Before them lay a twisted vision of hell.
The abandoned cold-storage facility and half the building in front of it had vanished completely. Even beneath the torrential rain, the flames stubbornly danced, vaporizing the downpour into hissing white steam.
The air reeked of gunpowder, charred debris, and something even more pungent.
The veins on Qinian’s neck stood out as he continued struggling beneath Jiang Ce’s arm. “He’s in there! I can feel it! My brother, he—cough, cough…”
Before he could finish, he doubled over and vomited a mouthful of blood into the muddy water.
Within the range of their shared senses, he could clearly feel the faint, violently fluctuating life signal of his brother, Qi Sui. Half of that agony was being transferred directly to him.
“If my brother dies, what’s the point of me staying alive?!” Tears glimmered faintly in Qinian’s eyes as he turned and glared at Shen Wu. “Can’t you detect things?! Is my brother in there or not?!”
Shen Wu’s face looked unnaturally pale in the firelight.
He had just forcibly expanded his mental scan over a wide area. Now, his temples throbbed violently, and he pressed his fingers against them, enduring the stabbing pain brought on by his depleted mental power.
Shen Wu did not answer Qinian. Instead, he looked at the terminal on his wrist, as though he had received an urgent message.
Jiang Nuan fully recovered from her brief dizziness. She took several breaths, forcing herself to calm down.
She quickly pulled the box of energy candies Lu Zhaoming had given them from the inner pocket of her clothes.
She went to Jiang Ce first. He was doing everything he could to restrain the struggling Qinian.
After expending so much energy shielding the four of them earlier, and now having to hold Qinian down, fine beads of sweat had appeared at his temples. The muscles in his arm were taut, their contours sharply defined.
“We need to replenish our energy first. That’s the only way we’ll be able to handle the battle ahead,” Jiang Nuan said.
Jiang Ce turned his face slightly and opened his mouth without hesitation, accepting the candy. “Thanks. And… don’t be afraid.”
The rest of his words caught in his throat: I’m here.
Then she went to Shen Wu.
Jiang Nuan did not intend to feed him the way she had fed Jiang Ce, since Shen Wu’s hands were free. He was staring at the luminous screen of his wrist terminal, his brows slightly furrowed and his expression grave.
Jiang Nuan held the candy out to him, but Shen Wu did not even raise his eyes. She simply pressed it against his lips.
Shen Wu’s hand paused over the terminal. He looked up at her, and something flashed swiftly through his eyes—an emotion that had no place in a situation like this.
He obediently opened his mouth. The warm, slick tip of his tongue brushed over her fingertip as he drew the candy inside.
Finally, Jiang Nuan went to Qinian.
Qinian was still breathing heavily, his chest heaving. He seemed to have lost all awareness of everything around him that had nothing to do with Qi Sui.
Jiang Nuan practically forced his teeth apart and shoved the candy into his mouth.
Rich sweetness spread across his tongue, tangling with the blood filling his mouth.
Qinian instinctively tried to spit it out, but Jiang Nuan had already clamped a hand over his mouth.
“Swallow it.” Her palm was warm against his cold lips. “Your brother is still waiting for you. If you rush in there like this, are you going to help him—or just collect his body?”
Qinian’s peach-shaped eyes, burning with madness, locked onto Jiang Nuan.
She did not retreat. She met his gaze head-on, even as she felt his lips trembling beneath her palm.
Her own hand was trembling too, but from anger.
Beneath her palm, Qinian’s trembling was terrifyingly real—the spasms of someone teetering on the brink of collapse.
In that moment, all the ambiguity and testing between them vanished. Nothing remained but the shared empathy of comrades who understood that if one fell, the others would suffer as well.
She hated this world with all her heart. Hated how cruel it was, how even staying alive demanded that they exhaust every last ounce of their strength.
That hatred seared through her nerves. Yet in the midst of overwhelming fear, it brought her a strange clarity.
She could not collapse. And she could not let him collapse either.
Her grip tightened, her fingers nearly digging into his cheeks.
After a long moment, his Adam’s apple moved with difficulty, and he swallowed the liquid mixed with blood and sugar.
The instant the energy candy passed down his throat, a warm current surged through his limbs. His depleted powers and strength began to recover.
Qinian finally stopped struggling and regained some composure, but his entire body remained taut as he stared at the burning pit ahead. “Contact the captain. Tell him to level this place, no matter what’s inside, no matter how many Cleaners there are—”
“It won’t work.” Shen Wu stood a little farther away, the screen of his communications terminal still lit.
“What do you mean?” Jiang Nuan asked.
Her heart clenched. What did he mean, it wouldn’t work? The only person who could break the deadlock as quickly as possible was Lu Shiyan.
Shen Wu was silent for two seconds.
“Just now, I received an encrypted emergency message from the captain.”
Rainwater ran down Shen Wu’s pale face.
“The command center has initiated impeachment proceedings against the Governor of Whale Harbor City on the grounds of ‘questionable identity.’ He’s currently under house arrest at headquarters. All his authority has been temporarily frozen, and communications have been cut off.”
The sound of the rain seemed to swell infinitely at that moment. Jiang Nuan felt the blood in her body turn cold.
“If the captain doesn’t resolve this, every one of us in Whale Harbor City will be classified as a wanted criminal.”
After all, everyone’s identities in this world had been created through Lu Shiyan’s abuse of the governor’s authority. That protective umbrella was already on the verge of collapse.
Shen Wu looked at them, his voice heavy.
“This isn’t a coincidence. It’s a trap carefully designed for every member of Team Zero. We have no backup.”
“The captain’s identity was exposed, we were lured to this godforsaken place, Qi Sui was used as bait to draw Ye Que into attacking at this precise moment, and the Cleaners ambushed us… Every step was calculated.”
The torrential rain pounded against the burning ruins, producing a constant sizzling hiss.
A heavy thought surfaced in Jiang Nuan’s mind, colder than the rain and hotter than the flames.
This was a meticulously orchestrated, multilayered trap aimed at Team Zero.
First, they had been lured away and drawn deep into danger. Then, their escape route had been severed at the source.
Who, exactly, could have laid such a precise and vicious trap?
Who could calculate each of their movements, build up a local force like the Cleaners, and set off multiple chains of events at the same time?
And yet, for some reason, they had specifically forbidden anyone from touching her?
