Ye Chen murmured, “You mean, pretend we don’t know and wait patiently?”
“Yes.” Nanako said confidently, “Isn’t there a tactic in China’s Art of War by Sun Tzu called ‘counterplotting’? This is a perfect chance to counterplot. Pretend we know nothing, let the other side relax their guard and try the same trick again, then we can turn from passive to active.”
Ye Chen thought Nanako made a lot of sense.
If they investigated, the other side might not be afraid at all.
In fact, whether to dig deeply into this woman could very well be a warning left by the other side.
At this thought, Ye Chen dismissed the idea of having Fei Kexin thoroughly check her identity. Instead, he had Hong Wu arrange for someone to check the water and electricity bills for the ninth floor of Tomson Riviera, to see the recent consumption and infer if anyone was living there. If water usage was zero recently while electricity was very low, it would prove the place was vacant and unoccupied.
Hong Wu was highly efficient. He soon reported back to Ye Chen that the ninth-floor unit had zero water bill for the past month and an electricity bill of just sixty-eight yuan and three jiao.
For an empty apartment with no leaks, water usage would indeed be zero.
But electricity was different. The fridge at home, the router, and any smart appliances that could connect online would keep consuming power. Sixty-plus yuan in electricity meant just over a hundred kilowatt-hours, or four to five degrees per day.
That consumption level meant a double-door fridge taking at least a third, and with Tomson Riviera’s two-to-three-hundred-square-meter flats, the developer had installed embedded AP panels in every room, which would take another third for the network. The rest would be for gas alarms, smoke detectors, and emergency buttons.
It was even possible they had left networked surveillance in the house, so anyone breaking in would get a real-time alert.
Based on the water and electricity usage, the apartment had clearly been unoccupied for the past month.
It seemed this woman’s mission was complete, and she had left Jinling. Even if they uncovered her identity, they probably wouldn’t find her anymore.
Ye Chen felt a bit irritable because he had realized that around him, an invisible net was weaving itself, one that grasped most of his movements and was even starting to arrange and control his life like in Truman’s world.
He even began to suspect if his wife Xiao Churan might be one of theirs. If so, her departure could just be because her role in their script had ended.
Though he knew they might not truly mean harm, this feeling of being secretly manipulated still made him very uncomfortable.
Nanako quickly changed the subject, “Ye Chen-kun, we’ve learned a lesson from this. Don’t let it affect you too much now. Ousama is still waiting for us at home for dinner. Let’s head up quickly!”
Ye Chen sighed lightly and nodded slightly.
He knew his mindset had gone a bit off, and it was largely related to Xiao Churan’s departure. At this moment, he suddenly wanted to go find Lin Wan’er, sit with her under the Pu’er mother tree by the hearth boiling tea, share these worries with her, and see how she might comfort or inspire him.
Thus, he adjusted his mentality and said to Nanako, “We can’t keep Mr. Ito waiting too long, so let’s go up now. But I can’t stay too late tonight; I have things to handle later.”
Nanako knew Ye Chen had just come out of seclusion and must have many matters to attend to, so she nodded and said, “After dinner, Ye Chen-kun, if you have things to do, go ahead and handle them. Ousama won’t mind.”
