Ruan Xiwen greeted me with his usual polite smile, making me believe he was a formidable opponent. He was probably of the same ilk as Liang Yingwu, highly intelligent and skilled. Moreover, being from a scholarly family, he had even more background than Liang Yingwu, though not as handsome. Unconsciously, I was comparing Liang Yingwu with Ruan Xiwen. After having experienced extraordinary dangers with Liang Yingwu, I knew of his adaptability and calm mind, and I hoped Ruan Xiwen did not surpass him in these aspects. Knowing that Ruan Xiwen was from organization X, I began to realize his smile was a disguise. I started with general questions. Ruan Xiwen answered all my questions without any issues. On topics related to archaeology, he spoke eloquently, truly showing his scholarly lineage. Realizing this approach wouldn’t yield any progress, I decided to probe for information directly.
“I heard from the residents of our community—you know, I happen to live there too—that there have been some strange changes in animals around here the past couple of days, which you could call mutations. Some of the elderly were scared out of their wits, though I don’t know if it’s true or not.” I said, watching Ruan Xiwen’s facial expression. Ruan Xiwen didn’t show any of the flaws I was hoping to see but instead looked surprised. He said, “Really? I haven’t heard about that.” I continued, “Yes, right within our community. It seems to involve dogs, cats, and the like. I heard it from some residents.” He put on a helpless expression and said, “I’m not aware of that. I’m only responsible for the identification work in archaeology. If there’s really such an issue, you should probably ask other departments. I think it’s probably just idle gossip. You as a journalist should know how to discern that, right?” Perhaps he thought his reaction was quite good, but I believed that if he truly didn’t know or if these mutations had nothing to do with archaeology, he should have reacted more strongly. He should have shown more interest, after all, he’s part of the X Agency. Clearly, he wasn’t surprised by the mutations I mentioned, which confirmed my suspicion that the archaeological site at Zhidan Yuan was related to these mutations.
