Chapter 94: Mission Accomplished

After filing the report and blocking the account, Jiang Zheng saw that there was no notification indicating the task had been completed.

This left him somewhat puzzled. He had clearly reported the genuine address, so there was no reason the task should still be unfinished.

Could it be... that he had identified the wrong person?

For a moment, Jiang Zheng even began to doubt himself.

If the task failed, then he would have spent three full days for nothing. But failure was not what hurt him most; what truly pained him was the possibility that he had targeted the wrong man.

If he had mistaken the culprit, it meant the swindlers were still at large, free and unfettered, and that was something he did not want to see.

Although he had not received a notification that the task was complete, neither had he received one saying it had failed.

So Jiang Zheng made a guess: perhaps the reason it had not been marked complete was not because it had failed, but because those crooks had not yet been caught.

He decided to wait patiently. Whether this mission would ultimately be finished successfully no longer depended on him.

His days returned to their former calm. He updated on schedule every day, read on schedule, and tried his best to build up a stockpile of chapters.

The promised burst of extra updates had not yet been fulfilled, and he had to hurry and save more drafts.

As this book reached its later stages, the difficulty of writing rose by another level.

Toward the end of a novel, one must begin tying up loose ends and bringing things to a close. However thrilling it is to lay traps and plant mysteries in the beginning, it is just as painful to resolve them in the end.

This novel of Jiang Zheng's had no shortage of such hidden pitfalls, and many of them, to this day, he still had not decided how to settle.

If one laid traps and never filled them in, the result was basically a botched ending.

After writing for more than two months, the story had already reached its later phase; in that sense, it was also his first time.

There was a price to pay as well: Jiang Zheng felt as though his fingers were about to give out.

The days passed in quiet routine.

Then one day, Yang Po suddenly called Jiang Zheng.

"Old Four, the case is solved. Your friend is amazing—he actually managed to find them," Yang Po said excitedly, his voice full of admiration.

In his view, finding a stranger in this vast sea of people was simply impossible, yet Jiang Zheng's friend had actually done it.

"Really? That's great," Jiang Zheng said, his tone quite calm.

In truth, after Yang Po called, Jiang Zheng had already received the notification that the task was complete.

So he knew the gang of swindlers had been caught.

"Old Four, when you have time, bring your friend over. I want to treat him to a meal. I'm really grateful for this, and also... thank you too, Old Four," Yang Po said.

"It's nothing, just a small favor. As for my friend, he's busy for now. I'll talk to him when he has time," Jiang Zheng replied.

"All right, no problem. We'll go by his schedule. Whenever he's free, I can make time too," Yang Po said.

Jiang Zheng gave a reply, then asked, "By the way, Old Two, how much of the money did you get back?"

At that question, Yang Po's mood clearly sank.

"None of it. Those people spent it all, and they didn't have any money left themselves," Yang Po said.

Hearing this, Jiang Zheng sighed inwardly. He had done his best to move quickly, thinking that if they acted faster, they would at least waste less of the money, and some of it might still be recovered.

He had not expected them to spend everything without leaving a single cent.

Yang Po went on, "It's fine. I'll just take this as a lesson learned. I won't make this kind of mistake again."

For Yang Po, the lesson was a profound one; he would probably never forget it for the rest of his life.

The two chatted a little longer before hanging up.

With this matter temporarily settled, Jiang Zheng made his skill choice without the slightest hesitation.

He directly selected the skill called Network Rogue. Having a hand in hacker techniques was not a bad thing.

In truth, programming had greater economic value by comparison. If it did not come with the price of hair loss, Jiang Zheng would certainly have chosen that skill instead.

Last time, when catching the scammers, he had used that skill once, and that night while showering he discovered that he had lost a small tuft of hair.

At the time, looking at the fallen hair nearly broke his heart.

The only consolation was that the hair had not come out in one concentrated patch, but had fallen out in scattered strands. To the eye, there was little difference.

He no longer dared to use that skill. Each use cost him a tuft of hair, and his hair simply could not withstand many more such uses.

From another angle, if he had no hair at all, then he could use the skill at no cost. But who would want to go around with a bald head?

Jiang Zheng did not want to be young and already sporting a mature hairstyle.

This was the first time he had chosen such a technical skill, and he was not sure what side effect would come with claiming it.

Still, he would meet whatever came head-on. No matter what the side effect was, he would accept it.

He could not refuse a reward simply because he feared the aftermath; that would be like stopping eating for fear of choking.

...

The next day, Jiang Zheng woke up and first carefully checked whether anything on his body felt wrong.

Yet after inspection, he found that everything seemed normal.

He did not believe it. Since when had any skill ever been so easy to claim?

Having found nothing amiss with his body, he simply decided not to leave the house today.

After all, whatever problem there was, as long as he did not go out, it could not harm him.

If he was not going out, then naturally he would read. Every morning now, whenever he had nothing to do, Jiang Zheng would study by reading.

He had just received a new skill yesterday, one related to hacking.

Jiang Zheng was quite interested in hacker techniques now.

Coincidentally, in order to make proper use of this skill earlier, he had bought a basic book on the subject.

Now he picked it up again, intending to reread it. Before, he had only grasped the general idea, never truly studied it in depth or thought it through carefully.

Now that he possessed this knowledge, he naturally ought to learn it properly.

Jiang Zheng flipped to where he had left off, planning to finish the rest of the book first so he could form a preliminary understanding, then go back and study it more carefully.

After only a few lines, he suddenly noticed something was wrong.

He could not remember any of the material he had previously read, as if he had never looked at it at all.

Jiang Zheng's memory was not especially remarkable, but after reading something once, he at least retained a general impression of it.

Yet now there was no impression whatsoever, and the earlier content was a complete blank.

In an instant, Jiang Zheng seemed to understand what the side effect of Network Rogue was: his memory of related knowledge he had learned would disappear.

If he wanted to use this skill, then he would have to start learning from the beginning.

Compared with other side effects, Jiang Zheng felt this one was relatively minor and had not greatly affected his life.

Since he could no longer remember the earlier part, he had no choice but to start from the beginning.

As he did so, he discovered something else strange.

He found that the knowledge gave him a sense of familiarity.

This was contradictory: he remembered nothing at all, yet it still felt familiar.

And yet, that was exactly how it was.

These ideas seemed as though they had always been in Jiang Zheng's mind; he had merely forgotten them, and now, seeing them again, he recalled them once more.

The advantage was that learning became extremely easy and fast for him. He finished the entire basic book in just one morning.

Not only that, he remembered it deeply and formed his own distinctive understanding of it.