“Fifteen years ago, a little girl was secretly brought to the home of a solitary old woman living off social insurance in the countryside. The old woman’s surname was Xue. To outsiders, she said that this was a relative’s child, of the generation of her grandchildren, named Xue Xiaolu. This girl was brought by a man. Someone said that at the time, the man called her ‘Xiao Zheng.’

“It was too long ago. It’s hard for the people who were there to describe the man’s appearance. Though there’s a photograph left behind that coincidentally caught this person’s profile.” 

Su Qing took a mobile hard disk out of his pocket and stuck it into a computer. 

The person who had taken the photograph obviously hadn’t meant to get the man in the frame. They were aiming at a lake in the village. There was only half of the man’s body. He had just taken off his sunglasses and was frowning slightly, staring at some place not far away. Su Qing enlarged his face. The man’s profile filled the whole screen. His expression looked a little complicated.

“Does Fei Zhe have other children?” A voice suddenly came from behind Su Qing. Ji Pengcheng had appeared at some point. 

“I haven’t been able to find out for the moment…” At this point, Su Qing looked back and glared at him. “Why can I never find you when it’s time to work?” 

Ji Pengcheng gave a “haha.” “I’m old. I can’t match up to you young people.” 

Kou Tong frowned. “Why did he send his child away then?” 

Su Qing flipped through a stack of materials and passed them to him. Midway, they were seized by Hu Bugui, who pretended to sternly and very earnestly look down and read them. 

Su Qing had to explain verbally: “Fifteen years ago, Fei Zhe was involved in a lawsuit. There was a fire at a trade center that caused a stampede, killing over a hundred people. Later the story broke that the trade center’s construction was slipshod, and that its fire safety system had serious problems. It was connected to Fei Zhe. People called him out online, and some of the more intrepid relatives of victims wanted to get justice from him. Finally, it seems that it came to hiring a contract killer, though in the end it came to nothing.” 

Ji Pengcheng slowly picked up the subject: “According to what you’ve said, at the time, Fei Zhe sent the child away to protect her. But if that’s true, why would he allow someone to kill her?” 

“Fifteen years. People change,” Su Qing said. 

“Change so much that he doesn’t love his child anymore?” Lu Qingbai frowned, then continued: “Or rather, is the current Fei Zhe still the same person as the one from before? Given his connection to Utopia, could some unbelievable physiological change have taken place in his body? Thinking about it from another point of view, why didn’t he need this child anymore?” 

“Children are regarded as extensions of their parents’ lives,” Kou Tong said suddenly. 

“Don’t talk about that.” Hu Bugui pinched the center of his brow, curbing their increasingly strange discussion. “What I most want to know now is, what power is it that’s supporting Utopia? Giving them large quantities of capital and weaponry?” 

Su Qing suddenly remembered something Chen Lin had said to him—that Utopia’s essence was related to energy. 

“Utopia’s essence is related to energy…” He couldn’t resist reciting these words aloud. 

Fang Xiu was startled. “You’re saying that it may be a country?” 

Ji Pengcheng smiled. “What, does this Fei Zhe also have foreign connections?” 

“Wait.” Su Qing quickly flipped open another file. “Fei Zhe previously studied abroad in N Country and worked there for some years after taking his doctorate.” 

“Oh…” Kou Tong smiled meaningfully. 

Hu Bugui suddenly thought that Kou Tong’s smile was annoying. However you looked at it, this person seemed dishonest, with his face full of hidden meaning. He silently thought, We’re already wanted criminals, who are you showing off for? 

“What is it?” Su Qing asked. 

“N Country is very interesting,” Kou Tong said. “A country or a region has many people, men and women, old and young, of all social classes and all levels of education. There are good people and bad people. Individually speaking, the differences are enormous. But despite that, these people inevitably have some commonality. It comes from geography, history, and blood line…” 

“Could you get to the point, Dr. Kou?” Hu Bugui stiffly interrupted him. 

Kou Tong rubbed his nose and smiled very good-naturedly. On paper, he drew an ordinary coordinate plane and a curve. “Supposing that these two axes are abstract representations of all kinds of means of production, and this curve represents the production possibility curve… Well, what I mean is…” 

“I know about this, it means that all of this country’s means of production distributed according to a certain scale can achieve this amount of production. No matter how they allocate their means of production, they can’t produce anything beyond that line.” Chang Dou had at some point come over. 

“So you know about it.” Fang Xiu pushed his head aside. 

Chang Dou pushed up his crooked glasses and covered his mouth, shifting his eyes around and not daring to make another sound. 

“N Country’s resources are very limited, and its geographical position is poor, with frequent natural disasters. You could say it’s unsuitable for human occupation.” Kou Tong didn’t talk anymore nonsense. He restrained his smile and casually drew on the paper. “But both in terms of population and technological level, they’re very high in ranking in the whole world. Their population density is extremely high, and their material requirements are becoming greater and greater. Meanwhile, the nation’s own energy sources are becoming increasingly burdened. If they want to expand the production possibility curve, there are normally only two methods. One is to find some way to add to their energy sources, and one is to rely on technology.

“N Country’s technological level is already fairly developed. If you’ll notice, this country’s economic growth has been at a standstill for many years. What do you think they’ll do?” 

“They’ll think of a way to add to their resources.” Qin Luo frowned. “So…they could steal from other countries, go to war, or…develop some kind of energy source and natural resource that they can possess.” 

“Hasn’t N Country been performing land reclamation to make farmland?” Lu Qingbai asked. 

“Yes, so now they’re developing human petroleum.” Su Qing laughed grimly, took a cigarette from his pack, and felt around in his pocket for a lighter. A hand holding a lighter immediately reached out from beside him. Kou Tong very naturally lit the cigarette for him. Su Qing stared. Though in certain circumstances, his nerves were very crude, he wasn’t a careless person. He had noticed that there was something not quite right between Hu Bugui and Kou Tong. 

Hu Bugui was immediately at a loss. With Kou Tong there, he didn’t know whether he should put Su Qing’s cigarette out. Then his gaze fell on the pack of cigarettes half sticking out of Su Qing’s pocket and found that it was already very flat. Three seconds later, Captain Hu decided not to match Dr. Kou for integrity or virtue. He reached out and pinched out Su Qing’s cigarette. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow.” 

Su Qing was used to this. He only rolled his eyes at him and didn’t argue. 

Kou Tong very considerately turned the subject away. “Listen…in the second wave of countries that just acknowledged Utopia’s legitimacy, was N Country included?” 

Su Qing stared. Then he laughed. The two of them exchanged looks like two fox demons. Su Qing said, “I have some very patriotic hacker friends. I can go get in touch with them tomorrow.”