Chapter 72: Vanished Into Thin Air

“Don’t take your hand off. Prove your goodwill. We can’t afford to make any more enemies right now.”

Hyena’s actual state of mind was far from the calm his tone suggested. Cold sweat had unconsciously soaked the back of his shirt—there were other people in the archives room? Didn’t that mean everything they had just done had been observed? Damn it, this was a low-level, stupid mistake. Why had he just assumed the archives room was empty? If the other party had even a sliver of malice, all five of them would be corpses by now… His regret seeped into his cold sweat, but his voice remained as steady as if it were just a minor, insignificant interlude.

He was the leader now. Anyone else could panic, anyone else could be at a loss, but not him. He had to stabilize the others’ mindsets—so, borrowing Parrot’s Talent once more, he said: “Don’t break formation. Stick to the plan. Patiently wait for that Black Fur Monster to walk into the archives room. She might be even more nervous than we are right now, because she has no idea how many of us there are or how many traps we’ve laid. Don’t imagine her as too terrifying; that will only add unnecessary pressure.”

“The Half-baked Boss is right,” Dry Wood sighed. “Paper Cutter, you’re shaking a bit too much. Take a deep breath—are all the traps confirmed triggerable?”

Paper Cutter obediently did as Dry Wood said. After a deep breath, she nodded: “The three traps above are normal. The total of six on the left and right sides are all normal. The four scare-traps on the ground are also normal.”

Hyena nodded. This was his improvised tactic. All of Paper Cutter’s traps were just a feint. Because of that crude bomb earlier, Paper Cutter’s Talent had already been exposed to the Black Fur Monster. She was surely already mentally prepared for Paper Cutter’s traps inside the archives room. In that case, he simply had Paper Cutter create a number of more deceptive, bluff-like traps. From the Black Fur Monster’s perspective, what was the best way to deal with such troublesome but non-lethal traps?

It was far too simple. Just charge into the archives room at a speed exceeding the traps’ trigger rate. As long as you were fast enough, you would leave all the triggered traps behind you.

But the moment she thought that, what awaited her was that shin-high “threshold” at the archives room entrance—a hard tree root Dry Wood had produced, sturdy enough that even a small car ramming into it would only end up wrecked. The instant she lost her balance and tumbled, she would fall straight into the Capture Cage jointly woven by Dry Wood and Paper Cutter. Even for that Black Fur Monster, breaking free from that Capture Cage wouldn’t be something she could do in a short time. And before that happened, they would have countless chances to knock her unconscious and bind her.

“Bang!”

Four sounds of tearing paper rang out in quick succession, so fast they almost seemed like a single sound. Then came the noise of the Capture Cage triggering. Joy surged in Hyena’s heart, but before he could say anything, he heard Paper Cutter’s scream in his mind: “Get down!”

His reaction was already fast enough. The moment he heard Paper Cutter’s voice, he cleanly threw himself backward, simultaneously raising his arms to protect his head. He very quickly understood what it felt like to be hit head-on by a small car. It was an unimaginably immense force. The instant of impact, Hyena briefly felt the shock of his consciousness being forcibly separated from his body. His uncontrolled body flew sideways, light as a piece of rag, not stopping until it crashed into a bookshelf behind him.

A monster. Hyena lay on the ground, feeling as if every bone in his body had been shattered. Only this word remained in his mind. It was only now that he finally figured out what had happened in that split second. His plan hadn’t been wrong, but it had one very serious problem: the Black Fur Monster’s speed was simply too great. She had been tripped by the tree root, but in mid-air during her tumble, she adjusted her balance like a cat. Then, as if toying with them, she struck and triggered the Capture Cage trap, after which she effortlessly found the spot where he had been hiding. He coughed forcefully. Although it was still pitch black before his eyes, he had a feeling: the Black Fur Monster was standing right in front of him.

He strained to lift his head and asked, “You… cough, you can see in the dark, can’t you?”

“I never said I couldn’t, did I?” Li Yuan sighed, looking into the darkness of the archives room. “The rest of you, are you planning to come at me together, or one by one?”

Dead silence filled the archives room. Li Yuan wasn’t in a hurry. In any case, she was now blocking the only exit from the archives room. These naive juvenile delinquents shouldn’t have chosen this place for their ambush. The situation had completely turned into catching turtles in a jar.

She crouched down, stretched out her hand, her arm returning to its original appearance as she pressed and kneaded the young boy’s arm. A mere light press made the boy cry out in pain. Before the cry finished, Li Yuan slapped him across the face and said coldly, “Shut up. Bear it. I’m setting it for you.”

After setting Hyena’s arm, she slowly stood up, brushing non-existent dust from her clothes. “This is why I say, dealing with juvenile delinquents like you is what I hate most. Your nature, well, it’s not rotten to the core, but you can always manage to do particularly bad things. Beat you to death outright, and I feel a bit reluctant. But don’t give you a beating, seeing that look on your faces, it really just pisses me off…”

She sighed, patting the boy lying on the ground: “You all should really be thankful that I’m the one who came today, and not someone from Team 1. You’re the leader, right? I’ll give you a choice. You tell them to drop their resistance and come out on their own for lenient treatment, or I’ll do it myself, beat every one of you up, and then strip away your resistance… that probably won’t feel too good.”

The boy took a deep breath and said, “Do as she says. Come out.”

After a moment, flashlight beams flickered on. A boy and two girls emerged from behind the bookshelves. Li Yuan tossed three pairs of handcuffs over and raised her chin. “And that little girl who acted pretty well?”

Deep behind the rearmost bookshelf, there was dead silence.

“Fine,” Li Yuan stood up, gesturing for Qi Xin to watch the four youngsters sitting on the ground with their hands cuffed behind their backs, while she herself walked toward that last bookshelf. When the flashlight’s glow revealed the final stretch of shadow, she froze slightly. There was nothing behind the last bookshelf. The empty floor was covered with a thick layer of dust, with a few shoe prints on it. She rechecked the surroundings but saw no ventilation ducts or any other possible passageways.

In the air, there was only a very faint scent, a light, clean lavender smell. The girl had seemingly vanished into thin air from this room, just like that.

“What the hell?” Li Yuan was somewhat speechless. She looked at the four people sitting on the ground. “Did you have other helpers?”

“If we had other helpers, why would we have listened to you and come out ourselves?” Dry Wood retorted sarcastically. “Can’t your dog nose smell—”

“Qi Xin.” Li Yuan waved her hand.

His voice cut off abruptly. Qi Xin put a black bag over his head. It was a body bag.

“There was someone else in the archives room at the time,” Hyena said in a low voice. “Besides us.”

Li Yuan was slightly taken aback. Could it be that what the girl had said earlier wasn’t entirely a lie? That Young Master Su and Qi Ran and Jiang Zhique really were in the archives room? But from the intelligence she knew, that Young Master Su was a completely useless second-generation rich kid, and that Jiang family girl only knew the Jiang family’s methods. It was impossible for them to vanish into thin air right under her nose. Qi Xin’s younger sister was even less likely. Qi Xin was a completely ordinary person, without any Syndrome, so her twin sister was surely the same.

She pressed her hand to her earpiece and connected to Fang Qi. “Is that Young Master Su received yet?”

“He went back a long time ago. He left before the fire started. The reason he didn’t go straight back was because he was eating at Snack City. There’s no signal underground there; it was a misunderstanding.” Fang Qi asked, “What’s up? Did something happen?”

“Nothing much. Didn’t catch the ones related to the arson, but caught a few small-time kids taking advantage of the chaos,” Li Yuan sighed. “One slipped away. There might have been other people at the scene… anyway, it’s complicated.”

“Don’t worry about it. Bring those little thieves out first,” Fang Qi sighed. “The arson is no longer the most serious issue. Several more headache-inducing things happened over on Zhou Liao’s side… you bring those guys down first, we’ll talk in detail back at the organization. Looks like overtime for at least the next few months.”

Li Yuan felt a headache coming on and could only sigh, closing the communication, fretting over how she was going to write this into her report.

Behind her, standing at the archives room doorway, Qi Xin quietly watched the empty depths of the archives room. When she caught the scent of lavender, a look of recollection crossed her face. She furrowed her brows slightly but still said nothing.

Upheaval.

Qi Ran desperately reached out, trying to grab something for support, but she couldn’t grab anything. All around her was only swaying White Cloth. Her fingertips slipped off the white cloths; there was simply nothing to hold onto. She fell along with gravity, as if stuffed into a vertically dropping washing machine, spinning and colliding constantly. Those impossibly long white cloths always managed to block her, preventing her from being thrown out entirely.

Just when she felt she couldn’t hold on for even one more second, the fall finally stopped. She landed on a huge, incredibly elastic piece of White Cloth, astonishingly soft. Gasping heavily, she sat up on the cloth, only to hear intermittent sounds of vomiting from beside her. She looked to her right and found Jiang Zhique and another girl kneeling on the cloth, retching uncontrollably. Jiang Zhique was relatively okay; she recovered after a few dry heaves. But the other young girl was in a miserable state. The force of her vomiting looked as if she were trying to throw up her entire stomach. Her hand pressed hard against her stomach, her thin body hunched tightly. Physiological tears smeared her cheeks. Eventually, she had nothing left to bring up. She just knelt weakly on the White Cloth. The filth, upon landing on the White Cloth, seemed to disappear straight away, not leaving even a trace.

The air was saturated with a rich lavender scent. The smell wasn’t like real lavender; it was more like that kind of lavender-scented detergent. The Mask the girl had originally been wearing had been thrown off and lay on the White Cloth not far away. Strangely, once removed, the Mask had become blank, without a single trace of greasepaint on it.

Qi Ran handed a tissue to Jiang Zhique, then took out another and offered it to the unknown girl. The girl paused for a moment before accepting the tissue and saying a soft “thank you.”

After wiping away her tears, the girl struggled to her feet on the White Cloth and asked in a low voice, “Where… where is this?”

Qi Ran shook her head. She had no idea what had just happened. The last memory she had was clearly of them staying still in that pitch-black archives room. That girl’s hand was on Jiang Zhique, her own hand was on that girl’s shoulder, maintaining the stillness. But then, in an instant, the three of them had suddenly started falling downwards, without any warning.

“My name is Qi Ran, and that’s Jiang Zhique,” Qi Ran extended her hand. “And you?”

The girl hesitated, reached out to briefly shake the offered hand, then let go. “Just call me Greasepaint.”