Chapter 68 – She Knows How to Play

“So what you’re saying is, what you saw wasn’t just the two of them talking?” Su Lifeng asked.

Xiao Liu shakily lit another cigarette. After taking a deep drag, a trace of lingering fear crossed his face. “No. I saw a lot of Black Thread… At first I thought I’d seen it wrong, or that I was hallucinating, because I’ve been messing with that stuff, and I took quite a bit last night too…” Xiao Liu paused, then went on, “But after seeing what those bodies looked like today, I think what I saw was probably real. It’s just not something I could tell Gouzi-Ge. No one would believe me.”

“Then why tell me?” Su Lifeng stopped walking and asked.

The corner of Xiao Liu’s mouth twitched, and his expression suddenly grew even more panicked. “Because… I’m afraid I’ll end up as one of those bodies too. I… I…”

“What exactly did you do?” Su Lifeng cut him off coldly.

Xiao Liu met his gaze with shifty eyes and fell silent for a while. In the end, he leaned back against the wall and said in a low voice, “I was planning to sneak in and take some hidden footage… Around here, when people book a private room, most of the time it’s because they want to do something they can’t let others see. I asked around about that girl. Her family has some money, but they’re not some powerful tycoon family or anything. With this kind of footage, you don’t have to worry about revenge, and you can still squeeze some money out of them. I was just blinded by greed…”

Su Lifeng frowned in disgust, but he did not comment. “And then?”

“Yesterday during the day, I found a chance to bore a peephole into the wall of the next private room. After she arrived that night, I found an opportunity to bring the equipment over. To make sure she’d already started doing… that with someone, I looked through the hole first, and then… I saw tons of Black Thread, wrapping that girl up completely. I got such a fright I had to clamp a hand over my mouth to stop myself from crying out. But even then, those strands of Black Thread seemed to notice me…”

“The Black Thread suddenly parted, and I saw a pair of eyes. It was like she saw straight through the peephole and looked right at me… After that, I ran. When I went downstairs, I ran into that girl’s friends. They asked if I’d seen her, and I didn’t think at all. I just pointed them in a direction. After that, I didn’t dare come out. By the time I worked up the courage to leave, the receptionist told me they’d already gone. She said it so normally that I figured I must have just been too high and hallucinated or something. Until this morning…”

After recalling all of that, Xiao Liu’s face had turned completely deathly pale. He grabbed Su Lifeng’s sleeve and said in a terrified rush, “Boss, tell me, that woman, that girl… They won’t come after me, will they? I saw what they did. And all this time I’ve been helping Gouzi-Ge with things, I…”

Su Lifeng shook off his hand, then turned to Gouzi, who was following at a distance and making a great show of looking around. “Gouzi, come over and help him. I don’t think he can stand anymore.” Then he said to Xiao Liu, “You should have surveillance cameras here, right?”

“Yeah…”

The owner of this place would never dare tamper with the surveillance footage no matter what. And as a local snake, Xiao Liu had a very easy time finding a way for Su Lifeng to get in and take a look.

The surveillance footage from that night had already been pulled up and was now playing repeatedly on the computer.

Xiao Liu pointed at a lone girl walking through the entrance on the footage and said, “This is that girl…”

After fast-forwarding for a while, Xiao Liu paused the video again and pointed at two figures among a group of men and women. “This is the girl, and this is… that woman.”

Su Lifeng stared at the somewhat blurry figure for a couple of seconds. Then his scalp prickled, and he said, “Can you zoom in on her?”

“The resolution isn’t very high. Even if I zoom in, this is about as good as it’ll get…” Xiao Liu explained, but he immediately enlarged the figure anyway.

In truth, to Xiao Liu and Gouzi, all they could make out was a girl in a white dress, her head hanging low as if she had drunk too much. But Su Lifeng’s expression instantly turned complicated. He stared at that figure and murmured a name under his breath: “Ren Xiaoying…”

The thought that he was standing right now in the very place where she had appeared last night sent a sudden chill crawling up Su Lifeng’s back.

“Did the greeter see her face?” Su Lifeng asked.

“No. She was afraid of offending those regulars, so she didn’t dare look too closely… Boss, I heard from Gouzi-Ge that you wanted to see the bodies. We, uh, didn’t touch the scene. We cordoned it off. This way, please.” Xiao Liu had calmed down considerably by now, though his hands were still trembling slightly.

When they reached the place where the bodies were, Xiao Liu didn’t dare go any farther. Gouzi, wanting to show some courage, forced himself to follow behind Su Lifeng.

But the moment he saw the corpses, his stomach still churned violently.

“They were indeed drained dry by a Xenospecies.” The corner of Su Lifeng’s eye twitched as well. Seeing bodies like these in broad daylight really did make the visual impact even stronger.

There were seven dead in total, and the girl was not among them. Judging from what Xiao Liu had said, that girl must have been transformed by Ren Xiaoying, absorbed by a Xenospecies and turned into a skin.

“Right. You said you secretly investigated that girl. Do you have her information?” Su Lifeng asked.

“Yes… I do. Her surname is Qin. Her name is Qin Moyun. Her father is Qin Zelong…”

Su Lifeng’s heart stirred, and he cut Xiao Liu off. “Is her father’s company called Zelong Trading?”

Xiao Liu froze for a moment, then nodded. “That’s right.”

“… So it really is her.” Su Lifeng’s pupils contracted as he muttered.

The one who had provided Cheng Feiwen and Xie Yu with Xenospecies, allowing them to “develop” more Mutants, was none other than Ren Xiaoying.

And Ren Xiaoying’s Black Thread had also extended into this company called Zelong Trading.

“After Third People’s Hospital, now it’s a human company? You really do know how to pick your places.” Su Lifeng clenched his fist. Last time, because of Ren Xiaoying, Jiang Yushi had nearly been killed. This time, she had set her sights on his younger sister, Su Lian.

Perhaps the second incident had also been deliberate on her part… The feeling of having an Wisdom Species in the same city as him truly made him feel as though he had a thorn in his back.

“Since I’ve decided to keep coming after you, I’ll start by destroying your lair again.” With that thought, Su Lifeng suddenly turned to Xiao Liu and asked in a low voice, “Do you really want to live?”

Xiao Liu froze, then nodded wildly. “Yes! Of course I do! Boss, do you have a way to help me?”

“That depends on whether you’re willing to help yourself.” Su Lifeng let out a cold laugh and spoke with pointed meaning.

Xiao Liu’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. In the end, after hesitating for two seconds, he gritted his teeth and nodded hard.