Free Web NovelChapter 1131: Chapter 1101: Night of the Waning Moon (3)
They were the third party to enter this building. In the darkness the whole place lay silent like a gaping mouth, swallowing any living thing that drew near. The corridor was so spotless it reflected the people walking on it like a mirror. Even deliberately lightened footsteps still made a dull clacking sound—an unavoidable consequence of moving fast.
The surveillance cameras mounted on the ceiling were like monsters with a single wide-open eye, turning their heads as the people advanced. The black lens inside the transparent dome rotated silently. Had this place been forgotten? The infiltrators’ boldness made the person behind the monitors let out a cold laugh, while on the other side of the mainframe, Tang was waving both hands. "Meisai, they’re in, and there’s a lot of them." Tang’s shout was somewhere between a child’s excitement and surprise; he chuckled gleefully. "Looks like you’re going to be busy again!"
"No, they won’t be needing us cops." Meisai didn’t look nearly as happy as Tang. He stared fixedly at the screen, watching those little white dots move. "Do these people not know they’re being monitored?"
"Who knows!" Tang spread both hands and shrugged.
The people infiltrating the corridor split up under the orders of their leader: two slipped into a fire escape, one went into an electrical room, and the rest followed into another stairwell. It was clearly a planned and coordinated operation, a highly professional team. Only one thing was puzzling: since they were pros, they ought to understand the most basic rule of any security protocol. The answer quickly presented itself in the form of what was actually happening.
"The system’s been hacked!" Tang shouted. His computer screen turned to snow; he couldn’t see a thing.
"Can you do something?" Meisai asked. Tang shook his head at him.
A minute later the infiltrators had successfully reached the fourth floor of the building. Above that was the isolation level that capped the tower. The scattered team regrouped on this floor. Their leader had someone unfold a map and issued another set of instructions. Immediately the infiltrators split up again; this time only three people remained.
Behind a door was a large desk and a row of neatly arranged pearwood bookshelves, on which books were set out in symbolic fashion—staggered in height yet very orderly. They were so new it made one imagine just how much the owner of this study must detest actually reading them.
The door was quietly pushed open a crack and a foot slipped inside, sneaky as a thief—though in truth he was more repulsive than any thief. "Huh?" Maybe because he saw there was no one in the room, his movements grew rough and bold. He swaggered in as if he owned the place, then shut the door and started rummaging through drawers and cabinets.
Xiao Lin was hanging upside down outside the window, watching the man rifling through the desk, clearly searching for something. He glanced at his wristwatch, made a hand gesture to the guard beside him, and then silently dropped onto the arched balcony. At that moment, off to his left, two figures landed simultaneously on another arched balcony.
A petite figure and a head of black hair—Xiao Lin wasn’t surprised she was here. What did catch his eye was that the person sticking close to her wasn’t anyone from Black Crow.
Xiao Lin drew his gaze back to the room. The man inside still seemed to be searching. A beam of light shot in from outside, and the man inside reacted as if startled, ducking into a corner. The one who came in from outside was a tall man. It was 1:15 a.m. Xiao Lin stared at him in surprise, suddenly stirred.
The tall man sat down at the desk and casually picked up some files to read. Just as he was focused on the documents, a black muzzle leveled at the back of his head.
"Mr. Dong Sansheng!" The guy who had slipped in earlier was now baring his teeth, pressing the gun to the man who had just entered the room. "I’ve been waiting for you for a long time."
With a gun jammed against his skull, the man showed not a hint of fear. He closed the file in his hands and rested both hands on the armrests. "Careful you don’t pull the trigger by accident, Mr. Robert."
Heh-heh-heh. Standing behind him, Robert burst out laughing. He slowly moved the gun away from the back of the man’s head, but kept it within shooting range. "Dong Sansheng, you knew I’d come?"
"I knew from the moment you stepped into this building. You may have cleverly disrupted my security system, but you seem to have forgotten what business I’m in. You think my place is that easy to break through? My dear Mr. Robert, I imagine your men have already been taken care of by now." Dong Sansheng swiveled his chair and stood up. "Put the gun away, Robert. You didn’t break into my turf in the middle of the night just to pay a visit. Tell me what you’re here for."
"Hahaha!" Robert laughed again, eyes fixed intently on Dong Sansheng, who had taken a seat on the sofa in front of a row of bookshelves. Robert pulled a cigarette from a tin and lit it. "I’d like to trouble Mr. Dong Sansheng to come somewhere with me. To meet someone."
"Is it Shao Huawei? What, Shao Weihua still hasn’t figured out what happened at the station last time?" Dong San Sheng blew out a mouthful of smoke right into Robert’s face.
"Well..." Robert paused. "I don’t really know what Mr. Dong San Sheng means by that ’last time thing.’ This time, I think, for you it can be called a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so..."
Before Robert could finish, a streak of silver shot over from the other side, pierced his shoulder, and kept going toward where Dong San Sheng was sitting. The man blurred, springing off the sofa. After dodging the silver light, he landed in front of Robert, one hand clamping down on the wrist holding the gun, the other already stabbing toward his chest. "So what? That Shao bastard can’t come up with a single aboveboard method? Despicable little prick, always likes to play dirty!"
Clearly Robert was completely stunned by the ambush just now. He blinked, not paying any attention at all to what Dong San Sheng was saying. "Mr. Robert, I’m afraid the one who’s staying here is you." A cold gleam flashed in Dong San Sheng’s eyes. In the spot where he’d just been sitting, a gleaming thin blade was stuck upright.
"Oh, that wasn’t my idea!" Robert shouted immediately, and at the same time he was furious that Shao Weihua had gone behind his back to hire someone to kill Dong San Sheng.
Dong San Sheng let out a cold laugh. The hand clamped on Robert’s wrist squeezed hard, and a pig-slaughtering scream burst out. Xiao Lin watched coldly from the side, and suddenly he found this getting interesting.
The scream drew in a strange duo, one tall, one short. Dong San Sheng was a bit surprised as he looked at the two who had suddenly appeared, and in the next second he was about to move to strangle Robert.
A compact double-bladed axe came spinning from the side, the angle so precise it swept in at the exact moment Dong San Sheng’s fist was coming down, knocking his strike off course and forcing him to let go of the man he was restraining. Dong San Sheng roared, his body already springing out, pouncing toward the short one.
Deafening impact after impact exploded out. The force from Dong San Sheng’s twin palms was terrifying and vicious, driving the small figure back. When the short one spun away and tried to retreat back in front of Robert, he found the big guy already blocking his way.
"You want to be my enemy? Anyone who wants to be my enemy better be ready to die! Are you ready?" Dong San Sheng’s sudden line made the two of them freeze for a second, but that brief pause was quickly shattered by another streak of silver light fired in from a different angle.
The three people in the room were all startled by Adam, who suddenly slipped inside. But at the same time, all four of them made different moves: the big guy grabbed Robert by the collar and dragged him toward the door, while Adam’s appearance made the short one’s movements slow for a beat; he was forced back into a corner by Dong San Sheng, his entire back exposed—exactly the angle Adam wanted to attack.
"Lin, what the hell is going on?" Yelü Shou appeared behind Xiao Lin, rattled by the chaos in the room. "Don’t tell me the Black Crow is having an internal feud?"
And just then Xiao Lin’s pupils tightened—his target had appeared.
Robert, dragged to the doorway by the big guy, hadn’t even lifted his foot to step out before he was scared into a scream by the figure suddenly blocking his way. A completely expressionless face, a creepily dead gaze—Xiao Lin recognized him at a glance as Number Two from the freighter. "It’s them!" Yelü Shou sucked in a sharp breath. "I searched this entire building and didn’t see a trace of them—where the hell did they pop out from!"
As he spoke, there was a crisp, terrified crack. Robert collapsed to the floor; it was impossible to tell which bone had been crushed. No blood could be seen flowing out of him, but in just a single second, this man’s sudden appearance had shocked everyone else present.
The man with the codename Seven-Level gave Robert’s body a cold glance, then turned and charged toward the short one being pressed down by Dong San Sheng. Where Seven-Level was, the Clown would be too—no need to guess that short one’s identity. He bellowed, his feet stomping hard into the floor as he shot at Dong San Sheng like an artillery shell.
Everyone thought his target would be Dong San Sheng, so Adam didn’t move to intercept. Yet just as Seven-Level’s knee was about to sweep across Dong San Sheng’s carotid artery, this heavy-built man shifted with surprising agility, twisting down to smash his attack into Dong San Sheng’s hand instead.
Dong San Sheng hissed in pain and let go. Seven-Level seized the chance to pull the Clown out of his attack range, swung her up over his shoulder, and when Number Two saw what he intended and tried to take him down from behind, Dong San Sheng raised a hand to block him. But aside from Number Two, there was someone else who had no intention of letting Seven-Level go—that was Angel Adam. The kawaii face she usually wore now showed a rare open hostility.
Dong San Sheng’s sharp gaze swept over Adam, the pressure in his eyes brooking no resistance. Adam instinctively shrank back a little, a soft shing as she pulled out a thin silver wire. Xiao Lin of course recognized the thing; in that battle in Sin City, he’d suffered plenty from it. (To be continued. If you like this work, you’re welcome to visit Qidian (qidian.com) to vote with recommendation tickets and monthly passes. Your support is my greatest motivation.)
