Chapter 20

Xie Yuchen stood in front of the fisherman statue with his hands in his pockets, looking at the door leading to the building complex.

The door was open. Black Glasses must have gone in but he was completely out of touch now.

When Xie Yuchen left his room, the Russian advised him not to follow Black Glasses but he came anyway. Although he believed that Black Glasses wouldn’t have any problems dealing with whatever he ran into, he was more worried that this person would destroy the scene.

Whenever there was danger, Black Glasses would handle it, but he would also make a mess of the scene.

If there were any valuables there, there was no doubt that the reparations would be high.

His flashlight wasn’t a tactical one but an ordinary one that the servants had found for him. Nowadays, tactical flashlights were basically as bright as a small sun and could illuminate a whole mountaintop when turned on. His subordinates said that even ghosts would be frightened by this type of flashlight. He felt that such a bright beam could even break Black Glasses’ sunglasses so he asked for a dimmer one.

Now, the flashlight in his hand was illuminating the area two or three meters in front of him.

He walked in through the open door and immediately noticed a special scent but quickly got used to it. This was no ordinary musty odor.

The Buddhist hall held many Buddha statues, which he swiftly looked over with sharp eyes. As his gaze swept around the room, he found that there were two paths here. He took the right one without an ounce of hesitation.

This place was very complicated so all of the rooms were probably connected. At least, that was his line of thinking.

He immediately saw those Orthodox Church porcelain figurines which had been placed around the corner. He squatted down and looked at them carefully.

Without a doubt, this was a road marker.

There was a high probability that these markers were meant to act as a guide to lead people to a certain place. With Black Glasses’ personality, he wasn’t afraid of what might be at the other end but was instead hoping that it might lead to answers. For example, if he saw a road marker, he would follow it without caring whether it led to a trap or not.

So, Xie Yuchen should be able to find him by following the road markers.

He looked at his cell phone. When he got here, the signal was already very weak so there was a high probability that it would disappear when he went inside.

He moved forward and followed the road markers. Along the way, the smell of cigarette smoke became heavier and heavier to the point that it was enough to just follow it instead of the markers.

But the strange thing was, that weird smell in the air would disappear wherever the cigarette smell was. But when the cigarette smell disappeared, the strange smell would appear again.

At first, Xie Yuchen thought that the cigarette smell was just covering up the bad smell, but he later discovered that this wasn’t the case.

It wasn’t being covered up at all, it was just disappearing.

His awareness of minute differences was caused by his living environment when he was a child. He could tell by looking at the creases in the curtains every day whether anyone had touched them or not. He would also pay attention to other people’s fingers whenever he was communicating with them.

Xie Yuchen knew that these details were full of secrets, and none of them were small secrets either.

He continued moving forward for some distance, still remaining suspicious, when he suddenly heard the sound of someone gasping for breath coming from a room off to the side.

He looked around, put the flashlight on the ground, and then moved to one side of the door and slowly pushed it open.

The door hadn’t been opened for a long time, so even if it was opened slowly, it still made a creaking sound.

The flashlight was shining into the room from where it was lying on the ground, so from inside the room, it looked like someone was standing at the door, getting ready to open it. But in fact, Xie Yuchen was actually standing next to the door. This way, if there was an ambush, the opponent would launch their attack towards the flashlight’s position first.

With the door open, the gasping sounds inside became more pronounced and drawn out. Xie Yuchen listened for a while and then looked inside the room, where he saw that it was actually a courtyard. He walked towards the eaves, lightly jumped up, and then used a rock-climbing method to scale the pillars and beams before climbing onto the roof.

As he looked at the sprawling building complex from his new vantage point, he could see just how huge it was. There were many towering trees in the middle of the complex that had been uprooted from various courtyards. He started to wonder about the smell but soon realized that it was much stronger here.

He went to the roof of the room he had entered just now, estimated the location of those breathing sounds, climbed over, and began to carefully remove one of the roof tiles.

His flashlight was still shining into the room from its original position, but the light was very dim so it could hardly illuminate the whole room. As a result, Xie Yuchen could only see a vague shadow. But he was surprised to find that the room was full of water jars.

Just as he wondered if it was a Japanese custom to fill a room with water jars, he saw a man crawling in the middle of them.

The way this person was crawling was very strange. It was almost like he was trying to stand up, but something heavy was pressing down on him so he could only crawl on the ground.

As Xie Yuchen continued watching, the man actually opened the lid of a water jar, crawled in like an animal, and then very slowly pulled the lid over himself.

He ignored the flashlight at the door, not even giving it the slightest reaction.

After that, there were no more movements from the water jar. Xie Yuchen waited for a while but the man seemed to have no intention of coming out at all.

Feeling that something was wrong, he closed his eyes and carefully thought about the man’s movements in the extremely dark environment just now.

The man was groping around.

He couldn’t see. That man’s movements in the midst of those water jars was like that of a blind person.

Xie Yuchen couldn’t come to a definite conclusion but he felt a premonition in his heart. He seemed to have seen or heard about this kind of state before. He opened his eyes and sat up, still thinking, but at this time, he suddenly saw something crouching right in front of him.

He didn’t know when that thing had appeared, but it was crawling on its stomach like the man down below. Even though it was just within arm’s reach, all he could see was that thing’s silhouette since there was only starlight in the sky, which made the surroundings very dark.

The thing was moving like an animal.

His muscles immediately tensed up and he rolled about three or four meters away. Then, he pulled out his cell phone and blindly turned on the flashlight.

When phones used to have keypads, he could type the words just by feeling the keys. But in this era, his skills only amounted to this much.

The flashlight came on and illuminated the space behind him, revealing that thing’s face. He found that it was Zheng Jingyin, but that didn’t seem to be totally accurate based on the other’s current state.

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