The sight of the black cat leaping down into the brilliant sunshine left Fang Xiaoxia staring in a daze.
At this moment, the cat's silhouette seemed to vaguely overlap with someone in her memories.
Yet before she could ponder it further—
*Hypnosis, activate!*
Mid-leap, Bai Zhou did not turn back, merely murmuring the command silently in his heart.
Immediately, Fang Xiaoxia's gaze turned vacant. Many of her memories seemed to blur and tangle.
They did not vanish, but at certain key junctures, portions of her memory were temporarily sealed away.
She raised a hand, trying to grasp something, but the black cat's silhouette was already gone.
Beyond the reach of her fingertips, the distance was flooded and swallowed by streams of light.
Just before those memories were locked away, that earlier question flashed across the girl's heart once more.
*Is a brief encounter a reward or a punishment?*
And at that very second, as if a youth had walked into the depths of her soul, a clear voice answered in a soft whisper.
He said, "If you aren't greedy, it's a reward."
In midair, a black ribbon fluttered.
Tiptoeing lightly upon empty air, her trench coat flapping in the wind, Crow's figure drifted into view, shielding the piercing sunlight.
"You're getting more and more proficient with hypnosis."
Stretching her slender frame, the girl glanced back at Bai Zhou. "Though, when did you plant that hypnotic suggestion? What did you do to her? As someone new to hypnosis, I still advise you to be careful about toying with people's memories—otherwise, it might leave negative side effects on the subject."
By then, the black cat had lightly touched down, vanishing down an alleyway in a single turn.
"I know."
Turning his head toward Miss Crow, who had been floating silently beside him like a ghost clad in black, Bai Zhou nodded.
"That's why I didn't delete her memories, just temporarily sealed them. She'll still remember meeting the black cat, but the jarring anomalies in between—like what just happened, as well as the irregularities she noticed about me—have all been locked away."
Bai Zhou said, "If an ordinary person learns about the hidden world and starts actively looking into it, there's no telling what kind of danger she might run into."
This was for Fang Xiaoxia's own good.
The consensus within the mystical world existed precisely to protect the quiet, peaceful realm of ordinary mortals.
"Then when will that seal be unlocked?" Crow asked again.
"If she ever crosses paths with me again and encounters another anomaly, it will trigger a chain reaction and bring it all back..."
Bai Zhou's brow furrowed, then relaxed. "Though I hope that day never comes. Living an ordinary life, having occasional worries and frequent joys, looking back ten years from now on today's awkward youth with fond nostalgia—isn't an ordinary life like that quite nice? At least ordinary people still have many decades like that to live, whereas the Extraordinary..."
Bai Zhou trailed off.
"Fair point," Crow nodded. "A meeting is always a twist of fate. Wish her good luck in the future."
"Good luck?" Bai Zhou wore an odd expression and shook his head.
"Still, at least..."
Remembering something else, Bai Zhou turned back toward the mouth of the alley.
His gaze looked past the rooftops toward the distant skyscrapers. Blinking twice, he murmured, "This time, I didn't leave without saying goodbye."
"..."
After a brief silence, Crow suddenly spoke up: "Be that as it may, I still feel..."
"Feel what?"
"I feel you're acting like someone who pulls up his pants and refuses to recognize the other person."
"?" Bai Zhou's eyes widened as he turned toward Crow. "Why are you defaming my innocent reputation out of thin air?"
"You clearly slept together every night, clung to each other all day, and she even saved your life..." Recounting everything she had quietly witnessed like items on a ledger, Crow shook her head and commented coldly, "And now you turn around and leave without the slightest lingering sentiment, even wanting her to forget you. How is that not being a heartless cad?"
Bai Zhou was at a loss for words.
*Slept together every night? Clung to each other all day?*
Everything Crow said was technically true.
—Yet taken entirely out of context!
"A half-truth is often the most convincing lie of all."
Bai Zhou reflected on this, seemingly enlightened as a faint gleam lit up his eyes.
"Teacher Crow, you teach so well. I've learned something new!"
"?" Crow's face froze.
*You can learn from even that? Just what did you learn?!*
*Is this student a little too eager to learn?*
*It's not like I'm going to give him a gold star...*
Without bandages, Bai Zhou slipped through the city, but with bustling traffic along the streets, people occasionally spotted him when he crossed the road.
"Oh, what a cute kitty!"
Similar exclamations drifted to his ears from time to time, but the black cat focused entirely on forging ahead, quickly leaving the voices behind.
Every now and then, Bai Zhou spotted the bounty posters for Bear Hunter plastered on walls. Thinking of the sum offered for his capture, an odd glint appeared in his eyes.
Occasionally, snippets of conversation from passersby reached his ears.
For example, a couple was standing by the road chatting.
The man asked, "Let me ask you: if a shark swallows a mung bean, what does it turn into?"
The woman pondered: "Hmm... I don't know."
The man put his hands on his hips and burst into laughter. "Silly, the answer is mung bean paste!"
The woman paused, then clutched her shoulders with a shiver.
Seeing this, the man asked with concern, "What's wrong?"
"Are you a popsicle from the North Pole?" The woman pinched her forehead. "Otherwise, how could such a cold joke come out of a mouth that's thirty-seven degrees?"
In another instance, while waiting at a red light, Bai Zhou saw a parent picking up their child from a weekend tutoring class.
Completely disregarding the stares of bystanders, the mother nagged at her son incessantly: "Why did you do so poorly on the test?! Last week when I asked if you'd finished reading all the books, didn't you say you were done?"
"Yeah." The boy in the school uniform wore a solemn calm that defied his age. Nodding silently, he replied placidly, "What I actually told you that day was: 'I'm done for.'"
The mother: "?"
Bai Zhou blinked twice.
He had a feeling someone's rear end was going to get beaten black and blue once they got home.
—As small interludes on his journey, Bai Zhou suddenly found this city rather charming and intriguing.
People were busy studying, busy working, busy living.
For better or worse, it was life; sweet or bitter, it was human existence.
Even in an ordinary life, every day brought different experiences. That was the difference between Tinghai and the stagnant, unchanging Wancheng.
Wancheng wasn't terrible.
Yet Tinghai was wonderful too.
*Clatter.*
A seventeenth-floor window suddenly swung open.
"What on earth... a cat can open a window?"
Standing in the living room, a middle-aged man stared in shock at the black cat opening his window.
"Wait, isn't this the seventeenth floor...?"
Just as panic set in, the man saw the trespassing black cat bare its teeth in a remarkably human grin.
The cat seemed to say: *What a coincidence, we meet again!*
Naturally, the man could not understand the cat's meow.
In the very next instant—
*Thump.*
The middle-aged security guard lost consciousness, slumping face-first onto the nearby sofa before breaking into loud snores.
Closing the window, Bai Zhou hypnotized the guard once more, making him walk over to his bed to enjoy a good sleep.
When he woke again, he would believe he had already clocked in at group headquarters and that everything had proceeded normally.
"Let's see..."
Bai Zhou first surveyed the surroundings, confirming the guard lived alone.
Next, he examined the small Red Spider totem on the guard's arm.
Based on his understanding of the tattoo, Bai Zhou temporarily blocked its signal connection to the other Red Spiders while simultaneously linking himself into the Red Spider network.
At this moment, both Bai Zhou and Crow reasoned that as long as the disconnection and the connection happened concurrently, it would register to the Major—acting as the Spider Queen—as nothing more than an unstable signal flicker.
Such occurrences happened frequently, and the Major likely experienced them countless times a day. After all, the small Red Spider totem was crude; that it could even be used over the long term was solely thanks to the ritualist's exceptional skill, leaving little chance of a truly stable connection.
Crow had even offered a specific suggestion: "To mimic it more convincingly, you'd better make your own tattoo's signal appear unstable as well, cutting in and out."
"Makes sense!" Bai Zhou admired Crow's knack for devious schemes and promptly followed suit.
"This feeling..."
Once hooked into the "network," Bai Zhou suddenly felt countless invisible, dense threads sprouting from his body, branching out in various directions.
This was the daily reality of the Red Spider security personnel. Anyone tied to so many threads became a puppet on strings, and those positioned across the web were death-sworn operatives firmly held in the Major's grasp—though the rank-and-file pawns remained utterly oblivious.
Bai Zhou, however, was different.
"I'm an impostor who sneaked in—I can pull out at any time." Bai Zhou's eyes gleamed.
Just as an alpha wolf could bark orders and control the entire pack through pheromones, Bai Zhou was merely a husky that had slipped into their ranks.
What alpha wolf? Stay away from me.
Bare your teeth at me again, and I'll bark right back at you!
Slipping into the security uniform and donning the broad-brimmed gray service cap, Bai Zhou raised his head. Beneath the brim, his youthful visage had transformed into a face identical to the security guard's.
A new disguise, Security Guard Old Zhou, was on the scene!
Sensing the surging physical strength within his body and his spirituality restored to ninety-nine percent, Bai Zhou slowly exhaled, his expression turning calm.
With that, everything was in place.
—Time to set off once more!
At 4:30 in the afternoon.
Bai Zhou halted in front of a skyscraper, surveying this massive security group that ranked among the top three in Tinghai and boasted an expansive operational reach.
The gray-black glass curtain wall coldly reflected the piercing afternoon sunlight. Badge-wearing personnel bustled in and out. The sheer footprint of the building was enormous, with over twenty floors belonging entirely to a single corporation, whose name was displayed prominently across the glass facade—
Hongzi Security Group!
For an entire skyscraper in the city center of Tinghai to belong to one conglomerate proved its formidable strength; even across the entire Tinghai Metropolitan Area, it held considerable sway.
Yet who could have imagined that the master behind it all was the Third Young Master of the Zijing Group?
"Loaded. Truly loaded."
Surveying the place, Bai Zhou clicked his tongue and grumbled inwardly, "It's precisely because wicked people like the Major hoard so much wealth that ordinary people like me end up broke. He has to be thoroughly brought down!"
Still, this location...
"This place is a little too familiar."
Muttering to himself, Bai Zhou cast a casual glance toward the next block.
Half a block away, Bai Zhou had just walked past a tightly shuttered shop.
Occupying prime real estate in the city center, the shop had remained closed long-term, displaying a "For Rent" sign while never actually leasing out—a quintessential example of occupying a spot without making use of it.
Yet it had a name—
Curiosity Sundries Shop!
Special Control Bureau Branch 36, which the Major commanded, was right beneath it!
Who would have guessed that the Major's two greatest factions—one in the light and one in the shadows—stood on the very same street in the heart of Tinghai?
Having come from next door, Bai Zhou realized the industrial park he had been searching for all along was located right next to his starting point...
"Two out of three are here. Why not invite the Fine Arts Society over as well and open an art cram school across from the sundries shop to serve as their headquarters?" Bai Zhou snarked inwardly.
Lowering his head to straighten his uniform, Bai Zhou put on his ID badge and sauntered past several guards standing as straight as javelins by the entrance, entering the main lobby through the revolving doors.
The lobby was spacious and immaculate, the air filled with a blend of premium fragrance and antiseptic, projecting an aura of corporate elitism. Even the materials used for the flooring screamed exorbitant expense.
The uniformed receptionist offered a sweet smile, though not toward "Bai Zhou," the middle-aged guard. On the massive digital screen behind her, the conglomerate's illustrious achievements played on a loop: *Serving over 5,000 clients! Market share firmly among the industry's top three! Gold Award in the Tinghai Security Operations Competition! Rigorous, standardized management. The safest environment, the most reassuring choice.*
A strangely familiar flavor washed over him.
It reminded Bai Zhou of Special Control Bureau Branch 36.
As he observed, someone walked past him.
The man headed straight for the reception desk: "Hello, I'm here for a security guard interview. I have an appointment..."
He was a burly man, his face carrying a mix of excitement and nervous tension at the prospect of joining a major conglomerate.
Bai Zhou: "..."
*Joining the Major's security company at a time like this?*
*I came here to wipe this entire place out in one fell swoop...*
"Certainly, let me check your details..."
While the receptionist spoke with the man, Bai Zhou looked away and lingered no longer. Tapping his ID badge, he swiped through the turnstiles.
Under the guise of the security guard, Bai Zhou quickly headed to the eighth floor to complete his clock-in.
Everything proceeded normally; no one was alerted.
By rights, Bai Zhou should have left now.
Yet glancing around the empty office, he looked intently at the supervisor in charge of attendance.
Feeling the faint connection between their totems, Bai Zhou offered the supervisor a smile—one that left the man feeling inexplicably creeped out.
"You..." The supervisor's voice cut off abruptly.
And then...
Bai Zhou became the attendance supervisor.
Killing the man was out of the question; doing so would immediately extinguish his signal.
Consequently, the supervisor was merely left sound asleep inside the private restroom of his office, with the door firmly locked.
Bai Zhou, wearing his face and clothes, moved freely through the skyscraper.
Across more than twenty floors, with so many people and tasks, nobody paid attention to Bai Zhou, yet neither did he spot anything out of the ordinary.
Fortunately, Bai Zhou always found a way.
And so...
Before long, Bai Zhou transformed from the supervisor into an employee from the surveillance room.
He sat inside the security room for over an hour, watching until night fell.
This time, Bai Zhou finally picked up on a few clues.
In a blind spot of the surveillance cameras on the east side of the first floor, people occasionally vanished, never to be seen returning.
More crucially, Bai Zhou's further checks revealed that in the B3 level of the underground garage—an area marked on the official floor plans as an equipment storage zone—there was an independent ventilation system.
The ventilation system here made no sense.
According to Crow's calculations, the duct diameter and fan noise far exceeded the requirements of an ordinary warehouse; they were more than enough to service the entire skyscraper.
—It was as if a silent behemoth lay coiled there, noiselessly inhaling and exhaling air.
After weighing his options, Bai Zhou decided against exploring the east side of the first floor.
While that might be the true entrance, it inevitably meant tight surveillance and heavy security!
Just then, Crow spoke: "I have an idea."
A short while later...
A sneaky, ghostly Bai Zhou appeared inside the underground garage's ventilation shaft, inching along like an insect.
The duct sloped downward, seeming bottomless, as if leading straight toward the center of the earth.
Bai Zhou crawled downward, discovering that the meandering duct's length far exceeded his expectations—and far surpassed the parameters on the floor plan.
Yet looked at another way—
"This proves something really is hidden down here!" Bai Zhou's eyes sparkled.
With that, Bai Zhou took the form of the Life-Stealing Spirit Cat.
The black cat crawled through the duct for what felt like ages, getting completely coated in dust.
"How much longer? This is seriously suffocating..." Bai Zhou grumbled inwardly.
Crow, of course, suffered none of this indignity, nor would she ever allow herself to look so ungraceful in front of Bai Zhou; she had transformed directly into a ribbon wrapped around his wrist.
"Don't you think this feels very secret-agent-like?" The black ribbon swayed gently, her voice echoing in Bai Zhou's mind.
"So secret agents on your Blue Star are all duct repairmen?" Bai Zhou blinked twice. "No wonder *Eight Thousand Questions of Naughty Black Cat* says duct repairmen possess superhuman strength, and the more mushrooms they eat, the stronger they get."
Crow: "..."
Crawl, crawl, crawl. Bai Zhou kept crawling through the ventilation shaft for an unknown stretch of time.
The lonely darkness and the pungent smell of dirt gave him the eerie illusion of being an undead corpse buried deep underground.
Gradually, the solitude and thick gloom turned into a torment.
Just as Bai Zhou was reasonably suspecting that the duct had no end at all, estimating he had descended hundreds or even a thousand meters deep—
A complex odor mixing an eerie sickly sweetness with metallic rust abruptly invaded Bai Zhou's nostrils.
Faint wisps of light filtered in from far below.
"We're here?"
Bai Zhou's spirits lifted, his movements picking up speed.
Soon, his view opened up dramatically—
Peering out through the ventilation grate, what met his eyes was a vast subterranean expanse with ceilings over ten meters high.
Massive ventilation ducts crisscrossed overhead like iron serpents, continuously circulating the air.
People moved briskly through the bustling, noisy space. Operating machinery was everywhere, alongside hazmat-suited workers recording data.
A massive, intricate, brightly lit industrial complex sprawled before Bai Zhou's eyes.
Having crawled through a pitch-black ventilation shaft for so long, well aware that he was countless meters beneath the earth, the sudden sight of such a massive, heavily guarded underground facility inevitably left Bai Zhou awestruck.
It was as if miners had been digging toward the earth's dark core for untold ages, expecting only ores, fossils, and magma, only to discover a thriving subterranean civilization.
"What an ambitious undertaking!"
The roaring drone of machinery reached his ears, and Bai Zhou inexplicably recalled how he had felt upon first seeing the Special Control Bureau's underground facility.
Countless meters beneath the surface, leveraging the power of the Special Control Bureau, the Major had established Branch 36.
Yet right next to Branch 36, relying on his own private resources, he had carved out another secret base underground that rivaled it in scale!
The distance between the two was likely minuscule—so close that Bai Zhou suspected the Major might have a secret tunnel leading straight from Branch 36 to this very spot.
Without question, nobody had ever known this place existed.
Bai Zhou was perhaps the very first uninvited guest to set foot here.
Before this brightly illuminated, meticulously organized behemoth, any individual seemed miniscule.
Yet Bai Zhou, this tiny individual, had come precisely to tear this behemoth apart.
"The darkest place is under the candlestick... he hid it deep indeed."
The closer he got to the facility, the stronger the cold draft grew inside the duct, ruffling Bai Zhou's fur.
Listening to the echoing hum of machinery below, the black cat blinked his eerie green eyes. Across his dusty, soot-stained face, a gratified smile finally emerged.
Human Material supply chains, ritualists, the Shepherd Project, Human Material cultivation plans, industrial park development projects?
"Hidden so deep... just what sort of shameful treasures is the Major keeping down here?"
He smiled, yet within Bai Zhou's eyes, a flame burned with fierce intensity.
"—Let me see!"
Chapter 168