Translator: Cinder Translations
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She used her connections to find a player who had previously encountered them.
It was a woman around 40 years old, plump in appearance, who managed a large-scale high-tech company in real life. After years of navigating the business world, she had honed an extraordinary will far beyond ordinary people.
From what Su Xiaoxiao knew, her social background was also quite complex, belonging to the gray market and starting in the shadows.
But it was precisely this person, an old player who had repeatedly escaped death from nightmares, who, after encountering those people, had bizarrely gone mad not long after.
She could only rely on the care of her family, curled up under a thick blanket, with tightly closed doors and windows, hiding in her bed, living a miserable life.
Any approach by a stranger, even an unfamiliar sound, would make her tense and nervous. Her trembling lips seemed to mutter things that no one could understand.
Soon after Su Xiaoxiao visited her, she heard that she had died.
The cause of death was a mystery.
It wasn't until much later that a friend in the police system sent news. The case had been permanently sealed in the department, and even with his authority, he couldn't access any details.
All they knew was that it was very strange—just after performing the autopsy, the old forensic doctor applied to be transferred from his post. After some time, he disappeared without a trace.
Su Xiaoxiao sensed something unusual about it.
She didn't further investigate using her connections, nor did she search for the old forensic doctor who might know something.
She was worried she would get involved.
This was not a situation she could test.
Moreover, this mission was complicated not only by a character named Chen Ran, but also by a guy named Hao Shuai.
The shock he gave her was no less than that from Chen Ran, and perhaps even more so, because in her brother Su An's eyes, the color he represented was even stranger.
When she asked her brother about his judgment on Hao Shuai, Su An remained unusually silent. After a long pause, he slowly extended his hand and pointed toward the window.
At that time, they were inside the lighthouse, and outside the window, there was a quiet night.
Su Xiaoxiao blinked and then looked at her brother, not understanding his meaning.
But soon, she realized her brother was saying that the man was... black.
Just like the night outside.
She had never heard of such a color from her brother's perception, and she never expected that black could exist.
What did black represent?
Did it imply that his heart was dark, or that his danger level was higher than that of Chen Ran, whose color was deep red? Or perhaps... her brother couldn't see through him?
So he used a very special color to signify it, to distinguish it.
Su Xiaoxiao knew nothing.
But she was sure that this guy named Hao Shuai was not simple because not only she had noticed him, but even Chen Ran, from the Deep Crimson, was very interested in him.
Or perhaps it was mutual vigilance between similar beings.
It led her to cooperate with him in acting, tricking him and the Fatty beside him into the forest, intending to use the strange stone slab to kill them.
The weirdness of this mission was beyond doubt. Even the teammates within the mission were not ordinary. Su Xiaoxiao could tell that the biker woman and the rock climber woman, Liang Long, who had already encountered misfortune, still died despite their extreme alertness.
"Click!"
A strange sound suddenly echoed in the silent stone chamber.
Su An, curled in the corner, couldn't help but shiver.
"Click!"
"Click!"
The frequency of the sound grew faster, like dense drumbeats, light yet full of texture, as if something wrinkled suddenly stretched out its body, or like some creature covered in a hard shell shedding its outer layer.
Although this metaphor was strange, it was precisely what Su An, who was already unusual, was thinking at this moment.
He trembled as he looked up, directly meeting a pair of bloodshot eyes.
In the dark corner, the old woman stretched her neck, revealing a twisted face, with blood-red eyes fixed on him. Her mouth opened, and a long tongue swirled around her lips.
Her purple-tinged lips were covered in dry, cracked lines, and as her tongue passed over them, blood actually oozed out.
Su An's pupils suddenly contracted.
It's here!
The strange whale song echoed in his ears again.
It was vast, cold, and eerie, like being submerged under the ice of the Arctic Ocean, only able to look up at the outside world through a thick ice layer.
But then... the ice layer cracked, and dazzling sunlight seemed to want to flood into his pupils.
The next second, he woke up from the dream, still in the stone chamber.
The dazzling sunlight was actually just the roaring flames burning in the center of the stone room.
Under the flickering flames, Su An slowly shifted his gaze from the old woman to the wall beside her.
There, the shadow of the old woman was reflected.
The shadow, illuminated by the firelight, kept swaying, growing taller and larger.
The earlier "click-click" sounds were made by it. At first, it was the same size as the old woman, but soon it grew to 2 meters, 3 meters, 4 meters... the shadow even exceeded the height of the stone room.
It tilted on the wall, trembling, twisting, exuding a strong ominous scent.
What was even stranger was that the old woman remained in place, not moving at all, but the shadow... began to approach Su An.
One step. Two steps.
Two distinctly different colors intertwined in Su An's eyes.
One was the old woman's, white and grayish, while the shadow on the wall was pure, or rather, a transparent existence.
Saying that he saw it with his eyes wasn't quite accurate. For Su An, it was more of a sensation—he felt that the entity that left the shadow on the wall was invisible to the naked eye.
What was it?
He didn't know, but he wasn't afraid, because to him, this being was no different from the fierce tiger he once faced in the tiger park.
He stood up, straightened his chest, and extended his hand toward the empty space in front of him, as if still waiting for that cute big cat to lean its head into his embrace.
Just like in the past, just like when he was younger.
In the warm stone room, only the old woman remained, hiding in a corner where the light couldn't reach. There was a fleeting, meaningless gleam in her eyes.
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"What's wrong with you?"
Chen Ran narrowed his eyes. He and Su Xiaoxiao, who was leading the way, maintained a distance of about 2 meters, so that in case of any sudden situation, there would be enough time for warning.
But just now, Su Xiaoxiao suddenly stopped without warning.
She clutched her chest, sweat pouring from her forehead, and her body trembled uncontrollably. "What's... what's happening?" She gasped for breath, then as if sensing something, she immediately looked in the direction they had come from. "My brother... he might be in trouble!"
"Impossible," Chen Ran shook his head when he heard her, "You've seen the clues I provided, Miss Su. Your brother... in the short term..."
"It's not possible," Su Xiaoxiao's pupils trembled as she swallowed hard. "My brother... something must have happened to him! I can feel it."
(End of the Chapter)
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Translated 4 Series, 1.65K+ Chapters and 2.01M+ Words.