Chapter 84: Twin Gale Sparrows

Wind Slash Domain activated. Ye Jingqiu kicked off the ground with both legs, like a pebble dropping into a calm lake. In an instant, the air rippled like water, dotted with faint sparkles that were nearly invisible.

The elements buoyed her up, supporting most of this human’s weight. On the outer wall, in a surveillance blind spot, the student in a blue-and-white school uniform reached out with her right hand. She gripped the steel frame around the glass, swung her arm, pulled herself up, and reached higher—like a spider, she began free-climbing the building’s exterior.

Dust-covered glass reflected the school badge on her chest, the block letters reading “Shanghai No. 45 Middle School” blurred as if washed by water.

“What are these Messiah people doing opening a logistics company in Shanghai? Short on funds and trying to make some cash?”

Ye Jingqiu wasn’t climbing fast. Shanghai had a no-fly zone, after all. If her hands left the wall for even a moment, she might get flagged as a “large drone.” The base hadn’t filed a flight permit, so she had no choice but to haul herself up like she was doing pull-ups.

The repetitive motion was getting boring. She thought back to the mission briefing, then cranked up the volume on her earpiece, subtly signaling her hope for some chit-chat.

“Stay safe,” Shi Zui said after a brief pause and a sigh. She reminded her young teammate first, then answered the question.

“It’s just to make transferring beast blood easier.”

Ye Jingqiu froze for a second. She knew the mission was to find and copy a file with transaction details, but she hadn’t expected Messiah to be moving “exotic beast blood.”

She’d reached the thirteenth floor now. The “Koda” sign on Koda Building blocked her path. Ye Jingqiu kicked off a steel bar and leaped left, switching to another route upward.

“Transferring beast blood? For something this important, I figured they’d use encrypted comms. Didn’t expect them to go old-school with letters.”

Ye Jingqiu tsked, thinking these guys were pretty retro.

“All comms tech is under Aether’s watch. Letters are actually safer. Besides, they use 【Wild Goose】.”

“Wild Goose?”

“It’s an Aether-type instinct.”

Shi Zui replied. The screen before her showed footage relayed back through Ye Jingqiu’s Will Ring. The needle-like camera had a narrow field of view, making each of Ye Jingqiu’s leaps look especially harrowing. Ning Wan had watched for a bit before clutching her chest and going off in search of quick-acting heart pills. So now, only Captain Shi calmly monitored the live feed.

Maneuvers like these were nothing to Shi Zui. As she watched, the captain mentally critiqued Ye Jingqiu’s form and casually explained instincts.

“The name probably draws from the idea of geese carrying messages. Anything written on paper infused with the instinct gets synced instantly to the owner.”

“So, like fax?”

“Exactly—fax that bypasses Aether. Top-notch security. For one-way info transfers like this, 【Wild Goose】 is even more reliable than quantum encryption.”

It sounded awfully familiar, this method of sending messages.

Ye Jingqiu gripped a steel bar and flipped over it like a falcon, landing briefly on the Koda Building logo for a rest. She scratched the back of her head, increasingly convinced that 【Wild Goose】 was an instinct she’d used before.

No time to dwell. Ye Jingqiu looked up at the lonely night sky, neon lights faintly refracting through it. Twelve more floors to the target. Thanks to Wind Slash, the strain on her arms was manageable.

“But trading beast blood… so Messiah hasn’t given up on the Project Y after all?” Ye Jingqiu tsked again and resumed her climb.

The Project Y’s original goal was to use beast blood to modify humans, granting instincts even to non-awakeners.

Strictly speaking, every exotic beast had its own unique instinct—like Chimei Wangliang’s Divine String Melody. The Project Y aimed to transfer that uniqueness to humans.

Blood exchange was an excruciating process. Beast blood contained pure, surging elemental power that ordinary humans couldn’t withstand. Straight swaps would kill on the spot, so the Project Y used a special diluent called “divine blood.”

“Rumor has it divine blood came from the Project Y’s first success, Zero. But Zero escaped, and the base lost track of her. Messiah probably hasn’t had better luck. Divine blood’s running low, so Savior’s resorting to pure beast blood.”

Ye Jingqiu paused at that. She remembered the captain mentioning she was a lab product, having spent three years in Messiah’s base. So had the captain been strapped to an operating table for mods too?

Was that the root of her hatred for exotic beasts?

Ye Jingqiu’s throat suddenly went dry. She’d never understood the captain’s intense animosity toward exotic beasts. If this was why… did that mean the captain might accept Little Dragon?!

“Zero, huh? The white-clad figure I faced in the factory called herself Number Thirty-Seven. How many modded people did this lab even make?” Ye Jingqiu probed carefully, eyes fixed on the thirty-first floor, scouting good landing spots.

Shi Zui pondered for a moment. Facing her past wasn’t exactly traumatic for her. “There were a total of one hundred thirty-seven successful modifications.”

Ye Jingqiu paused. She was already outside the thirty-first floor now. Lucky break—a hanging basket used by high-rise cleaners dangled there.

“So those silver-masked people are all successful modders?”

Ever the efficient one, Ye Jingqiu bit her lip, asked her question, then hopped straight into the iron basket. She knelt and pulled an automatic window breaker from her backpack, preparing to force entry.

These were sliding windows, but someone had locked them. Ye Jingqiu had no choice but to go brute force.

“Yes. Some modders have obvious beastly traits—like fur on their faces—so they wear masks. The base calls them silver-masked people… The switch is up top.”

Shi Zui said suddenly.

Ye Jingqiu let out a couple of “ohs,” having indeed found the activation switch. She’d only ever seen a window breaker in action movies before, where the protagonist slapped the device against the glass and the entire pane shattered in a satisfying crack.

It looked both cool and flashy, but the principle was actually pretty straightforward. The impactor just had to slam into the glass at high speed, and the massive force would disrupt the stress on the tempered surface, unleashing a web of cracks.

Ye Jingqiu pressed the window breaker into one corner of the glass. She couldn’t help feeling that she was a lot like this seemingly unbreakable tempered pane—tough and resilient on the outside, but really, sometimes a single offhand remark or pinpoint jab was all it took to send her crashing down.

Like when Chimei Wangliang had said, “You’re an exotic beast.”

She’d provisionally ruled out any connection to exotic beasts for now, but if there was even the slightest possibility—no matter how vanishingly small…

She didn’t even want to think about it.

Ye Jingqiu rubbed her thumb over the switch a couple of times, then pursed her lips and asked in a very soft, cautious voice:

“So, Captain… the laboratory you mentioned before. That was the Project Y, right?”

Silence.

Even the wind seemed to hold its breath, the distant murmur of voices and traffic fading into an ethereal haze. Ye Jingqiu didn’t budge. Before stepping inside the building, she and the Captain could chat freely over their earpieces, but the moment she hit that switch and the C-Class mission kicked off automatically, their exchanges would boil down to nothing but crisp battle updates and raw intel.

Truth be told, Ye Jingqiu had a real knack for pushing boundaries. Even now, she didn’t want things between her and the Captain to feel so strictly by-the-book.

After a long pause, Shi Zui finally murmured an “mm.”

Back in the studio, only a few dim lights glowed. Without any S-rank exotic beasts on the prowl, the base hummed with busy but orderly activity. The research department might be lost in their endless experiments, but most of the team had already settled in for some rest.

Shi Zui sat alone before the screens, the low-brightness displays casting a pallid light on her pale face. The room was deathly quiet, save for the holographic Aether darting about chaotically—no other living soul in sight.

Nothing to worry about, then.

Shi Zui thought.

“My earliest memory is the Project Y laboratory. I’ve forgotten most of it, but I remember there were no summers there. Much later, I escaped… only to get recaptured. Then Base Leader Ying came and saved me.”

Her voice was soft, her words carrying no trace of fear or reluctance—just a straightforward recounting, as if she were a detached observer.

Ye Jingqiu went still for a beat, her heart giving a faint, heavy thud, like someone had tapped it lightly. She tightened her grip on the window breaker.

“So, Captain, you’re…”

“I’m Number One.”

Shi Zui’s voice crackled faintly through the earpiece. “The serial numbers marked the order in which we subjects arrived at the lab. Nothing more to it. All I remem—Xiao Qiu!”

“Boom—”

It erupted like a C4 charge going off full force, the tempered glass exploding into a cloud of dust! A piercing screech rang in Ye Jingqiu’s ears, Shi Zui’s words swallowed by the thunderous din.

A ferocious shockwave blasted outward, its overwhelming force shattering the ribs of anyone caught in its path. The silhouette a hundred meters above plummeted like a kite with its string severed. Ye Jingqiu’s chest caved in; the world spun wildly, her eyelids drooping like lead weights.

“Alert! Alert! Exotic beast detected! Operative blood oxygen safeguards critically low—consciousness appears compromised!”

Even Aether’s warnings sounded distant and wavering. Ye Jingqiu forced her eyes open. Tilting her head back, she watched the ancient starlit night sky whirl into view. In that instant, the entire world slowed to a crawl.

Time itself halted.

No—not quite. The shards of glass were still drifting, but their motion had slackened dramatically, inching along like turtles, gliding languidly past Ye Jingqiu’s cheek. The shallow cut they left behind, though, felt all too real.

Ye Jingqiu’s eyes flashed with sudden realization! The glass hadn’t slowed—she had accelerated!

Wildlife researchers poring over mountain trail cams sometimes catch birds frozen midair, hovering impossibly. The trick lies with the camera: when a bird’s wingbeats sync with the frame rate, it looks suspended in the lens.

If the glass had eyes right now, that’s probably how Ye Jingqiu appeared—suspended in time.

Time couldn’t be bent at will; as one of the Thirteen Laws, no one could casually rewind it.

So it was Ye Jingqiu who’d sped up—or more precisely, her perception of time had stretched out.

This was the power she’d gained after slaying Wangliang. From then on, even a single second was enough for her to seize victory from defeat. She’d dubbed it 【Lock-On】, a dueling instinct perfectly suited for dragging foes into her domain and pinning them down.

“Repair!”

Ye Jingqiu murmured the command once more, and Word Manifestation activated in full. In a heartbeat, wind elements swarmed to her call. Fractured bones knit back together, her collapsed chest expanded anew, and Ye Jingqiu vaulted upward—

Her hand closed around the steel cable!

A shrill whoosh pierced the air as steel grated against flesh at blistering speed, igniting a furious blaze in her palm. But her isolation command kicked in simultaneously. Ye Jingqiu swung onto the cable, arcing her body like a pendulum before launching toward the 31st floor in the manner of a sleek black panther.

With her wind speed cranked to maximum, Ye Jingqiu spotted the exotic beast triggering the alarm the very next second.

Kui Que. B-rank.

Lock-On fizzled, and Shi Zui’s ragged breaths flooded her mind.

“Xiao Qiu? Are you alright? Nearest operative ETA four minutes.”

“I’m fine, Captain,” Ye Jingqiu replied, suspended high in the sky. She coughed once. “No need for backup. This is my first mission, after all—I’ll wrap it up nice and pretty for you!”

“It’s not about first times. Don’t push too hard.”

Aether cut in right on cue:

“B-rank exotic beast Kui Que detected in residential district. Task C20210130 auto-upgraded to B-Class. New priority objective added: Eliminate Kui Que immediately.”

“Attention, operative: Prioritize exotic beast neutralization.”

An exotic beast loose in a residential area was the base’s ultimate nightmare—nothing else came close.

Base Code, Rule One: Safeguard non-awakeners. Keep exotic beasts secret.

“I’m really okay, Captain. Don’t believe me? Just check my vitals.”

Ye Jingqiu coughed twice, finally hacking up all the stagnant qi from moments before. She eyed the ferocious beast flapping its wings in front of her as it licked its lips, inwardly lamenting how every mission that landed in her lap somehow devolved into a brawl.

Shi Zui had checked Ye Jingqiu’s transmitted data the instant it came in. She’d just finished pulling the surrounding surveillance feeds and now let out a small breath of relief. Her voice steadied as she issued her reminder. “Good. Stay sharp.”

Ye Jingqiu flashed a grin. Her right hand darted to the jet-black backpack slung over her shoulder, and in a teasing lilt, she said, “Captain, you’ve been showing your concern for me more directly lately, haven’t you?”

Before Shi Zui could respond, Ye Jingqiu seized the knife hilt inside her pack. A chill gleam flashed, and the long blade hurtled toward the Kui Que without a second’s hesitation.

It was a good thing No. 45 Middle School didn’t have metal detectors. Otherwise, who’d suspect that the class’s perpetual sleepyhead and bottom-of-the-rankings slacker carried anything in her backpack besides five years’ worth of Gaokao study guides—and a honed long knife?

To be exact, it was a Beast Bone Knife, a bespoke creation from the Alchemy and Dao Talisman Department. Forged from exotic beast bones and custom-tailored for Xiao Qiu.

A superb cold weapon, more than a match for the Tactical Dual-Blade Knife in Shi Zui’s hands.

Gripping the fresh hilt, Ye Jingqiu reflected that breaking in a new weapon had come out of nowhere.

Kui Que were vassals of the Candle Dragon, so encountering one here was a genuine surprise. This specimen wasn’t large, but the flames spewing from its maw were still terrifying.

Human and beast squared off midair, each coiling like a spring. Shi Zui watched her knife-wielding teammate on the screen in silence, offering no pointers.

Guess it was time to shine solo.

Ye Jingqiu ran her fingers along the hilt and let out a low chuckle. The captain was watching, after all—so this opening strike had to dazzle.

She locked eyes on the Kui Que’s savage beak. Then, in a blur, she thrust out her hand. Her body rocketed forward without warning!

Lock-On activated! Amplification activated! Wind Slash activated!

The trio of speed-based instincts layered atop one another, her blade streaking like lightning in a gale. High above at a hundred meters, the saber light carved the sky, surging onward like a crystal stream.

“Clang—”

The blade sang out. The next instant, Ye Jingqiu’s form blinked into existence elsewhere.

She stood firm on the 31st Floor.

Ye Jingqiu turned slowly, knife at the ready. The Kui Que still scanned about in bewilderment, hunting its vanished foe. A whisper of wind stirred the air—and then a bloody gash spiderwebbed across its lower limbs.

The beast glanced down in confusion. In that heartbeat, a storm of blade flashes erupted, rending from legs to heart. A globe of crimson mist detonated midair.

The B-Rank Exotic Beast Kui Que met its end in half a second.

Not a scrap of bone or flesh escaped; it was shredded to nothingness aloft. True oblivion, without even a grave.

Only after a long pause did Shi Zui’s voice crackle over the channel. “That strike… was exquisite. No need to hit the Training Room daily anymore.”

Ye Jingqiu arched a brow, pleasure blooming at the praise. “You said it, Captain! Aether’s got it recorded!”

“A gentleman’s word is his bond,” Shi Zui acknowledged with a hum. “Though I figured you’d spare it—after all, there might be more exotic beasts lurking.”

“Right. Kui Que come in pairs as a rule. The survivor usually bolts for the nest after watching its mate die.”

Ye Jingqiu laughed as she sheathed her blade, her gaze flicking to the shadowy flicker down the distant hall. “So we just follow the trail.”

A solid plan, Shi Zui mused, studying the Kui Que dossier now displayed on her screen.

Assuming Xiao Qiu’s “Kui Que habits” weren’t pure fiction—since nothing about pairs or nest-fleeing appeared in the file.

“No mentions in the Kui Que dossier of pairing up or retreating to nests,” Shi Zui murmured. “So, Xiao Qiu… where’d you read that?”

Ye Jingqiu froze.