Chapter 124 - Personal Project

Xi Long left right after his Siberia threat leaving only him at the house. It took a couple of minutes for Zhuang Wei to lift himself off the couch and sit up in a raised position. There was an aggrieved expression in his eyes that quickly faded away to a dull, calculative look. While part of his teasing and fighting against work was because he was tired, the other half was for ulterior motives. He wasn't sure if Xi Long believed him completely but it was not out of the ordinary for him to act this way. Even if he did doubt him, he knew there was enough trust between them to not question it further. After all, no matter what he did it had a reason and would be relayed back to Xi Long if anything came out of it. With the past couple of days there have been a lot of changes and he could not wait much longer to start his plans. 

Having Xi Long leave was only to have him out of the way and to do things in peace. Of course there was no way he could explain at this point, that he wanted to put a tracker on his so-called girlfriend. Not a physical tracker because he knew that was too obvious but a virtual one on her. While Xi Long did trust her, he could not feel secure in letting her be around them without knowing more about her. Granted, she had not done anything against them and did not seem like she had malicious intentions but her skills was too above a normal person. He had noticed how calm she was when there was a potential gun attack, again he knew how stupid the action was but it gave him the results he wanted. To add on, she had a needle hidden in her hat that could test all sorts of poisons. He doubted that it was attuned for only one specific type of poison since that would be useless. So the rational answer was that the needle could detect an array of harmful substances and that she lived a life where she must test her food constantly. 

Part of him wanted to steal the needle for himself so that he could conduct research on the item. He knew however that there was no way "Valentina" would let him get that close. Even going past those basic questions there were even more follow up concerns like where did she get the needle from? Who designed such a needle? And who else was a part of her background? While he did not know much about this woman, it was hard to confirm that she was the mastermind behind the research and development of the product. This was something that had to have gone through multiple trials and errors, there should be a team behind this or someone else supplying her with it. None of these were questions he could ask Xi Long because it was obvious XiXi was being wilfully blind. He never thought he would see a day where his best friend had become so....attached to a woman, especially such a dangerous woman like "Valentina." 

The contents of their relationship he did not care much about, he was happy to have his best friend finally experience his first spring. If they spent nights together, got serious, broke up, all of this was fine but only after he verified her identity. Or at least knew more about to her to feel secure. This confirmation he was looking for could come from only two methods, trying to dig for her information himself or spend more time with her and confirm in person. The latter was harder since there was no reason to call her out with only him nor did he think a lunch or dinner would work due to what happened last night. 

There were just so many questions racing though his mind that he felt like this was the biggest problem he had faced in a while. The way she reacted to the gun, the poison needle, the fake name, her fighting skills, etcetera. All of these things made him both wary and extremely curious about her background. There weren't many people that could hide from his information guild and escape from their eyes for so long. He wasn't sure at what point she had entered this country but he could confirm that she was from abroad. Her face was Chinese ethnicity but she gave off the image of a well traveled person. It was as if she had only recently come back from her studies in America but he did not think the foreign background was so simple as that. He was also a bit upset that someone so dangerous could sneak onto their territory without alerting anyone. 

He had no doubt that she went to great lengths to keep everything hidden and clean. Yet, how was it that someone similar to her attributes or personality had not made waves before today? She could have used multiple aliases but each incident involved with the underground was noted by him. He took great pride in being someone that kept track of all small and big events no matter its relevance towards them. The tracker he set up kept track of all nearby countries and popular countries as well so it was not as if he was sloppy or narrow in his work. Despite all of this, there were absolutely no records he could connect her to from a preliminary search. That is why he was determined to do a deeper research on her today and put a virtual tracker personalized towards her. This had to be a personal project and not something he could delegate either due to the sensitivity of the matter. 

If everything did check out he did not want to burn any bridges with her. From their dinner he could tell that despite her being polite there were no other feelings she had towards him. She was nice because he was Xi Long's best friend but would not hesitate to separate ties if the situation arose.