by N. Heller
"Did the other members enter the building? " That thought surfaced in Lin Sanjiu's mind involuntarily. "If that was the case, it would be great! This would create a good opportunity for me to escape!"
Unfortunately, her higher consciousness scanning did not allow for her to see through walls. Looking through the 'glass' of the cylinder she was in, she could see what was outside the container. However, she could not see if there was anyone in the lobby, so she couldn't confirm anything.
Lin Sanjiu considered her situation. The blond man caught her but he didn't attempt to make any signals and he didn't even inform his teammates... After thinking for a few seconds, Lin Sanjiu wrote a question while the man kept his gaze on her, "Did they enter that building?"
"You a rare duoluozhong..." the blond man praised softly, but he didn't answer her question. "You made that 'Gangrene Chaser' chase after you for such a long time and even led it into a trap. I think you must be very powerful, right?"
His accent sounded very weird. Even though his voice was mellow and rich, it just sounded weird. It was as if he was using another language to speak Mandarin. Lin Sanjiu didn't think too much about it. In fact, facing such an attitude, Lin Sanjiu only allowed herself to feel fretful for a few minutes. Following which, she realized that if she read between the lines, she already had her answer: his teammates had entered the building. If she had made a wrong guess, that man wouldn't praise her.
"Did they entered the building to retrieve that arrow? Can that demonic spirit swallow three people at once? Why didn't this blond man follow them into the building?" The memory of the incident that happened at the entrance of the train station gradually surfaced in Lin Sanjiu's mind. She deliberated over her words and wrote, "Your team's mission is to get duoluozhongs..."
Lin Sanjiu couldn't think of another answer to their actions. This was the first time she met these people, they didn't have any bad blood between them and she even avoided crossing their path by moving away discreetly. However, the team chased after her so fervently once they saw her. On top of that, this item that the man was using merely served to trap her. Since they didn't kill her immediately, Lin Sanjiu could somehow guess their objectives.
"Are you all trying to catch powerful duoluozhongs?"
"Huh?" the blond man suddenly pushed up his eyewear, revealing a pair of long narrow eyes. Lin Sanjiu had seen quite a few handsome men during her journey, like Hei Zeji, Li Zhijun and Gong Daoyi from the previous world. Their handsome looks were all hard to come by. But this was the first time seeing a man with such stunning features. It was almost heart-gripping. Under the faint light of the night sky, his dark green eyes looked as deep as a pool in a forest. Under the sunlight, his pair of eyes would probably look like clear, flawless jade.
But the man's expression wasn't as easy to read. "How did you deduce that?" He raised a brow and asked with some interest.
Lin Sanjiu didn't want to waste time chatting with him. "You caught the wrong person. I am not a duoluozhong. Much less a powerful one..." Noticing that the man's expression didn't change, Lin Sanjiu figured that he didn't believe her. She added, "But, I know where you can find something like that."
The blond man grinned. It was almost as if his face could shine. He sat down on the ground lazily, acting like he was uninterested in what she had to say. However, Lin Sanjiu already noticed the glint that flashed in his eyes.
"You just want me to let you go, right?" He looked down as he rubbed the faint stubble on his chin. "That's impossible. Don't even waste your time trying."
"Bullsh*t. How would I know if I didn't try?" Lin Sanjiu scolded him silently in her mind. Unaffected, she continued writing, "If you want, I can tell you where you can find a powerful duoluozhong... And, your teammates won't even hear a hint of it."
After she finished her sentenced, she examined the man's expression a little anxiously. Lin Sanjiu had placed all her bets on the possibility tgat the man had a somewhat bad working relationship with his team.
As expected, the man narrowed his eyes again. His thick lashes created two smooth arcs. He hesitated and said mildly, "Oh?"
"That my chance! " Lin Sanjiu thought to herself. Lin Sanjiu's heart raced. Even though she didn't know why they were trying to catch duoluozhongs and why this man wanted to keep those duoluozhongs for himself, she knew that as long as he was tempted by her offer, she had a chance to escape.
"In exchange, when you catch that powerful duoluozhong, I hope you let me go."
The blond man read her words and looked at her eye sockets. His dark green eyes had a sort of magnetism. "Aren't you afraid that I will go back on my words?"
"It isn't as if I have a choice," Lin Sanjiu wrote quietly. "I don't have right to make any bargains right now. This is the best I can do. I will leave to rest to fate."
"I like your attitude." The blond man's smile suddenly grew wide. Almost in a childish manner, he reached for the container and shook it lightly twice, as if he was shaking her hands. "I accept your deal. I am Silvan."
Chapter 222 - Getting Others to Do Your Dirty Work
In all fairness, Lin Sanjiu had to admit that if she was in Silvan's position, she wouldn't dare to do such a brazen thing. Firstly, she wouldn't trust an enemy who was obviously trying to escape. However, Silvan seemed to trust her words instantly. He didn't show even a hint of hesitation. Courageous wasn't the right word to describe this man, instead, he exuded a sort of assertiveness. He didn't even have to explain himself. Lin Sanjiu could feel that his assertiveness came from a confidence that was near arrogance. Apparently, he did not even care about the possible risks involved.
He basically showed a 'I know you are up to something but I don't care' attitude.
"Can such a person be just a member of a small team?" Lin Sanjiu tried to recall what the other members looked like, but she only had a hazy impression. None of them left such a lasting impression as Silvan.
Silvan stood in the quiet, dim elevator lobby of the building. He smacked the upward button beside the elevator absent-mindedly. The elevator immediately hummed softly as it came down from the 26th floor. Just a day ago, Lin Sanjiu probably wouldn't believe that she would return to this building voluntarily.
But her mentality was totally different now. No matter what this building was planning, she hoped that it would just act quickly. "My teammates did enter this building to retrieve that 'Gangrene Chaser'... But, how did you know that they did find that duoluozhong first?" As he said that, Silvan had already pulled down his ballistic eyewear and fit them properly on his face once again. With his striking looks half concealed, he immediately looked more reserved, appearing to be just an average handsome man. Lin Sanjiu stopped for a moment and tried to listen for the sounds within her scanning range.
There was only a dead-like silence in the building. She couldn't hear a single noise.
"If they found that item, it wouldn't be this quiet," Lin Sanjiu wrote quickly. Of course, she hid the fact that the silence proved that his teammates had already fallen into the building's trap. Silvan didn't reply, instead, he stared at the numeral display in the elevator.
After some time, he asked, "Which floor?"
"26." Lin Sanjiu wrote.
Even though the black arrow was always trapped on the 26th floor, Lin Sanjiu was confident that when they went there, they would not find the black arrow. The elevator door open slowly.
"You mentioned that you are not a duoluozhong. What are you then?" Silvan asked curiously as he pressed the button marked 26. He sounded sincere, but Lin Sanjiu couldn't really tell if he believed her. "Someone who didn't corrode their own eyes with black matter probably can't see you, right?"
"So, this team used the same method..." Lin Sanjiu thought to herself. She gave him an ambiguous answer, "This is my ability. I can revert back to my human form." After that, Lin Sanjiu had a sudden thought. She remembered that the siblings had told her that they learn about the method of corroding their eyes from someone else's experience when they w
ere back in Red Nautilus. If that was the case—
"Could you guys be from the Twelve Centrum?" she couldn't help asking.
Silvan lowered his head slightly. He was holding the cylindrical container that Lin Sanjiu was in. He eyed Lin Sanjiu and immediately laughed.
"You too? But if you are from the Twelve World Centrum, how could you not recognize this?" He patted the emblem on his shoulder lightly as he said this. His tone was a little weird when he said the word 'this'. As he pointed to it, he revealed his slight contempt and a subtle amus.e.m.e.nt before pulling his slender fingers away.
Lin Sanjiu had noticed that emblem ages ago, but she didn't know what it symbolized. The emblem had a silver black outline. In the middle, there was a beautiful warhammer. There was an eagle with extended wings in the background of the emblem. It looked imposing.
Just when she was feeling a little hesitant as to whether she should question the man further, Silvan spoke first.
"There's no harm in telling you," he said indifferently, but he seemed to be holding back some emotions, "I didn't come here from any of the worlds in the Twelve World Centrum... I come from 'The Munitions Factory'."
"The Munitions Factory!" Lin Sanjiu, who was in the container, was shocked when she heard this. She had heard the name of this place many times. She heard it first from Shen Lianqi 1 and recently from siblings. Almost everyone from the Twelve Centrum had mentioned this name. Between the lines, Lin Sanjiu could tell that The Munitions Factory was an unavoidable subject of discussion if you lived in the Twelve Worlds Centrum. It seemed to be some sort of large organization.
That explained why the men were so well-equipped. In her higher consciousness form, Lin Sanjiu had been s.u.c.k.e.d into this container without even a chance to resist.
"But why does The Munitions Factory need to catch duoluozhongs?" Lin Sanjiu pondered.
Noticing that the weird thing in the container had not responded for some time, Silvan seemed a little baffled. "Apparently, you are not from the Twelve World Centrum," he said with certainty. His following words immediately stunned Lin Sanjiu, "You probably met residents from the Twelve World Centrum. Speaking of which... The people who were lying at the entrance of the train station seem to be the same people in the pharmacy store... Are they from the Twelve World Centrum? They are badly injured but still alive. Their wounds were also tended. Are they your friends?
"If that is so, you really might not be a duoluozhong." After Silvan said this casually, the elevator door opened slowly and he walked out of the elevator. Lin Sanjiu didn't read his expression because she was still stunned. She simply asked a question from her own speculations, instead, the man managed to infer so much about her based on that. Furthermore, he got everything right. The man's quick wit was certainly worthy of praise. She suddenly felt unsure about her plan to use the building to get rid of the team of men.
"Let's hope that it works." Lin Sanjiu thought to herself. When she found herself in the familiar dim corridors, Lin Sanjiu felt that the events that happened to her in this place seemed to be a lifetime ago. When Lin Sanjiu recalled the scenes of her escape, she couldn't help looking at the man beside her. Silvan appeared as relaxed as before, as if he had just found another place to stroll around.
They heard a sudden 'click' coming from the locked door of an apartment unit ahead. The door slowly swung open. From where they were standing, they could only see a few fingers at the edge of the door.
"Is Silvan's teammate behind that door, or—" Before Lin Sanjiu could finish her train of thoughts, Silvan threw the container which Lin Sanjiu was in aside. A black gun barrel appeared silently by his wrist. Next, Silvan aimed the line of blue flames from his gun at the door. The flames swallowed the door instantaneously.
"This is your chance!" Mrs. Manas shouted in Lin Sanjiu's mind. Lin Sanjiu who had already been prepared, did not waste a single second. She quickly activated and gathered all her higher consciousness together. She started compressing them as if her life depended on it.
While the torrent of flames continued engulfing the door, Lin Sanjiu was thrust into a pain she had never experienced in her life before. Usually, compressing two strands of higher consciousness was hard enough for her. Right now, she was trying to compress all her higher consciousness as much as possible. Even though she didn't have her physical body, she could not deny the bone-shattering pain she felt.
"Damn it. I'm giving up. I might not die even if I'm captured." Such thoughts surfaced in Lin Sanjiu's mind and it was very tempting to just give in to them. While enduring the vivid pain, Lin Sanjiu tried her best to curb her impulse to just give up. Though the vague encouragements from Mrs. Manas, a few words pierced through the haziness of her pain like the first light of dawn. "Do it now!" She heard those words very clearly.
If Silvan were to look at the cylindrical container at that point, he would have noticed that the weird creature in it was becoming smaller and smaller. It finally condensed itself to a size of an apple. In that condition, it glowed erratically as if in an unstable state. Suddenly, there was a loud explosion. The blue flames from his gun finally stopped as he turned around. At the same time, the container exploded into bits. The swelling black shadow from within shot out of the window like an arrow on a taut bow. It disappeared into the boundless sky.
"I didn't expect it to act so quickly," Silvan leaped up from the ground and stared at the broken fragments of the container. Her eyes revealed his slight amazement. "That is The Munition Factory's newest—oh, I forgot you are still here." He looked at the person who had just walked out from the door and threw his thoughts about that weird thing to the back of his mind. She met him in Hyperthermal Hell when she encountered Puppeteer.
Chapter 223 - You Have To Go To The Doctor If You're Sick
Lin Sanjiu flew straight back to the pharmacy store without even pausing for a breather. She nearly fell out of the sky when she reached it. She had spent only less than thirty minutes escaping from that team from The Munitions Factory, yet the small pharmacy store was now as crowded as the train station in China during the Lunar New Year's travel rush.
Almost admiring that scene, Lin Sanjiu slowly floated down from the sky. She was dumbstruck as she scanned the huge crowd around the store. She saw all sorts of spirits, those she recognized and many other familiar ones. They were all trying to squeeze their way into the pharmacy store. There was a spirit with the classic hair-covering-face appearance. She also saw a neatly-dressed, silver-haired granny with a faint smile. She spotted a translucent Kuchisake-onna with a scarf around her face and a mouth which stretched from ear to ear...
All spirits usually had a slightly translucent quality about them. However, there were so many spirits there that the multiple bodies and colors formed a generic black shadow of a huge crowd. It was really quite a sight. After she gave it some thought, Lin Sanjiu felt that no words, other than a good chain of vulgarities, could best describe her current feelings.
"If those kids die," Lin Sanjiu mumbled to herself as she pushed through the crowd of spirits, "I'm going to bomb that Munitions Factory. Even though her higher consciousness form looked a little similar to the other spirits, they were essentially different. Lin Sanjiu ground through the crowd like a diamond grinding through pieces of soda biscuits. After a few rounds, she had reduced the spirits, who were blocking her way to the entrance of the store, into columns of smoke. After pushing away the remaining duoluozhongs that were in front of the entrance, Lin Sanjiu rushed into the store. Just as she let out a sigh of relief, she was stunned by the scene in front of her.
"No, you might get an infection. He lost too much blood. He needs stitches and a blood transfusion. Oh, since both of you have O blood type, transfusing your blood to him could be a possibility..."
Reno and Rena had both regained consciousness. Rena got out of the cupboard long ago and was now sitting by her brother's side. Though both kids appeared weak and lethargic because of their wounds, Lin Sanjiu could see that they were try
ing their best to focus on what the doctor was saying.
For that time being, she would call him... or it, a doctor.
There were all sorts of medical-related items on the floor, from a medical box to a stethoscope. There were even two medical records, one with Rena's name and the other with Reno's. However, Lin Sanjiu couldn't help scrutinizing the image in her mind.
Unmistakably, that doctor was a bicolor, black-white cat.
It clicked its tongue as it tapped the pen in its paws, "How about that? If you two consent to the procedure, I can arrange the surgery... Oh, what's wrong?"
Noticing the changes in the siblings' expression, the cat finally noticed that someone was behind him. He turned around and tossed a glance at Lin Sanjiu. Lin Sanjiu found herself staring into a cat's moist, shiny eyes, which shone with a green l.u.s.ter.
"Lin Sanjiu. You came back just in time. We are trying to plan our surgery with the doctor..." Rena said hurriedly before she turned to the cat and asked, "How long will the surgery take?"
The cat doctor did not answer. He gave Lin Sanjiu a sidelong glance and started packing his things. After he had stored all his items, he straightened the bow tie on his neck, "You don't have to make your decision now. Take your time to think about it. Anyway, I work at the provincial hospital. When you guys have made a decision, you can just come over..."
Lin Sanjiu stared at the bicolor cat with her two pitch-black eye socket. Despite her gaze, the cat doctor seemed unfazed as he gave them an elegant nod and retreated out of the door in an unbelievable speed.
No matter what, he seemed very guilty.
When she looked at the siblings again, they still seemed bewildered as they started discussing quietly, "Right, I think what the doctor said made sense. Why don't we just go ahead with..."
"Go ahead with sh*t!" Lin Sanjiu couldn't help roaring inwardly. She pulled one of her rib bones out without hesitating and hit each of their heads' once.