In theory, information from other agencies outside of the Bureau, such as the Public Security Bureau, is handled by the aftermath department. 

So, using his work account, Xuan Ji could directly access the "Sky Net" surveillance system. Since he couldn't sleep anyway, Xuan Ji connected to the airplane's WiFi and searched through the surveillance footage before and after the time of the black market raid and around the Dongchuan vegetable market.

However, perhaps because it wasn't his area of expertise, Xuan Ji couldn't make sense of the chaotic surveillance footage and didn't see anything useful. He only felt that the Dongchuan vegetable market was packed with people.

Suddenly, Xuan Ji felt a jolt in his heart, like stepping into thin air upon waking up from a dream, and his heart rate increased rapidly. Based on a certain intuition, Xuan Ji pulled up a few videos that he had previously skimmed through and found that only a small segment from one camera gave him this strange feeling.

"What's here?" He couldn't help but sit up straighter, squinting to carefully observe every corner of the surveillance footage.

The pancake vendor seemed to be doing well... There was a bicycle accident nearby, and then the two owners got into a fight... Oh, it escalated to physical violence... But what made his heart race shouldn't be this, he shouldn't be that mentally frail.

He checked the less than a minute long video repeatedly, but still couldn't find anything strange.

Xuan Ji glanced at the camera's location, it should be installed at the southwest corner of the market- the same direction that Gu Yuexi had been investigating... Was it a coincidence? 

He sifted through the surveillance footage from the southwest entrance of the market to the surrounding shantytowns. Soon, that mysterious "sixth sense" began to react to other surveillance footage.

Xuan Ji then completely abandoned his half-hearted technical approach and began to follow his "mystical inspiration." 

He intuitively extracted all the video clips that seemed off to him, arranged them in chronological order, and compared them to a map. He discovered that they formed a route... judging by the time difference, it was the speed at which a person would walk quickly.

There was someone who didn't appear in the surveillance footage, walking all the way from the southwest entrance of the market to the shantytowns.

Xuan Ji immediately realized: this was an illusion! 

This was a powerful illusion that could deceive even high-definition cameras, and Xuan Ji had only seen one person use it... Oh, right, it was during that time when the Dongchuan vegetable market was shrouded in dark clouds and there were a few lightning strikes. 

His colleagues even complained about how inaccurate the weather forecast was. He remembered that Sheng Lingyuan was particularly susceptible to lightning strikes, especially after he returned to his true form.

Was he there when they were cracking down on the underground black market? 

Xuan Ji couldn't sleep and his mind was racing. The Emperor was proficient in witchcraft, so he probably used it to track down whoever had tampered with the Mirror Flower Water Moon Butterfly. 

What did he find out? 

Did the deaths of Hua Hu and the others have anything to do with him?

And also... if Gu Yuexi's X-ray vision could sense Sheng Lingyuan through some method, why did she secretly investigate without saying anything? 

As Xuan Ji's lips twitched, he suddenly thought of a possibility - could Gu Yuexi also be suspecting him? 

Lost in thought, the plane's announcement interrupted him as they landed back at the Yong'an headquarters.

The sun was already rising as they touched down, and the aftermath department team's buses were waiting to take them home for some rest. Xuan Ji, suspicious of Gu Yuexi's investigation, kept a close eye on her and noticed that she didn't board any of the buses. He asked his colleague for information.

"Team Leader Gu," his colleague said, "she's not leaving. She lives in the 'Employee Service Base,' not far from the main building. It's only a ten-minute walk." 

The 'Employee Service Base', Xuan Ji knew, was like the headquarters' 'officers' guesthouse'. Internal personnel who came from other places to the headquarters for business, as well as team leaders and department deputy directors or above, could apply for free temporary accommodation. The conditions were pretty good, except that it was too far from the city and surrounded by wilderness. There was only one convenience store nearby, and no supporting facilities.

Xuan Ji asked, "What's going on? Is she renovating her house?"

A colleague said, "Her 'home' is at the Employee Service Base. She applies once a month on the internal network and can stay for a month. Hey, Director Xuan, you didn't know when you first came, did you? Our Team Leader Gu's nickname is 'Fairy Xian', a hermit from the world, who doesn't care about things like houses or cars - they're too vulgar for her." 

Special forces soldiers risk their lives and naturally receive high salaries. With her level and seniority, Gu Yuexi could live comfortably by being frugal and taking out a loan to buy a house in the city. 

But she didn't want to. It seemed like she wasn't interested in anything that wasn't necessary for survival. She lived a minimalist lifestyle, saving money without investing or buying property, leaving it as a pile of meaningless numbers. 

When someone asked to borrow money from her, as long as it wasn't for illegal activities, she usually agreed without caring if they would pay her back. 

Eventually, Wang Ze couldn't stand it anymore and had a group of his subordinates from the Wind God team demand repayment for her, and then took over her finances. 

She had lived in the "dormitory" for many years, with very few personal belongings. Packing them up, she probably wouldn't need to check them in if she took a commercial flight. The only decoration in the entire room was a crystal-framed mirror on the bedside table, which held a photo of her taken when she had just joined "Wind God".

Back then, she was still young, with baby fat on her face and not as tired-looking as she is now. The girl in the photo had a serious expression and didn't smile, but her eyes revealed a timid awkwardness. 

Old Wang secretly made a "yeah" gesture behind her head, giving her two "antlers" and laughing with his teeth showing. Beside him, a man held a longsword in one hand and pressed Wang Ze's head into his neck with the other.

Those days are gone forever. 

Gu Yuexi locked eyes with her past self for two seconds, wiped her glasses, washed her face, and opened her computer. She played a surveillance video and paused it on a specific frame. 

Xuan Ji had overthought things; Sheng Lingyuan's deception could fool not only high-definition cameras but also X-ray vision if he wanted. Gu Yuexi's target was not the emperor. She zoomed in on a corner of the screenshot, revealing a hand belonging to someone who was extremely cautious and familiar with the location of all the cameras in the area, avoiding them one by one. 

Gu Yuexi combed through the surrounding surveillance footage multiple times but only found this one clip. It was installed by a private individual in a small shop, and Gu Yuexi had to use her connections in the Wind God to obtain it. 

The quality of the footage captured by the surveillance camera was poor, and the person in the frame was only partially visible. They immediately noticed and quickly left the camera's range.

Gu Yuexi struggled to use the software to enhance the footage. She stumbled through the process, explaining her every move aloud as she fumbled with the unfamiliar program.

Team Leader Gu, usually calm and collected, was the reliable backbone of the team. She exuded an intellectual air, as if she had received a higher education. However, when it came to reading, she was surprisingly clumsy. She resembled a primary school student struggling to read a long passage, needing to point with a pen and silently mouth the words. She often had to read over several times before understanding what was being said.

From early morning until noon, Gu Yuexi worked tirelessly to clarify a few of the frames. Finally, she was able to make out the "watch" on the person's wrist. The material was brass, with only one needle on top, and the surface was covered in ancient Chinese characters... It was a compass.

Gu Yuexi leaned back suddenly on the chair, her breath trembling. It was a compass she would never forget.

Many years ago, a man had given her the warm compass when she was most afraid. 

"Follow the pointer, trust it, don't be afraid. Little girl, this compass is a family heirloom. You must return it to me when you come out."

Gu Yuexi had never attended school or read a book. Reading was difficult for her because she didn't start learning to read until she was 17 years old, following online courses for preschool children.

Before the age of 17, she didn't even have her own name. 

When she first arrived, she was underage and the bureau arranged a temporary guardian for her, a big sister from the personnel department. "Gu" was her guardian's surname, and "Yuexi" was a name given to her by Wang Ze that didn't sound like a real name. 

At that time, Wang Ze was just a young and inexperienced guy who had just joined the Wind God team. He was very uncoordinated and addicted to games, so he just copied the name of a female protagonist from a certain game.

Xuan Ji was right. 

The X-ray vision was not an easy ability to live with in this world. 

In the first ten years of Gu Yuexi's life, these eyes were always a curse to her. 

When she was born, there was a special membrane on her eyes, and a quack doctor in an unlicensed clinic said she was born blind, so her parents abandoned her. Her luck was not good. 

She wasn't picked up by a kind-hearted adopter or a government welfare institution, and was picked up by a group of thieves. The thieves had a wide range of business, occasionally venturing into the field of begging for disabled children. When they saw that she was "blind," they thought she was lucky, but soon after they picked her up, the membrane on her eyes became thinner and thinner, until it disappeared completely.

The heavens did not bless her with food to eat. 

Those people wanted to manually blind her, but they found that her pupils could deform violently like some animals. 

Soon, those people discovered her special ability - when her eyes deform, they can penetrate obstacles and have powerful X-ray vision. This was like having a "god mode" cheat. 

During business hours, she could accurately see where someone's wallet was and how much money was inside, she could see through someone's back to their bank card password, and picking locks was effortless for her. During leisure time, she was even more unstoppable at the gambling table.

With her, the small group of thieves flourished and within a few years, they went from street thugs to a full-fledged theft organization. However, the quality of the group's members couldn't keep up with the growth of the organization. 

Their courage became more and more inflated, and soon they crashed. 

During a mission to steal cultural relics, they were targeted by a transnational criminal group that was just as skilled and ended up being double-crossed.

Everyone else died, but Gu Yuexi survived because of her special abilities.

For the next ten years, those people kept her locked up in a special prison constructed by a special ability user, treating her like a caged animal. 

In that "mental prison," all of her senses were prohibited, cutting off all connections with the outside world. Unless they wanted to use her eyes, everything she "saw" was just an illusion in the prison. 

Without their permission, she couldn't even eat a meal by herself. The most unbearable thing was that in that mental prison, there was not only loneliness and isolation, but also some mentally deranged individuals who would come up with all sorts of bizarre ways to torment her. 

Even if she was dismembered in the mental prison, her flesh/body would remain unscathed, as she was just a vessel for her eyes.

Gu Yuexi will always remember the man who knocked on her 'cell door' with 'Echo Sound,' he broke in with light, just like a god descending from legend.

"I'm here to save you, don't be afraid, here's my work permit." 

"Um...you don't know how to read? It's okay, I'm from the Bureau...or you can think of me as a 'super cop', my name is Yan Qiushan."

"Don't worry about getting lost, we have this-"

During the joint operation of multiple countries' special abilities teams, Yan Qiushan was the leader sent by China, and he was unbelievably young.

At that time, Yan Qiushan, also known as "Captain Yan", didn't talk much in the joint operation group - he couldn't say much more than "hello" in four different languages, and his foreign language skills were worse than a parrot's. He had to rely on gestures to communicate with his non-native teammates. 

But this "mute" person had an inexplicably good reputation. On one hand, he was talented and reliable, but people also said that when he smiled, he looked like a teenager, as if everything in the world would have a happy ending. 

In the mental prison, he gave her an ancient brass compass and instructed her to follow the direction of the pointer, leading her back to the real world after ten years of separation. 

However, Captain Yan seemed to have forgotten about this so-called "family heirloom" compass and never asked for it back. It stayed with Gu Yuexi for four years. 

For someone who had not been in contact with the outside world for ten years, even after leaving the mental prison, it was difficult to find a sense of reality. She needed an anchor, and only by seeing the pointer of the compass could Gu Yuexi confirm that she was in the real world. 

Gu Yuexi was a solitary person with poor communication skills. On top of that, her "abnormal" ability of X-ray vision and her unfortunate background made others suspicious of her intentions. 

During her time at the youth special ability training center, she was isolated by everyone. The only comfort she had was from Captain Yan and a few Wind Gods who often came to visit her.

Yan Qiushan wasn't very good at interacting with young girls going through puberty. 

Every time he came, he would sit up straight and ask about her progress in her studies like a guidance counselor. Once he finished asking, he would have nothing else to say and they would just stare at each other. The only time he could really talk was when it came to special ability training. He could go on and on about it for ages - it was really long. 

Zhi Chun, Yan Dui's sword spirit, was always resting in the sword. 

However, sometimes when he saw Captain Yan in such an awkward situation, he would come out of the sword to lighten the mood. The knowledge and care that the sword spirit, Zhi Chun, provided often made Gu Yuexi forget his true identity. 

He embodied all the qualities of a perfect older brother: thoughtful, patient, gentle, and capable of anything. However, at that time, the bureau had plans to groom Yan Qiushan as the next leader of the Wind God department, which meant overtime work and frequent travel for Captain Yan and Zhi Chun. 

They could only spare a little time to visit her occasionally, like precious stars in the night sky that could not illuminate her dark adolescence.

She graduated from the youth special ability training centre alone, and on the day of her graduation, her luggage was thrown out of the dormitory by her roommate. 

Later, during her field training, she was expelled from her team four times due to interpersonal issues. She was like a stray dog, mustering the courage to approach the crowd countless times, only to be kicked out again and again. 

On the day she was abandoned for the fourth time, Gu Yuexi was informed that if she failed the internship evaluation for the fourth time, she would have to leave the field reserve team. However, the logistics and administrative positions required education, and she couldn't even recognize some of the characters, so there was no suitable position for her. 

At over eighteen years old, society had already done its best for her, and there would be no extra care for her.

Some say that fate is like a broken wheel, repeating itself and spinning out flowers, but destined to return to the starting point. 

Gu Yuexi finally realized, in a dull way, that some people seem to be destined to be illegal immigrants in this world, born here by mistake, a system error. Those who are sensible should have left peacefully a long time ago, instead of always thinking about finding a foothold. 

It's just too greedy. 

On the day she resigned from the personnel office, she carefully cleaned her compass and sent it to the aftermath department through a friend. 

She had no intention of contacting Yan Qiushan and planned to leave without saying goodbye. 

Gu Yuexi's plan was to quietly hang herself in an undeveloped wild forest near the West Mountain, where few people ventured and she wouldn't be discovered. Once the rope was cut, she would fall to the ground and become part of the food chain, not causing trouble for anyone.

However, fate seemed to have other plans. 

On that day, Yan Qiushan happened to be reporting to headquarters and became suspicious when he couldn't contact her. Without even taking a break after returning from out of town, Captain Yan and his team of special agents searched for her all afternoon. 

Just in the nick of time, Zhi Chun cut her rope. The sharper the blade of Zhi Chun's knife, the gentler his temperament. He was also sensitive and easily moved. Despite his impressive display of cutting a rope from thirty meters away, he trembled with fear when he couldn't locate her pulse and thought she had died, nearly scared into crying. 

This 'scaring Zhi Chun into crying' part later became a running joke among the staff, and new recruits were often confused when they heard about it, thinking that Gu Yuexi was some kind of badass.

Zhi Chun was afraid of her being bullied, so he deliberately misled people and did not correct the story. 

When Yan Qiushan, who had been promoted to 'Captain Yan,' reviewed her performance, he personally went to the security department and requested a special forces selection quota for her. Back when Wang Ze was still Captain Yan's subirdinate, he joked, "Our boss never asks for favours, but he went to Old Song just for you. I'm jealous! Oh, ouch! Why are you hitting me with your knife handle, sister-in-law? If you hit me too hard, I might drool and call you dad..."

Because of Wang Ze's careless joke, Gu Yuexi worked tirelessly in the training camp. During the final assessment, she broke two ribs and suffered internal bleeding, ending up in the emergency room and covered in bruises as she was "transported" to the Wind Gods.

It wasn't until much later that she found out the brass compass was actually Captain Yan's family heirloom, worth at least a school district house in the city center. Yan Qiushan couldn't bear to take it back when he saw her clutching it like a life-saving straw, so he "forgot" it with her for several years on purpose. 

Wang Ze had always complained that during those years, he couldn't borrow the compass and ended up getting lost enough times to circle the earth several times over, and almost learned how to read a map.

Once again, they pulled her out of the dark and hopeless prison and gave her a place to stand, accepting her.

On New Year's Eve that year, her colleagues at Wind God who were also homeless like her all went to Captain Yan's house to throw her a "welcome party," but Captain Yan turned it into a scolding session all by himself.

It turned out that this introverted person could also be very talkative when it came to scolding people, from her suicide attempt to the consequences of her poor performance in the assessment: "We are guardians, not mad dogs. If you don't even know how to cherish your own life, how can we expect you to cherish the lives of others? As a special forces agent like you, how can our comrades and the people trust you? I didn't even want you at the time, if it weren't for... um!" Zhi Chun stuffed a round dumpling into his mouth, silencing him.

Captain Yan's raised eyebrows were immediately smoothed over by the dumpling, and he mumbled, "It's so hot."

"Nonsense," Zhi Chun mercilessly exposed him, "I let you try one just now, it wasn't hot at all."

After a while, Captain Yan finally realized what had happened and his face turned red. 

He transformed back into a quiet and gentle person, and Zhi Chun sent him off to blow up balloons to avoid wasting his excess lung capacity. 

From then on, every time she got hurt, she could always count on getting scolded by Captain Yan. Every Chinese New Year, she had a place to stay and when the New Year's bell rang, she would receive a special egg yolk dumpling. That was until a younger newcomer joined and took her place as the youngest and stole her egg yolk dumpling. She felt bitter as she blended in with Wang Ze's 'fallen out of favor' army, but she learned to take care of those who were once as naive and awkward as she was.

She thought that year after year, she could chase after those backs forever.

However...

Gu Yuexi stared at the screenshot of the golden compass on the monitor, her eyes red as if they were about to bleed. 

It had been three years since Zhi Chun disappeared and Captain Yan had also vanished without a trace. 

Was it really him? 

Why would he appear near the Dongchuan black market at this time? 

Did something unexpected happen? 

Did someone take his compass?