His slumber had been deep and sweet, with no telling how much time had passed.
Bai Zhou woke up on the several-hundred-square-foot floor... on the top level of his grand villa.
What greeted his eyes was an unfamiliar... sky.
Along with a strange, glaring sun.
—Such was life in a "sunroom" that lacked a ceiling and was missing two walls.
All in all, rounding up generously, Bai Zhou's hard work had earned him the fairytale life of a successful man... even if only half of it.
"Morning."
A familiar, calm voice rang out with the punctuality of an alarm clock.
"Morning, Crow."
Bai Zhou rubbed his eyes and sat up.
"How long did I sleep?"
"Seven hours."
"That long?" Bai Zhou looked up at the blazing sun overhead. "I got roasted like that for so long without waking up?"
He rubbed his face unconsciously, wondering if he had been baked black as charcoal.
"..."
Crow didn't bother to answer, offering neither confirmation nor denial to his question.
Yet as soon as Bai Zhou turned his head, he spotted a mass of flailing shadowy tentacles rapidly pulling back from the corner where he had just been sleeping—
Eventually retreating under Crow's feet.
"Could it be?"
Bai Zhou looked at Crow with a surprised expression.
Had Crow used her shadows to block the sunlight for him?
—No wonder he had slept so soundly.
"Now that you're awake, it's time to get down to business."
Crow simply turned her head away, bringing up serious matters with her usual impassive face.
*Tap, tap-tap!*
Lifting her boot, she stomped the heel twice against the concrete floor beneath her.
"As a stronghold, this place lacks far too much!"
"Especially regarding escape contingencies and structural reinforcement."
"If the enemy fires a few rockets here or blankets the area with artillery, you'll have no way out and will just have to sit and wait for death."
Crow shook her head solemnly.
"—Unacceptable!"
"However..."
Noticing Bai Zhou's stern expression, Crow's voice softened slightly.
"The traps inside are passable..."
—Far more than merely passable.
Putting aside their raw power and speaking strictly of the traps themselves, the clever interlocking mechanisms and vicious angles of several layouts had rendered even Crow speechless.
It was as if Bai Zhou were remarkably experienced in this craft, as though he had witnessed countless sinister trap configurations and harbored mature blueprints in his mind all along.
—Yet how was that possible?
As Bai Zhou's sole teacher, she certainly didn't recall teaching him any of this.
...Then it could only be innate talent.
This inevitably reminded Crow of the quicklime Bai Zhou had hurled in past battles, and the high-powered tactical flashlight he had strapped to a speargun...
Was Bai Zhou truly a Destined of the [Chen] Fate Principle, a path renowned for its upright and magnanimous nature?
Upright and magnanimous—which of those qualities had Bai Zhou ever displayed?
—Crow was utterly baffled.
...And so, the moment Bai Zhou got out of bed, he threw himself into work.
The abandoned villa was renovated beyond recognition.
Using shards of red brick, he scribbled and sketched across the walls, tracing all manner of bizarre patterns.
Powdered desiccated rats, the bones of dead birds, and the dried husks of various insects were arranged in designated ritual positions.
Through this hands-on practice, Bai Zhou's mastery of micro-rituals grew steadily more proficient.
In truth, he had only learned about ten micro-rituals from Crow. None possessed tremendous power, but together they covered nearly every practical scenario.
—It amounted to an introductory foundation.
Among them, the most remarkable—and the hardest to master...
Was the explosive ritual that had once shaken the entire Special Control Bureau.
—And even that required the assistance of specific chemical precursors.
An hour slipped by in a flash.
Under Bai Zhou's sweat and toil, this deserted "haunted house" was drastically overhauled into...
Something far more bizarre and terrifying than any haunted house.
If a vagrant were to wander in by accident, even without tripping a single trap, the sheer sight of the interior would send them fleeing into the night in terror.
For at this moment, across all five floors of the villa, every section of floor, ceiling, and wall was covered in grotesque ritual symbols painted with red pigment.
—It looked for all the world like the gathering hall of an esoteric cult's den, creepy beyond belief!
*Clatter—*
Tossing aside the tiny red stone that had worn down to nothing, Bai Zhou dusted the red powder from his hands and stood on the staircase, gazing over his handiwork with deep satisfaction.
Across the rough concrete walls, scarlet ritual glyphs spread out dense as spiderwebs, blanketing his entire field of vision.
While the sight would make anyone else's hair stand on end, to Bai Zhou it was another feeling entirely:
"—So secure."
Bai Zhou let out a heartfelt sigh.
*Grumble...*
Perhaps because his mind had settled, Bai Zhou's stomach registered its complaint.
A sudden, gnawing pang of hunger washed over him.
...Ah, time to eat.
Thinking back, his last meal had been yesterday at noon in the base cafeteria.
In the blink of an eye, an entire day was nearly gone.
"Bai Zhou."
Just as he was pondering food, Crow's voice drifted into his ear.
Bai Zhou turned to look and found Crow peering down at him from the landing above.
Only, he couldn't tell if it was just his imagination...
He felt as though Crow looked a bit listless.
There were faint dark circles beneath her eyes as well.
...So she could feel sleepy too?
Come to think of it, Bai Zhou had never seen Crow eat or sleep.
It was truly bizarre—hardly like a living person.
"If the stronghold is fully prepared, it's time to head into the city."
Crow seemed to have a new matter of importance to discuss with him.
"Into the city?" Bai Zhou asked, puzzled.
"A game of cat and mouse has already begun."
Crow's voice was as cool as ever, tinged with its distinctive raspy edge, echoing through the hollow, unfinished corridors of the villa.
"For now, they are the cats."
"Because their early-stage advantage is simply too overwhelming."
"Not only do they have sheer numbers on their side, but the surveillance grid spanning the entire city is enough to paralyze your every move."
"Evading their manhunt is nearly impossible as it is, to say nothing of investigating their operations under that kind of scrutiny..."
"—Therefore, you may need some external help."
"External help meaning..." Bai Zhou blinked twice.
Picking up on the implication in Crow's words, his heart skipped a beat.
*Thwack.*
Crow drew a folded map from her coat and tossed it across the air to Bai Zhou.
"A wily hare has three burrows—that is an instinct for self-preservation etched into the bones of every Extraordinary."
"In every unassuming corner of this city, in every shadow, even inside the sewers..."
"There may well be supplies and weapons stashed away by some Extraordinary, things that could allow them to crawl back from the brink of hell."
"Usually, they call such a place a 'safehouse.'"
"—This is also an important lesson I need to teach you."
Her expression carried a touch of seasoned familiarity and sentimentality.
She looked every bit like a bloodstained, wanted veteran reminiscing about the turbulent years of being hunted across the underworld...
"I've marked the coordinates on this map."
"A long time ago, I left a little 'pocket money' there and forgot to ever retrieve it."
From her tone,
Crow was brimming with nostalgia and confidence regarding the private "pocket money" she had once hidden away.
"While it isn't the launch button for a nuclear warhead, it is more than enough to arm you to the teeth."
"It will upgrade you from a 'lamb awaiting slaughter' into a wolf capable of tearing out the hunter's throat..."
"—And it just so happens to solve the problem of being tracked by street cameras."
A safehouse!
Pocket money...
"Are we going right now?" Bai Zhou asked.
"Of course."
Those two simple words were like an "Open Sesame" incantation, throwing open an extraordinary gate before Bai Zhou.
Behind that door lay the legacy Crow had left behind in days gone by, the tip of the iceberg of her trials through blood and fire.
She wanted Bai Zhou to swiftly inherit everything from her past, arm himself to the teeth, and then...
Survive!
*Rustle...*
With a mix of anticipation and nervous tension, Bai Zhou curiously unfolded the map.
He examined it carefully.
A single location was prominently circled in red ink.
It appeared to be situated in the bustling heart of downtown, and it seemed far from ordinary.
Even amid the dense thicket of map coordinates, it had its own prominent, distinct name—
[L'Ambroisie]
A completely unfamiliar scribble of foreign letters, reading like an incantation or perhaps a shop name, greeted Bai Zhou's clear, bewildered eyes.
Beneath it was a line of text:
"Three-Star Michelin Fine Dining, Est. 1988!"
"—Reservations Required!"
Chapter 44