The black fog swirled around. Feeling something, Qiu Fa suddenly turned his head toward Jing Pei.
He saw her standing atop the pile of corpses left behind by his retracted hurricane walls. Her hands had shifted back from dragon claws into fair, blood-soaked fingers, currently wrapped tightly around Qiao Ming’s neck. She looked vicious, yet breathtakingly beautiful.
She glanced back at him. The wind disheveled her long, wavy black hair, and her expressionless face softened into a natural smile. “Director Qiu, I just executed some death-row fugitives for you. How are you going to thank me?”
Before Qiu Fa could even process her words, her smile vanished. “Oh crap, no time!”
She tossed Qiao Ming’s corpse aside, scanned her surroundings, and dashed toward the large Bubble 109 gate visible through the mist.
At the same time, the ground began to tremble violently.
Qiu Fa caught up immediately, realizing the problem. “Did the countdown get cut short?”
“We have less than three minutes left.”
Qiu Fa’s heart skipped a beat.
Jing Pei reached the gate and grabbed a stone, tapping a rhythmic signal against the metal: tap-tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap-tap.
Inside the gate, Lolita sat on the piled corpses of Scarred-brow and the Hypnotist, yawning in boredom.
Long Qingyan stood nearby, dazed. All communication between the inside and outside of the bubble had been severed. With the heavy gates shut tight, she had no way of knowing what was happening outside. However, she knew something major was going down, and she trusted that the young heir had everything under control.
Lolita had been brought in inside a box after shrinking into a child. She had no idea who Jing Pei was or what she wanted, but she simply followed her instructions.
Still, seeing Lolita pull a massive meat cleaver from her skirt and ruthlessly chop down the two men attempting to open the gate had left her completely stunned. She couldn’t help but wonder: how did she even fit that cleaver in her skirt? Didn’t it feel heavy when she walked?
Suddenly, the entire bubble began to rumble like an earthquake.
Lolita rolled off the piled corpses and woke up instantly. “Damn it! It’s still not fixed! This princess is not dying here! I’m opening the door!”
“N-No! We haven’t received the signal yet!” Long Qingyan blocked the control panel, her voice trembling in panic.
In the nearby dormitories, several sleeping workers were jarred awake by the violent tremors. “Is this an earthquake?”
Just then, Long Qingyan finally heard the rhythmic knocking from outside. She rushed forward and entered the passcode to open the gate.
She expected to see her young heir, but instead, a striking, unfamiliar woman and Director Qiu rushed in.
The moment Jing Pei and Qiu Fa crossed the threshold, a dark shadow darted past them, taking advantage of the lingering black mist before the outside families could gather.
Qiu Fa spun around to scan the area where the shadow had vanished. Qiao Ming’s corpse was gone!
But they had no time to worry about that now.
There was just one minute left, and the tremors kept getting worse.
The shadow carrying Qiao Ming’s corpse ran at full speed, terrified that Qiu Fa might give chase.
The organization’s orders were to back up Qiao Ming, but since Qiao Ming was already dead, there wasn’t much he could do. At least the body was still warm. If he brought it back immediately, there might still be a chance to revive him. At the very least, he had to report the abilities of the woman who fought alongside Qiu Fa.
And even if they couldn’t save him, the organization could still harvest Qiao Ming’s Atavist ability and transfer it to someone else to keep serving their cause. He hadn’t completely failed his mission.
After fleeing several miles and realizing Qiu Fa wasn’t pursuing him, he finally let out a sigh of relief. But as he rounded a corner, a faint, glowing figure suddenly blocked his path. He froze.
The figure wore loose, pristine white clothes and white shoes, looking very casual. Yet his long, silver-white hair, matching silver-white eyes, and divine, handsome face made his extraordinary nature clear.
The man carrying the corpse stared, his eyes instantly filling with despair.
“Meeting like this is fate,” a heavenly voice echoed in his ears. “Prepare for judgment.”
Cold sweat poured down the man’s face. He pivoted on his heel and fled.
Holy crap, why the hell did I just run into Lou Ting?!
“Where do you think you’re going?” the voice pursued relentlessly.
Suddenly, his foot met empty air, and his entire body sank into a swamp-like void. Fear consumed him as he felt himself being sucked down, stripped of all strength to struggle.
Watching the criminal and Qiao Ming’s corpse burn into nothing but ash, Lou Ting spread his wings and flew back to a nearby mountaintop. From there, he could see Bubble 109.
The black fog surrounding Bubble 109 had thinned to a mere veil. The Atavist families and military units were finally starting to move, heading in to investigate.
There were simply too many people.
Inside the gate, the moment Qiu Fa spotted Lolita, he glared at Jing Pei. This woman really had no respect for him, bringing a fugitive she had snatched right under his nose directly back in front of him.
But there was no time to argue.
Long Qingyan, being an ordinary human, was tossed to the floor by the heavy tremors, unable to stand. She desperately clutched the microphone to the bubble’s broadcast system, wanting to calm the panicked workers.
But she was shaking too hard to speak. Lolita snatched the microphone away and spoke into it playfully, “Testing, testing. It’s not an earthquake, just some Atavists making a mess. Go back to sleep. The shaking will stop soon. Don’t get out of bed, unless you want to fall and break your neck. Testing…”
The countdown displayed: 00:30… 00:29… 00:28…
Qiu Fa raised a fist, ready to smash the machine, but Jing Pei grabbed her phone and stopped him. “If I’m not mistaken, there’s a biochemical bomb inside that thing. If you attack it, it’ll detonate and infect us all. I bet entering the wrong code will trigger it, too.”
“Do you know the correct code?”
“Not a clue.” She knew the shutdown code for the original machine, but this new one had been altered by the plot. The code was bound to be different.
Qiu Fa: “…”
Just then, her call went through.
Jiang Qing had not gone to Bubble 109 with the rest of the Wu family. He sat in his room, keeping an eye on the news.
He noticed that the Atavist families who had rushed to the scene weren’t doing anything. They were all waiting to see how Qiu Fa would handle the situation before making their own moves.
How stupid, Jiang Qing thought. These great families had always been the same—coward, greedy, and always eager to push someone else to the front lines while they stayed safe.
But they didn’t realize that regardless of whether Qiu Fa won or lost, they would still end up as the losers.
Of course, even if they did intervene now, it would be useless.
He glanced at his watch. “There’s no time left.”
“No time for what?” his mother asked gently from the doorway.
“Nothing.” He stood up and left the living room, leaving his mother staring anxiously at his back.
Jiang Qing returned to his bedroom. Just as he unbuttoned his collar, a hidden phone in his drawer began to ring.
His brow twitched. He pulled it out and saw an unfamiliar number on the screen.
He picked up. “Who is this?”
A strange female voice answered from the other end. “If you don’t want your secrets leaked to the little tortoise, tell me the new shutdown code for the machine in Bubble 109 right now.”
Jiang Qing’s expression stiffened. “Who are you?”
“You have five seconds to think about it.” Jing Pei glanced at the watch she had stripped from Qiao Ming’s severed hand. Only ten seconds remained on the countdown. “Don’t count on me dying in Bubble 109. Since I chose to come here, I obviously brought a secret weapon to save myself. But if this bubble goes down, you’ll be the one dying next.”
Standing beside her, Qiu Fa had a highly complicated expression. He was a law enforcer, yet he was forced to stand by and watch an information broker blackmail someone right in front of him.
Jiang Qing didn’t know the caller’s identity, but the feeling of having his secrets exposed made his skin crawl. The woman’s voice continued, “Do you really want to do something you can’t undo?”
Jiang Qing clenched his phone. Under immense pressure, he rattled off a string of codes, his voice turning icy. “I’ve given you the code. Let’s see if you have the guts to trust it.”
The line went dead immediately.
Jiang Qing slumped onto the edge of his bed, burying his face in his hands as his mind raced.
Six seconds left.
Jing Pei immediately typed the characters into the machine’s keyboard. Her fingers flew across the keys, entering the complex string of letters and numbers exactly as Jiang Qing had described.
But the code was very long.
00:06… 00:05… 00:04…
Jing Pei suddenly felt a warm wave of Atavist energy wrap around her. It belonged to Qiu Fa.
“Are you planning to arrest me, or are you protecting me?” Jing Pei actually found the time to tease him.
Qiu Fa remained silent.
“Don’t worry. Even if the code is wrong, I still have a backup measure to turn things around,” Jing Pei said. She wasn’t joking, though she really didn’t want to play her ultimate card just yet. If she had to use her final trump card this early in the game, she would have to seriously question her ability to alter the future.
Meanwhile, in the Nevergone District, the moment Chu Xusheng received the text message Jing Pei had pre-saved in her drafts, his muscles tensed.
Min Yue, who was keeping a close eye on Bubble 109 through a battered laptop, also grew very solemn.
“Hey, what exactly is your ability?” Chu Xusheng asked anxiously. “If I don’t get another text in five minutes, you have to act!”
Those were Jing Pei’s strict orders.
Min Yue pursed her lips, saying nothing. She pulled a small knife from her boot, looked at Chu Xusheng, and then stared at the blade, as if weighing her options.
Wait, a knife? It didn’t carry any Atavist energy; it was just a plain, ordinary kitchen knife.
Chu Xusheng was thoroughly baffled. Why did she look at him like that?
How could a normal knife possibly turn the tide in a crisis of this scale?
Back at Bubble 109, Qiu Fa stared down at the blood-stained watch Jing Pei had tossed aside.
00:03…
The membrane of Bubble 109 began to tear.
00:02…
The tearing accelerated rapidly.
00:01…
A singularity was forming.
00:00.
Jing Pei slammed the confirm key.
The energy flow tearing the spacetime connection suddenly cut off. The tearing stopped instantly. Due to the natural elasticity of the spatial membrane, the tiny cracks began to heal themselves.
The violent tremors gradually subsided.
Jiang Qing’s code was correct.
The crisis was averted.
