“Do you have any ideas?”
Xia Jie dipped his blood-stained bone blade into the dirty water bucket, as if he felt Zhao Man's blood was even filthier than the turbid water.
Wu Xinting did not dare voice her opinion. She shook her head.
“None.”
Xia Jie sneered.
“Useless people all die.”
Wu Xinting shuddered, immediately changing her tune. “I can help you carry out Zhao Man's plan, if you need me to.”
Xia Jie raised an eyebrow and looked at the corpse on the ground, chuckling under his breath.
“You really are smarter than her. Let's begin then. We will use her corpse to refine this so-called dream-inducing agent.”
Wu Xinting looked at Zhao Man's corpse without a shred of pity, because she knew that when Zhao Man had proposed this plan, the person she chose to refine the dream-inducing agent on would have definitely been her.
And injecting two doses of Dream-Inducing Agent 2.0 would kill her.
Zhao Man had never planned to escape with her in the first place.
But now, the one dead was Zhao Man.
Wu Xinting cast a cold glance at Zhao Man's corpse. Feeling no pointless resentment, she simply spoke the truth.
“The agents are hidden. They aren't here. If we want to pull off the plan, we must go back to get them.
“But leaving at this moment has already exposed that something is wrong with us. Going back now will likely raise suspicion.
“My death doesn't matter, but your plan...”
Whoosh—!
The bone blade instantly appeared before Wu Xinting, its razor-sharp tip pointing straight at her pupil.
Xia Jie grunted coldly, “Are you trying to goad me?”
Cold sweat broke out all over Wu Xinting. She did not dare move a muscle.
“I wouldn't dare. I am only laying out the pros and cons to you...”
“Fine courage.
“But no matter how much courage you have, you will still feel fear.”
The bone blade violently thrust toward her eye. Wu Xinting squeezed her eyes shut by instinct. She didn't feel pain, only the sharp tip resting against her eyelid.
The blade tip slid along her eyelid, traced the bags under her eyes, circled her nose bridge, and slowly sliced her entire face open along the jawline.
Wu Xinting was terrified out of her mind.
Due to the overwhelming dread, she even lost her sense of pain, feeling only a warm, greasy wetness covering her entire face.
The blood welling from the cuts virtually painted her face red.
She didn't dare move, shivering violently.
Xia Jie took a step closer, saying in an inscrutable tone:
“Did you know?
“A woman who knows how to apply makeup can often doll others up beautifully as well.
“I think you have good features. Are you willing to give it a try?”
Wu Xinting's brain had ground to a halt. She had no idea what Xia Jie meant, but she knew she had no choice but to nod.
Xia Jie smiled with satisfaction.
He withdrew the bone blade and used the same method to slash open his own face. The tentacles beneath his skin crawled out eagerly, dancing in celebration as they crept toward Wu Xinting's face.
Wu Xinting felt something even slicker join the greasy wetness on her face. She didn't dare open her eyes to see what it was. Soon after, she felt as if countless steel needles were plunging directly into her skin.
“Ah!!! No!!!”
She wailed from the excruciating pain, only to find that her throat had already been gripped tight, preventing her from squeezing out even a single squeak.
She felt as though she were about to die, as if countless worms were writhing wildly inside her brain.
Before long, she blacked out.
When she opened her eyes again, she found herself suspended by her hair over the bucket of dirty water. Through the turbid liquid, she saw a short-haired woman whose facial skin was shredded like a jigsaw puzzle.
The woman's face was so unfamiliar that she had absolutely no memory of it.
The wounds were still bleeding, dripping from her chin into the bucket. Occasionally, a tentacle would pop out from beneath a cut, twitching and writhing.
She could feel the presence of the tentacles as if they were her own hands, her own feet, her own body.
She felt cold all over, terrified to her core. Yet, amidst the colossal wave of terror, an indescribable sense of joy welled up.
Because she knew that from this moment on, she had changed.
She seemed to no longer be an ordinary person.
“The makeup is done. Go get to work.”
...
In the hospital room, Yu Jin was waiting with a trace of anxiety.
The Special Response Squad hadn't sent any updates for some time. Trapped in the room, he could only sense the heavy atmosphere of the hospital. He knew the Bureau was conducting a search, but he had no idea whether they had found Wu Xinting.
He didn't dare ask directly for fear of giving himself away, so he could only try a roundabout way by getting Tang Yaoting to ask.
Tang Yaoting, on the other hand, was not in a hurry at all. He felt there was nothing to worry about. Of everyone in the entire hospital, Wu Xinting was the least likely to meet with mishap. After all, in his eyes, she was a Bureau agent.
Left with no choice, Yu Jin had to find another excuse to probe. If he couldn't ask about Wu Xinting, asking about Xia Jie should be fine, right?
He called out to the agent at the door to ask about the search progress.
The Bureau agent at the door was full of confidence. Although there were no results yet, he believed that under such an inescapable net, even if Xia Jie grew wings, he could not escape.
“...”
Yu Jin gave a forced smile, thinking to himself that the Xia Jie who allegedly couldn't escape had actually flown away long ago, and the real Xia Jie wouldn't even show up here.
Just as he was thinking this, the entire building suddenly shuddered. Explosions echoed one after another, followed immediately by the sound of shattering glass.
Everyone in the room was startled. They looked at each other in disbelief before rushing to the window. Peering outside, they saw a figure suddenly burst out from the smoke of the explosions on the lower floors, charging outward.
The figure wore janitorial clothing. The bone blade on his right hand coiled like a serpent, systematically killing several field agents as he stepped over their corpses to break through the hospital's first line of defense.
“!!!”
The moment he saw this, Yu Jin's pupils shrank to pinpricks. He almost instinctively reached behind his waist toward the Sneering Revolver.
He couldn't believe his eyes. His first reaction was to think the red-haired Yu Jin was out there.
But he quickly realized the figure below couldn't possibly be the red-haired Yu Jin.
Yet who else could possess such a bone blade?!
“!!!”
Yu Jin froze, and a chill instantly shot up from his spine straight to his head.
He found it hard to believe, yet he had no choice but to believe it.
Xia Jie!
That was Xia Jie!
He was actually here!!!
Anger flared in Yu Jin's heart. Overwhelming resentment surged up from his throat, and he spat the boy's name through gritted teeth.
The people beside him also snapped out of their shock.
“It's Xia Jie!!”
“He's trying to break out!”
“Don't let him escape!”
The field agents in the room instantly sprang into action—warning, coordinating, and gathering. They stormed out of the room almost in one breath, leaving only the red-eyed Yu Jin and the grief-stricken, furious Tang Yaoting.
And, of course, Chi Yu, who was watching the drama unfold.
Standing near the back, Chi Yu observed both of their reactions clearly.
The moment Yu Jin saw Xia Jie appear, he wished he could leap straight down from the window to join the blockade.
But he knew he wasn't the red-haired Yu Jin. If he really jumped, putting aside whether he would survive the fall, his actual strength meant he would at most be delivering another life to Xia Jie on a silver platter.
Tang Yaoting was beside himself with rage. Staring at the figure about to break through the sentries' blockade, he acted as a lookout and yelled toward the ground:
“Two o'clock direction! He's heading for the residential area, watch out for him taking hostages!”
The Special Response Squad was not to be trifled with. Without needing Tang Yaoting's warning, the moment they detected someone forcing a breakout, almost every Dreamwalker capable of keeping pace with Xia Jie's speed rushed after him.
Especially Li Ji.
After confirming that the figure bursting from the smoke was indeed Xia Jie, he materialized directly along Xia Jie's escape route.
Facing Xia Jie, who was rampaging like a wild beast, he raised his hand and fired five consecutive shots, each targeting a vital spot.
However, bullets did limited damage to the real Xia Jie. Without even needing his bone blade, his protruding skeletal armor was enough to deflect them.
But regardless, the bullets ultimately hindered Xia Jie's speed. The moment his movement faltered, the Special Response Squad behind him arrived.
“Kneel!”
“Lock!”
“Flesh, cease your breath!”
“...”
Countless crowd control techniques bore down like Mount Tai, layering over Xia Jie one after another.
Virtually powerless to resist, Xia Jie was pinned to the ground, bleeding from his nose, eyes, ears, and mouth, forced flat on his stomach.
Yet he still did not lower his proud head. Struggling to lift his chin to look at Li Ji before him, he said with extreme arrogance:
“You're Li Ji?
“Cough, cough... With so many of your subordinates dead, it must feel terrible, doesn't it?
“Hahahaha... cough, cough... hahahaha...”
...
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