4 Chapter 4: Outside the Tower Investigation Corps

High Tower second level, Investigation Corps regional headquarters branch, Seventh squad camp.

"Name: Bai Wu, age unknown, estimated eighteen or nineteen, gender male."

About three seconds later, the head of the interrogation team, who was reporting to the squadron leader, said embarrassly:

"That's... that's all."

"That's all?"

Wu Jiu furrowed his brow, while Liu Mu chuckled on the side.

"Wu Jiu, your Seventh squad's interrogation skills are lacking, aren't they? After all that time, you only got a name and gender—oh, and you didn't even need to ask for his gender, so essentially just a name? Hahahahaha..."

The head of the interrogation team hung his head low, not daring to utter a sound, internally grumbling that the name was merely offered out of politeness…

Liu Mu stood two meters tall with a bulky build.

In contrast, Wu Jiu was slim, not just slim in comparison to Liu Mu. Wu Jiu was one sixty without shoes, one fifty-nine. He originally had a pleasant name, Gu Qingyu.

But ever since Liu Mu started calling him Wu Jiu, the other squadron leaders also began addressing him as Wu Jiu.

Although he was only one fifty-nine tall, he was the strongest ace of the entire Investigation Corps outside the tower.

Wu Jiu rolled his eyes at Liu Mu and, paying him no heed, said:

"Give me an explanation."

The interrogation team leader showed an even more awkward expression:

"Captain... the thing is, all our interrogation tricks are useless on him, instead, we keep being led by the nose by him."

Being led by the nose... The interrogation didn't work, instead, they got the tables turned?

Liu Mu showed surprise, he might tease, but he would never actually doubt the abilities of the interrogation team.

The Seventh squad is the elite of the Investigation Corps outside the tower, with each subgroup in interrogation, internal affairs, combat, and espionage considered the best in the corps.

"Who exactly did you catch?" Liu Mu was very curious.

Wu Jiu's expression was stern, and with his phoenix eyes, he looked at the head of the interrogation team:

"Tell me the details."

The head of the interrogation team probably encountered such a tough nut to crack for the first time, and said with a sense of grievance:

"There were four members from my team, and all four ended up being questioned instead of doing the questioning during the interrogation."

"Neither soft soap nor threats and bribes worked on him, instead, he often incisively pointed out the flaws in their interrogation techniques. He even told them the correct way to conduct an interrogation and the like..."

"You might not believe it, but later in the interrogation, it honestly looked as though they were students and that kid was the teacher."

"All the traps we set he didn't fall for, instead, he seemed to intimately understand the personalities of the members of my team, indirectly getting a grasp of his current situation…"

Hearing all this, Wu Jiu's expression looked slightly better.

"What exactly did he ask?"

"This is the even stranger part; the questions he asked were either ones we couldn't answer, or they were so simple that we didn't know how to respond."

"Like how many levels are there in the High Tower? Who knows that; everyone just knows there are six, but no one has been to the sixth level to see if there might be a seventh."

"Then he asked what Innate Force and Talent Sequence are, questions every child knows, but he didn't and kept asking for details repeatedly."

"He also asked about Evil Fallen, and it seems like he genuinely wanted to know the answers to these questions, rather than deliberately asking some simple questions. Oh, that's right, he also asked me for a copy of the Talent Sequence periodic table."

Wu Jiu and Liu Mu exchanged glances, with Liu Mu tentatively saying:

"Although I don't know where you snagged such an individual, my Thirteenth squad's interrogation team is short on people. How about you hand him over to me?"

Wu Jiu replied irritably:

"To recruit for interrogation? You really intend to break a butterfly upon a wheel."

"What's the situation?" Liu Mu became even more interested.

Wu Jiu did not keep him in the dark:

"Five months ago, we received reports that people from the lower levels were disappearing for no reason—thugs, orphans, the kind of people whose deaths nobody would care about. The reason we received a report at all was because one of those who vanished had a debt from usurious loans, and the creditor filed the report."

Liu Mu was puzzled:

"Why should we concern ourselves with matters inside the tower? Shouldn't the Gao Ta Town Garrison Corps be responsible for that?"

"That bunch of noble soldiers? You're aware of their conduct, aren't you? They don't give a damn about poor people's affairs. I had a hunch that these disappearances were fishy, so I've been following this case. It eventually led to a certain gambling den."

Liu Mu was familiar with the absurdities of the upper class and said:

"It seems the nobles can't stand loneliness and have started playing their Hunger Games again?"

"Pretty much the same old scheme, but the bookmaker's status is not simple, and the location of the weekly gambling games is unclear, only known to be on the fourth layer. You also know that the fourth layer isn't very friendly to us in the Investigation Corps."

Liu Mu nodded.

The Garrison Corps of Gao Ta Town and the Investigation Corps outside the tower are both established by the rulers of the fifth layer.

But because of the low survival rate of those who leave the tower to investigate, the Investigation Corps is also known as the Refugee Corps.

The children of wealthy families hardly ever consider the Investigation Corps; they all join the Garrison Corps.

This joining mechanism also determines the corruption within the Garrison Corps, where bureaucratism is rife.

It also determines the subordinate status of the Investigation Corps. In such a hierarchical tower, everything has its rank.

"Going any further in the investigation will be troublesome. The bookmaker has significant influence, and the gamblers are all influential figures. It's difficult to find a breaking point. But this week, I received an anonymous phone call."

"An anonymous call?"

"You would never guess how things unfolded."

"Damn it, stop beating around the bush and spill it."

Wu Jiu spoke unhurriedly:

"The so-called gambling game is actually a group of people watching how the lowlifes die. They capture people and take them outside the tower to see how long they can survive."

Liu Mu had heard about it; he also knew that the nobles on the third and fourth layers hardly regarded the people of the lower two layers as human.

"This time it's more outrageous, they've chosen to banish people to the blue zone."

"A bunch of lunatics."

Liu Mu clenched his fists.

Every year, quite a few people from the Investigation Corps die outside the tower, and fewer venture into the blue zone because it's too dangerous.

"Of course, the gamblers want to see more thrilling scenes. The scale of this game is unprecedented. Compared to the struggling for survival in the white zone, they would prefer to watch how mutants, highly deformed Evil Fallen, devour human beings."

Wu Jiu's expression turned slightly odd:

"But this time, they miscalculated. The survivor, who should have died quickly, not only lived on but also managed to survive in the high-temperature area infested with Evil Fallen for nearly two hours without attracting a single one."

Liu Mu was shocked.

An ordinary lowlife from the bottom layer could hardly survive five minutes in the blue zone.

Surviving for two hours was unimaginable, not to mention not attracting any Evil Fallen—didn't that prove...

That he was in the blue zone, totally calm, and even a bit amused?

"So someone thought the game was fixed? Was it a whistleblowing call?"

"No... unfortunately, we didn't catch the bookmaker. The caller wasn't questioning the legitimacy of the game. Her main purpose was to get to Bai Wu before the bookmaker, to rescue him.

Because besides surviving two hours, Bai Wu also used the Evil Fallen to counter-kill the assassin sent by the bookmaker."

Liu Mu thought, what kind of story hadn't he heard? But he truly hadn't heard of this development.

So the survivor was this Bai Wu...

A poor man from the lower levels survives two hours in a high-risk area outside the tower, attracting no Evil Fallen, and furthermore, uses Evil Fallen to kill an approaching assassin...

"So you know, right? If he has never been outside the tower, it means one thing." Wu Jiu looked at Liu Mu.

Liu Mu slowly nodded, astounded, and said:

"He is a natural-born tower outer investigator with extremely strong emotional control! I'm very curious, though, who is the whistleblower?"

"A woman. She sounded very young."

"How would an ordinary woman know your contact information? And since it was a noble's gambling game, why didn't she go to the Garrison Corps?"

"That's something I can't figure out either."

The conversation fell silent, and about half a minute later, neither Liu Mu nor Wu Jiu could make sense of it, and Wu Jiu said:

"Aren't you good at interrogation? Why don't you, the captain of Team Thirteen, go and ask personally?"

Liu Mu smiled; he was certainly interested:

"Good, let me meet them. I want to see what kind of deity this is."