Chapter 177 — The Credit Is Yours
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
After a few perfunctory words, she told them to bring the men back to the station and that she would return shortly herself, then Qiu Lingshan hung up.
This time the credit was certainly hers for the taking—Qiu Lingshan could already picture the chief's smiling face turned toward her—and yet at this moment she could not feel the least bit pleased.
There was no other reason: Wei Zhao really had found the robbers, and Qiu Lingshan found herself at something of a loss as to how to handle it.
"Hello?" Qiu Lingshan had hung up the phone, and after waiting a while without hearing a word from Wei Zhao, she could only turn around, bend low, and look at him. "The robbers have been found. How did you do it?"
"Haven't you been following me all along?" Wei Zhao said, his eyes half open, looking at Qiu Lingshan as she bent halfway toward him. Truly magnificent…
"…" Qiu Lingshan thought to herself, I certainly have been following you, but you wandered about so wildly that I have no idea at all how you actually found those robbers.
And besides, what made you so certain the robbers had to be below the cliff?
"Observation." Naturally Wei Zhao would not mention the jade pendant. "Careful observation and bold reasoning. When I walked around the mountain earlier with no apparent clue, I wasn't really without a clue at all!"
"Oh?" By now Qiu Lingshan believed what Wei Zhao said, too. His seemingly aimless wandering about had not truly been aimless—after all, Wei Zhao had found the robbers.
"I simply did what the robbers might have done!" Wei Zhao said. "When the robbers first came up the mountain, they must have wandered about just like I did, because they had never studied surveillance and counter-surveillance, so they could not have searched the mountain very carefully for a hiding place. They are not you people—they are not professionals!
So I considered the problem from the robbers' point of view. If I were one of them, what would I do? So I first wandered about the mountain and found no hiding spot, and at last I turned my eyes to the place others are most likely to overlook—and the place they would least suspect. If I were a robber, I would take the risk of sending a man down the cliff face to find out whether there was a cave below.
If there was one, hiding inside would make them very hard to find. With enough food, they could basically pass a stretch of time in safety, and once that stretch of trouble had blown over and the search grew lax, they would seize their chance to slip away."
"Is that all?" Listening to this theory, which Wei Zhao had in fact fabricated on the spot, Qiu Lingshan found that it did make a certain amount of sense, and it also happened to explain why he had been wandering about the mountain earlier.
"What else could there be?" Wei Zhao shrugged. "Do you see any high-tech equipment on me?"
"No, I don't." Qiu Lingshan nodded and accepted Wei Zhao's explanation. "Still, that guess of yours was truly bold."
"It isn't boldness. Since the robbers are not as professional as you, and after a search on such a massive scale by professionals you still could not find them, do you think the robbers are more professional than you?" Wei Zhao countered. "So if it wasn't that, then they took a risk and hid somewhere rather dangerous."
"Be that as it may, thank you for this!" Although Qiu Lingshan felt Wei Zhao's method of searching was far too simple, almost like a joke, he had found them, and she could hardly say anything more.
"No need to thank me. I was hired by Mr. Gu. These men meant harm to Miss Gu, so it is only proper that I cooperated with you to flush them out. So no thanks are needed." This time, Wei Zhao was telling the truth.
"No wonder Captain Yang recommended you to me," Qiu Lingshan said. "But who did you learn these methods from?"