He had tried to recognize this face, but failed. He was somewhat face-blind when it came to Western faces, basically only able to judge people by their skin color and hairstyle.
But Wolf was an exception. His hair was dense, and he was tall and burly. In Jiang Shu’s eyes, he differed from a regular officer much more than humans differ from chimpanzees.
"Knock knock knock—" He knocked on the door of Wolf’s small office, which was open.
"Come in." Wolf didn’t look up from his desk, frowning at the light screen on it.
Jiang Shu walked up to him, casually placing a lunch box on the desk, then leaned in for a closer look.
The light screen displayed witness reports of three incidents involving the Deception Group. Since the "Glass Fortress," "Bullet Chambering," and "Quartering by Horses" were all performed in public, the video footage of the performances was clear and detailed.
However, clarity didn’t necessarily reveal details, and this certainly wasn’t Wolf’s first time watching these three videos.
"Jiang Shu, you’re here? Come, take a look at this." Wolf looked up briefly, his face lit up with pleasure as he stood and pulled Jiang Shu down into his just-vacated seat, then moved aside to open the lunchbox.
"Eat less, leave a couple for Kirie and the little seagull." Jiang Shu glanced at him, then pulled the video progress bar back to the start. "The three from the Deception Group?"
"Yes." Wolf nodded and bit into a taco. "This is tasty, much better than the pancake last time."
"Whatever, eat it or don’t." Jiang Shu made a noise through his nose.
The video about the performances of the Deception Group started playing again, and he watched intently.
Magic performances were basically just magic by another name, the core of which remained the same.
Funny enough, in the past life, the people who could most appreciate magic shows were these magicians, who had likely guessed the secrets of the magic early on.
By comparison, the people of Lonely City could now better appreciate magic, since no one understood it, they just needed to focus carefully.
Bullet chambering was simple — using magic to catch a bullet with bare hands.
It was a very old magic trick. The principle was simple: hide the bullet in the hand beforehand, and the gun fired with a bullet that contained no gunpowder, so the bullet wouldn’t actually be shot.
"That’s not right." Jiang Shu frowned. The greatest enemy of this magic trick was the high-speed camera. If it captured that the bullet hadn’t left the chamber, the secret of the magic would be exposed.
In the past, without high-speed cameras, it was normal to not discover the trick, but in a place like Lonely City...
Not discovering it seemed quite normal too.
After all, the cameras capable of capturing bullet motion started with frame rates of thousands to tens of thousands. With only the frame rate of a few dozen in a normal person’s prosthetic eye, it was nearly impossible to capture any flaws.
A street magic performance in District F would be insane if someone brought such a large device to film.
Thinking this, Jiang Shu pulled back the progress bar to play the video again.
In the video, the fox jumped onto the stage built in the center of the square, waving to the gathering crowd.
"Good afternoon, people of the Seventh District. Long time no see." The fox grinned. "Today, what I am going to perform is closely related to your daily lives."
He pulled out an elongated revolver. "Yes, a gun."
"Also, for this performance, besides my assistant Devil Wind, we have a special guest." The fox looked towards the middle-aged man bound hand and foot behind him. "You might be familiar with him. That’s right, a board member of Keyin Company. As for why he’s our special guest, see for yourself."
With that, Devil Wind pressed a button in his hand, and a small drone in the sky began to distribute flyers.
The crowd caught the falling flyers and started to read them. The flyers were richly illustrated but brief to read, and soon, everyone had finished.
Keyin Company had launched a charity initiative two months ago in District D, providing food and necessities to the homeless on the streets. However, the hidden truth behind the hypocrisy was — cleaning up the homeless.
Here, the homeless were not wanderers; wanderers were just a special term for those without jobs on their Character Cards.
In just one month, dozens of homeless had disappeared from District D for a laughable reason — to keep the cityscape clean.
These homeless were not natives of District D but had moved from Districts E and F.
District D was safer and more densely populated with the middle class than Districts E and F, and more people were willing to give to the homeless.
Simply put, the homeless market in District D was far from saturated.
Some homeless from Districts E and F discovered this pleasing fact, so they packed their bags and came to District D.
This also caused the cityscape of District D to deteriorate rapidly, and this year, the company that won the bid for the city’s sanitation management was Keyin Company.
The Three Major Groups and the Social Sequence funded the bid, outsourcing city sanitation work to some companies — a consistent practice in Lonely City.
A few months ago, Keyin Company also won the cityscape planning projects of Districts D, E, and F simultaneously, an unimaginable feat in the past. Failures in cityscape management every year were mostly due to these lingering, cancerous homeless.