Chapter 173 - Baekje

Chapter 173: Chapter 159 BaekjeIn theory, even Treasure Pavilion itself wouldn’t know the seller and buyer information of the .

All transactions are completed by an AI program, and the parties do not meet face-to-face. This includes the final transfer of Game Coins, which is done through the Whale Song Organization’s financial clearing system. The parties do not even need to add each other as friends.

Li Cheng silently took note of this and, along with Gray Rain, left the killing field, returning to the real world.

He had barely settled into his seat when a system notification sounded in his ear.

"Just bought equipment and now there’s a task notification, could this get any more convenient."

Li Cheng bit back a sarcastic comment with a deadpan expression. Nightmare at the Amusement Park was a Regular Task triggered actively by players and would not replace the Script Tasks periodically distributed by the killing field system.

"Baekje Black Sky, judging by the name of the task, seems to have South Korea as its background?"

He searched for recent news in South Korea on the computer, focusing on explosions, fires, homicide cases, or new urban legends. Nothing quite matched.

He also searched for Jiang Kan and presumably the name Shaoxi, but found no useful information.

Li Cheng called over Gray Rain, got ready, and stood waiting silently in the living room for the teleportation time to come.

Teleportation was as uneventful as ever. When he opened his eyes again, Li Cheng found himself standing in a dark, dirty alley.

It was getting dark, and the street outside the alley was bustling with people. Under the colorful neon lights, fashionably dressed young men and women chatted and laughed in Korean, and the newest hit song by the boy band EXO played from the storefronts, with the South Korean Tai Chi national flag everywhere.

Some electronic clocks displayed the current date as August 15, 2014. This day is a national holiday in South Korea, commemorating liberation from Japanese colonial rule, also known as Liberation Day.

This side-confirmed that indeed, this was a fictional world set in contemporary South Korea.

’My appearance has changed...’

Li Cheng furrowed his brow slightly. He ran his hand over his sleeve, feeling the bulletproof vest he was wearing at the time of teleportation, but his outward appearance was now that of a black delivery rider’s outfit, wearing jeans underneath, with a motorcycle helmet, sunglasses, and a face mask, completely bundled up.

’Full cosplay mode then, but it doesn’t affect the use of my Equipment and Skills... First things first, let’s figure out who I’m supposed to be.’

Li Cheng took off the helmet and mask and looked down at his reflection in a puddle.

His current appearance was that of a nearly forty-year-old middle-aged East Asian man, with short black hair, average looks, very dark circles under his eyes, and an extremely haggard expression. Sёarᴄh the Novёlƒire.n(e)t website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

Furthermore, in the pockets of the black delivery rider’s jacket, he found a box cutter, an iPhone 5, and a wallet.

"The appearance of this body clearly shows no signs of long-term, heavy physical labor, but the right index finger and thumb are instead calloused. Combining this with a brand new utility knife and a haggard expression, his identity is definitely not that of a delivery rider."

Indeed, just as Li Cheng thought, the residential registration card (South Korean ID card) in the wallet showed that the owner of the body he was impersonating was named Jiang Wanyong, thirty-nine years old, living in a wealthy area of Anshan City in the Gyeonggi Province of South Korea.

The iPhone 5 was not locked and could be used directly. Through the search engine and call recordings on the phone, Li Cheng further learned about Jiang Wanyong’s identity.

(The iPhone 5 does not have a built-in call recording feature, but the original owner had downloaded a third-party app to save all call records.)

He was a somewhat famous comic artist, specializing in horror and thriller comics. He bought a villa with the comic copyright earnings and lived a happy and fulfilled life with his wife and daughter.

Until four months ago, his daughter, Jiang Meixi, who went on a high school graduation trip, perished unluckily in a maritime disaster. Jiang Wanyong’s wife, Jiang Shaoxi, who was pregnant with their second child, held back her grief to conduct the funeral for their eldest daughter with her husband, rapidly becoming emaciated.

To make matters worse, Jiang Shaoxi, who was very close to her due date, mysteriously disappeared from their home in the wealthy neighborhood seven days ago, without the community’s surveillance cameras capturing any part of the disappearance.

The only clue was a phone call that Jiang Shaoxi made to her husband, Jiang Wanyong, from a cell tower in the Seoul Jiangdong District, right before she disappeared. The call was cut off before it could connect.

Upon learning of his wife’s disappearance, Jiang Wanyong immediately reported it to the police in both Anshan City and Seoul City. However, the police in these two places were extremely inefficient in their work, and after seven days of searching, they found no clues.

The Seoul police’s response to Jiang Wanyong’s pleas and prompts were utterly perfunctory. After numerous calls, the attitude of the police in the recordings was especially impatient, telling Jiang Wanyong to go home and wait for notification, so as not to interfere with the investigation.

"Jiang Wanyong had a utility knife in his pocket, probably going crazy because of his eldest daughter’s death in the sea accident and the bizarre disappearance of his pregnant wife."

Mumbling to himself, Li Cheng silently put away the wallet and phone, and turned to walk deeper into the alley.

The Anshan City address on the ID card was thirty kilometers away from Seoul, definitely more than the 20-minute time limit of the task, which meant that the system had actively eliminated the possibility of finding clues in Anshan City for Li Cheng.

That left only one path...

Li Cheng crossed the alley and looked up at the police station building with the golden eagle emblem.

He didn’t go straight inside, as Jiang Wanyong’s attire had already proven his utter disappointment with the Seoul police—conventional methods would not uncover any clues.

Li Cheng went around to the back parking lot of the police station building, picked up a few pebbles from the roadside, flicked his fingertips, and used the stones to knock the parking lot’s surveillance cameras askew.

Next, he chose a Kia sedan that was neither new nor old, hammered the car door hard to trigger the car alarm, and himself lay flat on the ground, rolling under the car to hide.

"I should be under the car, not inside it~"

Li Cheng hummed a song leisurely, comfortably waiting.

Shortly after, a young male police officer came out from the police station building. He was the owner of the sedan, and as he circled the car checking for issues, he muttered curses under his breath like "Son of a gun! Shake it at the dentist!".

But there was clearly nothing wrong.

The officer, puzzled and about to leave, suddenly heard a "whoosh" sound as two hands reached out from under the car, grabbed his ankles, and pulled forcefully, dragging him to the ground.

"Heh heh heh heh—"

A sinister chuckle sounded from beneath the car, ignoring the male officer’s desperate struggle, and he was forcibly dragged under the vehicle.

All was silent.

A moment later, Li Cheng, now dressed in a police uniform, crawled out from under the car.

He straightened his clothes and stuffed the unconscious young policeman, who was in his undershirt, into the trunk of the car. His own face writhed and shifted into the appearance of the latter, then he stepped toward the police station building.