With that said, Lu Ruo directly ended the livestream.
She took off her phone, opened the direct messages on her streaming account, and tried to message Jiang Yu to ask for the location where they had been playing earlier.
Yet Jiang Yu did not reply to her message.
In homicide cases, the longer the time interval, the harder it was to find the killer; not a single second should be wasted.
If she called the police directly, she did not know the location, and simply saying that there was a corpse inside a wooden barrel in a dilapidated house would sound very much like she was playing a prank on the police.
With all sorts of thoughts running through her head, Lu Ruo walked out of her room, deciding to ask Grandma Gu for Gu Qi's contact information.
However, she was informed by the housekeeper that Grandma Gu had already fallen asleep.
Lu Ruo could only pin her hopes on the housekeeper: "Excuse me, do you have my third brother Gu Qi's phone number? I'd like to contact him privately."
The housekeeper wore a kindly smile on his face: "Certainly, here you go."
Armed with Gu Qi's phone number, Lu Ruo hurriedly dialed it. Before Gu Qi could speak, she anxiously said, "Third Brother, I was just livestreaming helping someone communicate with cats. A boy named Jiang Yu's cat said it was taken to play near a dilapidated house, and it smelled a heavy scent of human blood inside the house."
"But I haven't managed to ask where the location is yet."
Recognizing Lu Ruo's voice, Gu Qi spoke in a gentle tone: "Alright, I'll contact him shortly. It's very late, you should go to sleep."
"But..." Lu Ruo wanted to say that only she could communicate with cats, so she could get more information this way.
Yet Gu Qi's tone allowed for no objection: "Don't worry, go to sleep first, leave the case to us. I've asked Uncle Housekeeper to send you some milk; drink it and then go to sleep."
As his voice trailed off, Lu Ruo heard the sound of other people talking over the phone: "The suspect is coming out, move in!"
Gu Qi: "I'm a bit busy on my end, I'll tell you the investigation results tomorrow."
With that, Gu Qi directly hung up the phone.
Just then, the housekeeper delivered the milk. Lu Ruo took a sip, and a system prompt instantly echoed in her mind: [Quest completed: Help the police catch the thief and inform the victim that it was all thanks to the small animal. Quest reward: 10 points, random animal language: Dog Language!]
It seemed that the suspect Gu Qi's side had just caught was the mastermind behind the theft case, who was also Grandma Gu's distant cousin.
Since she had already completed two quests anyway, Lu Ruo comforted herself that being anxious about the concealed corpse case was useless. She quickly drank the sleep-inducing milk, lay down on the bed, and closed her eyes.
Soon, she drifted into a half-asleep, half-waking state, dreaming of an event that had happened back when she used to live in the mountains.
That was six years ago, when she was twelve years old and in the sixth grade at the village's dilapidated primary school.
Every day after classes ended, she still had to go up the mountain before dark to cut pig grass for the next morning. It was also there that she found a man who had collapsed unconscious on the mountain.
The man was covered in blood, and he grabbed her foot, begging for help.
Initially, Lu Ruo didn't want to save him; she knew there were many bad people in the nearby villages who would abduct women and children into the village to sell them for money.
Yet the accent with which the man pleaded for help sounded extremely familiar.
The light in the mountain forest was dim, so Lu Ruo didn't see the man's face clearly. She only remembered using the meager knowledge of herbal medicine she had learned in the village to apply some hemostatic herbs to the man's wounds.
Fearing the man would be dragged away by wild beasts, she even dragged him to a spot that was hard to spot and covered him with a layer of dead grass.
When she went to check on him the next night, the man was already able to move slowly on his own. He told her she was his savior and asked if she had any wishes.
Lu Ruo actually knew she wasn't a child from the village. She remembered that she originally lived in a big city, with a beautiful, clean room, delicious food, and three brothers who loved her.
Yet 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 the small mountain village? If she told the truth, wouldn't it expose her desire to escape?
The dream became very chaotic at this point.
Lu Ruo couldn't remember what exactly she had said to the man; she only remembered that in the subsequent sequence, there seemed to be the scent of milky candy.
The next day, Lu Ruo didn't wake up until nine o'clock.
Seeing the time on her phone, she froze for a moment.
At the Lu Family, she had never slept such a full, restful sleep.
Huahua and Duoduo had long since crawled into Lu Ruo's room through the pet door. Seeing that Lu Ruo was awake, the two little cats leaped onto her quilt together.
"Good morning, human~"
"Good morning."
The coy "good morning" was spoken by Huahua, while the other somewhat aloof voice belonged to Duoduo.
Lu Ruo petted the two kittens a couple of times. Before she had enough, Huahua dodged away: "Stop petting, stop petting, your tummy is rumbling, hurry down and eat so you can get better faster."
Duoduo used an even more solemn tone to say: "Your Majesty's Consort, you must eat more to better serve Us~"
Then the two little cats jumped off the bed one after the other, flicking their tails as they left.
Lu Ruo was left between laughter and tears.
After washing up, she went downstairs. Grandma Gu and Gu Qi were seated at the dining table.
Seeing Lu Ruo come down, Grandma Gu smiled beamingly: "Ruoruo, did you sleep well?"
Gu Qi also said, "Morning."
"I slept very well, Grandma. Good morning, Third Brother."
Feeling a bit unaccustomed to it, Lu Ruo sat down in the chair pulled out by the housekeeper, and a servant immediately placed lean pork and millet congee and an egg in front of her.
She thanked the housekeeper and didn't eat right away; instead, she stared at Gu Qi, wondering whether to ask about yesterday's barrel-concealed corpse case.
Gu Qi understood Lu Ruo's hesitation and took the initiative to say: "The theft case has been closed. After learning there was a mastermind yesterday, we interrogated the two arrested criminals separately. At first, they refused to admit there were accomplices, but we brought out the abnormal cash flow in their relatives' accounts, which finally made them loosen their tongues."
To conceal the truth, that distant cousin of his had deliberately made many detours with the funds, making the "hire money" received by the two accomplices look legitimate on the surface.
Now, both the servant and the accomplice with the mole on his hand had pointed the finger at the true mastermind. The suspect with the mole on his hand even produced a video he had secretly recorded in a non-surveillance area as evidence.
That video was originally meant to extort more money. But upon hearing that it could lead to a sentence reduction, the accomplice gave up resisting.
With ironclad evidence, no one could escape.
Had Lu Ruo not understood Duoduo's words, they wouldn't have pursued a deep investigation. Perhaps the criminals would have slipped up later on, but at least for now, there would have been no way to find the real culprit.
Having finished explaining the situation of the previous case, Gu Qi then brought up the homicide case exposed by Jiang Yu's cat.
"I contacted Jiang Yu last night and rushed over overnight to check. There really is a cement barrel at that place. After bringing it back and stripping it down, there is indeed a corpse inside. When Jiang Yu's cat discovered the barrel last Sunday, the cement inside probably hadn't completely dried yet."
"The scene has now been cordoned off by us. It was too late yesterday and unfavorable for the investigation, so I'm heading back to the scene later."
"Also, the report I submitted to my superiors regarding you has received a reply."
"Ah, is it about my ability to talk to cats?" Lu Ruo asked nervously, "Has a reply come down?"
Seeing the young girl in front of him frowning almost into a knot, Gu Qi smiled and said: "The subsequent handling method given for now is to appoint a criminal police officer named Gu Qi as Lu Ruo's observer to determine whether comrade Lu Ruo holds an upright stance."
"Ah." Lu Ruo was spun around in circles by Gu Qi's string of words.
After a moment, it finally dawned on her that what the superiors meant was to have Gu Qi monitor her.
"But didn't we just become adoptive relatives?" Lu Ruo still had some common sense in this regard, "If you're assigned to observe me, what if you... what if you shield me?"