Chapter 26: Expert

“This is actually really bad.”

Shi Yue felt a chill that pierced her to the bone. Qian Yuhui had seen her face, and he had seen her school uniform. Although he likely didn’t know who she was or which school she attended, once he woke up and described her features to the police, she would be finished.

Shi Yue thought for a moment and decided to search online for the nearest hospital to the Lake Mochang District. Generally, accident victims are taken to the closest hospital to the scene. All she had to do was check which hospital was nearest to that nightclub… Qian Yuhui should be there.

Before long, Shi Yue found a hospital nearby. However, checking the time, she realized it was already very late; she wouldn’t make it to Lake Mochang District tonight. Moreover, tomorrow was Monday, and she had school—she couldn’t afford to skip class again.

“The news said Qian Yuhui is still in a coma. The way I see it, he won’t wake up until tomorrow at the earliest. I might as well take a taxi specifically to that hospital tomorrow evening after school. I should have enough time.”

With this thought, the weight in Shi Yue’s heart lifted slightly. There was always a chance to fix things. Besides, he was in the light, and she was in the dark. The most important thing was not to panic.

Turning off her phone and pulling up the covers, Shi Yue could finally get some proper sleep.

Tonight, layers of dark red clouds obscured the moonlight early on, looming like a massive dome. This dome covered everything on the earth—the buildings, the lights, the sound of traffic, the people coming and going. Everything seemed like exhibits inside a glass case, placed in an isolated world.

“Young Miss, those two men insisted they saw you early this morning and claimed they sold you a blade. I chased them away as per your instructions. It’s truly baffling. You clearly didn’t leave the house all day yesterday, Miss. How could you have gone to their shop in the middle of the night to buy a sword… But Miss, doesn’t it strike you as odd?”

The setting was a row of townhouses. From the outside, the area looked a bit crowded. Dozens of these detached houses were lined up like dominoes. The gray-brown brick walls and cascading vines gave the place a sense of history, but in reality, this villa complex might be the youngest in all of Phoenix City. It had only been built in recent years, populated mostly by the nouveau riche. Yet, even for the new money, this was often just a passing station; residents changed every few years. As a result, though the development was young, the houses often felt older than their owners.

Most of the houses here followed the trend of Western-style architecture, but there were exceptions. For instance, a house on the edge of the villa district. While its exterior was the same cookie-cutter Western style, opening the front door revealed a different world. A large floor-to-ceiling screen stood between the foyer and the living room, painted with a black-and-white ink wash of a cormorant rising from the water. Bypassing the screen, one could see wooden tables, chairs, floors, wall cabinets, and ceiling grids. Celadon porcelain, resembling mist and clouds, was placed in every corner. In the adjacent study, walls lined with books could be seen. The scent of wood mixed with the smell of old books and vines, weaving an antique tapestry that made one feel as if they had stepped back into a scholarly family of the 20th century.

In the backyard of the villa, a woman dressed in ancient Hanfu with a long blade at her waist stood silently. Her figure was swallowed by the dark shadows of the trees, with only a little light penetrating the gaps in the leaves to illuminate the patterns on her robe. Beside her, a man in a formal suit stood politely. He looked like a servant, or perhaps a butler… or maybe a visiting subordinate. Whoever he was, his attitude toward the woman before him was undoubtedly submissive.

“Young Miss, if they aren’t scammers, then someone is impersonating you to trick them. They said they only confirmed it was you after seeing your sword technique. What a joke. Did Boss Wang teach anyone other than you? Truly, any random riffraff dares to pretend to be a master now.”

Seeming to realize his language was a bit disrespectful, the man bowed slightly in apology, then continued, “Miss, why not just let those two black-market shopkeepers see you in person? If they just took one look at your face, they’d know you and that fraud aren’t the same person.”

“…”

After a long silence, the woman brushed aside a patch of grass, reached in, and gently plucked a calendula. She exhaled softly, and the petals in her palm danced into the air like golden snow.

“There’s no need. Let them believe that fraud is me.”

Under the night sky, she slowly turned her face to look at the man who had been waiting for a long time. “Dong Ming, you told me that the fraud performed their sword technique for those two, and after seeing it, they immediately believed it was me… Dong Ming, what kind of skill can instantly convince two strangers?”

“Dong Ming, go tell those two shopkeepers that I did indeed pick up a good blade from them and that I like them. For our next meeting, I want them to invite me to the VIP observation deck on the top floor of the Golden Hotel in Wu’an District. Tell them to call you first, then lead me there… Dong Ming, you know what to do when the time comes, right?”

The man nodded, a subtle smile blooming on his face. “Understood. Heh, I also want to see exactly what kind of expert is capable of impersonating even you.”

Phoenix District, the main urban area of Phoenix City.

A wildly styled luxury car weaved nimbly through traffic before screeching to a halt in a hotel’s underground garage.

A man stepped out of the driver’s seat. His physique was extremely peculiar: his body wasn’t muscular—in fact, for a man, he was on the skinny side—but his arms were extraordinarily thick. Covered in full-sleeve tattoos, the arms stood out starkly, looking jarringly uncoordinated with his relatively frail body. He wore a baseball cap pulled low and stepped quietly into the elevator.

He pressed the button for the top floor. With a ding, the elevator doors opened to reveal a hidden, luxurious clubhouse. He bypassed all irrelevant distractions in a few steps and went straight to a private room at the end of the corridor. A man was sitting there steadily.

“Sit.” The man gestured.

The tattooed man pulled out a chair and sat down, looking heavily at the man before him. “Boss,” he paused, then said, “Yang Sheng is dead.”

“Yang Sheng?”

The man opposite him clearly didn’t have much of an impression of the name.

“The trafficker from Xuan District. He was killed this morning.”

The man across the table lifted his eyes, seeming to recall such a character existed. The laugh lines at the corners of his mouth shifted slightly. “Oh?”

“I went to collect the goods from him today as per routine, but outside I saw corpses everywhere. I immediately hid and saw a woman… dressed like a cosplayer from an anime convention. That cosplayer girl killed all of Yang Sheng’s men single-handedly. I saw her talking to Yang Sheng, so I quickly took Yang Sheng out.”

“You didn’t take her out?”

“No.”

The boss dropped his expression, looking rather curious. “A cosplayer girl, and you didn’t take her out? What’s her background? Is it possible she’s the one behind the killing of that Yan person last time?”