Chapter 45: 45 Chapter 12 Part 2

The last fat man grabbed a rock from the ground and hurled it, only for it to be shattered mid-air by the baton, which then followed through to smash the back of the hand that hadn’t retracted in time.

“ARRRGH!” A blood-curdling scream tore from his throat, piercing the night sky.

Shadow stepped over the fallen men, walked to the dead end, and crouched beside Xia Xun. Confirming the person was still alive, she stowed the baton and lifted Xia Xun from the ground.

When Xia Xun opened her eyes again, she found herself in a dimly lit room.

All around her were bare concrete walls. The floor was covered in thick dust and scattered trash.

This garbage clearly wasn’t recent. The place looked like it hadn’t been visited in a long time.

Xia Xun took a deep breath and choked on the smell of decay in the air, coughing violently several times. She belatedly realized her hands were tied behind her back, and her ankles were bound too, forcing her into a kneeling position.

The room’s only light came from a flashlight not far away.

The person hidden on the other side of the flashlight beam was utterly still. Xia Xun had almost failed to notice her presence.

“Awake?” The familiar voice changer, the familiar voice.

It was the person from yesterday.

Xia Xun swallowed, suppressing her cough, and feigned confusion. “Who are you?”

The electronically altered voice was flat and uninflected, sounding cold and distant. “You don’t know who I am?”

Xia Xun frowned, staring at her silently.

Shadow had been sitting on the windowsill. Upon hearing this, she immediately jumped down and walked towards her.

Backlit, Xia Xun couldn’t make out the person’s features at all. Even when the person walked right up to her, she realized, she wouldn’t have been able to see them clearly anyway.

Shadow wore a mask and cap. The only visible eyes were hidden in shadow. Even the outstretched hand was covered by gloves.

Xia Xun could see this person was extremely cautious, clearly having made thorough preparations before bringing her here.

Shadow looked down at her from above. “You should know.”

She was the one who rescued Xu Jinyao from the stairwell back then. So she must have overheard those conversations too.

A detective shouldn’t be so careless as to forget everything completely after just one day.

Xia Xun moved her neck. The sharp pain she felt before losing consciousness had completely vanished.

“You used anesthetic on me too?” she asked.

Shadow slowly crouched down. “‘Too?'”

She had used the word ‘too’.

Understanding dawned on Shadow. “You did hear everything.”

Xia Xun smiled and shook her head.

“What are you laughing at?” Shadow asked, puzzled.

A smile lingered in Xia Xun’s voice. “You can just pretend I didn’t hear anything. It’s not like I’d tell anyone anyway.”

Shadow frowned. “What do you mean?”

This person had no killing intent; Xia Xun could feel it.

Despite being dressed all in black, making it easy to connect her with the Figure in Black from the previous cases, this person would step in at a crucial moment to save her.

So Xia Xun raised an eyebrow and said, “Exactly what I said.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, a sharp slap echoed through the room.

Xia Xun didn’t see how she struck. When she realized it, her head had already snapped to the side. Intense pain seared from the corner of her lip—probably the previous wound splitting open again.

“Tch—” She sucked in a breath of cold air. She straightened her head, fixing her eyes on Shadow. “You hit pretty hard.”

Slap! Another one rang out.

Xia Xun felt both sides of her face start to burn fiercely.

Her face was turned to the side. This time, she didn’t straighten it immediately, nor did she speak.

Shadow reached out, grabbed Xia Xun by the chin, and wrenched her face back. “You think I can’t see through you? You arranged for those men to come, didn’t you?”

The coarse texture of the glove scraped against her skin. Xia Xun pulled her head away, breaking free. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Now it was Shadow’s turn to laugh. After a few laughs, her demeanor instantly turned icy. “You really are a good actor. If I hadn’t checked the wounds on your body, you might have fooled me too.”

Xia Xun coughed lightly twice. “Seems like it’s safer to actually commit to the act next time. What a pity.”

Shadow suddenly raised her hand. Xia Xun thought she was going to slap her again and instinctively closed her eyes. Instead, the cold, mechanical voice asked, “A pity?”

Shadow’s hand rested on Xia Xun’s shoulder, her fingers brushing back and forth against the nape of her neck. “You want to try this again?”

Xia Xun squirmed, trying to shake her off, but the hand suddenly clamped down, gripping the back of her neck tightly and shoving her face-down onto the floor.

“I’m warning you,” Shadow said. “This is the last time.”

The ropes binding her wrists had just been loosened. Before Xia Xun could even think of resisting, she was pinned again in the blink of an eye.

“Alright, alright, the last time, the last time. I was wrong. I’ll listen to you from now on. Can you let go first? The floor is filthy. My face isn’t a broom.” Xia Xun flopped twice on the ground, scuffling.

Shadow’s brow furrowed deeply, as if she’d heard something utterly disgusting. She suddenly loosened her grip.

Xia Xun seized the opening. Pushing off the ground, she twisted her body, reversing the pressure and pinning the hand that was on her neck against the wall. In the next second, she clenched her fist and aimed a straight punch at Shadow’s face.

Shadow raised her other arm to block. Knowing the punch wouldn’t land, Xia Xun changed direction mid-strike, opening her fist into a palm strike and flicking Shadow’s cap off.

The hair tie snapped. The cap tumbled to the floor, and long, flowing hair cascaded down.

It really was a woman.

Xia Xun froze for an instant.

Shadow seized the chance, yanked her hand free, and shot to her feet, kicking Xia Xun hard in the stomach.

Her movements were too fast, and Xia Xun was a half-beat too slow. She took the full force of the kick, curling up in pain. Yet she still tried to undo the ropes on her ankles.

Shadow didn’t give her the chance. She kicked her again. “You dare ambush me?”

Xia Xun rolled across the floor, slamming into the wall and groaning in pain. “Wait, hold on a second…”

Shadow ignored her completely, merely taking care to avoid Xia Xun’s actual wounds, aiming her kicks at uninjured areas.

Xia Xun grabbed a handful of garbage from the floor and hurled it at Shadow. She scrambled to her feet and stumbled for the door.

The dust from the garbage momentarily blinded Shadow. She reached out to grab her but missed, forced to rely on her hearing to track Xia Xun’s position.

Xia Xun, fleeing, had instinctively snatched the flashlight. But she quickly realized Shadow could track her movements by sound. She tossed the flashlight away and ducked into one of the empty rooms.

This place was just as she suspected: a truly abandoned building project far from the city center. She didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious, nor where her phone was. But since this woman had no killing intent towards her, maybe she just wanted to teach her a lesson.

After all… she was the one who had set the trap first, baiting the other into action.

Deciding abruptly, she walked out of the room and immediately ran straight into Shadow. Before she could open her mouth, a hand clamped around her throat.

She stumbled back several steps, hitting the wall before stopping. To signal her intentions, she raised her hands in a gesture of surrender. “Not running anymore. Really, not running anymore.”

Shadow didn’t loosen her grip. Her powerful fingers gradually tightened.

Tears welled up in her eyes—a physiological reaction from the earlier dust irritation. Fortunately, there was only faint moonlight here; no one saw her cry.

The tears couldn’t mask the fury on her face. As her fingers tightened bit by bit, Xia Xun soon felt the suffocation. Yet she still didn’t struggle.

Shadow’s breathing was ragged. Gritting her teeth, she released her grip at the very last moment.

Xia Xun coughed violently, bent almost double.

Shadow yanked her upright, slamming her against the wall. She said coldly, “You’d better remember this. If there’s a next time, you won’t be the only one with broken bones.”

Xia Xun’s lips curved into a smile. “You fought well. Those guys weren’t good people anyway.”

Shadow froze. “What do you mean by that?”

A faint smile played on Xia Xun’s lips. She didn’t answer immediately.

That’s right. The men tonight were indeed deliberately lured there by her. But her injuries weren’t severe because she knew how to protect herself, how to fall without getting seriously hurt.

As for that knife, it was an unexpected bonus. Before that pebble shot over, she had been fully prepared to fight back.

She now had a fairly solid grasp on this Intelligence Officer’s intentions. Though always watching her from the shadows, she also functioned as a bodyguard.

She didn’t know where Xu Jinyao had found such an informant. But with this one around, her own cover as an “intelligence officer” paled in comparison.

For a moment, Xia Xun’s mood was complicated.

So she answered flatly, “Nothing. Just complimenting you.”

Shadow’s frown deepened.

She didn’t respond but turned to leave. Xia Xun’s voice came from behind her. “You’re just leaving like that?”

Shadow halted.

“In the middle of nowhere, how am I supposed to get back?” Xia Xun said. “Have a heart. Give me back my phone, will you?”

Shadow fished out the phone, tossed it to her, and left without a backward glance.

Meanwhile, elsewhere.

Xu Jinyao received a call from Xia Xun.

“Officer Xu, can you come pick me up?”

Xu Jinyao held back a scolding and took a deep breath. “Where are you?”

The voice on the other end of the line was weak and hoarse. “I sent you my location.”

Xu Jinyao didn’t ask what had happened, nor what her current condition was. She didn’t know what had come over her. Normally, she would have started yelling by now. This time, she simply replied calmly, “Okay. Wait for me.”

But after getting into the car, she realized her hands were trembling. The seatbelt was stuck, and she couldn’t pull it loose no matter what.

She was struggling to contain her fury. Her mind was filled only with that hoarse voice from the phone call.

If it were any other time, maybe. But this was an attack just yesterday, followed by another disappearance today.

Most crucially, she couldn’t reach Shadow.

Her thoughts spiraled to the possibility that both of them might have met with disaster.

The location Xia Xun sent only fueled her rage.

She remembered hearing colleagues from the Narcotics Squad say that the most frequent visitors to those unfinished buildings were druggies.

She didn’t know why Xia Xun was there, nor what she’d experienced during her disappearance. All she knew was that when she saw her, she was going to demand answers.

But when she arrived, her anger inexplicably dissipated.

Xia Xun looked utterly pitiful. Her clothes were filthy beyond description, her pants were torn, and she was clutching a wooden stick she’d scavenged from somewhere. She was leaning on that stick, standing by the roadside, waiting for her.

Seeing Xu Jinyao get out of the car, she even grinned. “You’re here.”

‘You’re here’?

Xu Jinyao halted mid-step, closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply. But her anger surged right back up, fiercer than ever.

She snapped her eyes open and charged straight forward, snatching the stick away. Without a word, she flung it into the bushes.

She wanted to explode. She wanted to curse. She wanted to teach this lone-wolf detective a lesson she’d never forget. She wanted to give her a good, hard scolding.

But when she opened her mouth, before she could say anything, the person in front of her collapsed into her arms.

This scoundrel.

She was just about to push her away when she felt the skin burning hot to the touch.

Xia Xun had a fever.

A dangerously high fever.

It was only then that she suddenly understood why the voice on the phone had been so hoarse.