"Hmm, if you don't mind me asking… how much did you pay to hire that female investigator?" Chen Ke suddenly asked.
Li Bo was startled, not knowing why Chen Ke would be interested in this.
"The referral fee alone was 10,000 union coins. After the investigator arrived, the daily cost was 3,000 union coins. She was a level D, so it was relatively cheap… She investigated for a total of 8 days and I ended up spending 34,000 union coins."
Chen Ke gasped, pissed off that Pihom had tricked him…
Li Bo didn't know why a trace of disappointment crossed Chen Ke's face as he said, "Actually, the investigator herself doesn't get much of that money. I've heard that the split between a level D investigator and the company is 1:9, and that split doesn't include the referral fee."
Hearing this, Chen Ke began calculating in his mind.
Excluding the 10,000 referral fee, the female investigator's total hiring cost for eight days was 24,000 union coins, and after sharing with the company at a rate of one to nine, she would pocket only 2,400 union coins.
Figuring it this way, the compensation Pihom offered wasn't low, and he even provided weapons and ammunition for free. But Chen Ke still did not believe that Pihom sought him out merely to save money—there had to be his own reasons behind it.
After all this, Li Bo's noodle shop completely lost its customers, and he was clueless why the monsters targeted him. When Li Bo was at his wit's end, a mysterious note suddenly slipped through the door slit, warning him that if he didn't want to be harassed by monsters, he should offer free food to the poor people in the Lower District and repeatedly cautioned that if Li Bo sought help from any forces, those monsters would act.
Thus, from that day on, patrons started returning to the noodle shop.
Most of these poor wanderers from the Lower District were illegal immigrants who had sneaked into the United Federation from the Covenant Union or the Fei Huang Republic, and some were local residents who had lost their jobs during the factory shutdown era.
They couldn't even smell the stink in the noodles, nor did they mind that the noodles were getting worse day by day. After all, Li Bo wanted to cut costs, obviously he couldn't let these poor devils eat for free according to the menu's standards.
When Chen Ke stepped into the noodle shop, Li Bo still held a glimmer of hope, but when he realized that Chen Ke couldn't smell the stench either, he mistook him for another vagrant coming for free noodles.
It seemed that the situation was not simple; Chen Ke had not encountered many Transcendent objects and phenomena since coming to this world, so he couldn't judge whether the threatening note to Li Bo was from a human or a monster.
Achieving goals through coercion was a typical human behavior, and by default, Chen Ke leaned towards the belief that there was someone, or some power, controlling these monsters behind the scenes. However, if these were purely the actions of monsters, then Chen Ke would have to be impressed by them.
Regardless of whether the instigators were humans or monsters, at least the motive behind it seemed to stem somewhat from justice and benevolence, although to Li Bo, the victim, this justice was almost as bad as the wrongdoing.
No one had the right to do good by harming others' legitimate interests—doing good should be at one's own expense, thought Chen Ke firmly.
And Li Bo, who was honest and upright in running his noodle shop to earn a living, certainly had no obligation to assist these poor people. When Li Bo's assets were all depleted, he would join the ranks of those homeless.
So, regardless of the motivations of these monsters or their controllers, their actions were exploitative.
"I feel like I'm now supporting a bunch of wastes for the federation, and I even paid protection money! Look at my situation now. Every night, those things monitor around my house, and I've been long wanting to leave…" Li Bo angrily said.
"Those diners eating your noodles have started to mutate a bit, those monsters have tampered with your kitchen," Chen Ke said.
"I also think they are affected by the noodles…but neither the County Police nor investigators could find any issues," Li Bo helplessly responded.
"I need to check your kitchen, take me there quickly," Chen Ke said as he put away his Colt Python.
"So you're saying, you're here to help me? Are you really from the Investigation Bureau?" Li Bo asked expectantly.
The two walked towards the back door of the noodle shop, from where they could bypass the diners and directly enter the kitchen.
Facing Li Bo's question, Chen Ke craftily divulged his fabricated identity.
"No, but something similar, I am a... Demon Hunter."
Once the two entered the kitchen, there were only zwei chefs cooking, and including the two waitstaff bustling about, the noodle shop was indeed not large in scale.
A large pot boiled with bubbling water, stacks of noodles piled in buckets beside it, the chefs scooped noodles into the boiling water with a skimmer, stirred a few times, then skillfully poured it into empty bowls partly filled with hot water on the side, another chef sprinkled some salt on the noodles, and a bowl of noodles was ready. They even skimped on the oil.
Chen Ke scanned the kitchen, but initially found nothing unusual. Through the walls, he saw several red humanoid silhouettes; it seemed that anyone who had harbored hostility against him would be permanently marked by the Killing Aura Radar.
The chefs looked at Li Bo in confusion, as the kitchen, being a restricted area, was not supposed to be entered by others, but Li Bo waved his hand, letting them continue their work.
Being a small kitchen, Chen Ke started inspecting thoroughly, not knowing what he was searching for, but hoping something suspicious would catch his eye, such as an inconspicuous amulet, a row of mysterious spells carved on the wall, or anything else out of place that did not belong in a kitchen, possibly the source of the curse.
Unfortunately, Chen Ke found nothing.
Just then, Chen Ke's peripheral vision caught an orange-yellow glowing outline, and he looked toward the source, the pot with boiling water.
Chen Ke approached the pot, and it turned out to be the skimmer that was emitting the light. He looked back at the two chefs and Li Bo, realizing that only he could see the strangeness of this skimmer. He grabbed the handle and pulled out the skimmer, a line of text appeared in his mind:
"Unidentified mutated object"
"Identification will consume 20 minutes of lifespan"
Mutated object? Chen Ke guessed it was something distinctly different from the Holy Relics, but it still required lifespan to identify, perhaps this was the source of the anomaly in the noodle shop.
Identify it! If it leads to finding the creature, the lifespan can be restored!
"-20 minutes"
"Your remaining lifespan is 3 hours 29 minutes 52 seconds…"
As the orange-yellow outline on the skimmer gradually vanished, an information box appeared in front of Chen Ke...
[Mutated Object Level: Common]
[Mutated Effect: Ingredients touched by the mutated object will emit a decaying stench, undetectable only by those in dire poverty.]