by N. Heller
"Maybe she can activate her ability from afar?" Lin Sanjiu couldn't help guessing.
Their surroundings were so quiet that it was almost peaceful. Lin Sanjiu and Hannie's patrol was actually the second shift. When Reno and Derik patrolled earlier, they also didn't notice anything out of place.
Being vigilant, Lin Sanjiu kept the scanning area of her higher consciousness within the radius of 600 meters. After a few hours, she didn't discover any threats but instead used up quite a lot of her higher consciousness. Her left calf muscles shrunk quite a bit. After a quick consideration, Lin Sanjiu reduced her scanning radius to 200 meters.
"I can't believe this. I still have to patrol this place with 'it' for another two hours…" Hannie mumbled softly to herself some distance away from Lin Sanjiu, though Lin Sanjiu could capture what she said clearly.
Lin Sanjiu was not bothered but such complaints and instead she stretched her neck and looked around her. Even though her current body was just made of higher consciousness, Lin Sanjiu valued the regained sensation from stretching her muscles that she had lost for some time. When she had the chance, she would move her neck.
When Lin Sanjiu turned back to look at Hannie again, a sudden gust of wind blew Hannie's wavy hair in the opposite direction.
"A breeze?" Just as Lin Sanjiu had that thought and before she could react properly, she suddenly sensed that something was wrong. Moving solely on her intuition, Lin Sanjiu floated backward. A gust of wind brushed the tip of her nasal bone.
It had become windy, but the wind was created by a ball-like thing flying toward them in mid-air. That ball-like thing looked similar to a cannonball. It appeared to have been shot from the rooftop of another high-rise building. It whistled in the air as it whizzed toward Lin Sanjiu and Hannie. It was accelerating at such a high speed that it stirred up a piercing wind.
"It's an enemy attack!" Hannie immediately shouted into her communicator while she climbed up from the ground in a slightly embarrassing manner. At the same time, the ball-like thing had already reached the edge of the rooftop they were standing on. It suddenly unfolded, exposing a person who was smiling with its tongue stuck out. The person gripped the edge of the rooftop, did a flip, and landed on the rooftop. That "cannonball" had transformed into a shirtless man with dark-colored skin.
Lin Sanjiu was slightly startled. She did not know where the other six members were hiding. She only knew that the man in front of them wasn't going to be someone easy to deal with. Under such circ.u.mstances, it was quite impossible to get out of this situation by stating that she was just on "guard duty". In a quick decisive manner, she lowered her body and launched herself toward the man.
"Ah, what is this!" the dark-skinned man was stunned for a split second before he avoided Lin Sanjiu's attack. He stuck out his long tongue and licked his own cheek. He cast a sweeping glance at Lin Sanjiu's lower back and his expression changed instantly. With a few somersaults, he evaded Lin Sanjjiu and blocked Hannie's path.
"I don't want to fight with you!" the man shouted to Lin Sanjiu. Lin Sanjiu stopped. Then, he turned to Hannie and chuckled, "You're my target!"
"You're overestimating yourself!" Hannie yelled. A ball of white light appeared in her hand as she briskly aimed at the man's face. Much to Lin Sanjiu's surprise, Hannie had a melee close-combat style. Lin Sanjiu decidedly restrained herself from helping.
This was a rare opportunity for Lin Sanjiu to observe Hannie and her real capabilities. After watching her for a while, Lin Sanjiu realized that Hannie definitely had some level of combat skills. After exchanging a few blows, Hannie had the upper hand and forced the man toward the rooftop access door. Meanwhile, the sound of footsteps came from the stairs. Derik and the others came to help and they now had the dark-skinned man trapped.
The dark-skinned man uttered an indiscernible curse and nimbly crouched and rolled away from Hannie's attack. Following which, he rushed to the edge of the rooftop without even taking a gasp of air. When Zhu Mingchuan pushed open the rooftop access door violently, the man had already jumped off the building with no qualms.
Zhu Minghchuan and Hannie immediately rushed to the edge of the rooftop. However, without any abilities to jump off a high-rise building unscathed, the two of them could only look down from above and mutter vulgarities. Apparently, the man had escaped by air.
"How are you? Are you hurt?" Reno and Rena, who had been behind Derik, asked worriedly as they ran toward Lin Sanjiu. They were late and missed that brief battle. Rena looked away hurriedly and asked, "What just happened?"
Lin Sanjiu did not reply.
Derik and the others were standing nearby, so Lin Sanjiu didn't want to write a reply.
When the dark-skinned man jumped off the building, Lin Sanjiu clearly saw a "7" on his back.
Chapter 229 - Long-brewed Plan
"Take off your clothes."
The one single light source in an office inside a bank came from a table lamp. The light barely pierced through the darkness. The yellow light covered a small radius before being swallowed by the darkness. The "person" standing in the shadows wrote these bloodied words. After that, she moved the lamp so that the light made her words visible.
"But, I'm only fifteen…" a teenage boy said with opened jaws. He was very hesitant and seemed very reluctant, as if considering something. For a moment, Lin Sanjiu didn't know whether to laugh or cry as she wrote frustratedly, "What are you thinking! Just take off your shirt!"
They only had a short break between patrols, so Lin Sanjiu took considerable effort to get the three of them together. She certainly didn't want Reno to waste their time so aimlessly.
"Huh? Okay…" Reno scratched his head and looked at her sister beside him for a second. Then, he rolled his shirt up and took it off. The adolescent was still growing and had a lean frame. However, with his years of training, he didn't look scrawny but instead had a trim body. Lin Sanjiu did not notice this at all because her mind was focused on one thing. "Turn your body."
Reno listened obediently and showed his back. Out of curiosity, Rena moved closer to have a look. Just when she saw Reno's back, she let out a quiet yelp, "Huh? What's this?"
Under the yellow light from the lamp, they could clearly see a small black "4" between the dimples of his back.
"What? What's on my body?" Reno started getting a little anxious.
At the same time, Rena caught a glimpse of what Lin Sanjiu wrote and suddenly became anxious as well. Before she could reply to Reno, Rena pulled up her dress and quickly said to her brother, "Is there also a number on my back?"
There was, without a doubt, a small numeral "4" on the teenage girl's youthful skin.
"How... how did we get this number?" Reno saw it and turned to see the floating words above Lin Sanjiu's hand: "Both of you have it."
"There is a 4 on your back. Do I also have that? Weird, I didn't feel anything…" Reno said as he touched the "4" on his sister's back.
Rena, who had been trying to look at her own back, immediately replied, "Are you touching the number? It doesn't feel any different."
The number had appeared on their back without them noticing at all. It did not feel any different from their skin. It was as if they suddenly had a birthmark which looked like a number. After the siblings got over their initial shock, they started discussing about what that number was. They had only exchanged a few words when they realized that Lin Sanjiu was quiet. They couldn't help turning to look at Lin Sanjiu.
Right now, Lin Sanjiu felt somewhat pensive about this. There wasn't any skin or muscle on her back right now. She only had her spine and the two red organs beside. Naturally, the others couldn't spot a small black number. However, with Mrs. Manas reminder, she used her higher consciousness to check her entire body and finally found something out of place.
She noticed a bit of black color near where her lower back should be. When she looked closer, she spotted a small "4". It had appeared within her higher consciousness at some unknown time without any sign
at all.
If it was only something on their skins, it might not be too serious. However, if that number could appear as part of her higher consciousness… For a moment, Lin Sanjiu was too deep in thought to hear the siblings calling her.
"Hey, what are you thinking about?" Reno walked over and acted like he was going to push her. Lin Sanjiu snapped out of her thoughts. "How did you know that there were numbers on our body?"
Lin Sanjiu smiled a little bitterly in her mind, "Not only you two. I have it as well." Lin Sanjiu wrote. "That man who attacked us also had a number 7 on his back. If I'm correct, Derik and his teammates probably have numbers on their back as well. I think they know about these numbers... but I don't know what numbers are on their back."
"Does it appear on anyone that had been corroded by black matter?" Rena said as she couldn't help touching her back for a second.
Unlike his sister, Reno had a different concern, "What made you think that way?"
"I have noticed them looking at our backs a few times," Lin Sanjiu wrote honestly. "At first, I didn't know what they were doing… Until I saw the man at the rooftop today."
The siblings were quiet for a short while.
"If Derik and the others know about this number, why didn't they tell us?" Reno asked quietly. Perhaps, being his age, Reno was disappointed to find out about this as he had a good impression on Derik.
Lin Sanjiu also thought of another suspicious point. The bank building had a few dozen floors but they only patrolled the first floor and the rooftop. Before she met the dark-skinned man, that strategy seemed quite logical. However, if Derik's team knew that their enemy could attack from the air, such arrangement was quite meaningless because their enemy could attack from any floor!
"Isn't it obvious enough. They must have other plans."
Before Lin Sanjiu could write another word, Rena replied, "I wonder how the numbers are related to the Special Items… I think we shouldn't work with them any longer. Let's just ask them about this number and leave!"
It was easy for Rena to say 'just ask them' but it might mean a confrontation. But all three of them were not people who would avoid conflicts. They discussed softly for some time and quickly decided on what to do.
"Hannie is wearing a very short blouse. Rena, you will pretend that you accidentally spotted a number on her back later and try to test her. Let's see what's their reaction." Reno organized their plan, "It is best if they tell us the truth… If they try to tell us more lies, we will pretend like we believe them to keep them off guard. Next, when we change shifts, Lin Sanjiu and I would hide somewhere to ambush them. If we see an opportunity, we will catch that Zhu Mingchun. I don't believe I can't get anything out from him!"
This plan was certainly more reliable than confronting them straight up. After they decided on this, and seeing that it was about time, they tried their best to relax their expressions. They headed for the door.
Reno, who was leading, heard a sudden light 'click' before he even reached for the door handle. The noise was very soft and faded before they could even confirm it. If they were as tensed as they were now, they could have missed it.
Lin Sanjiu found the sound very familiar. She frowned and thought for a while. "Damn it," she thought to herself inwardly. That was the sound of Hannie's boots.
Chapter 230 - The So-called Cognitive Blind Spot
"So that's why! This was the purpose of wearing such noisy boots and acting like she didn't care. Hannie used it to create a misimpression. She could actually move around without making a sound!" Mrs. Manas exclaimed.
When a person is used to a sound, it would create a sort of associative biases, making it impossible to consider the possibility that she could move soundlessly. In other words, it created a cognitive blind spot.
Lin Sanjiu was shocked by what Mrs. Manas said and quietly regretted letting her guard down for a moment. She should have kept her higher consciousness scanning at a wider range. Being too anxious to recover her body, she had become overly frugal with using her higher consciousness.
After that sound disappeared, Reno rushed over and grabbed the door handle. He pushed down the handle and shook the door violently. Unfortunately, much to the siblings' chagrin as their faces turned pale, the door would not open despite the door creaking from Reno's strength. They had been locked in.
Logically, a normal man-made office door should not be this strong. The siblings squinted and peeped through the crack of the door before finally stopping and dropping their heads, disheartened.
"It's no use. They must have used some item manufactured in Twelve Worlds Centrum," Rena sighed and turned to Lin Sanjiu. She found the words Lin Sanjiu had created in mid-air, "Hannie is outside? How did you know? Let me see… Hey, can you go out?"
Rena's face lit up when she remembered this. "That's right! How could I've forgotten that! You can go out!" Rena's voice rose with excitement. Even though the gap between the door was very narrow and Lin Sanjiu's body had grown significantly, Lin Sanjiu could slowly squeeze through that gap and escape from the room as long as she stretched and flattened herself.
"Great! Go outside and remove that item from the door!" Reno said urgently.
Without making any sound, Lin Sanjiu lowered her body. Her white bones, muscles, and blood gradually fused together and she stretched herself out. She was now a gruesome color, as if someone had mashed a person's body and put it in a mixer. Rena averted her gaze as she was too afraid to look at Lin Sanjiu. She could only hear her brother cheering Lin Sanjiu, "Yes, you're halfway. You're out!"
Rena quickly looked and saw the last bit of reddish splodge disappearing through the gap under the door. Lin Sanjiu had disappeared from the room. She took 40 seconds to slip out from under the door. To a normal person, that isn't much time. However, 40 seconds was enough to climb one floor, so it felt like an unusually long time to Lin Sanjiu.
Once Lin Sanjiu relaxed, her body immediately reverted back to original form with a half side made of muscles and the other half of organs. She examined the weird thing on the door. Before she came out of the room, Lin Sanjiu would never have imagined that the thing reinforcing the door would actually be alive.
A black scorpion about the size of a little girl's upper body was on the door. It had pierced its two long pincers into the door frame. A dull light shone off its black, patterned exoskeleton. As incredulous as it sounded, Lin Sanjiu could sense the scorpion's "muscles".
Lin Sanjiu carefully avoided the poisonous stinger on the scorpion's waving tail and grabbed its body. She exerted her strength before it could react with its stinger. However, she was shocked that she couldn't pull that scorpion off even with her current strength. The scorpion did not budge even an inch.
Unwilling to give up, she tried it a couple more times but found that it was still stuck to the door. Lin Sanjiu was starting to get anxious.
Apparently, Hannie had overheard their plans using some method and decided to seal the door with this scorpion. Lin Sanjiu didn't know when Hannie would bring the others over. Lin Sanjiu knew she needed to get the siblings out before they became easy targets for them.
"How is it?" Rena asked impatiently from behind the door, "You can't open it?"
Lin Sanjiu thought for a moment and knocked once on the door to reply to Rena.
As the office they were in was on the top floor, it was too high for them to jump out of the window even if they wanted to escape that way. Just when Reno and Rena were discussing what to do next, Lin Sanjiu suddenly had an idea.
"Wait for me," Lin Sanjiu wrote after squeezing part of her body through the gap under the door. Then, with some difficulty, she added, "I will chase Han—."
Naturally, she was referring to Hannie. In fact, it had only been two minutes since they heard the sound from Hannie's boots. If Derik and Zhu Mingchun were on the first floor, it was possible that Hannie had not reached them.
" If I can catch that woman, getting information from her and dealing with the locked door wo
uldn't be a problem ," Lin Sanjiu's heart pounded. Before the two children could respond, she flew toward stairs heading down.
Even though a large part of her body was already completed, it was still just a body made of higher consciousness. In front of others, she tried to maintain the illusion that she was walking with her feet. However, Lin Sanjiu could easily lift her legs and make her entire body float like before.
Considering that she could fly, Lin Sanjiu thought that she should probably be faster than Hannie. With this in mind, Lin Sanjiu used her maximum speed and flew down ten floors before rushing into the stairway. She flew down the stairways floor by floor but she couldn't catch a single glimpse of Hannie. When she finally saw the ground floor, she found that was totally quiet and there was no one around. Lin Sanjiu didn't see Derik or Zhu Mingchun around, let alone Hannie.
"This is weird. They were here previously…" Lin Sanjiu circled the lobby of the bank anxiously. She tried to retrace her steps and wondered if she made a mistake. When she moved to the corridor, she wanted to slap herself. The elevator display showed that the elevator was current on the top floor (which was where the siblings were). Lin Sanjiu had no idea how long it had already been there.
"They took the elevator up!" Shocked, Lin Sanjiu didn't even have the time to rebuke herself for her stupidity. Lin Sanjiu rushed out of the building and flew upward immediately. "I hope the kids are okay…"
Before Lin Sanjiu even muttered these words in her heart, she was badly startled by a loud boom from above. The top floor exploded with flames. The blast was so strong that the force swept Lin Sanjiu for a distance. At the same time, shattered glass and broken window frames fell from the air like rain.
Amidst the destruction and debris, two people were also falling down like ragdolls.
Chapter 231 - Breathless
Just as Lin Sanjiu felt her heart sinking as heavily as the two figures which had fallen out from the window above, the two people suddenly moved. They stretched out their limbs, as if trying to catch any sort of dangling lifeline. Lin Sanjiu was relieved as she quickly flew over to help them.