signingbooks Chapter 1302 The Gray Gentleman's Warning
Chapter 1302 The Gray Gentleman's Warning
Liu Yang shakily pulled the note out of his pocket and handed it to Yan Chen. His fingers were trembling, and the note swayed slightly in his hand.
“I…I really don’t know him. I only saw him once in that warehouse. He squatted there for a while, looking for something on the ground, and then he left. I picked up this note there, and I don’t know what he was doing.”
Yan Chen took the note, unfolded it, and glanced at it.
An address was written on the paper with a ballpoint pen, the handwriting crooked and messy, as if it were written with an unfamiliar hand.
The address is correct; it's the address of Lin Yi's traditional Chinese medicine clinic.
Do you know that person's name?
Liu Yang shook his head.
“We only met once. He stayed in the warehouse for less than ten minutes and then left. I didn’t even get a good look at what he looked like.”
Yan Chen stared into his eyes for a few seconds to make sure he wasn't lying, then turned and walked towards the door.
Hei Xue turned around and followed Yan Chen, his footsteps echoing in the corridor and fading into the distance.
The clown jumped down from the shoe cabinet, his bare feet landing on the concrete floor without making a sound.
He stopped at the door, glanced back at Liu Yang, a smile spreading across his face, and then turned and disappeared into the darkness.
Liu Yang sat on the cot, his back pressed against the wall, panting heavily after the others left.
He looked down at his hands; his fingers were trembling violently, and he couldn't stop them.
The message reached Lin Yi's phone the moment the SUV drove out of the residential area.
Lin Yi picked up his phone and glanced at it. The text message was simple: "Someone saw that thief."
After reading the message, Lin Yi put his phone back on the coffee table, screen down.
Su Xiao held her teacup, watching Lin Yi's actions, but didn't ask about the content of the message.
He didn't need to ask; if the information was important, Lin Yi would tell him on his own.
The water in the teapot had been refilled several times, and the aroma of Tieguanyin tea had faded to the point that it was almost undetectable.
Su Xiao stood up from the chair, picked up the teapot and went into the kitchen, poured out the tea leaves, and brewed a new pot of tea.
The aroma of the new tea filled the air, much stronger than before, with a faint orchid fragrance.
Bubuwang crawled out from under the counter, circled the coffee table twice, then lay down at Lin Yi's feet, resting its head on its front paws and wagging its tail gently behind it.
Lin Yi picked up the teacup and took a sip. The first sensation of the tea was its mellowness, followed by sweetness, and finally a faint floral fragrance lingered in his throat.
Lin Yi has been sitting in this chair since the afternoon, barely moving except to send a few text messages.
He just needs to sit here and wait for the result.
He would decide on his next step once the news came back.
If he were to personally go and search, it would disrupt those people's rhythm and make things more complicated.
When Lin Yi was drinking the tea for the fourth time, his phone vibrated again.
This time it wasn't a text message, it was a phone call.
The screen displayed an unfamiliar number, registered in Guangming City, but Lin Yi had no such number saved in his contacts.
He picked up his phone, swiped the screen, and held the phone to his ear.
"Hey."
"Doctor, I am Blackblood. The person has been found in a basement in the north of the city and I have already taken control of him."
“He was very stubborn. I asked him several times, and he always said that no one instructed him to steal it, and that he only stole it because he was greedy. I had someone check his background, and he has no criminal record, no prior convictions, and has not been in contact with any suspicious people recently.”
"But he has a problem. There was a small sum of money in his bank account recently, about one million. The remitter was an overseas account, and the source of the money cannot be traced. The money was transferred in three days after he stole the items, which matches the timing."
"He said he borrowed the money, but he couldn't produce the IOU, and he couldn't provide any information about the borrower. The stories didn't match up, and there were contradictions in his statements, but if you pressed him further, he would stop talking. He was very tight-lipped, like he had been trained to keep quiet."
After listening to Hei Xue's words, Lin Yi remained silent for a moment before speaking.
“Bring him here, I want to question him myself.”
"Okay. I'll be there in twenty minutes."
The phone hangs up.
Lin Yi placed his phone on the coffee table, picked up his teacup, and took a sip.
Time passed in silence. The sky outside the window had completely darkened, and the light from the streetlights shone through the glass door, casting dappled shadows on the ground.
Occasionally a car drives by on the street, its headlights sweeping across the glass door, leaving streaks of white light before disappearing.
Bubuwang got up from the floor, shook its fur, walked to the door, squatted down, and looked in the direction of the street.
Its ears stood straight up, its nose sniffed the air, and then it turned its head and barked at Lin Yi.
The sound wasn't loud, but the meaning was clear—someone was coming.
A pickup truck drove up from the end of the street at high speed, its engine roaring through the empty street.
The car headlights drew two blinding beams of light in the darkness, illuminating the road surface in a stark white light.
The pickup truck braked sharply in front of Su Xiao's jewelry store, the tires screeching as they rubbed against the ground, and the smell of burning rubber filled the air.
The car door opened, and Black Blood jumped out of the driver's seat.
He was holding a person by the back of the collar with his right hand, as easily as lifting a chick.
The man's mouth was gagged with a wad of cloth that looked like a sock.
His hands were tied behind his back with plastic cable ties, leaving deep red marks on his wrists.
Black Blood walked between Lin Yi and Su Xiao's shops and threw the person on the ground.
The man's body slammed onto the ground with a dull thud, rolled over once, curled up on the ground, and made incoherent noises.
After Black Blood finished doing all this, he glanced at Lin Yi, nodded, then turned and walked to the pickup truck, opened the door, started the engine, and drove away from the street.
The whole process took less than thirty seconds, was swift and efficient, and involved no unnecessary words.
Lin Yi stood up from the chair and walked out of the jewelry store.
Su Xiao followed behind him, standing at the shop entrance, squinting at the person curled up on the ground.
Bubuwang squatted on the steps, tilting its head to look at the thief on the ground, its tail wagging gently behind it.
Lin Yi walked up to the thief and squatted down.
His body blocked the light from the streetlamp, and the thief was shrouded in his shadow.
The thief looked up and, using the dim light from the streetlamp shining through Lin Yi's shoulder, saw the face in front of him.
His body began to struggle violently, twisting and turning on the ground. He kicked his legs a few times and moved his body back a few inches, but his hands, which were tied behind his back, prevented him from making any further movements.
The sock stuffed in his mouth made his stammering speech indistinct, but Lin Yi could see fear in his eyes.
Lin Yi reached out and took the wad of cloth from the thief's mouth.
The moment the cloth was removed, the thief gasped for breath, like someone who had just surfaced from underwater, greedily inhaling every breath of air.
His lips were trembling, his face was pale, and his forehead was covered in cold sweat.
Lin Yi looked at him without saying a word.
The thief's throat bobbed. He looked around, his gaze shifting from Lin Yi to Su Xiao, and then from Su Xiao to the men in black who were walking out from both sides of the street.
He didn't know where those people came from.
He had been in the underworld of Guangming City for several years, and had seen many ruthless people, crazy people who would stab someone in the back at the slightest disagreement, and desperate criminals who would break someone's leg for a few hundred yuan.
But his instincts told him that these people had blood on their hands, and that they had taken more than one or two lives.
They weren't ordinary thugs, not those petty thugs wielding machetes in street fights.
They are people who crawled out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
The thief's lips trembled a few times before he finally managed to squeeze out a sentence.
"Boss, please feel free to ask me anything. I will answer everything I know to the best of my ability."
His voice trembled as he said this, but his tone carried a fawning, ingratiating quality.
"I didn't expect you to have such a complete set of skills."
The thief's expression froze for a moment, then quickly returned to its obsequious smile.
Lin Yi's voice was very calm, as calm as if he were asking how the weather was today.
"So who exactly sent you to steal from this shop? Don't tell me you came here just to steal a few hundred yuan." Lin Yi said, raising his hand and pointing to the traditional Chinese medicine clinic next door.
The thief followed his finger and saw the traditional Chinese medicine clinic with its shutter door tightly closed.
His gaze lingered on the traditional Chinese medicine clinic for a moment, and a strange expression appeared on his face for a split second.
That strange feeling wasn't fear or panic, but something more complex, like someone trying to recall a vague memory, trying to find the corresponding image in their mind, but no matter how hard they search, they can't find it.
His brows furrowed, and his lips moved a few times, as if he were talking to himself or trying to recall something.
Then he made a pained expression.
That pain wasn't feigned; Lin Yi could tell.
His pupils were contracting, like someone desperately resisting something that was being eroded from within.
The next second, the pained expression on his face disappeared.
Instead, a familiar smile appeared.
That smile didn't belong to the person in front of me, but to someone else.
It was placed on this face, like an ill-fitting mask, with fine slits at the edges that revealed the true face beneath.
The thief looked up at Lin Yi.
The fear and panic from before were gone from his eyes; only a chilling calm remained.
The mouth opened, but the sound that came out was not that of a thief; it was a voice that Lin Yi found strangely familiar.
"I hope you like the gift I gave you."
As soon as he finished speaking, Lin Yi leaped backward.
He pushed off the ground with his foot, took several meters back, and stood up straight the moment he landed.
The thief's body began to collapse the moment he finished speaking; it wasn't a slow collapse, but a disintegration from the inside out.
His skin was covered with dense black cracks, which spread from the top of his head to his whole body like a giant spider web.
Black mist surged around the edges of the crack, emanating from his body and spreading through the air.
His body was like a piece of burnt charcoal, peeling away layer by layer in the process of weathering, from skin to muscle, from muscle to bone, and from bone to marrow.
The whole process took less than two seconds.
When the black mist dissipated, nothing was left on the ground.
There was no blood, no fragments, no trace whatsoever.
That person was completely erased from this world as if they had never existed.
The street was quiet for a moment, then erupted in a series of hushed gasps.
The men in black stood still, their expressions shifting from indifference to astonishment, and then to fear.
Isn't it said that skills and items can't be used in the real world? Then how did the other party manage to produce something that clearly came from the amusement park?
Peacock stood on the sidewalk across the street, her phone slipping from her fingers and crashing to the ground, cracking the screen.
She didn't pick it up; she just stood there, staring at the empty ground, her face as pale as a sheet of paper.
Her lips were trembling, her fingers were trembling, her whole body was trembling.
She knew what kind of people could do something like that in the real world.
Peacock's mind went blank; her body reacted faster than her brain, and before she could even think of what to say, her foot had already stepped out.
She crossed the street, walked quickly to Lin Yi's side, bent down, and spoke in a low voice, but with an barely suppressed tension in her tone.
"Mr. Lin, about this matter..."
Lin Yi didn't look at her.
His gaze fell on the empty ground, and the young face was expressionless, but Peacock could see something in his eyes.
It wasn't anger, but a chill.
The chill made the peacock swallow back all the words that were on the tip of her tongue.
Lin Yi ignored her.
He was certain he had heard a similar tone somewhere before, probably in the last two world progressions.
His memories flipped rapidly through his mind, page after page, sweeping over the faces he had encountered in the mission world, the opponents he had fought in the arena, and the strangers he had brushed past in the void.
Tier 6 Arena.
He encountered a very strange guy while playing in the Tier 6 Arena. He couldn't quite remember the guy's name, but it was something like "Puppet" or "Puppet" or something.
The way that person spoke made him uncomfortable. It wasn't the tone of voice, but the sense of incongruity that emanated from his very bones, like something wearing human skin imitating human speech.
The tone of that person's voice was exactly the same as the smiling tone on the thief's face.
It's not just similar, it's exactly the same.
If Lin Yi remembered correctly, there were very few people in the entire amusement park who possessed such methods.
The ability to use park props in the real world, and the means to implant fragments of one's own consciousness into others—these are things that ordinary rule-breakers cannot possess.
The only person who had dealings with Lin Yi was the increasingly famous rule-breaker, the Grey Gentleman.
Lin Yi sneered.
Upon hearing that cold laugh, the hairs on the back of the peacock's neck instantly stood on end.
Her scalp tingled; this time, things were probably really about to turn upside down.
But to Peacock's surprise, Lin Yi showed no signs of pursuing or leaving the house.
He just stared at the empty ground for a few seconds, then turned around and walked towards Su Xiao's jewelry store.
Su Xiao followed behind him, paused at the doorway as they entered, and glanced at the peacock.
That glance was calm, devoid of any extra emotion, but the peacock understood the meaning behind it—this is something you cleaners can't handle.
Su Xiao withdrew his gaze and walked into the jewelry store. The glass door closed behind him with a dull thud.
The peacock stood at the shop entrance, looking at the closed glass door, watching the thin curtain behind it sway gently in the air.
Her lips moved slightly, but she only managed to utter two words.
"Fall back."
Her voice wasn't loud, but it was exceptionally clear on the quiet street.
Upon hearing those two words, the expressions on the faces of the men in black relaxed at the same time.
Some people let out a long breath, some wiped the cold sweat from their foreheads, and some put away the weapons they were holding.
They turned around and walked towards their respective vans.
No one spoke, no one whispered, everyone remained silent, doing what they were supposed to do.
The sound of car doors closing echoed through the streets as engines started and headlights illuminated the scene.
The convoy drove along the street into the distance, its taillights leaving two dark red streaks in the night before disappearing at the end of the street.
Peacock stood on the sidewalk, bent down, picked up the phone with the shattered screen from the ground, wiped the dust off the screen with her sleeve, and then put it in her pocket.
She only knew one thing—from today onward, the safety of Lin Yi's street must be her highest priority.
It wasn't because she received orders from her superiors, nor because Lin Yi and Su Xiao were important partners of the Cleaners, but because she didn't want to die.
Peacock didn't know how she got out of that street. When she came to her senses, she was already sitting in the office of the Cleaner's Bright City branch.
The office was small and simply furnished, with a desk, a few chairs, and a map of Guangming City hanging on the wall. Outside, it was completely dark; the streetlights shone through the gaps in the curtains, casting a thin strip of light on the ceiling.
She sat behind her desk, her hands resting on the surface, staring at the street marked with the location of Lin Yi's Traditional Chinese Medicine Clinic on the map for a long time.
Then she picked up the phone on the table and dialed a number.
After the call was connected, she didn't waste any words and only said one sentence.
"Add more personnel to monitor that street 24 hours a day. Report any suspicious persons immediately."
The person on the other end of the phone didn't ask any further questions, only saying "Received."
Peacock put down the phone, leaned back in her chair, and closed her eyes.
She could still feel her heart pounding; the tension that had been building since evening hadn't subsided, and instead grew stronger with time. (End of Chapter)