Chapter 141: You Win! |
The small detection device flew out of the woods, spinning across the plaza before landing on the stone pavement.
With a flash of light from within the device, an invisible reality stabilization field expanded outward, enveloping Dr. Wang.
That was enough.
Whether the other party carried a black box or anything else, under such interference, Huang Xiao could perfectly erase all traces.
The most difficult and unpredictable phase had passed. Now, he was in complete control of the situation.
As long as he steered the investigation toward a defection, Huang Xiao would be completely safe.
Anyone who interfered with his promotion or tried to ruin his future had to disappear.
However, to forge the signs of a struggle, he needed Dr. Wang to cooperate before Hu Lihua drew his last breath. That would make it look real.
He did not need a flawless cover-up; as long as the investigation was led in the wrong direction, it would be his victory.
After verifying everything repeatedly, the venomous snake finally slipped out of the woods and stepped onto the mountainside plaza.
Tonight, Huang Xiao wore night vision goggles, which, combined with his helmet, completely concealed his face.
Unlike Hu Lihua, he had arrived fully armed. He even had an excellent excuse to brush off the older man: the fear of being recognized walking alongside him. He lacked nothing, wearing both gloves and shoe covers, and his pant legs and cuffs were tightly secured, as he was terrified of leaving any biological traces at the scene and ruining everything.
He first passed by Hu Lihua. The man was clutching the exposed shaft of a crossbow bolt in his chest, his breathing ragged and heavy, glaring at Huang Xiao with eyes full of pure venom.
Huang Xiao ignored the half-dead man and turned his gaze to Dr. Wang, evaluating which body to drag over to the other to make the scene look more convincing.
Dr. Wang's face was a blurry silhouette through the night vision goggles. Suddenly, Huang Xiao noticed the doctor's finger tap his mobile phone screen.
Huang Xiao's mobile phone immediately rang.
'Is he still making a call even after I showed up?'
'Has he lost his mind from blood loss?'
Still, he wanted to hear what kind of stammering nonsense this dying man had left to say.
Just as he pulled out his phone, Huang Xiao frowned.
His night vision goggles were not great at picking up bloodstains, but glancing back along the path the man had supposedly crawled, he could not find a single drop of blood.
'If I missed, why is he faking it?'
'Is he waiting for me to approach? Does he think he can overpower me in close quarters?'
While lost in thought, Huang Xiao's hand still followed his initial intention and answered the call.
"Gong!!!"
The deafening chime nearly ruptured Huang Xiao's eardrums. He hurriedly switched off his auditory enhancer and reached for the hang-up button. In that moment of hanging by a hair, he caught a glimpse of the screen showing an unnumbered [Unknown Caller].
"You win! You have won this month's grand prize: a West Coast boat tour, press any key to—"
"—"
Without waiting for the enthusiastic, rhythmic male voice to finish, Huang Xiao tossed the phone to the ground, aimed at the device, and blasted it to pieces with his handgun.
Yet the voice still echoed from the scattered components, practically screaming in ecstasy.
"Congratulations on claiming your reward! The prize will be delivered immediately!"
'An Anomaly Project?!'
'Why would an Anomaly Project target me right now?'
'Damn it, I shouldn't have fired!'
Sensing an impending disaster, Huang Xiao immediately locked onto the culprit.
Only one person nearby had touched a mobile phone recently— "You actually dared to use an anomaly!"
He aimed his gun at Dr. Wang, only to find a complete stranger crouching defensively with his hands over his head.
At some point, Dr. Wang had vanished.
'Is this person the source of the anomalous effect? Or perhaps a reality bender?'
'There are no bloodstains or bullet wounds on him. Will my bullets even work?'
'My previous gunshot was registered as pressing any key. If I shoot again, will the damage reflect back onto me?'
'Could it end up killing me instead?'
As an experienced containment field agent, Huang Xiao locked his sights on the target, but his index finger hesitated on the trigger.
Years of professional experience told him that resorting to force against an anomaly that showed no direct aggression was both unnecessary and extremely dangerous.
Suddenly, he noticed an abnormality on his thermal imaging display and immediately raised his gun toward the sky.
A second later, the ruthless agent froze in shock.
The sky in the thermal imaging should have been pitch black, but now, it was illuminated by something massive. A boundless canopy of white heat signatures, mixed with a multitude of brighter dots of various sizes, descended upon him like a giant hand crushing down from outer space.
A staggering nine hundred thousand liters of seawater, swarming with hundreds of marine creatures and accompanied by a small yacht, materialized out of thin air from over twenty meters above and smashed into the plaza!
An immersive "West Coast boat tour" had arrived on schedule!
Before a volume of water large enough to fill a small lake, all resistance seemed comical. The overwhelming deluge hammered the plaza, shattering the stone pavement and sending geysers of spray meters into the air. Bearing the prize yacht, the torrent surged violently down the cemetery steps, forming a raging waterfall that crashed toward the base of the mountain.
When the seawater receded, three bodies remained on the plaza.
A moment later, one of them staggered up, hunching over to cough up seawater from his lungs.
This person was naturally Shi Rang.
Knowing the contents of this prize in advance, he had braced himself for impact. Suffering a few broken bones from the crash was nothing more than a minor flesh wound to him.
Dozens of fish flopped around on the ground nearby, doomed to die without ever understanding where the ocean went.
'I am sorry, innocent fish.'
"Cough, cough...
...You...
"
Huang Xiao lay sprawled a short distance away.
He was not dead, but the crushing weight of the seawater had slammed him into the ground, twisting his limbs and shattering his bones. He had lost even the strength to crawl.
Shi Rang trudged over and kicked the gun out of the agent's mangled hand.
He signaled to Jing Zi and his hired muscle, who had survived the flood by clinging to trees in the forest, gesturing for them to provide backup. Meanwhile, Shi Rang stood tall, looking down upon the agent whose schemes had just evaporated.
Huang Xiao's eyes widened so far they practically tore at the corners.
The reality anchor had been washed away, and Shi Rang was wearing the face of Xu Guangrong, the father of the family of four who had met such a tragic end.
"A life for a life is the absolute law of nature. It's just a pity you can only die once," Shi Rang declared.
Reaching out, Shi Rang accepted a handgun from his approaching backup. The safety was off, and a round was already chambered. Gripping the weapon with both hands, he aimed it squarely at Huang Xiao's head.
At this point-blank range, he was certain he would not miss.
"Do you have any last words?"
"What exactly do you wa—"
"Bang!"
Everything Huang Xiao had acquired through his endless scheming and heinous acts came to an abrupt end.
Staring at the bullet hole in the helmet and the head beneath it that had exploded like a smashed watermelon, Shi Rang remained entirely placid.
He had just killed someone with his own hands, yet his grip never wavered. His mind was unbelievably tranquil, as if he had merely crushed an empty soda can. He flawlessly arranged the cleanup: "The reality anchor was washed over near the cemetery pillars. Jing Zi, go find it. You, go check if there are any of my biological traces left behind. Report back as soon as possible, and then we evacuate."
"Understood!" The two subordinates dispersed immediately.
Shi Rang took a deep breath. He had been a bit battered during the operation, and he had made quite a scene, but the outcome was exactly what he wanted.
It was Huang Xiao who had "pressed any key" to accept the "prize" that Shi Rang had transferred. He hadn't forced it upon him. Shi Rang had already coordinated with the prize announcer; even if Huang Xiao had declined, the prize would have unconditionally defaulted to Shi Rang. So even if the Management Authority investigated this later, they would only find evidence of Huang Xiao voluntarily claiming the reward.
"Xu Guangrong, Wang Huiling, Xu Qiming, Xu Qixin... and all the others who were murdered, I have avenged you."
He muttered softly. With a sharp crack, his dislocated neck snapped back into place, finally allowing him to lift his head. Nibbling on a piece of chocolate, he strolled over to Hu Lihua, only to discover that the commander was dead.
His neck had been snapped by the sheer force of the plummeting seawater.
Shi Rang nudged the arrow sticking out of the man's chest with the tip of his shoe, and the crossbow bolt simply clattered to the ground.
After a brief observation, he let out a dry chuckle.
This sly old fox had worn an armor plate under his close-fitting bulletproof vest. The bolt had merely wedged into the plating, never penetrating his body.
The man had been putting on an act the entire time. He had likely called for backup long ago, waiting for reinforcements to arrive and arrest the overconfident Huang Xiao.
A grand performance, complete with three different actors.
'What a cunning old fox.'
Sadly for him, he acted a bit too hard and ended up actually dying.
Shi Rang had worn gloves since he arrived. He patted down Hu Lihua's waist pouch and discovered two reality anchor generators shaped like four-sided dice, the exact same model Huang Xiao had just tossed out.
Right then, Jing Zi and the hired muscle rushed back.
"All residual traces have been destroyed by the seawater!"
"Mr. Shi, agents from the Management Authority are already at the bottom of the mountain. I didn't have time to retrieve—"
"It's fine. Let's go."
Shi Rang shoved the items deep into his pockets.
"Our goal has been achieved."
The trio vanished in a flash of light.
Soon after, the Management Authority field agents arrived at the scene and discovered the corpses of Hu Lihua and Huang Xiao. Seeking to preserve evidence, they swiftly began searching for the special communicators the two men were supposed to carry.
A short time later, their communicators were found inside a car parked at the base of the mountain.
The most recently accessed file on the communicators was an audio recording:
"
—Hello? How did it go? —He fell for it completely."