Welcome to the Misogyny Game

The police launched an investigation, only to find that the restaurant was located in some remote and deserted areas, except for one in a bustling city, which was an ordinary vegetarian restaurant.

When the shop owners saw the blue hats, they assumed that their food hygiene was substandard and had been reported.

"The Industry and Commerce Bureau, didn't they come last time?" He looked at his green smiley face icon and felt more confident.

"Our employees are all certified and licensed, and our ingredients are delivered fresh from the market every day. Our customers have never had any problems eating here. We guarantee hygiene and health. We would never do anything illegal."

The boss has said those smooth and fluent words more than a hundred times.

"We're just here for a meal, don't be nervous."

Seeing the store manager stand up and the waiter stop serving food and stand there, the officers subconsciously looked around before finding a place to sit down and taking off their hats.

The diners, some holding chopsticks and spoons, others holding their phones, all looked towards that table. Finding nothing amiss, they continued eating.

The scene simply quieted down.

The waiter took the menu and went into the kitchen. Seeing that they really were just having a meal, the boss told the people he had hired to go about their business, and so the restaurant started operating again.

The owner, deeply influenced by Buddhist thought, opened this shop. When the vegetarian noodles were served, the police officers looked at the dried bamboo shoots and green beans floating on top, picked up their chopsticks, and started slurping them up.

After the meal ended and the police left, the vegetarian restaurant gradually returned to its noisy state.

Just like the teachers you encounter in class or the police officers you meet at work, seeing that police uniform makes you feel exceptionally dignified and you dare not act recklessly.

Perhaps some guy got drunk, really drunk, and that's when he mustered up the courage to put his arm around them and urge them to drink and eat. Of course, if he had the guts to assault a police officer, then no reason could get the silver bracelet back.

The police officers who had finished their meal did not go far. They discussed what they had seen, but found nothing suspicious.

Could it be that there's nothing wrong with this place?

Without a search warrant and with insufficient evidence, they couldn't act rashly. At most, they could only test the waters. People who have done something wrong are most afraid of those in uniform. Although the boss was nervous, all he could think about was whether his shop would be shut down.

Perhaps it's due to their strong mental fortitude, or perhaps the murderers don't feel guilty about killing; they see no difference between killing a person and killing a chicken or duck.

This way, you'll appear calm and composed when facing them, but then you'll clash with your boss.

The police smiled. There was no evidence yet; it wouldn't be good to jump to conclusions.

They scattered and began to visit and investigate in various places.

Liu Chaoque and He Yanzhi also came to this small restaurant, not for any other reason, but simply because they happened to be there.

They had been climbing the mountain for half a day, and even she, who was skilled in martial arts and could fly and escape using her lightness skill, felt a little tired.

Before they came here, the mountain they climbed was somewhat like the mountain in her hometown, with bamboo forests, tall trees, and unidentified flowers blooming by the roadside, as well as a mountain path made of stones and soil.

Pine nuts hung on the tree, a few fell, but instead of the squirrel with its bushy tail, I saw a wild rabbit scurrying away in a panic.

The chestnuts grow on the tree, too high up, encased in brown, spiky shells.

Holding a spiky ball, Liu Chaoque thought that perhaps she was like the squirrel that climbed the tree, except that she didn't need to prepare food for the winter, and she didn't have the teeth to bite through the hard shell.

She looked at her trousers, which were covered in mud. How could there be biting mosquitoes in the late autumn forest that had caused her ankles to swell? Or perhaps it was some unknown insect crawling on the ground or a caterpillar that had fallen from the tree.

The noodles were served, and she seemed to really like them; they were in a temple then, and now they were in a small restaurant in a bustling city.

"This is too salty," she said to He Yanzhi.

He Yanzhi took a bite of the same dish as hers and smacked his lips: "Perhaps you've been eating a bit lighter lately."

"Maybe." It turns out that everything tastes best the first time you eat it.

She asked the waiter for some condiments, carefully carried a dish containing aged vinegar and minced garlic, and returned to her seat.

“You said you’d eat garlic. Does that break a Buddhist precept?” Liu Chaoque suddenly said.

He Yanzhi nodded.

She eventually finished the bowl of barely passable noodles, leaving behind the soup with most of the noodles floating on top and the untouched vinegar dish.

"Did you notice anything?" she heard him ask.

"Did you realize the boss's knife skills were superb, or did you realize he wasn't just a vegetarian?" Liu Chaoque teased.

"Hmm? How did you know that?"

"His bamboo shoot slices were very thin, yet they didn't dissolve in the water."

She watched from afar as the kitchen staff prepared the food. The chef was chopping vegetables, trying his best to control his movements and slicing the bamboo shoots a little too thick.

"So what do you think?" He Yanzhi was really sure this was related to the case. Was it because of his good knife skills? But the cases he had discovered, apart from the need for great strength, calmness, and disregard for life, seemed to be something anyone could do. He awaited her answer.

"It must be that the Lanzhou noodle chef left his job and found new employment."

“I thought you were just going to say something,” he said. “Seriously, if you’re really a ramen chef, switching to vegetarian noodles would be a perfect fit for your profession.”

The two looked at each other and smiled knowingly.

"Let's go check out another location."

Liu Chaoque and his companion returned to the meat grinder. The police officers confirmed that the sack was indeed filled with sweet potatoes, and the driver who arrived late was also taken in for questioning.

They didn't go back to the police station; they just wandered around the area.

"Where did you think that big bag of stuff came from?"

She walked onto the road in the factory area, and perhaps because of the food business, she could always smell a faint fragrance.

"From the trunk of a car, from the base of a passenger vehicle, or via a delivery truck?"

Liu Chaoque looked at the chimney emitting steam not far away: "Do you think it's possible that he was originally mixed in with the flesh?"

"Disguise it as normal pork and then put it into the meat grinder?"

"Perhaps both are true. They might directly process the meat into cooked meat, make sausages, and mix them into food that requires quality inspection. Do they have quality inspection reports? I'm still curious how they know that the meat in them contains human flesh."

The two went to the quality inspection department, learned about the basic quality inspection process, and watched the machine operate and the printed quality inspection report.

“Generally, quality inspection departments conduct random sampling and testing, but some companies, in order to make the quality inspection results look better, only put out products that are easy to pass.”

"So there's actually room for manipulation, right?" Liu Chaoque thought of the math problems he had done before and the news he had read: "Could it be that an employee is retaliating against their boss by sending substandard sausages or sausages containing human flesh into the quality inspection machine?"

"So what's in it for him?"

Liu Chaoque looked at the well-dressed, bespectacled young man brought by the police officer.

"What's the point, really?"

……

"We need to understand the situation from you now."

The man sitting in the interrogation chair appeared remarkably calm. He stroked the texture of his shirt and said slowly, "What do you want to ask? I still have work to do later."

Calm and composed, I simply refused to look them in the eye.

"Are you sure you were in charge of the quality inspection for that doxxing incident?"

"Yeah, what's the problem, officer? You can't just make someone take the blame because there was a problem with this quality inspection. Isn't that just like an unscrupulous boss? My boss didn't hold a grudge against me for this, and yet you guys just come and arrest me?"

He chuckled, leaned back, and asked with a gentle smile, "For your actions, I have the right to call a lawyer, don't I?"

The police officer gestured for them to proceed, saying, "You can hire a lawyer, or you can sue us, but you have to answer our questions first."

“I refuse to answer,” he said.

"Cooperate with the police in handling the case."

Is this an obligation or a right?

"obligation."

"Then I have the right to choose not to fulfill this obligation."

The situation suddenly became tense. The man remained silent, and the police could not coerce or bribe him. Before a conviction was made, he was only a criminal suspect.

A knock sounded on the door, followed by a loud report, which eased the atmosphere considerably.

Liu Chaoque and He Yanzhi entered the interrogation room.

The man paused for a moment, then smiled, a somewhat mocking smile, but remained silent.

Liu Chaoque looked in his direction and began to speak: "Zhang Guangyuan is from Guangdong and Guangxi. His mother died from a massive hemorrhage when he was born, and his father died in an accident when he was ten. He grew up with the help of his neighbors. He was very sensible from a young age. After growing up, he looked for many jobs but kept hitting walls. He finally found a job, which is the job you have now."

"A fortune teller?" the man asked in surprise. "Or are you investigating me?"

He finally spoke, and his expression finally changed.

Liu Chaoque feigned mystery and replied half-truthfully, "Yes and no."

He regained his composure: "My childhood was miserable, but I am grateful. Although I kept hitting walls, the final result was good. I finally found a job, why would I ruin it?"

"Perhaps... the boss is the one who hit your father?"

Liu Chaoque boldly guessed that the man's expression changed, and struggle and shock flashed across his face as quickly as her illusion, but she silently breathed a sigh of relief.

“Your father could have been saved, but because the boss’s wife was pregnant and about to give birth, he had to take his wife to the hospital first. By the time he returned, your father had already lost his life.”

“No, that’s not it.” He chuckled. “You’ve miscalculated.”

He began to believe that Liu Chaoque was a fortune teller; in this vast world, it wasn't impossible for a few people with metaphysical talents to be called in by the police, but...

He looked at the small room and then at the men in police uniforms, and suddenly sighed, "The end of science really is metaphysics."

Liu Chaoque, who has no metaphysical knowledge but can create illusions to make people subconsciously relax and distinguish between real and fake Food Spirits, and He Yanzhi, an abnormal human with the ability to control the wind: seem to be right.

How did you kill him?

The man seemed to see his father lying in a pool of blood, and the driver who hit him and fled the scene. The license plate, J, was clearly etched in his mind. He saw his own helplessness, the indifferent pedestrians, and his father's heartbeat growing weaker.

Did that person ever come back? He didn't know. All he knew was that he shouted until his throat was hoarse and he shouted until he was exhausted, but he still couldn't save his father. There was kindness in reality, but he didn't encounter it at the time.

Later, my father became a cold corpse. No one thought about burying him, and there was no crematorium far away. Too many people had died. My father lay in the hospital morgue for a very long time.

The first body he handled was his father.

This employee is 40 years old.