Monster - Chapter 25
Chapter 25: A Frail Woman
"This has to be a joke! I'm just an ordinary office worker. I've never learned any fighting techniques. How am I supposed to fight someone to the death!?"
Lin Sandie wanted to retort to Kang Yi like that, but after so long under Yan Ting's control, she had long since developed the habit of keeping everything bottled up inside. She had grown accustomed to viewing things with the most pessimistic attitude. Before she could even voice her objection to Kang Yi, she immediately felt it would be a waste of breath.
If it were Yan Ting, she would surely have guessed that the female assassin who looked exactly like her wasn't actually her. Yan Ting loved power, but she also loved her. She must have done something on her behalf, but the result was still that she had to participate in the fight.
This only confirmed that this "certificate of honor" was something she had no choice but to face.
Her lips trembled. It took a long moment for Lin Sandie to resignedly ask, "When does the fight start?"
"Tonight at 11:30, which is…" Kang Yi glanced at her watch. "In about five hours. The rules are simple: the only weapon is a dagger. It's divided into a first half and a second half, with no time limit. The contestants can call for a halftime break at any time, but you only get one chance, so my advice is not to waste it. The break is ten minutes. You can choose when to take the stimulant, but I recommend taking it in the first half, because you only get one dose of that, too."
After hearing Kang Yi's words, Lin Sandie's face grew even paler. She had a habit of exercising, but that was limited to running, jumping rope, and anaerobic workouts. Forget fighting for her life—in all her years, she had never even been in a single fistfight.
"Oh, right. If there's still no winner after both halves are over, the executioner will dispose of you. At that point, you won't even get a chance to go to the hospital," Kang Yi reminded Lin Sandie with a smile.
"…Do I have any other choice?" Once she presented this kind of certificate of honor, Lin Sandie would definitely die. She had a premonition, and her premonitions were always accurate.
"Nope," Kang Yi said, still smiling cheerfully at Lin Sandie's ashen face. "For an ordinary person to join us, this is the only way to become one of us. Only then can you have a future again."
Kang Yi slowly stood up and walked toward the door. "Come on, I'll take you to get something to eat first. What do you want?"
"Fried chicken."
"I thought you'd say you had no appetite." Hearing Lin Sandie state her request so clearly, Kang Yi raised an eyebrow, looking at her with some surprise. She saw that Lin Sandie, who had been so calm and composed since they met, now had red-rimmed eyes.
"I haven't had fried chicken in four years," Lin Sandie said, her voice full of grievance. ①
Because Yan Ting didn't like it, because she was afraid of losing her figure, she had desperately paid Yan Ting with all sorts of rights and freedoms just to stay alive. But now, all of that had been easily shattered by a woman of unknown origin. Lin Sandie felt she was truly pathetic.
But even if she was pathetic, she wanted to eat something she loved at the end of her life.
Seeing Lin Sandie like this, Kang Yi paused. She walked over and tilted her head slightly to look at Lin Sandie's beautiful, tear-streaked face. For some reason, when the usually calm and steady Lin Sandie had such a moment of intense emotional fluctuation, she seemed like a completely different person. Such vulnerability and sorrow could pierce the heart of anyone with their guard down.
Kang Yi raised a hand and caressed Lin Sandie's cheek. It was soft and cold to the touch.
Lin Sandie bit her lip to keep her tears from falling, turning her face away slightly.
"What a pity~" Kang Yi chuckled softly and took Lin Sandie's hand. When she let go, a small switchblade rested in Lin Sandie's palm. Its surface was decorated with a pattern of small blue and white flowers.
"What is this, Ms. Kang?" Her rain-misted eyes looked up at Kang Yi.
"Consider it a gift from me." Kang Yi gave Lin Sandie a deep look and withdrew her hand. "This is the only help I'm authorized to give you. You'd better hide it."
Lin Sandie knew nothing about what was to come, but she obediently tucked the switchblade into her trench coat pocket, placing it next to the photograph.
10:20 PM.
In the shadows of a camphor tree across the street from the back entrance of the Salai Building, a crow with glossy, sleek feathers perched on a branch, heartily eating a box of sashimi balanced in the fork of the branches. As it used its beak to pick up the plump, red-and-white slices of fish, it would occasionally dip them into the wasabi and soy sauce in a separate compartment of the box before swallowing them whole.
At these moments, its bird face, which shouldn't have been capable of expression, became incredibly animated.
After accepting the case from Xu Siqian to investigate the cause of Xu Yao's death, Lou and Miu the crow began their investigation of the Salai Building, which was said to be the most luxurious skyscraper in Leviathan.
Because time was short, Lou hadn't been able to forge a logical identity or find a suitable disguise. Miu decided that until they found a way for Lou to infiltrate the building, it would monitor the place first, collecting information on the people coming and going.
As a Guide carrying out a mission, Miu had some basic abilities that Sentinels lacked. One of them was that it could release a 100-meter-diameter spherical space centered on itself. Anyone who passed through this sphere, even if they weren't in Miu's line of sight, would have their information scanned and acquired by it.
This was a basic skill permitted by "Thus Have I Heard." The corresponding basic skill for Sentinels was called "Line," a skill used for tracking.
Within the spherical space of the "Island," Miu could clearly perceive anything that happened, even the fall of a single feather.
Besides scanning information on people passing through, this ability could also provide a warning of anyone approaching to attack. Like the assassin who had been hunting Lou, Miu had sensed him the moment he entered the sphere's range.
The ability wasn't overwhelmingly powerful, but it was very useful.
In the Main World, this ability was called: Island.
Through the "Island's" scans, Miu discovered that the people entering and exiting the Salai Building were all either rich or noble. Furthermore, this was the headquarters of the two houses of parliament, concentrating almost 90% of the upper echelons of this Tower World.
For this reason, the surveillance here was astonishingly dense. Not only were there plainclothes guards, but there were also cameras every few steps, which made Miu hesitant to let that idiot Lou come over.
Even the late-night snack it was currently eating had been bought by Wang Lirou.
"Little Crow~" Miu was happily eating when Lou's cheerful voice suddenly sounded in its mind, making its eyelids twitch.
Miu swallowed the sashimi in its beak in one gulp and immediately hopped to another branch. In the distance, a white ambulance was heading in their direction. Through the connection between it and Lou, it could clearly see Lou dressed in a nurse's uniform, wearing a mask, with her long hair tied up, sitting neatly in the back of the ambulance playing on her phone.
"What are you doing here?!" Miu exclaimed, then hopped back to the original branch, swallowed the last two pieces of sashimi, and then its body shrank, the entire bird transforming into a brooch that appeared over Lou's heart.
"I wanted to go in disguise, but you said no, so I had to sneak over as a nurse. Don't worry! I stole her supervisor's phone and sent her a text telling her to take two days off."
"Idiot! Is that what I'm asking about? You'll really die if you get caught! This isn't your home turf!"
"Sister Lirou helped me with my makeup. With the mask on, I look different, right…"
"That middle-aged transvestite has skills like that?… Forget it. Based on my recent observations, it's fine if we don't enter the building. We can investigate from the outside and find out who those injured people covered in blood are and why they were so seriously hurt inside the Salai Building."
After several days of surveillance, Miu had noticed that after midnight, people covered in blood were often carried out on stretchers and taken away in ambulances. Some were sent to the emergency room, but most didn't even make it that far and were sent directly to the morgue.
Miu reasonably suspected that some kind of evil ritual requiring live sacrifices was being held inside the Salai Building.
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