Chapter 39: The Vanished Clue

Li Chuan and his team swiftly retreated from the burning factory, cutting through a narrow alley before finally stopping beside an abandoned warehouse. The firelight flickered in the night, casting an eerie orange glow on their faces, making everything feel strangely unreal.

"We lost them for now." Su Man leaned against the wall, adjusting her breathing as she checked the remaining rounds in her magazine. "But these people aren't ordinary killers. They move like a highly trained combat unit."

"They're elites," Cheng Mo added grimly. Dried blood still streaked across his face. His combat knife had already tasted flesh tonight, but he knew this was only the beginning.

Li Chuan remained silent, his gaze fixed on the distant fire as it raged against the dark skyline. He knew that the man in black was still alive. And he knew that their enemy wouldn't back down so easily.

A voice crackled in his earpiece—Shen Qiu. "Comms are back online. I managed to pull satellite footage from the surrounding area, but… you guys need to see this."

Li Chuan activated his terminal. A live feed projected onto the screen—an aerial view of the burning factory. However, something felt off. The assassins hadn't left. Instead, they stood motionless in front of the flames, as if waiting for something.

"Why aren't they retreating?" Su Man frowned.

The next moment, a familiar figure emerged from the inferno.

The man in black.

His clothing was slightly singed, but he didn't seem injured. In fact, there was an eerie calmness to his expression, a knowing smirk that sent chills down their spines.

Shen Qiu zoomed in.

And then they saw it.

A shadow.

It slithered behind the man in black, flickering in and out of the flames like a distorted phantom. It wasn't a trick of the light. It wasn't smoke. It was something else.

"Wait… what the hell is that?" Cheng Mo's eyes narrowed.

In the fire's glow, the shadow seemed to shift and ripple, neither fully human nor entirely formless. It moved with the man in black but didn't belong to him.

"That's… not human," Su Man muttered.

Li Chuan felt a chill creep up his spine.

His mind had always operated on logic. Everything had an explanation. But now, something primal inside him warned—this was beyond conventional reason.

Shen Qiu continued tracking the man in black, but just minutes after he left the factory, all visual records of him vanished.

"It's like he just… disappeared," Shen Qiu muttered in frustration. "No traffic cams. No satellite trace. Either he's using military-grade jamming tech, or… someone's actively erasing his trail."

"Who the hell is he?" Su Man demanded.

Li Chuan's fingers tightened slightly around his terminal.

They had encountered powerful organizations before—intelligence brokers, underground syndicates, even corrupt officials with entire black ops teams at their disposal. But this…

This was something else.

"If he wanted us dead, he wouldn't have stalled," Li Chuan finally spoke. "He was testing us. And he wanted us to see that thing."

Su Man's eyes sharpened. "You mean… he wanted us to notice the shadow?"

Li Chuan didn't answer immediately.

In information warfare, revealing data was just as strategic as concealing it. The man in black had made a choice to show them something. But why?

Shen Qiu suddenly spoke again. "I ran a cross-check in the archives. Any documented mention of shadows like the one we just saw… has been scrubbed."

"Scrubbed?" Cheng Mo repeated.

"Yeah. But I did find a fragment of an old classified report. Just one sentence—'Experiment failed. Target uncontrollable. Lockdown protocol activated.'"

Li Chuan's expression darkened.

Experiment?

If this wasn't just a mercenary unit but the byproduct of some kind of experiment, then they weren't simply dealing with an organization…

They were dealing with the aftermath of something much worse.

Cheng Mo let out a low chuckle. "This is getting interesting."

"What's our next move?" Su Man asked.

Li Chuan's eyes flickered with determination.

"We find out who that man in black really is."

"If this is tied to an experiment, there has to be data somewhere. And there's only one person who might have it."

Su Man and Cheng Mo exchanged glances, already guessing the name he was about to say.

Shen Qiu confirmed it first.

"You mean… Li Feng?"

Li Chuan didn't respond.

But the answer was obvious.