茶杯狐 -CUPFOX

Chapter 182: Laughing and Crying Mr. Chen

At around 8 am, Xiang Kun made a call to his Mom, randomly chitchatting for a bit. His mom then reminisced about a dream she had on Wednesday night, where she saw the old man from next door in Tongshi Town coming over to play chess with his Dad.

She reflected on their life in Tongshi Town and recalled the old man teaching

Xiang Kun calligraphy. She believed these memories were triggered because Xiang Kun recently wrote a lot of characters using a brush pen, leading her unconsciously thinking of the deceased old man and sighing at how transient life can be.

After hanging up, Xiang Kun came up with some hypotheses:

1, His mom only mentioned she had the dream on Wednesday night, and that had been two days ago. Over two nights now, he hadn’t felt the influence of the three “Emotionally Infused” items, meaning it’s very likely, as he had guessed — that it’s only when he is in connection with the items, that they would affect those around him who are asleep, leading them to dream;

2, The “Emotionally Infused” items couldn’t possibly influence others’ emotions by themselves. They required a connection with Xiang Kun to exert their “functionality”. The source of this could likely be Xiang Kun’s “Emotional Assimilation” ability.

In this case, there was no need to get his Dad to send over that piece of calligraphy. As long as he doesn’t sense it, his parents won’t be affected.

Then Xiang Kun tried to sense the calligraphy at Xia Libing’s place, it was still as stagnant as dead water. He decided that for the next few nights, he would try to sense it whenever he thought of it. He refused to believe that he wouldn’t feel it even once.

Unless Old Xia had thrown his piece away, or placed it in some distant, out-of-the-way place.

Would Old Xia do that?

Just when he was contemplating whether to indirectly probe Old Xia about it on WeChat, Officer Chen’s WeChat avatar surprisingly popped up, giving him a start.

He looked and realized it was a video sent by Officer Chen.

Officer Chen barely chatted with him leisurely, every time he took the initiative to contact him, it was mostly about work. Thus, Xiang Kun solemnly opened the video.

Then, he saw himself…

It was a clip from the 10-minute long video of him cooking Bamboo Rat Meat at Youlong Restaurant with a certain swagger. The scene was of him swiftly removing the seeds from bell peppers with a knife, then starting to introduce the special features of gourmet videos in a slow-paced manner.

While the original soundtrack was removed, the video was sped up and accompanied by Wang Baoqiang’s dialogue from “A Man’s Martial Arts”:

“Junior Feng Yu Xiu, here tor guidance. Today, we shall distinguish between superior and inferior, between life and death.”

Although the lip-syncing was not perfect, this dialogue intertwined with Xiang Kun’s knife skills and his intentionally aloof demeanor strangely fitted together.

As soon as Xiang Kun exited the video and intended to type a response, he realized Officer Chen sent another short video—just a few seconds long—and the scenes were still taken from his cooking video.

That video captured him boiling the bamboo rat meat in hot water, with the background voiceover converted to a line from Titanic: “YOU JUMP,I JUMP.”

Then the scene switched to bamboo rat meat being deep-fried, still with the voiceover: “YOU JUMP,I JUMP.”

The last shot was of the bamboo rat meat being taken out of the pan, yet again with: “YOU JUMP,I JUMP.”

Xiang Kun’s mouth twitched slightly and was about to reply when Officer Chen sent another video and a crying with laughter emoji.

This video was again a cut from Xiang Kun’s cooking video— the final part where he summarized right before serving the bamboo rat meat, and the background music was replaced:

“I never force my friends to do something they don’t want to do, I have my principles, I don’t want to be trampled underfoot all my life, you think I am a beggar, I’ve been waiting for three years for a chance, I want to stand up for myself, not to prove how great I am, but to tell everyone, I will take back everything I lost!”

Although Brother Xiao Ma’s vigorous voiceover didn’t fit with Xiang Kun’s calm demeanor, there was a kind of weird harmonious sense.

“Chen SIR! Got a lot of free time, huh?!” Xiang Kun sent back a raging emoji.

For a while now, he hadn’t seen Tang Baona sharing these parodies of his bamboo rat cooking process in the group. He thought that video had already been forgotten by the netizens.

Who would have guessed that it had been shared so widely that even someone like Officer Chen—who clearly doesn’t have a lot of time to surf the internet—had seen it!

Why hadn’t these clownish netizens found a new target yet? How could they find such fun in mocking a mere 10 -minute cooking video? Why were they still wholeheartedly shearing wool from a single sheep?!

Officer Chen kept on sending three consecutive crying with laughter emojis: “When I returned home yesterday evening, I saw my wife watching a video, laughing till she was in tears. So I went over to have a look. I found that the bald guy with glasses in the video looked familiar, and when I looked carefully, sure enough, it was you, Xiang Kun! You’re quite something, you’ve become an internet celebrity now, huh?”

“Internet celebrity, my ass!! What they’re doing is illegal, it’s humiliation, infringement, and slander, violating my right to my own image! Brother Chen, you must seek justice for me!”

Officer Chen kept on sending crying with laughter emojis again: “This is not under the jurisdiction of our Criminal Investigation Department, you can consult a lawyer, or I can recommend a colleague from our Cybercrime Unit to you.”

Xiang Kun sent a sneering kid emoji: “So, Brother Chen, you sent me a message during office hours just to tease me?

Officer Chen: “Ah, yes, I have another matter to discuss with you, are you sure you did not privately investigate the case of that ‘consulting company’?”

Xiang Kun’s heart thumped, he rapidly replied on WeChat: “Of course not! After hearing about the case from a friend, I immediately asked you because I felt something was off. Why do you ask?”

Officer Chen: “The key suspects of the case have all been apprehended, a perfect chain of evidence was established, the questioning process was smoother than we anticipated. Mainly because one of the ringleaders voluntarily surrendered, and the reason being he had a nightmare that scared him.”

Did the lead go from the Eight-armed, Eight-eyed Wood Carving back to me?

Xiang Kun furrowed his brow, and asked on WeChat: “What kind of nightmare scared him into confessing? And asides, how does that have anything to do with me?”

Officer Chen: “When I heard about it, I recalled the young man who threatened you and then got frightened and called the police. And now, when you coincidentally asked about this case, I, of course, thought of you. As for what nightmare he had, what he said was confusing, one moment he claimed that ‘retribution had arrived,’ at another point, he described something about ‘death not being the end’ and the ‘Eight-armed Yama.’ We suspect that he may have developed some mental problem after scamming people for so long.

Fortunately, he provided ample evidence. All of which have been tracked down. The other suspects all confessed knowing there was no way out. Otherwise, if his mental evaluation couldn’t pass, it would indeed be somewhat troublesome.”

After chatting with Officer Chen for a while longer, Xiang Kun confirmed that the ring-leader from that consultancy company, the conman in his seventies, didn’t reveal what he had seen in his dream to the police, nor how he saw it.

Maybe, in the old man’s mind, the imposing figure of the Eight-armed, Eight-eyed Wood Carving, felt like a divine being or demon that he held in high regard and didn’t dare to mention?

In the end, Officer Chen commented: “Xiang Kun, your constitution seems to have a knack for getting entwined with various cases. If you were the protagonist in a TV series, it would definitely be a detective drama….”