After saying this, Lu Ruo immediately cut off the livestream.
She picked up her phone and opened the messages on her streaming account, trying to send Jiang Yu a message to ask about the location where he had previously taken his cat.
But Jiang Yu didn’t reply to the message she sent.
With a murder case, the longer the time gap, the harder it is to find the killer—not a single second should be wasted.
But if she called the police directly, she didn’t know the location, and just saying there was a corpse in a wooden barrel inside a rundown house would sound like she was messing with the police.
Lu Ruo’s mind raced with all sorts of thoughts as she walked out of her room, deciding to find Grandmother Gu to ask for Gu Qi’s contact information.
However, she was informed by the butler that Grandmother Gu had already gone to sleep.
Lu Ruo could only place her hopes on the butler: “Excuse me, do you have my third brother Gu Qi’s phone number? I’d like to contact him privately.”
The butler smiled warmly. “Of course, here you go.”
With Gu Qi’s phone number in hand, Lu Ruo quickly dialed it. Before Gu Qi could even speak, she said urgently, “Third brother, I was just doing a livestream to help someone communicate with their cat. A boy named Jiang Yu’s cat said it was taken to play near an old, rundown house, and inside the house, it smelled a very strong scent of human blood.”
“But I didn’t get to ask where the location is.”
Gu Qi recognized Lu Ruo’s voice and said gently, “Alright, I’ll contact him in a bit. It’s very late—you should get some sleep.”
“But…” Lu Ruo wanted to say that only she could communicate with the cat, so she’d be able to gather more information.
But Gu Qi’s tone left no room for argument: “Don’t worry, sleep first. We’ll handle the case. I’ve asked Uncle Butler to bring you some milk—drink it before you sleep.”
As his words trailed off, Lu Ruo heard voices from other people on his end: “The suspect is out! Go!”
Gu Qi said, “I’m still a bit busy over here. I’ll tell you the investigation results tomorrow.”
With that, Gu Qi hung up the phone directly.
Just then, the butler brought the milk. Lu Ruo took a sip, and a System notification sounded in her mind: [Task: Help the police catch the thief and tell the victim it was the little animals’ doing—completed. Task reward: 10 points, random Beast Tongue: Dog Tongue!]
It seemed that the suspect Gu Qi’s team had just arrested was the mastermind behind the theft case—Grandmother Gu’s cousin’s son.
At least she’d already completed two tasks. Lu Ruo comforted herself that there was no use panicking over the corpse case. She quickly drank the sleep-inducing milk, lay down on the bed, and closed her eyes.
Soon, she drifted into a half-awake, half-asleep state, dreaming of something that had happened when she used to live in the mountains.
It was six years ago, when she was twelve, in the sixth grade at a rundown village elementary school.
After class every day, she had to go up the mountain before dark to cut pig feed for the next morning. It was there that she found an unconscious man on the mountain.
The man was covered in blood, grabbing her ankle and begging for help.
Lu Ruo hadn’t wanted to save him at first—she knew that many bad people in nearby villages would bring women and children into the village to sell them for money.
But the man’s accent when he begged for help sounded strangely familiar.
The light in the forest was dim, and Lu Ruo couldn’t see the man’s face clearly. She only remembered using the meager herbal knowledge she’d learned in the village to apply some hemostatic herbs to his wounds.
Afraid the man would be dragged off by wild beasts, she also pulled him to a hidden spot and covered him with a layer of dried grass.
The next evening when she went back to check, the man could already move slowly on his own. He said she was his lifesaver and asked if she had any wishes.
Lu Ruo actually knew she wasn’t a village child. She remembered that she used to live in a big city, with a beautiful, clean room, delicious food, and three brothers who loved her.
But she couldn’t say she wanted to go home.
What if the man in front of her was also one of the culprits who had brought her to this small mountain village? If she told the truth, wouldn’t he find out she wanted to escape?
The dream became chaotic at this point.
Lu Ruo couldn’t remember what she’d actually said to the man, only that in the later part of the dream, there seemed to be the faint scent of milk candy.
The next day, Lu Ruo didn’t wake up until nine o’clock.
Seeing the time on her phone, she was stunned.
In the Gu household, she’d never slept so soundly before.
Huahua and Duo Duo had long since slipped into Lu Ruo’s room through the pet door. Seeing that she was awake, the two kittens jumped onto her blanket together.
“Good morning, human~”
“Good morning.”
The sweet, coquettish “good morning” came from Huahua, while the other, slightly aloof voice was Duo Duo.
Lu Ruo petted the two kittens, but before she’d had her fill, Huahua dodged away: “Stop petting, stop petting! Your stomach is about to rumble. Hurry downstairs and eat—only after you eat will you recover faster.”
Duo Duo added in a serious tone, “My beloved consort, eat more so you can serve me better~”
Then the two kittens hopped off the bed one after another, swishing their tails as they left.
Lu Ruo didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
After washing up, she went downstairs. At the dining table sat Old Mrs. Gu and Gu Qi.
Seeing Lu Ruo come down, Old Mrs. Gu smiled warmly. “Ruo Ruo, did you sleep well?”
Gu Qi also said, “Morning.”
“Slept very well, Grandmother. Good morning, Third Brother.”
Lu Ruo, somewhat unaccustomed to it, sat down in the chair the butler had pulled out for her. A bowl of lean pork congee with millet and an egg were immediately placed in front of her by a servant.
She thanked the butler but didn’t eat first. Instead, she stared at Gu Qi, wondering whether she should ask about yesterday’s barrel corpse case.
Gu Qi understood Lu Ruo’s hesitation and took the initiative to speak: “The theft case has been closed. After learning yesterday that there was a mastermind behind it, we interrogated the two captured criminals separately. At first, they refused to admit there were accomplices, but when we presented the abnormal transaction records in their relatives’ accounts, they finally caved.”
To conceal the truth, his distant relative had deliberately routed the funds through many channels, making the “hiring payments” the two accomplices received appear legitimate on the surface.
Now both the servant and the accomplice with the mole on his hand had identified the true instigator. The suspect with the mole on his hand had even produced a video he had secretly recorded in a blind spot without surveillance as evidence.
That video had originally been meant to extort more money. But once he heard he could get a reduced sentence, the accomplice gave up his resistance.
The evidence was ironclad—no one could escape.
If Lu Ruo hadn’t understood Duo Duo’s words, they wouldn’t have continued their deeper investigation. Perhaps the criminal would have slipped up later, but at least at this stage, they wouldn’t have been able to find the real culprit.
After Gu Qi finished explaining the previous case, he moved on to the murder case exposed by Jiang Yu’s cat.
“I contacted Jiang Yu last night and rushed over to check. There really was a cement barrel at that location. After we brought it back and stripped it down, there was indeed a body inside. When Jiang Yu’s cat discovered the barrel last Sunday, the cement inside probably hadn’t fully dried yet.”
“The scene is now sealed off. It was too late yesterday for a proper investigation, so I’ll need to go back to the scene in a bit.”
“Also, the report I submitted to my superiors about you has come back with a response.”
“Ah, is it about me being able to talk to cats?” Lu Ruo asked nervously. “Did they respond?”
Gu Qi saw the young woman’s brows knitting tightly together and said with a smile: “The follow-up action they’ve assigned is to appoint a detective named Gu Qi as Lu Ruo’s observer, to determine whether Comrade Lu Ruo’s stance is positive.”
“Ah.” Lu Ruo was completely confused by Gu Qi’s roundabout way of saying it.
It took her a moment to realize that the higher-ups meant for Gu Qi to monitor her.
“But didn’t we just become sworn siblings?” Lu Ruo had at least some common sense about this. “If they have you observe me, what if you… what if you cover for me?”