"Hunting a fox?" Wolf repeated on the other end of the phone.
"Yeah, didn’t I tell you that this morning?" Jiang Shu stood up, ready to start making lunch, "Tomorrow is the first judicial trial, you can probably guess what will happen. All we can do is set the trap and wait for the fox."
"Mmm..." Wolf elongated his voice, not saying anything, neither agreeing nor rejecting.
After a while, he continued to ask, "Where are you?"
"I’m at the theater, cooking," Jiang Shu was scooping uncooked rice from the rice bag with a rice bowl, "If you’re coming over, I’ll make extra."
"Okay, I’ll come now," Wolf replied.
"Alright, come over then, but definitely don’t bring the matcha mousse cake from the dessert shop next to the Lunzi Street Railway Station in District C, and don’t bring the triple-color ice cream from the next street, especially not four portions, because there are only three of us here," Jiang Shu instructed nonchalantly.
"..." Wolf didn’t know what to say for a moment and could only reply with "okay", then he quickly hung up the phone, afraid Jiang Shu had something else to say.
Jiang Shu glanced at Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta beside him, just as they too looked over, then simultaneously swarmed the screen with comments.
Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta: Shu Shu, battery, hungry~
...
"If you have nothing to do, go wash the vegetables," Jiang Shu said irritably, seeing them lying there motionless, and with a flick of his hand, he threw four card over.
The four Tablet Spirits immediately sprang into action, one fetching vegetables, another getting a basin, another turning on the faucet, bustling about efficiently without chaos.
"There’ll be four and a half people for lunch, prepare four dishes," Jiang Shu instructed from afar after putting the washed rice into the rice cooker.
The four Tablet Spirits flashed their lights to show they understood.
Meanwhile, Jiang Shu also estimated the time and sent a message to Shen Xuwan and Su Xiaoou, asking them to come for lunch in about forty minutes.
Twenty minutes later, someone knocked on the door of the Magic House, and the Tablet Spirits smartly unlocked the electronic lock.
"The matcha mousse was sold out, so I bought you chocolate mousse instead," Wolf said as he stepped in, placing a small box on the desk. He then opened the box and stored the cake and ice cream in the fridge.
This was Wolf’s first visit to Jiang Shu’s Magic House. He looked around, took in the layout of the Magic House, and said to Jiang Shu, "Your place is... kind of simple."
The Magic House was in fact an open space with not much furniture and no screens. Apart from the bathroom which was a separate room, one could see the kitchen, bedroom, and office all at the same time. The furniture, though neatly arranged, seemed somewhat cluttered in such an environment.
Jiang Shu was by the sink, picking through vegetables, and when he heard Wolf say that, he didn’t even turn around but replied, "As long as it’s livable."
Gamma, who was washing the dishes, also mockingly posted a comment.
Gamma: This humble abode, only its fragrance persists.
"Only its fragrance?" Jiang Shu saw the comment and reflexively asked, "Isn’t it ’only my virtue is fragrant’?"
And Gamma shook its head back and forth as it explained.
Gamma: Young people don’t talk about ’my virtue.’
Jiang Shu: "..."
If only this kind of random cleverness could be used in solving riddles—that would be great.
However, although he didn’t feel it before, now, after Wolf’s comment, Jiang Shu indeed felt that the Magic House was a bit small.
Maybe...
Buy a house in Lonely City?
Naturally, Jiang Shu thought about the house in the villa area of District A.
But a house in that part of District A would start at tens of millions, and right now, he didn’t have that much money to buy a house.
Perhaps...
Pursue a career in the entertainment industry?
If he had to name the quickest legal way to make money that he could do right now, it would probably be chasing a dream in the entertainment industry...
"So, how do you plan to catch the fox?" Wolf moved a chair and sat not far behind Jiang Shu, who was heating oil in the pan.
"Do I need to do that? Isn’t catching people your job?" Jiang Shu said casually as he poured vegetables from the chopping board into the pot.
"It was your suggestion, wasn’t it? You can’t just bail out on it now," Wolf chuckled.
Yet Jiang Shu just shook his head, "Even if I didn’t say it, you guys would have set things up in advance."
"But I want to hear your opinion," Wolf persisted, it seemed he was determined to hear something from Jiang Shu.
"As for the Deception Group, their biggest reliance is still on the fox’s hypnosis ability; it’s like a bug-like ability," Jiang Shu stirred the spatula in the pot, thought for a moment, and continued speaking, "I said before, if you police remain alert and vigilant, it will be hard for him to hypnotize you, but now I’m not so sure."
Indeed, after Jiang Shu had studied the cases of the fox’s hypnosis carefully, he became increasingly convinced that the person was outrageous, completely not abiding by common sense.
With that kind of ability, he could totally play the game in reality, seen often in those novels cough cough.
"Hm?" Wolf paused, taken aback by Jiang Shu’s words, feeling a bit anxious.
"If possible, I still suggest not to use too many ordinary police officers," Jiang Shu continued, still with a steady tone, "It’s evident that the Deception Group is merely venting their frustration at Lonely City for ’injustice’ and some ’filth’ in a way. They have been restraining themselves, not harming innocents, and haven’t laid hands on the police."
"Right, perhaps... could reduce their sentence appropriately when caught?" Wolf asked, frowning.