Chapter 18: Discovery

The appearance of random adjudication is primarily designed to allow the disadvantaged party a chance at a comeback during continuous confrontations. In most cases, however, the advantages held by the dominant party remain quite pronounced. But this was the first time Ember had ever triggered a "Critical Success" on a single adjudication, whether as the disadvantaged or dominant party. Furthermore, the additional effects brought by this lucky adjudication were truly unexpected. Jesse Pinkman assumed Ember was a reality-warper and turned tail to flee without a second word, a reaction entirely unfitting for a chief of police.

Ember and Qiu Yinong, who had been standing by and preparing for a massive battle, were left dumbfounded.

"Why did he run?"

"I don't know why he ran, but I know *we* should be running too!"

Ember leaped up from the ground, shaking off the shards of glass covering his body, and then bolted out of the car wash alongside Qiu Yinong. Yet Jesse Pinkman had already vanished without a trace, moving with a speed that left them marveling. Fearing that the man might fetch reinforcements from his subordinates, Ember and Qiu Yinong strode swiftly back to their car, directly selected Maple Scenery's home on the vehicle's navigation map, and once again consumed thirty minutes of game time to quickly distance themselves from the crime scene.

Whoosh!

As their field of vision shifted and the sky grew dim, Ember saw no abnormal warning prompts, which finally allowed him to let out a sigh of relief. Jesse Pinkman was not an easy opponent to deal with; if he had successfully mustered his subordinates, Ember and Qiu Yinong might not have come out on top.

Qiu Yinong removed her face mask to catch her breath, then looked at Ember with bewilderment and asked, "How on earth did he manage to spot us?"

Ember was equally puzzled by this. The two of them had remained completely silent throughout, hardly daring to take a deep breath for fear of alerting Jesse Pinkman, yet they had ultimately exposed a flaw. Suddenly making a connection to perceptual mechanics, he guessed that their prolonged staring had triggered a perception contest. In this continuous confrontation, the police chief had coincidentally matched Ember's luck in breaking through the attribute suppression, thereby realizing their hiding spot in hindsight.

"Let's put that aside for now and take a look at my discovery!"

Ember promptly retrieved the items from the hidden compartment: an airtight packaging box and a sheet of blank paper.

"Wow! You're still the capable one; I searched the back room thoroughly and couldn't find a thing."

Qiu Yinong's eyes lit up as she watched Ember take out the cane transformed from the Eight-Spider Spear, gently swipe it across the paper packaging to open it, and reveal two red vials of unknown composition and unverified effects.

"As the chief of police, Jesse Pinkman was actually colluding and teaming up with Walter White in smuggling cargo. If this stuff gets exposed, it'll probably trigger severe consequences, which is why he concealed the true case details from Maple Scenery and kept it a secret even from his own subordinates."

Ember cast *Gloom Veil's Eye* onto the red vials, but absolutely no useful information was generated for the item's attributes. At that moment, Qiu Yinong suddenly shared her inspection results with him.

***

**[Tier 2 Berserk Potion] (Diluted/Variant)**

**Type:** Consumable Item
**Requirement:** Tier 2 Vitality
**Function:** Increases maximum health by thirty points and raises all major attributes by two tiers. Grants the "Debuff: Crush" effect upon attacking, dealing 1.5 times damage to targets whose strength tier is lower than yours. Effect lasts for five seconds.
**Description:** This potion can help you stage a desperate counterattack, even though it has been diluted and carries certain hidden risks.
**[Prompt: Once the potion's effect wears off, you will enter a five-minute state of weakness, and the maximum tier of your major attributes will be reduced by two.]**
**[Prompt: Once the potion's effect wears off, you will undergo a vitality adjudication. Failing the adjudication will incur severe penalties.]**
**[Prompt: This item cannot be brought out of the current assessment space.]**

***

"My Appraisal Skill was enhanced by the Eldest Daughter of the Sun, granting me unique insights unrecorded by the university information database, which is why I can spot all sorts of strange things." Qiu Yinong blinked at Ember, pressing her lips together in a soft smile. "Looks like I'm still somewhat useful after all!"

"Nobody ever said you were useless."

Ember smiled and shook his head, thinking to himself that this girl had a strong personality and would never back down when it was her time to shine. Of course, after spending a long time together, she would still occasionally slack off.

"I said it myself, is that alright?" Qiu Yinong crinkled her cute nose at Ember, then immediately returned to the main topic. "All joking aside, if the cargo Walter White and Jesse Pinkman talked about really refers to berserk potions, then it shouldn't be a big deal even if it's exposed, right? Besides, it's even diluted. Did he really need to be this cautious?"

At this, Ember flicked the brim of his hat, adopting the demeanor of a detective and speaking in a deliberately profound tone. "What the cargo actually is doesn't matter all that much; what matters is what it's going to be used for!"

Qiu Yinong rolled her eyes at him. "Then why don't you tell me, what can these two berserk potions be used for?"

"Isn't that simple?"

Ember flipped his hand over, revealing the blank paper that had appeared alongside the packaging box. While Qiu Yinong's attention had previously been entirely on the box, Ember had noticed that this sheet of paper emitted a special scent. Holding the paper out close to Qiu Yinong's face, he asked, "Smell anything?"

"Mhm, it has a bit of a weird scent."

"My teacher was an eccentric character who always loved teaching strange things. One of the lectures was about how to use special pigments for painting. Under different environments, these pigments undergo chemical reactions, causing color changes that alter the artwork. The most classic example of this is heating them with a flame."

As he spoke, Ember retrieved a windproof lighter from his pocket. As a detective, even if he didn't have a pipe, he had to carry one with him. Furthermore, Ember actually had a dagger tucked into his waist—another essential self-defense tool for a detective. With a *snap*, he ignited a flame and waved it gently near the surface of the paper. Before long, Qiu Yinong's watery eyes were filled with astonishment, her pink lips parting slightly in involuntary surprise as she cried out, "It's changing! It's really changing!"

As the paper was heated by the flame, a line of small characters slowly revealed their true form: *Brothers, Fly, Passenger, Settle.*

"Brothers, fly, passenger, settle..."

Ember murmured the four disjointed words thoughtfully. After her initial surprise subsided, Qiu Yinong looked on with a variety of thoughts, attempting to analyze them word by word. "'Brothers' is probably the writer's form of address for Walter White. 'Fly' should be a code name, likely referring to the delivery person. 'Passenger' and 'settle' can perhaps be understood together; the writer is asking Walter White to settle the passenger. Maple Leaf Town is close to the outskirts of Maple Island, not far from the port shown on the vehicle's navigation map. Putting it that way seems to make sense."

"That has some merit. 'Passenger' and 'settle' are connected, and associating them with the port is fine. However, the interpretation of 'Brothers' is open to debate. I don't think a writer as concise as this would bother addressing a collaborator with that term. There should be another meaning to it."

"Instead of guessing blindly here, why don't we find someone to ask?" Qiu Yinong suggested.

"My thoughts exactly!" Ember shifted his gaze past Qiu Yinong's face toward the lit-up house. "I suppose nobody is better suited than Maple Scenery to answer our doubts."

Shortly after, Qiu Yinong followed Ember out of the car and suddenly asked, "I haven't asked you yet why you chose to come back here instead of going to Walter White's company?"

"Because there's no need for that anymore. Jesse Pinkman's perception isn't poor; otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to spot us. He said they searched the company for a whole day and found nothing, which should be the truth. So I don't think we would find anything special by going there."

Ember leaned on his cane, which had transformed into the Eight-Spider Spear, as he walked toward the front door, casually explaining his reasoning to Qiu Yinong. "If we had followed the normal procedure and gone to the company first, the most likely scenario would have been that, after finding nothing, we noticed the newspaper left inside and arrived at the crime scene a step too late. But if that were the case, the outcome would be predictable. Trying to get the items from the hidden compartment would probably have cost us a great deal of effort, because we would have had to face not only a powerful police chief, but also these two berserk potions."

Hearing this, Qiu Yinong nodded heavily in sudden realization, instinctively patting Ember on the shoulder and saying with an amused smile, "It's great running dungeons with you—you don't have to use your fists or your brain. No wonder Sword Immortal keeps calling you 'Thigh' [Note: slang for a powerful carrier/carry]."

Ember retorted, unamused, "Not having to use my brain might be true, but don't even think about not using your fists. I'm still counting on you to provide the damage output, so don't even think about slacking off!"

"Got it! Look at you getting all flustered. When you boil it all down, aren't you just treating me as a tool?"

Qiu Yinong stuck her tongue out at Ember, then immediately pressed the doorbell. And when they were once again seen off from the house by an expectant Maple Scenery, they finally understood that the word "Brothers" on the note was not an address for Walter White at all, but rather referred to a place called "Los Pollos Hermanos"!