Chapter 32: The Great Thief

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At first light, the old residential district was already in an uproar.

An Ning went downstairs to open the shop. The moment she raised the rolling shutter, she saw women still dressed in pajamas, teary-eyed young girls, and old grandmothers leaning on canes, all chattering noisily about something.

There were also more than a dozen bare-chested men with fierce expressions, searching everywhere for something.

Even the constables had arrived.

Was the neighborhood ever this lively during the New Year celebrations?

An Ning was completely bewildered.

(°～°〃) “Mei Ling? What happened so early in the morning?”

Mei Ling immediately hurried over and grabbed An Ning by the arm.

“Quick! Go back upstairs and check whether any of your underwear or panties are missing!”

“Something happened… Something terrible happened?”

An Ning was even more confused. “What’s going on?”

The moment someone asked, the women and girls in the street flew into a rage.

“Girl, you don’t know? There’s an underwear thief in our neighborhood! Every piece of women’s underwear hanging out on balconies throughout the entire district has been stolen!”

“That’s not all! It wasn’t just the laundry hanging outside. Even the clean underwear stored in drawers has vanished. From ninety-three-year-old grandmothers down to little schoolgirls, nobody escaped!”

“He robbed all 1,073 households in a single night! If he sells the worn stuff online, he’ll make enough money to go insane!”

An Ning’s eyes widened as her entire worldview shattered.

He robbed the whole neighborhood in one night? Was that underwear thief even capable of doing that much work?

And, uh… would anyone really pay for underwear worn by a ninety-three-year-old grandmother? Yikes…

The more they talked, the angrier everyone became.

“It wasn’t only the underwear in the drawers. I… I was definitely wearing mine when I went to bed last night, but when I woke up this morning, it was gone! And I didn’t notice a thing! What… what did he do to me? Boo-hoo-hoo!”

“He even steals the underwear right off people’s bodies!”

“That’s nothing! Even my husband’s battle-damaged old boxers, the ones with four huge holes in them, disappeared! Tell me, is that something a human being would do?”

“Girl… calm down first. But seriously, shouldn’t you give your husband some pocket money so he can buy a new pair?”

The residents of the neighborhood had gone completely berserk.

The men were furious enough to turn their eyes red.

“Just let me find out who did this! I’ll shave his head clean off!”

Even the constable could only cover his face. After so many years on the job, this was the first case he had encountered that was this bizarre.

There were no clues at all. The surveillance footage had yielded nothing. At present, they could only confirm one thing: considering the sheer scale of the operation, the culprit had to be extremely familiar with the neighborhood. It might even have been a group effort.

But with so few leads, the investigation had already reached a dead end.

An Ning was frightened too. “Could… could it have been those people from Shanhe Group while they were doing volunteer work last night…?”

The moment she brought that up, the crowd became animated.

“That’s right! It’s very possible! Constable, you should investigate Shanhe Group. Last night…”

The old residential district was certainly lively that morning.

An Ning hurried back to her room. Seeing that nothing of hers was missing, she finally let out a sigh of relief.

“Wait, Yaoyao…”

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An Ning then ran toward Ren Jie and Tao Yaoyao’s room and opened the door without knocking.

“Yaoyao, get up! I have to tell you, there was an under—”

Before she could finish, An Ning’s eyes widened. She stood frozen on the spot.

ﾞ━=͟͟͞͞(Ŏ口Ŏ ‧̣̥̇)…

The tiny room, barely over a hundred square feet, was completely filled with brightly colored underwear and panties. They were piled up like a mountain.

Ren Jie himself was buried beneath the heap, sleeping soundly. A bra was even pulled over his head.

An Ning’s worldview shattered all over again.

She had found the underwear thief!

Caught red-handed, with both witness and evidence present!

Hearing the door open, Ren Jie scratched his head.

(๑⁼̴ ～ก̀) “Mmm… What is it?”

An Ning: !!!

She slammed the door shut, pretending she had never entered, and returned to her own room in a daze, her face filled with shock.

Ren Jie still woke up. He was just about to rub his eyes when he pulled a little white camisole straight off his head.

“Hm?”

He opened his eyes fully and stared at the underwear filling the entire room. He was utterly dumbfounded.

Σ(유口유|||) “What the hell?!”

That shout woke Tao Yaoyao from her sleep. She sat up groggily.

(๑⁼̴ ࡇ ⁼̴) “Big brother? What happened?”

Ren Jie shot across the room in a panic, yanked up the blanket, and immediately rolled his little sister into it like a stuffed pancake, sealing both ends and turning her into a blanket-wrapped caterpillar.

Tao Yaoyao squirmed madly on the bed.

“Mmph, mmph! Let me out, Big Brother! Did you do something shameful? Let me see! Come on, let me see! I can be shameless too!”

Ren Jie was completely numb with disbelief.

What the hell was going on?

Where had all this underwear come from?

Could it be that he had used up all his emotional mist last night, allowing his demonic original sin to emerge and putting him into pervert mode? Had he sleepwalked outside and stolen all this underwear?

His head was throbbing. Ren Jie hurriedly checked the Mirror Lake space.

The result left him even more bewildered.

The surface of the lake was covered with drifting emotional mist—an astonishing amount of it. Even when he had been showing love to the pigeons in the plaza, he had never gathered this much.

Where… where had all this emotional mist come from?

He looked out through the window and saw the neighborhood swarming with people, all following the constables around in search of clues.

Ren Jie’s expression darkened further.

No wonder there was so much emotional mist. He now knew where all this underwear had come from.

It had not been him sleepwalking.

Who else could it have been?

Just then, a pure-white treasure-stealing marten crawled out from beneath the pile of underwear.

Seeing that Ren Jie was awake, it hurriedly dragged several pieces of underwear over and stuffed them into his hands like precious treasures, looking eager to curry favor.

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A treasure-stealing marten?

Treasure.

Stealing.

A thunderbolt out of a clear blue sky seemed to strike Ren Jie directly on the head.

Damn it!

So this little creature had spent the entire night stealing all of this?

Why on earth were you stealing underwear?

And was that tattered pair of boxers with four enormous holes really something a human being had worn?

Did the wearer have teeth growing out of his backside?

Ren Jie grabbed the treasure-stealing marten and shook it furiously.

“You’re really something, aren’t you? Why did you steal this junk? Were you planning to sew it into a quilt cover and make a robe out of it? Or turn it into a patchwork blanket?”

The treasure-stealing marten looked aggrieved and pointed toward the drawer Ren Jie had tidied up the previous day.

Ren Jie pressed a hand to his forehead.

So yesterday, when he had organized Tao Yaoyao’s camisoles, panties, and other clothes, the marten had assumed they were precious treasures he valued?

And it had stolen all this stuff to give him as a gift?

Ren Jie truly did not know whether to laugh or cry.

“Quick! Hurry up and put everything away. Tonight, return every piece exactly the way you stole it!”

“Otherwise, I’ll turn you into a scarf! A scarf, you hear me!”

The treasure-stealing marten looked mournful as it dropped into the pile of underwear. A flash of white light shimmered across its belly, and an opening like a primordial pouch appeared there. It began stuffing the underwear inside, one piece after another.

As it worked, it gazed pitifully at Ren Jie.

The corner of Ren Jie’s mouth twitched.

Good grief. How could such a tiny body hold so much? That treasure bag of its was practically a portable storage space.

It might actually make a pretty good spatial backpack.

He checked the time and realized he was almost late. Today was the Radiance Bureau’s regularization examination.

“Stay home and behave, all right? I’ll deal with you when I get back.”

With that, Ren Jie slung his schoolbag over his shoulder and darted out of the room.

“Auntie An Ning, I’m skipping breakfast. I have to get to the Radiance Bureau first!”

But An Ning grabbed Ren Jie’s arm with a deeply serious expression.

(｡･ˇ‸ˇ･) “Xiaojie… why don’t you find yourself a partner? Auntie will support you completely. You’re old enough now, and… and you’re at the age when you should start dating. If you keep holding everything in like this, you’ll hurt yourself, won’t you?”

Ren Jie: ???

Why was Auntie An Ning suddenly saying something like that so early in the morning?

“Hahaha, what are you talking about? I’m still just a kid. It’s much too early for me to find a partner. I’m off, I’m off!”

An Ning looked deeply worried.

“Xiaojie, if you run into any constables outside, keep your head down and avoid them, all right? Don’t let them catch you.”

Ren Jie: ???