Sasa's heart practically leaped out of her chest.
She knew the Archive didn't keep useless people, but she absolutely never expected that Chen Yu wouldn't even last three moves against her.
Sasa took a deep breath.
"...Are you Kelsang Flower?"
Shen Yi tilted her head to look at her, answering lightly, "Yeah."
"Were you guys setting a trap, baiting me?"
Chen Yu's wildly racing heart only began to slowly calm down after Shen Yi withdrew her attacking stance.
The man leaned against the wall and closed his eyes, feeling that the back of his shirt was already drenched in cold sweat.
"What a coincidence," he smiled forcefully, pretending as if nothing was wrong. "Xiao Yi, to think you're actually an assassin."
The moment those words left his mouth, the air fell silent for a second.
If there was any room for self-deception before, Chen Yu could no longer fool himself after being taken down by her in just three moves.
Now, just hearing Chen Yu speak made Shen Yi angry.
She wasn't satisfied yet.
She went ahead and gave him a vicious beating.
"Chen Yu, we've known each other for so long. Why did you betray me and become someone else's lapdog just to catch me?"
Shen Yi was still brooding over the fact that he had called himself a 'little lapdog of the Archive'.
Sasa felt that the current situation was quite grim.
There were over a dozen heavily armed people outside, with ambushes set up both upstairs and downstairs. Someone could burst into this room at any moment.
Their teacher was still waiting for news. The situation was as complicated as a tightly knotted ball of yarn; the slightest misstep would lead to a total collapse.
Yet, she still found herself speechless at this little girl's thought process.
So, compared to the scene of internet friends drawing guns on each other, Shen Yi's focus was actually on the word 'lapdog'?
Beaten to the point of being utterly defenseless, Chen Yu pressed tightly against the wall, his face hurting terribly. "Why are you only threatening me? Didn't Sasa betray you too? Besides..."
What did this have to do with betrayal?
They were clearly just cracking down on crime and eliminating evil.
"Sasa didn't insult me," Shen Yi didn't care about any of that. She lightened her steps, swiftly moved forward, and pressed her hand against the man's throat, vividly applying the 'lapdog' trope. "Why did you betray me?"
"Stop being a dog for that teacher of yours, come be my dog."
"This isn't called betrayal," he was completely at a loss with this little internet friend, raising his hands. "I was never your person from the very beginning, Yiyi."
"Then you can go die too." Shen Yi pulled out a knife without hesitation.
"Wait, wait, wait, wait!!"
He was practically cursing in his heart.
Just what kind of terrorist had he befriended online?
This wasn't an internet meet-up; this was a meet-knife.
"You're the little assassin from the Archive organization? Right?"
Shen Yi nodded. "Right."
"No, no, no, you're not." Chen Yu's brain had been buzzing, but after taking a beating, he instantly figured it out. He grabbed her shoulders and said word by word, "You cannot be, Xiao Yi."
"You will die."
As long as she admitted her identity and got locked up, her fate would absolutely be no better than any other assassin's.
Sasa calmed down and looked down at her phone, deleting all the data regarding the assassin for this mission. "Right, you are not, Xiao Yi."
"You were just passing by."
"We were just messing around just now."
She notified the people outside to lower their guns and issued a clear command over the communication channel: Mission canceled, target does not exist. Repeat, mission canceled, target does not exist.
The two of them were dead set on covering for her.
Shen Yi could see that.
The emotions that flared up just now from being threatened with a gun by her friends came fast and faded fast.
She didn't want to put them in a difficult position, so she immediately raised her hand to state her stance, as eager as a student answering a teacher's question in class. "I can just jump out the window and leave. It's the second floor, not too high. I've jumped it before."
"Don't. You better just walk out the door with us. There are people watching outside too, so you'd easily get caught if you jump." Chen Yu wiped away his cold sweat. Did assassins never take the normal route? Jumping out of windows?
Sasa patted her head and lowered her voice. "Cooperate with us for a bit, okay?"
After Shen Yi's anger subsided, she weighed the situation and obediently nodded.
Chen Yu was the first to open the door and walk out.
Hearing the door open, everyone's gazes simultaneously gathered on him.
"We got the wrong person just now. This is a friend I know. She's young and doesn't know any better. She ran in to play with me, and we were just messing around."
"Where did this unruly brat come from, barging into someone else's place with such bad manners?" A companion nearby was half-skeptical.
"And why does it look like you got beaten up by her?"
However, with her baseball cap taken off, Shen Yi looked completely like an innocent student.
It was hard to associate her with a legendary assassin.
Chen Yu quickly said, "We friends always mess around like this, and she's just a kid. It's normal for her to be ignorant."
"A teenager is a kid?"
"A teenager is still a kid." He hurriedly ushered his angry colleague away. "Sorry, sorry, the two of us just made a mistake."
The others reluctantly believed it.
They were all just working for a paycheck anyway; there was no need to look too deeply into it.
Just as Chen Yu and Sasa were feeling relieved that they could lead her out, a person suddenly walked in from outside.
He reached back and slowly closed the door.
Immediately, this caused both of their hearts to sink.
The man stood at the doorway, his back to the light shining in from outside. He took two steps inward, and as the light fell upon his face, his features were finally revealed. His brows and eyes were long and narrow, the outer corners of his eyes tilting slightly upwards in classic phoenix eyes. He had a high nose bridge and thin, red lips, giving him a somewhat androgynous look.
"Who is she? Sasa?" the man asked directly.
Sasa quickly stepped forward and said, "She's a friend I know."
"A friend?" Li Jianwei tilted his head, the corners of his mouth curling into a slight arc. Paired with those narrow eyes of his, he looked just like a fox sizing up a rabbit that had strayed into its territory.
With his hands behind his back, he circled around Shen Yi and greeted her with a smile, "My name is Li Jianwei. Hello."
This person naturally carried an uncomfortable aura about him.
He had a wicked vibe and didn't seem like a good person.
However, strangely enough...
The system, which had been inactive for a long time, suddenly sent a notification.
[Main Character Party Member +1]
He was also a main character in this manga's protagonist group?
Shen Yi's interest was piqued.
"Wasn't your mission to catch the assassin?" Li Jianwei's gaze shifted from Shen Yi's face to Chen Yu's face, and then from Chen Yu's face to Sasa's. "Where is the assassin? And where did she come from?"
"We didn't catch the assassin; maybe we accidentally exposed ourselves." Chen Yu was very wary of him. "Her name is Xiao Yi. She's an internet friend of mine and doesn't know the situation here. I accidentally shared the mission address with her before, and Xiao Yi wanted to give me a surprise, so she recklessly barged in to meet me."
He himself felt that this excuse was incredibly absurd.
It would even be exposed the moment someone checked his phone.
But he wasn't Li Jianwei's subordinate, so why should he show Li Jianwei his phone?
As long as Chen Yu didn't want to hand her over, he had ten thousand excuses to defend his friend.
Li Jianwei smiled, taking a step forward suspiciously. "Really? Is she really not the assassin?"
Sasa nodded, exceptionally calm. "Of course. Look at how young she is; she's still school-aged."
Li Jianwei kept his smile, not saying whether he believed it or not.
He took a step forward, bypassing Chen Yu's attempt to block him, and moved to Shen Yi's side.
Suddenly, without any warning, he formed a blade with his hand and struck down hard at her neck!
