushed her.

Chen Wu quickly covered her own mouth, using her eyebrows and eyes to express her rage wildly.

“No notifications yet, so he’s probably asleep.” Or rolling around in bed with the lover he went on vacation with.

Chen Jiu felt their luck was still pretty good. She rapidly scrolled through various chat histories. But most of them were flirty messages, making her eyes hurt. For a moment she really wanted to rush over and beat that Zheng guy up.

She had never been a patient person to begin with. Everything she was doing now was for the sake of the last bit of conscience, morality, and law in her heart. If Chen Jiu acted according to her childhood temperament, by now the grass on Zheng Kai’s grave would probably already be three feet tall.

“These girls really have strong stomachs.” Chen Jiu mocked: “They can actually stomach this kind of goods.”

Chen Wu rubbed her eyes. She was starting to see double too. The whole screen was filled with xxxx banned words. Some she didn’t recognize, some she couldn’t form into words. In a way, she had dodged a bullet.

After reading through several close contacts’ records, Chen Jiu searched for “Xu Wei.” There was no such contact.

Chen Jiu couldn’t believe it. She searched again. She tried splitting “Xu” and “Wei” separately several times. Nothing. No abbreviations either. She searched through all the nicknames like baby, wife, darling. Still nothing. Finally, Chen Jiu refused to accept it. She opened the entire contact list, hundreds of people, and flipped through them one by one. Still no Xu Wei.

That meant this man had likely, shortly after his girlfriend’s death and the investigation, completely erased her from his contact list, making her cease to exist in his world.

Chen Wu punched the desk hard, yelled in pain, and said with tears in her eyes: “How can there be people like this!”

Chen Jiu fell silent for a moment, then rapidly closed the app and shut down the computer.

Tonight’s login would definitely be noticed by Zheng Kai, but it didn’t matter. They just had to evacuate in time.

On the way back, Chen Jiu didn’t forget to reward Chen Wu. Passing by a milk tea shop, she bought her a sweet drink.

But Chen Wu’s mood still wasn’t very good. She poked at it with the straw and sipped small mouthfuls, and asked rather gloomily: “What do we do now? Do we have to rely on just this phone?”

“Not necessarily. Did you forget the method I told you about before?” Chen Jiu looked straight ahead and said calmly: “That was also a last resort method. He forced our hand.”

Chen Wu’s fur slowly smoothed out, and she chuckled: “Won’t that be a bit not good?”

Chen Jiu would just have to see what kind of luck he had.

The two found a repair shop that was still open late at night and handed over the phone.

The person said they could try, but couldn’t guarantee one hundred percent data recovery. They should be mentally prepared, and the price wouldn’t be low either.