He left after seeing the robbers escorted into the police cars.
It was evening when he arrived home.
Tang Hao went to the nearby wet market.
The vendors at the wet market knew him very well. They greeted him warmly when they saw him. A few of them asked about Ling Wei.
“Where’s that girl, Tang boy?”
Tang Hao was at a loss for a reply whenever he was asked that.
It had been a month since the incident. He also wondered how she had been.
‘Her life must be good now!’ Tang Hao thought.
He made dinner for himself when he got back. He chatted with Qin Xiangyi over the phone as he ate, listening to her talk about her business and her everyday life.
He enjoyed the simplicity of it all.
The call lasted for more than an hour.
After dinner, Tang Hao sat down in the living room and took out the raw jade stones he bought earlier that day. He broke the rocks open and cut the jade ore into thin slices.
The night got darker.
Tang Hao sat there, making talismans with full concentration. An unknown amount of time passed before the sudden vibration of his phone broke his concentration.
He was surprised when he saw the call notification.
It was from Officer Zhao.
He held the phone in his hand for about ten seconds before answering the call.
“Hello, Officer Zhao!”
The other end of the phone was silent.
Tang Hao also fell silent. He did not know what to say.
A long while later, she spoke hesitantly, “Come down!”
“What?” Tang Hao was confused.
“I said… come down here! I’m at the entrance of your residential area!” Zhao Qingxue said. She sounded a little tipsy.
“You drank?”
She was silent for a while. “Just a little!”
“I’ll be downstairs soon!” Tang Hao said.
He ended the call and lifted his head to look at the clock. It was already eleven o’clock.
“She’s not asleep yet at this hour? And she’s been drinking too..” Tang Hao mumbled and furrowed his brows.
He left his house and went to the entrance of his residential area. He looked to his left and right and saw a car parked nearby.
He walked toward the car, opened the door, and sat inside.
Zhao Qingue was sitting in the driver’s seat. She turned her head over and looked at him.
She was not in her police uniform, but rather a red dress.
She continued staring at him.
Tang Hao furrowed his brows. It seemed that she took quite a lot of alcohol, but she was not drunk yet.
“That was you earlier, right?”
She suddenly opened her mouth. Her eyes were sparkling.
Tang Hao grimaced. “How did you know?” He asked.
“Hmph, isn’t that easy? Who else could it be other than you? You were the first person I suspected, and I confirmed my suspicions when I saw the security footage.”
Tang Hao scratched his head awkwardly. “Looks like I’ve been found!”
Zhao Qingxue burst out laughing when she saw his face. “Don’t you know? The robbers seemed to have lost their minds when they mentioned you!”
“Well, it’s their fault for robbing a bank. They’re unlucky to meet me!” Tang Hao mumbled.
The atmosphere fell silent again.
…
The next morning.
Zhao Qingxue woke up just after he made breakfast. While they were eating, Zhao Qingxue’s phone started ringing.
“It’s Captain Zhang!” Zhao Qingxue told Tang Hao after she picked up her phone.
Very soon, her expression changed drastically.
“What? Where?” She shot up from her chair abruptly. Her expression was indescribably grim.
A while later, she continued speaking. “Understood. I’ll go over as soon as I can.”
She ended the call after that.
“There’s a case?” Tang Hao asked out of curiosity.
Zhao Qingxue nodded. “It’s a troublesome one!” Her face stiffened, and her hand holding the chopsticks froze in mid-air.
She furrowed her brows and said with some difficulty, “They discovered another girl at a construction site in the north of town. She’s only in her mid-teens, and she’s barely alive when they found her. The doctors are trying to resuscitate her now.
“She was only a bag of skin and bones when she was discovered. There were signs that her blood was drawn over a long period of time. Fortunately, she was alive when they found her, but the other two that we found earlier were dead.”
Tang Hao was silent.
The fires of anger were silently brewing.
Who could be so cruel to a teenage girl?
“What are the chances of saving her?” Tang Hao asked seriously.
“The captain said that the chances are quite high. The girl has a strong will to live. The doctors say that it’s a miracle that she survived,” Zhao Qingxue said.
Tang Hao was silent for a while. “I’ll go with you! Maybe I can help you somehow.”
“Alright!” Zhao Qingxue nodded.
The two people abandoned their breakfast and quickly went out the door. They passed by Zhao Qingxue’s house on the way to the hospital, and she changed into her uniform.
Chapter 482 - Baird
An Audi A8 sped past the front gate of Province Z’s First Public Hospital.
After Tang Hao parked the car, he and Zhao Qingxue quickly went up a building.
They met with Captain Zhang and the other police officers at a corridor on the third floor.
“You’re here, Lil Zhao!”
Captain Zhao shouted as he saw Zhao Qingxue. His gaze turned to Tang Hao and he was shocked.
“Oh, how rare! Long time no see, Comrade Tang Hao!”
Captain Zhang smiled eagerly. He walked over briskly and shook hands with Tang Hao.
He was behaving quite courteously.
He knew that Tang Hao was affiliated with the army and had extraordinary abilities. He had witnessed the extent of Comrade Tang Hao’s power.
He was a superhuman person!
After he shook hands with Tang Hao, he shot a mischievous glance at Zhao Qingxue.
Both of them had arrived together early in the morning, which made him wonder if they were doing anything the night before.
“How is it, Captain?” Zhao Qingxue asked nervously.
Captain Zhang coughed lightly and said seriously. “They stabilized her, but she’s still unconscious and very weak. The doctors say that she won’t be waking up anytime soon.
“There! She’s in that room…”
Captain Zhang pointed at the room next to him.
“The headquarters are verifying her identity in the missing persons list. We’ll be getting results soon.
“The forensics team has collected evidence at the scene. They’ve questioned the workers and the foreman at the construction site but did not find any useful information, just like the last two times.
“It’s as though the girl had appeared out of thin air.”
Captain Zhao subconsciously furrowed his brows as he spoke.
“This case is a tricky one. There are no leads, and the methods are so peculiar and cruel.
“Just who could be that depraved to do that toward a child?”
Captain Zhao roared. He punched the wall, and he seemed emotional.
He had witnessed many crime scenes as a veteran police officer, but he became emotional whenever children were victims.
“This is already the third victim. If we don’t stop the perpetrators, there will be more…”
The police officers were silent. All of them looked indignant.
Tang Hao furrowed his brows and sunk deep in thought.
Zhao Qingxue had briefed him about the details of the case while he drove to the hospital.
They found the first girl about more than t
wenty days ago under an overpass in the south of the city. She was emaciated and her arms were full of needle holes.
They found out from the autopsy that her cause of death was loss of blood over a long period of time.
They also found out that the girl was reported missing five months earlier.
She was not from Provincial City, but a girl from a farmer village in the next district.
The second girl was found fifteen days ago. Her body was found in the east of the city. She was also reported missing five months ago.
It meant that the girls were abducted and confined somewhere. In those five months, their blood was extracted from their still-living bodies.
After the girls died, their abductors discarded their corpses.
The girl they discovered that morning was the same, but fortunately, she was still alive.
They found out that over ten girls from the province were reported missing five months ago.
They were not sure if all the cases were related, but the possibility was very high.
It meant that more than ten girls were being tortured in such a way currently.
Tang Hao’s brows were locked tightly together, and his fists were clenched.
He could not control the anger in his heart.
Such depraved acts were unforgivable!
It did not matter if the perpetrators were mundane people or cultivators. He could not spare them.
“May I go in and take a look, Captain Zhang?” Tang Hao asked the police officer after taking several deep breaths to calm down.
He had to investigate if the crimes were done by mundane people or someone or something more sinister.
“Well…” Captain Zhang hesitated for a while but eventually nodded. “You may go in!”
Tang Hao opened the door and saw a thin and small girl on the bed. Her face was eerily skeletal.
She lay on the bed, unmoving, strapped to a ventilator.
Tang Hao walked up to the bed and looked at her for a long time.
His heart twitched when he saw her sickly face. He felt the same emotions in Hu Lingling’s case.
The sorrow and indignation cut him like a blade.
His body was trembling and his fists were clenched tightly.
He took a deep breath to calm down and started diagnosing her condition.
Soon, he discovered something. He could feel a weak trace of qi on her.
The qi was unfamiliar to him.
Upon closer inspection, the qi was similar to a werewolf’s.
‘Vampires!’
Tang Hao’s expression changed.
Vampires and werewolves were monsters from the West.
He had encountered many werewolves before, but vampires were a first.
However, according to the Taoist masters, vampires should have been rare in Huaxia. Taoist Master Chang Qing told him that some cowardly vampires might set their eyes on blood banks.
The vampires that performed those crimes were brazen and lawless!
Did they think that no one in Huaxia could stop them?
Killing intent flashed in his eyes. His body shook, and his expression sank.
“They need to die!”
He spat those words icily.
He lifted his left hand, and a compass appeared.
That was a special compass from Mao Mountain. It could track a trace of qi back to its owner.
Taoist Master Chang Qing had used it before to track down the werewolves.
The needle on the compass wobbled. Suddenly, it swirled and firmly pointed in a specific direction.
“Got it!” He narrowed his eyes.
He left the room with the compass in his hand.
“The case is out of your hands now… you can’t handle it!” Tang Hao said as he looked at Captain Zhang and the other police officers.
The police officers were shocked.
Zhao Qingxue noticed the compass in Tang Hao’s hand and thought of something.
Perhaps there was a supernatural element to the case, which meant that they would be helpless.
“Be careful!” She reminded him.
Tang Hao nodded at her and left.
As he walked down the stairs, the killing intent in him rose. His expression was ice-cold as his eyes were transfixed on the compass.
He got into his car and drove away toward the direction indicated by the compass.
Very soon, the car left the city area and went into the countryside.
He continued driving forward. He eventually reached a manor in the mountainous region next to Provincial City.
He got out of the car and looked at his compass.
The needle was pointing straight at the manor.
He lifted his head and noticed several English characters on the front gates of the manor.
Those letters spelled out “Baird”.
Chapter 483 - : Huaxia’s Decline
“Baird?” Tang Hao furrowed his brows.
He knew he had heard that name from somewhere.
‘Right, Baird Corporation is a famous multinational conglomerate.
‘Another multinational conglomerate!’
Just like Beck Corporation, they were also committing crimes in Huaxia.
How many more evil forces were hiding in Huaxia?
How many more of these monsters were lurking in the city, harming the innocent without any care for consequences?
Not only there were vampires and werewolves from the West, but there were also Western warlocks, Nanyang shamans, Dongying ninja cultivators…
They did not seem to care for the law or morality.
How did the great ancient country of Huaxia decline to such a sorry state?
According to the Taoist masters, most of those villains would not have dared to step into Huaxia in the past. Even if they did, they would not brazenly cause so much trouble.
However, they seem to have no regard for the law now.
That was a clear sign of Huaxia’s decline!
Tang Hao’s heart burned with the fires of anger as he stood there.
How could he, a Huaxianese, tolerate foreigners causing trouble on his land?
If he could not stop it, perhaps he could look away and do nothing. However, now that he could stop them, it was his obligation to do so.
‘All those evil-doers must die!
‘Their blood shall be an offering to the Huaxianese victims!
‘Even if they did not cause any harm, there is no place for them in Huaxia!’
Tang Hao narrowed his eyes, and his gaze turned ice-cold.
“Everything starts from here!”
Tang Hao lifted his head and looked at the manor again.
He took out his phone and gave a call to Shabby Taoist Master.
“Hey, Fellow Cultivator Tang! Is there anything?”
“Do you have any information about the name Baird?”
“Baird?”
Shabby Taoist Master thought for a while and replied, “Oh, I know, those bloodlings! They’re a prominent family among the vampires. They’re quite powerful!
“Right, they have a company in Provincial City, I think. Don’t tell me that they’ve crossed you?”
“They’re quite powerful, you say? I’m about to storm into their nest and slaughter them all!” Tang Hao said coldly.
“What?”
Shabby Taoist Master jumped out of his seat. “You’ll cause a lot of chaos if you do that. They’ll come to you for revenge.”
“Revenge? I’m not scared of that!”
Shabby Taoist Master laughed bitterly.
Knowing Tang Hao’s abilities, he would have been able to take on them all.
“Don’t you know what they did?” Tang Hao said indignantly, “They’ve abducted more than ten girls and used them as blood slaves. Two of them are already dead.”
“What?” Shabby Taoist Master’s face turned pale abruptly.
“Dammit, those bloodlings! How dare they do evil in Huaxia? I’d skin each of them alive
if I have the ability!” Shabby Taoist Master cursed out loud.
“Those Western whelps are getting more and more lawless. They’ve never dared to do that. Now, all these werewolves and vampires run rampant all over Huaxia.
“Back then, with the two Perfected Persons of Mao Mountain protecting the peace, they did not dare to do anything improper. Now that they’ve gone into seclusion, they’re out causing trouble again.
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