Upon hearing that the excavator had disappeared into thin air, An Chen’s heart skipped a beat, and he had a suspect in mind.
Actually, there was only one candidate.
After all, besides Su Xiaojiu, no one else could move such a large object…
Others probably wouldn’t be interested in such a large iron lump.
Even thieves wouldn’t steal this thing; are they going to drag this excavator away to sell as scrap metal?
His phone dropping didn’t attract anyone’s attention. An Chen immediately picked it up and quickly left.
“Dong!”
An Chen pushed open the door, and it slammed against the wall, making a muffled sound.
“Su Xiaojiu!”
An Chen generally didn’t get angry.
But Su Xiaojiu had gone too far this time!
An Chen forcefully closed the door. Su Xiaojiu heard the noise and came out of the room, rubbing her eyes, seemingly just woken up.
“You’re back?”
An Chen rushed to Su Xiaojiu in a few strides, not caring if she would, in a fit of anger, use a spell to burn him to ashes. He glared at her.
“The excavator downstairs, did you steal it? Where did you hide such a huge excavator?!”
In fact, in An Chen’s opinion, this question was redundant.
Besides her, it couldn’t be anyone else.
Su Xiaojiu’s expression was strange; she tilted her head.
“You mean the excavator, that big guy? Isn’t it on the road downstairs? Why are you asking me?”
Seeing that this fellow was still feigning ignorance, An Chen led Su Xiaojiu to the window, looked down, and pointed at the construction site.
“See for yourself, where did it go?”
“I don’t know. I was sleeping in your room this afternoon. Didn’t you tell me not to go out and cause trouble…?”
Su Xiaojiu looked innocent, even a little wronged, which made An Chen fall into self-doubt.
Su Xiaojiu, this girl, was the standard innocent and naive type. Whether she was sweet was debatable, and she wasn’t the scheming kind. She didn’t seem like she would lie.
If Su Xiaojiu said she didn’t take it, maybe she really didn’t…
Moreover, Su Xiaojiu really looked like she had just woken up.
Then…
Where was the excavator???
An Chen calmed down a bit, and his tone softened slightly.
“Your qiankun bag, can it hold something that big?”
“Hmm… yes, it can. The space of a normal qiankun bag is larger than that thing. As long as there aren’t too many things in the bag, it should be able to hold it.”
“It seems that other Cultivator have set their sights on this iron lump.”
Anyway, ordinary people couldn’t make such a large object disappear into thin air. After witnessing Su Xiaojiu use her qiankun bag to clear out the snacks on the shelves, An Chen directly narrowed down the scope to Cultivator from the Nine Continents Continent.
“I told you it wasn’t me.”
Su Xiaojiu slightly lifted her head, her nostrils facing An Chen, with a hint of haughtiness on her face, and said:
“Next time, don’t wrongly accuse an honest person like me!”
“…”
An Chen responded with silence.
Su Xiaojiu waited for a long time with her neck craned, but An Chen didn’t say anything else. Su Xiaojiu twisted her neck back, a bit annoyed, and chided:
“Can’t you apologize to me?”
An Chen shook his head.
“Why not apologize? My dad said that people should apologize when they do something wrong. When I was little, if my brothers did something wrong or bullied me, he would make them apologize. If they didn’t, he would beat them until they apologized!”
An Chen shook his head again.
“I’m shaking my head not because I don’t want to apologize, but because, whether or not you stole the excavator, this excavator was stolen by ‘you’.”
Su Xiaojiu was bewildered by An Chen’s words.
“What do you mean I stole it? If I didn’t steal it, then I didn’t steal it…”
An Chen patiently explained:
“In this vicinity, only three Cultivator have appeared recently. The Hanzi (Man) from last night is dead. I also encountered another one; from the video, he was injured and fled, maybe he’s already been caught or even killed by the police. Only you are still perfectly fine. Now that an excavator is missing, anyone with eyes can see that this was done by a Cultivator. Who do you think they will suspect?”
“But I wasn’t discovered, was I?”
“Not necessarily.”
An Chen shook his head.
“The surveillance camera I told you to destroy that night is a hidden danger.”
He explained his analysis, and only then did Su Xiaojiu show a look of sudden realization.
“So that’s how it is! Your brain is quite useful! But… such a detailed matter, no one should be able to discover it, right?”
An Chen had been uneasy about this matter for almost a whole day.
“I hope so.”
An Chen shook his head, pulled the curtains, and moved away from the window.
“What are we having for dinner?”
Having woken up, Su Xiaojiu was also hungry. From last night until noon, she had only eaten snacks she had taken from the internet cafe last night and hadn’t had a proper meal.
“Noodles.”
An Chen walked into the kitchen, thought for a moment, and decided not to take out the instant noodle cakes they ate every day. Instead, he opened a packet of dried noodles.
Although this stuff was also cheap, the taste was still a bit better than instant noodle cakes.
An Chen also took out two eggs and two green onions from the small refrigerator in the kitchen.
For him, this was already a meal of no low standard.
However, since there was a “guest” at home, he had to make it a little better. Moreover, Su Xiaojiu, at the moment, was his potential money tree.
An Chen still knew a bit about the Dao of hospitality, and he was even more willing to serve a benefactor.
It was just that there wasn’t enough time to make rice and stir-fry dishes, otherwise An Chen would have grudgingly sacrificed some meat to stir-fry two dishes.
Two handfuls of dried noodles were boiled until soft, a little salt, soy sauce, and sesame oil were added, and two poached eggs were made separately. Finally, chopped green onions were sprinkled for garnish, and two simple bowls of clear noodle soup were ready.
An Chen brought the two bowls of noodles to the dining table, while Su Xiaojiu had already run over impatiently, sniffing with her nose.
“Smells good.”
Su Xiaojiu’s eyes lit up. She didn’t care about the heat and devoured the noodles in the bowl as if she hadn’t eaten before.
An Chen had only eaten a little more than half, but Su Xiaojiu was already almost finished.
“Do you… not even have enough to eat and wear in your Nine Continents Continent? Or is it that the cooks there don’t make good food?”
An Chen looked strange.
This Su Xiaojiu was like she had never eaten before.
“Not really. There are many delicious things in the Nine Continents Continent too, it’s just that I haven’t been able to eat them recently…”
“Can’t eat? Oh…”
An Chen thought for a moment and understood.
Delicacies from land and sea aren’t always available. The service industry in the Nine Continents Continent is certainly not as developed as on Earth. Even Cultivator, in most cases, might only eat makeshift food.
The technology tree of the Nine Continents Continent probably can’t produce refined salt of the current market standard, and the production processes for other seasonings are probably not very good either, so casually made food certainly wouldn’t taste very good.
“It’s not what you think!” Seeing that An Chen had probably misunderstood something, Su Xiaojiu quickly explained: “I ran away from home…”