The white pickup truck left the expressway through the curtain of rain and headed straight onto the provincial highway. There was very little useful information in the file—not even a way to contact the person he was supposed to pick up. Xueping was more than three hundred kilometers from Fog Harbor, so Shang Lu had no choice but to drive through the night and reach his destination as quickly as possible.
A light rain fell the entire way.
As dawn approached, a row of skyscrapers appeared along the gloomy horizon, points of light scattered among them like stars. Xueping was a quiet little city without anything resembling such a developed cluster of high-rises, so this was clearly a mirage that had appeared today.
Residents stood on terraces and rooftops, observing the mirage through binoculars or taking photos with their phones.
Perhaps later, #XuepingMirage would start appearing across social media platforms.
As part of the old district, Fenglin Street was even quieter in the early morning than the rest of Xueping. Tall maple trees lined both sides of the narrow road.
Shang Lu parked beside a building with dark-red exterior walls.
It was an old six-story apartment building, and fallen leaves covered the high steps leading to its entrance.
The Earthcore Research Institute had a complicated network of connections, and people associated with it were frequently subjected to personal threats, so its core scientists were provided with safe houses.
This was obviously one of them.
Shang Lu climbed the steps leading to the apartment entrance. The buttons on the old entry buzzer were worn and mottled, and the characters “2A” were almost impossible to make out. He had barely pressed the button once when the front door opened automatically with a creak.
A sound-activated light came on.
The entrance hall was silent.
Shang Lu had an extremely accurate instinct for danger.
The staircase spiraling upward was solidly built, and the old wooden banister retained the character of another era. A fresh scrape ran across it.
Farther ahead, sure enough, several drops of blood dotted the stairs, along with a man’s shoe.
Shang Lu drew his service pistol from the back of his waist and silently made his way to the second floor.
There were two apartments on each level. The door to Apartment B was tightly shut, covered with small advertisements and overdue-payment notices. It was impossible to tell how long the place had been unoccupied. The lock on Apartment A, however, had been violently broken, and the door stood slightly ajar.
Shang Lu entered. There was no one inside, and the apartment was just as unnaturally quiet.
The curtains swayed in the breeze, while packaging boxes and promotional brochures lay scattered all over the floor.
The place looked like an enormous storage room.
No—a showroom.
The apartment was not large, but every surface within sight that could hold something had been neatly stacked or lined with clean packaging boxes, empty bottles, decorative sculptures, toys, and books.
There were so many objects, of such wildly different kinds, that it was hard to imagine how long the resident had been collecting them.
Or whether the resident had a serious hoarding problem.
One of the shelves had apparently fallen during a struggle, scattering those “collectibles” everywhere.
Following the signs of disturbance, Shang Lu first checked the kitchen and bedroom.
Both looked much like the living room, crammed full of objects. The apartment resembled some kind of animal’s nest. Even beside the bed, things had been arranged according to color and size.
He checked the bathroom last.
The bloodstains appeared again there. Shang Lu slowly pushed open the bathroom door and immediately spotted someone lying in the bathtub.
The person did not move. A large towel covered his head, and blood was still slowly seeping through it.
Clearly, he had not been dead for long.
With the dead man’s face covered, Shang Lu could not determine whether this was the person he had been sent to find.
However, in the bathroom mirror, he caught sight of an extremely young face.
A teenager was crouched behind the bathroom door, gripping a fruit knife. His pale face was covered in cold sweat, his brows and eyes looked damp, and his pupils were so dark they seemed bottomless.
Their gazes met in the mirror.
In the blink of an eye, Shang Lu saw a flash of cold light.
The teenager’s knife was already stabbing toward him.
Shang Lu turned aside to avoid it, remembering at the same time to holster his gun so it could not accidentally discharge.
The other boy immediately lunged with a second strike.
“Fang Huan Xing!”
The teenager froze, and Shang Lu seized his wrist. Shang Lu’s fingers might as well have been steel bars. Pain shot through Fang Huan Xing’s wrist, and the fruit knife slipped from his hand and fell to the floor. Before Shang Lu could say another word, Fang Huan Xing’s other hand had already snatched up a toothbrush from the counter. He reversed his grip and stabbed it straight toward Shang Lu’s eye.
Every attack was vicious. Every move aimed to kill.
Shang Lu could more or less guess how the man in the bathtub had died.
The teenager was still wearing hooded pajamas and plaid pajama pants. He had probably been attacked in his sleep.
His entire body was still locked in a fight-or-flight response. For now, Shang Lu could only restrain him first and talk afterward.
The moment Shang Lu caught his wrist again, Fang Huan Xing kicked at his knee without hesitation. In that split second, Shang Lu read his intention in advance. Using his height advantage, he yanked the teenager toward him and locked an arm around the back of his neck. “Stop! I’m here to pick you up!”
Forced to tilt his head back, Fang Huan Xing seemed to assess whether he was telling the truth.
After a long moment, his Adam’s apple moved. He asked coldly, “Code word?”
Shang Lu had no intention of actually hurting him and had already eased his grip, his fingers only loosely curved around him. “What code word? There wasn’t one in the file.”
In that single second, a sudden burst of astonishing strength hit him. Shang Lu’s back slammed hard against the floor.
Fang Huan Xing had actually thrown him over his shoulder.
The teenager turned and ran. Shang Lu reached for his ankle, but Fang Huan Xing immediately raised his foot and tried to stomp on his face. Shang Lu rolled aside and, in the same motion, yanked his ankle.
The teenager was barefoot and about to go face-first into the floor, so Shang Lu loosened his grip at the last second.
Immediately afterward, his vision went dark.
Fang Huan Xing kicked him hard in the chest.
“…”
You’ve got to be kidding me.
Shang Lu stopped holding back.
Thud!
Fang Huan Xing hit the floor just as Shang Lu had, getting his own face-first introduction to it.
Fang Huan Xing grunted in pain. He had barely rolled onto his back when Shang Lu moved over him and pinned him down. This time, Shang Lu pressed both of Fang Huan Xing’s hands and legs firmly against the floor, leaving him completely unable to move.
The young man braced himself above Fang Huan Xing, almost an entire size larger than him. His thick jet-black hair was damp, and he was breathing hard. His eyes were so deep they seemed bottomless, making him look extremely dangerous.
Shang Lu was so angry he almost laughed. In an ominously calm voice, he asked, “Kid, how old are you? Can you understand human speech?”
Who knew how Fang Huan Xing’s brain was wired? Even though he was breathing hard too, he remained remarkably calm and asked in return, “How old are you?”
“Twenty-eight.”
Fang Huan Xing received an answer but offered nothing in exchange.
He blinked and kept his mouth firmly shut.
He was probably fully awake now.
With that young face, barely looking old enough to shave, Shang Lu guessed he was still a minor.
Not wanting to argue with a kid, Shang Lu patiently coaxed him. “Listen carefully. I’m here to protect you, not hurt you. If I were your enemy, I would’ve shot you already. This is an emergency. Whatever questions you have, we can talk about them slowly on the way. I can let you go now, but you have to promise me a ceasefire and calm down. Can you do that?”
Fang Huan Xing’s expression remained tense.
He nodded.
Shang Lu warned him, “If you can’t, I really will hit you.”
Fang Huan Xing blinked again.
Shang Lu slowly released him and stood.
This time, Fang Huan Xing did not attack. Instead, he murmured, “Investigation Action Group Seven. Shang Lu. Team leader. ID 6771536.”
Shang Lu looked down.
At some point, his identification card had been stolen.
Fang Huan Xing sat up. He was still a teenager after all; both wrists had been squeezed red where Shang Lu had gripped them.
Despite having stolen someone else’s ID, he showed no embarrassment whatsoever. Ignoring Shang Lu’s reaction, he asked, “DAIC? What does that mean?”
Shang Lu’s chest still hurt from the kid’s earlier kick. Irritated, he answered, “Department of Anomalous Incident Control. DAIC is the abbreviation. People usually call it the Anomalous Case Department.”
Fang Huan Xing pointed at one of the words with his index finger. “Anoma…”
“Anomalous,” Shang Lu corrected. “Meaning abnormal.”
Fang Huan Xing immediately repeated it with complete seriousness. “Anomalous.”
Shang Lu stared at him.
“…”
At least he learns fast.
Fang Huan Xing abruptly changed his tone, adopting the polished voice of a broadcaster. “In the event of any urgent anomalous situation, all citizens are advised not to act on their own and to maintain a safe distance. Immediately contact the police and call 81188 to notify the Anomalous Case Department.”
He handed the ID back to Shang Lu. “The Anomalous Case Department… that’s you?”
Seriously? Was he reciting the PSA right now?
That was the exact script from the Anomalous Case Department’s new public-safety advertisement this year.
Shang Lu had just opened his mouth to say yes when a bullet skimmed past the tip of his nose.
He shoved Fang Huan Xing down. “Take cover!!!”
The bathroom glass shattered, leaving the floor glittering with fragments.
Muted gunfire sounded again and again through a suppressor as bullets struck the tiles, throwing sparks everywhere.
Shang Lu quickly determined that there was only one shooter. During the brief pause while the attacker changed magazines, Shang Lu reached toward his waist from behind the doorframe.
Nothing.
Across from him, behind the opposite side of the doorframe, Fang Huan Xing was holding Shang Lu’s gun in both hands, calmly extending the muzzle outward.
Shang Lu stared at him.
“…”
The assassin exposed himself.
Fang Huan Xing immediately pulled the trigger, but nothing happened.
He pulled the gun back and looked at it with confusion, apparently searching for something.
Shang Lu knew exactly what he was looking for. With a helpless gesture, he said, “Trigger safety.” Then he gave up. “Give me my gun.”
Fang Huan Xing studied it for a moment, then, without even looking, casually raised the gun and fired outside.
Bang!!!
This time it worked.
Whatever he hit came crashing down in a noisy heap.
Shang Lu stared.
“…”
Almost simultaneously, another hail of bullets came at them.
The two waited.
Silence returned.
Another opening.
Fang Huan Xing had already leaned out again and called something toward the attacker in a foreign language Shang Lu could not understand.
The other person shouted back in the same language.
Shang Lu thought it might be Russian.
After finishing their exchange, Fang Huan Xing showed no mercy. The instant he saw an opportunity, he fired, and someone dropped with the shot.
When Shang Lu went out to look, a large foreign man lay on the floor with a hole in his head, his eyes wide open.
This kid was definitely no ordinary teenager.
Shang Lu pretended not to notice anything unusual. He merely tugged at the hood of Fang Huan Xing’s pajamas and asked the most important question. “Who are these people?”
The apartment had been shot to pieces.
Fang Huan Xing tossed the gun back to Shang Lu, his face cold. “Don’t know.”
Either way, they could not stay there. Shang Lu took out his phone to notify the police, intending to take Fang Huan Xing away first and leave the scene for them to handle.
When he looked around again, Fang Huan Xing had already hurried back into the bedroom. By the time he emerged, he had put on shoes and was carrying a backpack, bulging with belongings. He had packed very quickly.
They were standing in the aftermath of a gunfight, but because Fang Huan Xing looked so young, Shang Lu somehow had the bizarre impression of watching a high school student get ready to leave for school.
Without so much as glancing at the bodies on the floor, Fang Huan Xing walked past Shang Lu and entered the kitchen.
He pulled a bag of toast from a cupboard, looked at the label, and read aloud, “Ingredients: rye, water, edible salt, baker’s yeast. Production date: see front of package. Shelf life: three days at room temperature.”
With an almost compulsive insistence, he finished reading every word before tearing open the package and stuffing a slice into his mouth, his cheeks puffing out.
Noticing Shang Lu watching him, Fang Huan Xing stopped chewing and asked warily through a mouthful of bread, “Wha’re you lookin’ at?”
Shang Lu stared.
“…”
Why was he guarding his food like that?
Fang Huan Xing stuffed the remaining toast into his backpack, then added a bottle of water and several apples. The zipper could barely close.
Then he took something else from his pocket and dangled it between his fingers. “What kind of car do you drive?”
It was Shang Lu’s car key.
Shang Lu’s face went blank. “…Give that back.”
This was the first time in Team Leader Shang’s life that everything on his person had been stolen without him noticing.
And that included his service weapon.
At best, an oversight like that could get him dismissed. At worst, it could land him in prison. It was a potentially career-ending mistake.
And the person who had done it was a kid.
Team Leader Shang felt there might be no point showing his face at work again after this.
His temple throbbed. Shang Lu steadied himself and said politely, “I drive a pickup truck.”
The kid stood beside the window, morning light giving him a soft, fuzzy outline that somehow made him look even more punchable. “A pickup? The kind of car shaped like a slipper?”
The description was not exactly wrong.
Shang Lu said, “Yes.”
Fang Huan Xing thought for a moment, then tossed the car key back into Shang Lu’s arms.
“Take care.”
He dropped the inexplicable farewell and, before Shang Lu could react, stepped onto the windowsill and jumped.
“Hey, kid—”
The windowsill was empty in the blink of an eye.
Only the curtain continued to flutter.
They were on the second floor, at least four or five meters above the ground.
Shang Lu rushed to the window. Below, the teenager rolled once across the ground and somehow landed safely without a scratch. Backpack on his shoulders, he immediately took off at a dead sprint without looking back.
Now Shang Lu knew why Fang Huan Xing had been standing beside the window.
He could only curse the fact that the Anomalous Case Department did not issue handcuffs.
Swearing under his breath, he jumped down after him, but by then Fang Huan Xing had already vanished.
More gunshots came from the second floor, clearly signaling the arrival of another group of attackers. Police sirens sounded not far away.
Once he was steady on his feet, Shang Lu took a moment to recover.
Fine.
He shook the muddy water from his trousers and leather shoes, then Team Leader Shang quickly opened his phone.
On the tracking app, a little green dot was sprinting like mad across the map nearby.
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