Wen Yan took out the phone assigned by the Scorching Sun Department, entered the department’s database, and searched for the name Zhuge Wanjun. Before long, the system pulled up her file.
This Zhuge Wanjun is a lawyer, and her story is quite inspiring. She worked her way up from humble beginnings and eventually became a partner at the Yu State South Wall Law Office.
She has connections with a lot of people, as well as many from the Different Races.
Some Different Races living in human society keep their heads down, make honest money, enjoy the conveniences of modern life, bask in the vibrant world around them, and, naturally, abide by its rules.
When they need legal aid, people like Zhuge Wanjun are their first choice.
Zhuge Wanjun is indeed a real pro, and tough to deal with. She’s secured a ton of benefits for her clients, and so she’s earned the trust of many Different Races.
Over time, she gradually started to acquire things from the Different Races that only they could get, and would then use these items to build connections with powerful or influential humans.
For instance, the snake gall of a beauty snake—you can exchange merit points for it in the Scorching Sun Department, and it’s not outrageously expensive, but it’s all about luck whether it’s in stock.
After all, it can cure nearsightedness and presbyopia, even gives you a bit of night vision, no side effects, no harm, just swallow it—you can’t beat the convenience, definitely not something modern medicine can compete with.
Given how prevalent nearsightedness is, in the Scorching Sun Department, there are thousands—maybe even ten thousand—families with kids who need their eyesight fixed to get into certain departments, but who don’t want surgery.
So a beauty snake’s gall, requiring little merit, naturally becomes the top pick.
Beauty snakes are on the brink of being wiped out, and their gall on the black market goes for sky-high prices. If a fresh gall, taken within a day, goes up for five million, it’ll get snapped up in five seconds flat.
But as long as you want it, Zhuge Wanjun really can get her hands on one.
Zhuge Wanjun is a natural networker, thriving between the Different Races and humans, and is only getting more popular.
Even the Scorching Sun Department turns a blind eye to people like Zhuge Wanjun, so long as she doesn’t directly get involved in certain matters—they won’t give her trouble.
After all, sometimes, to get certain intel, if you stick to the Scorching Sun Department’s style of doing things by the book, it’s just not going to fly.
Finding someone like Zhuge Wanjun becomes the easiest and most reliable option.
It’s highly likely that Zhuge Wanjun had contact with Fake Mo Zhicheng, but to say she was directly involved in everything he did before—that doesn’t seem to fit, at least according to the classified files.
This Zhuge Wanjun inhabits the gray area between black and white, self-aware, always teetering in the gray zone without ever leaning all the way into the dark side.
This time, she’s probably just shifted a little toward the white side of the gray zone.
Something must have happened that forced her to make the move.
Wen Yan studied the classified records—there are several incidents on file. Every time, Zhuge Wanjun positioned herself just right: always swinging back toward the middle just before the Scorching Sun Department thinks she’s crossed to the dark side, and often supplying key intel in the process.
She never truly sits with the Scorching Sun Department, but won’t go fully dark either—end result is, she’s built a bridge that only she could maintain, a line of communication with special value.
Because for most Different Races, they mainly sit in the gray area. Only a few go all-in with the Scorching Sun Department.
The rest mostly blend into the city. To say they strictly follow every rule and never use their powers like ordinary people—total nonsense. It’s just that nothing comes of it, so the Scorching Sun Department can’t be bothered to interfere.
Like how Wen Yan, during the last couple of days, checked on a few things with his clearance and discovered a demon in Yu State running a massage and therapy clinic for insomnia.
Some people with severe insomnia go there for therapy, get a great night’s sleep, and wake up refreshed.
The key is, the owner’s a Dream Tapir, running an insomnia clinic, with phenomenal results. If that’s not the work of supernatural powers, Wen Yan swore he’d eat his own phone right then and there.
If you want to be strict about the rules, that Dream Tapir is definitely violating the Scorching Sun Department’s regulations.
But does the Department care?
Some in the Scorching Sun Department suffer from serious insomnia themselves—they’re actually regular customers at the clinic.
If it doesn’t hurt society, and might even help, the Department basically looks the other way.
Rules are one thing. How you enforce them is another.
Stick to the rules too rigidly, and chaos would break out.
Wen Yan stared at Zhuge Wanjun’s file, stewed over it, and after thinking for a bit, called over Zhang Laoxi.
"Old bro, I need to go meet someone later. Could you drive me, and bring Uncle along? Honestly, going out without Uncle makes me really uneasy."
"Are we going to get into a fight?" Zhang Laoxi’s eyes lit up. Lately, he’d been staying next door to Wen Yan, catching a bit of upside from Wen Yan’s boxing practice—felt like his own skills had skyrocketed. He was already gearing up to go back to Fuyu Mountain and see if he could grab that Copper Armored Corpse from last time.
"Definitely not looking for a fight. I just feel a lot safer when Uncle’s around."