Perhaps sensing Jing Shu's rising anxiety as they found more corpses but no Wu You'ai, Yang Yang, who had already profited greatly from this night's haul of prisoners and intelligence, offered a sliver of reassurance. "Relax. Zhang Qiang knows far more than any foot soldier. This group of sewer rats will not be able to hide for long. We will dig them out." He gave her a look that held a flicker of understanding. "No wonder Lao Niu had a soft spot for this family," he thought. "They were shrewd, ruthless, and efficient, valuable allies in this mess."
The next immediate issue was Wu You'ai's medical care if they found her alive. Bringing her straight back to the villa in a critical condition would only worry family to death, especially her elderly grandparents who doted on the girl. Better to let her recover somewhere secure and discreet first, then bring her home once stabilized.
In the last room they checked, a small office, Jing Shu's flashlight beam finally fell on a familiar figure slumped in a chair, unconscious but breathing. Wu You'ai. Her clothes were torn, and a horrific, charred burn covered part of her thigh, but she was alive. On the table beside her, Jing Shu noticed Wu You'ai's phone. It was on airplane mode, presumably to prevent tracking, but once Jing Shu re-enabled the network, notification sounds began ringing nonstop. The screen lit up with ninety-nine missed calls, all marked from a contact named "Mentor."
It seemed that no one in her immediate family knew she had been captured. Even Third Aunt Jing Lai was still working her shift at Ai Jia Supermarket, completely unaware. Wang Dazhao had confirmed that the kidnappers had grabbed Wu You'ai alone on her way back from foraging, even her own mother didn't know.
Seeing those relentless calls from "Mentor," Jing Shu's eyes lit up with a plan. This was the brilliant, eccentric mentor Wu You'ai mentioned constantly, the one with high-level access. Could he be trusted with her care? Perhaps Wu You'ai could stay with him for a while, in a proper infirmary.
Jing Shu dialed the number. The moment the line rang, it was picked up on the first tone. A deep, slightly hoarse, and intensely focused voice came through. "Who are you?"
Jing Shu: "???"
The question stunned her. If this was truly Wu You'ai's mentor, shouldn't his first question be where is she or why are you answering her phone? Had this person really called ninety-nine times without saving her number? Or, more chillingly, had he already deduced Wu You'ai had been kidnapped and was expecting a ransom call?
While Jing Shu hesitated, the man continued, his voice flat and demanding. "Where is Wu You'ai? If you have demands, speak directly. But I need auditory proof she is alive within the next ten seconds."
Jing Shu: "…"
"Are you Wu You'ai's mentor?" Jing Shu asked, needing to confirm his identity first before revealing anything.
"You did not take Wu You'ai because of me? You don't know who I am?" Suspicion sharpened the man's tone.
"What was he, a deity everyone should know?" Jing Shu's already frayed patience snapped. Clearly, Wu You'ai's mentor was as socially maladjusted and eccentric as she was. "Are you her mentor or not? If not, I am hanging up."
"Yes," came the low, immediate response. "Where is she? What do you want?"
"If he had answered that way from the start, this would have been much simpler," Jing Shu thought irritably. What an exhausting conversation. He seemed like one of those people with a permanent "The peasants are trying to assassinate me" complex.
"She's hurt but stable. Burns and shock. I've given first aid," Jing Shu said, forcing calm into her voice. "I'm her cousin, Jing Shu. I called back because I saw your endless missed calls and thought you should know she's safe now. We've rescued her."
"Where is she physically located?" The questions were clipped, devoid of gratitude.
"An abandoned office building next to Ai Jia Supermarket. Fourth floor."
"Stay there. Do not move her unnecessarily. I will arrive in ten minutes." The call ended with a decisive beep before Jing Shu could reply. "Figures," she thought. "Arrogant, commanding, and not ordinary."
While waiting, Jing Shu sent her worried parents back to Xishan Villa with an armed police escort. She dared not let them come upstairs, even hardened officers had been shaken by the scene of torture and decay. Her parents didn't need those images.
"Don't worry," she told a frantic Third Aunt over the phone, lying smoothly. "She's fine. It was a false alarm. She was never really captured. She's with her mentor working on some urgent, confidential project. Once they're finished, I'll have her call you." She wove a believable cover story.
She reassured them and arranged for the grandparents to stay safe and guarded at the villa. "Officer Yang Yang will take me home later. We're perfectly safe."
The anesthetist, A Lan, who had come with Yang Yang's team, was also preparing to leave. With his injured wrist wrapped and a surprisingly flirtatious wave, he said, "Remember to send that pig leg through Yang Yang. If you need my professional services again, just call. I'm practically a doctor at this point." He winked.
Yang Yang, meanwhile, had pulled out his long syringe again and resumed his 'interrogation' of the now-conscious but broken Zhang Qiang in a side room, the man's muffled screams a grim soundtrack.
With her family secured, Jing Shu waited for the mentor's arrival. He arrived in nine minutes and forty-five seconds flat, a commendable time, only to get lost inside the labyrinthine, half-built office building and waste another twenty minutes wandering.
Following the shared location on her phone, Jing Shu finally found Wu You'ai's mentor on the wrong floor, the fifth, flanked by two large, stoic men who wore expressions of profound resignation. Apparently, this wasn't his first time getting directionally challenged despite his brilliance.
Jing Shu had expected someone scholarly, perhaps in his fifties or sixties, with glasses and a lab coat. Instead, she found a man far younger, probably in his late thirties, with long, sleek black hair tied back and an all-black tactical outfit that clashed absurdly with the dusty construction site. His sharply slanted eyes radiated an aura of intense, focused aloofness. Despite getting lost, he carried himself with unshakable arrogance. "Lead the way," he said coolly, as if she were his subordinate.
She suddenly wondered if Wu You'ai had chosen this mentor for his scientific brilliance or his dramatic, brooding looks. Given her own quirks, she was leaning toward the latter.
Once they reached the fourth-floor scene and saw the armed police and Yang Yang's team, the mentor and his two men visibly relaxed. They even struck up casual, familiar conversation with some of the officers. Jing Shu learned through their exchange that they were all from affiliated special police or research security units and that the mentor's name was Chu Zhuohua.
"How did she get injured? Details." Chu Zhuohua asked, kneeling beside Wu You'ai's chair, his fingers already checking her pulse and pupils with professional efficiency, his earlier arrogance replaced by clinical focus.
Jing Shu recounted everything concisely, Wu You'ai's capture as a potential informant, the failed rescue mission by the main force, the brutal murders of all other hostages by Shangguan Jun, and her own emergency field treatment of Wu You'ai's severe burn.
"You're the Jing Shu Wu You'ai is always talking about, the one who 'survives against all standard biological odds and models'?" Chu Zhuohua studied her closely as he administered a pre-loaded syringe from his kit to Wu You'ai, his eyes gleaming with sudden, intense scientific curiosity.
Jing Shu: "???" She filed away the bizarre description. "Wu You'ai, what exactly have you been telling your mentor about me?"
…
In the end, after stabilizing her, Wu You'ai was taken by Chu Zhuohua's team to his high-security research base for proper medical care and recovery. After some discreet but thorough vetting through Yang Yang's channels, Jing Shu determined the man, while eccentric, was trustworthy and had the best facilities. Still, driven by a protective paranoia, she drove over daily to deliver homemade nutrient-rich meals and even secretly installed a tiny pinhole camera in Wu You'ai's recovery room to monitor her condition remotely.
Back at Xishan Villa that afternoon, Jing Shu fulfilled her promised payment to Yang Yang by having Jing An deliver a healthy black pig from their stock. During a tense family dinner, she carefully explained that Wu You'ai would be staying with her mentor for 'advanced academic study and field research collaboration,' and even arranged a brief, staged video call with a drowsy but clean Wu You'ai to reassure everyone. Finally, the chaotic, blood-soaked day could be considered resolved, at least on the surface.
It had been a harrowing twenty-four hours. Jing Shu was physically and mentally drained to her core, but she had gained valuable spoils, a cache of six military-grade grenades and Wu You'ai's safe return. The loss of several irreplaceable massive stones and over a hundred liters of precious gasoline seemed a worthwhile trade.
That night, exhausted as she was, her body aching, Jing Shu forced herself to sit on her bed and practice with the Cube Space puzzle cube. Even with her mind clouded by fatigue, she repeated the intricate mental patterns and physical manipulations tirelessly. Today's events had brutally underscored the Cube's importance, for storage, for weapons positioning, for survival. She had to push for its next upgrade. Her current capacity was being stretched thin.
Over and over, her fingers moved, her mind visualizing the internal architecture.
Her speed increased without her conscious notice, though her eyelids grew impossibly heavy, the cube blurring in her hands.
Click.
A soft, internal sound, like a delicate lock turning, echoed not in her ears but in her mind. The timer on her phone, set for her practice session, beeped softly. Jing Shu's vision blurred completely. She vaguely registered that she had just broken her personal speed record before a wave of absolute mental exhaustion crashed over her. She blacked out, collapsing sideways onto the floor, the cube rolling from her limp hand.
"Cluck cluck cluck!"
"Moo~"
"Snort snort!"
The next morning, Jing Shu awoke not to her alarm, but to a bewildering cacophony of animal sounds that seemed to originate inside her head. Her skull throbbed as the distinct cries of chickens, the low of a cow, and the grunts of pigs echoed in her mind, their calls overlapping and unnervingly clear.
When she finally pried her eyes open, blinking in the morning light, the sounds did not fade. They persisted, but now she could sort them, as if hearing them from different directions within a vast, open space. It was as if she had stepped into a completely new sensory world.
A slow, dawning realization cut through the grogginess and headache. She sat up abruptly, her heart hammering against her ribs.
"My Cube Space… it has leveled up again!"