When Ruan Ning woke from her sleep, she saw someone standing beside her bed.
In the darkness, she could only make out a vague, tall figure. She couldn’t see the person’s features or expression clearly, and she nearly jumped in fright.
Fortunately, she quickly recognised through instinct that the person was Gu Yicheng, and only then did she suppress the urge to draw her gun.
Knowing that he would not wake her in the middle of the night for no reason, she was just about to ask what had happened when she heard a faint rustling sound coming from the doorway… as if someone was whispering outside.
Ruan Ning was startled and suspicious. Why would there be people outside their room in the middle of the night?
“There are people outside. Don’t make a sound. Hide by the sofa first. I’ll handle this.” Gu Yicheng kept his voice extremely low. Perhaps afraid that the people outside would hear, he leaned close to her ear to say it.
They were so close that Ruan Ning could hear his breathing, and feel the warm breath that brushed against her skin.
In the darkness, the tips of Ruan Ning’s fair ears slowly flushed red.
She nodded. At a time like this, she wasn’t going to act recklessly and insist on staying with him. She quickly got out of bed without making a single sound and hid in the corner beside the sofa.
That spot happened to be in the room’s blind spot. Coupled with the lack of light, even if the people outside came in, they would not notice her there.
At the same time, outside Ruan Ning and Gu Yicheng’s room stood two ordinary-looking men, one tall and one short.
“Keep it down. Don’t wake them up,” the taller man whispered sharply when he saw his companion accidentally drop the syringe they were planning to use.
The shorter man saw how nervous he was and said carelessly, “Stop scaring yourself. At this hour, how could anyone still be awake?”
It was after two in the morning, the time when people slept most deeply. Besides, there were people keeping watch downstairs in the hotel. These newcomers had been split into different rooms. Surely no one inside would be so alert that they would stay awake at night and keep someone on watch.
The taller man also felt that his words made some sense. His tense nerves relaxed slightly. But when he remembered the task Sister Sun had given them before they came, his expression turned serious again.
“Whether we’re scaring ourselves or not, stop wasting time. Let’s hurry up and finish the task Sister Sun gave us. If we delay things, she won’t let us off.”
The two men looked at the room number in front of them, lightened their steps, and slowly pushed open the door.
After entering and passing through the entryway, they saw two beds placed in the middle of the room. On both beds, there seemed to be the vague outline of a person under the covers.
The two exchanged a glance. Each of them held a syringe in his hand, and each had a thick rope hanging from his waist.
There were other people going to the other three rooms. Their task was only to take down the people in this room.
Before they came, someone had secretly come over to investigate. Since they knew this room had the fewest occupants, the two men assigned here were not particularly strong. But they had a secret weapon. The syringe they had brought contained a muscle relaxant. One injection would be enough to make even an ability user collapse immediately. For several hours, they would not be able to summon any strength, let alone use their abilities.
This kind of muscle relaxant had been difficult to obtain on the market both before and after the apocalypse. If Sister Sun had not seen how highly Captain Chen Ling regarded this team he had brought in from outside, and judged that they were not weak and likely had several ability users among them, she would never have handed such a powerful thing to them to use on these people. Especially since this matter had to be done without causing too much commotion in the hotel and alerting the search team.
Once the muscle relaxant took effect, they would use the ropes to tie them up and gag their mouths. No matter how strong these people were, they would be completely at their mercy.
The two men split up. The tall man walked toward the bed on the left, while the short man headed toward the bed on the right.
The tall man aimed the syringe at the person on the bed and stabbed downward. But before his hand could descend, a pair of hands suddenly appeared out of nowhere and firmly grabbed him.
Damn it! This person was awake?!
Realising this, the tall man’s face filled with panic. He abruptly took a step back, and his calf struck the edge of the bed. The sudden pain sobered him up considerably.
So what if he was awake? As long as he injected the muscle relaxant into this person’s body, his goal would be achieved.
After thinking this through, he tightened his grip on the syringe and suddenly stabbed it toward the other person’s arm.
Gu Yicheng let out a cold laugh. With one hand, he twisted hard. At the same time, he kicked forward with his left foot. While the man instinctively dodged, Gu Yicheng moved his hand in reverse and drove the syringe into the man’s neck. The contents of the syringe were also injected into his body.
While the fight was happening on one side, the short man also discovered that there was no one at all in the bed on his side. His syringe had stabbed into empty air. When he lifted the blanket, he saw that there was only a pillow underneath.
Seeing that their plan had been exposed, and that the tall man had already fallen victim to his own weapon, the short man no longer cared about the companion he had come with. He turned and began running toward the door.
Gu Yicheng threw the empty syringe onto the floor. His face was cold, his eyes icy. He did not even glance at the man collapsed beside the bed, nor was he afraid that the other one would manage to run out.
Unhurriedly, he took a few steps forward, drew a switchblade from his space, and flung it casually but forcefully. The blade grazed past the fleeing man’s head and embedded itself into the door panel only a few steps away from him.
The short man’s entire body froze stiff.
The terror of having that switchblade scrape past his head still had not faded. His legs went weak and trembled uncontrollably. He clearly wanted to flee from this place as quickly as possible, but his feet refused to listen, as if they had been glued to the floor. He could not move at all.
“Run. Why aren’t you running anymore?” A low voice, carrying a trace of danger, rang out in the room.
The person who had thrown the knife just now was standing behind him.
“I—I surrender! Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!” The short man raised both hands above his head in a gesture of surrender. He was just an ordinary person with no abilities. On top of that, he had been badly frightened. Before the fight had even begun, his momentum had already collapsed.
To show his sincerity, he gritted his teeth and injected the syringe in his hand into himself.
The tall man was so angry at the sight that he wanted to curse, but just as he opened his mouth, Gu Yicheng knocked him unconscious.
Ruan Ning stood in the darkness. Seeing that the situation had already settled, and that both men had lost their ability to fight back, she took out a flashlight from her space, switched it on, and hurried over to Gu Yicheng.
“Brother, are you okay?” The room had been too dark just now, so she had not been able to see whether he was injured.
Gu Yicheng’s expression softened considerably. “I’m fine.”
“These two are people staying in this hotel, right? But why would they come after us in the middle of the night? And with something so strong too.”
Ruan Ning had seen it just now. After Gu Yicheng injected that man with the syringe they had brought, he immediately collapsed to the ground. The substance inside was probably similar to an anaesthetic, or some other drug that could make a person lose mobility.
“Talk. Who ordered you to do this?” These two were so weak. There was no way they could have organised this themselves. There had to be someone behind them.
“It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me. It was Sister Sun! Yes, Sister Sun told us to do it. She and Captain Chen have long been at odds beneath the surface. This time, he brought all of you back and even wanted you to join the base. That would threaten her position. Sister Sun wanted all of you to disappear, so you wouldn’t strengthen Captain Chen’s side,” the short man stammered. Even in the cold weather, he was covered in sweat from fear.
Her?
Ruan Ning immediately remembered the arrogant woman they had seen at the hotel entrance that afternoon.
They had clearly had no grudges or enmity with her before this, yet she had attacked them for a reason like that? And by using a sneak attack in the middle of the night, no less.
According to this man, their original plan had been to drug all of them, then throw them onto a road filled with zombies, letting them stay conscious as they watched themselves being eaten bit by bit. They would then take their vehicle and all the supplies in the backpacks they had brought.
If that was true, then the person who had come up with this plan could truly be described as vicious.
Ruan Ning’s expression turned ugly. “Which floor does this Sister Sun live on?”
If others did not provoke her, she would not provoke them. But if others did provoke her, she would definitely strike back. Although Ruan Ning did not like solving violence with violence, she was not the type to silently endure after being wronged by others. They were the ones who had provoked them first.
“She… she’s on the top floor, the room on the right-hand side.” At a time like this, as long as he could survive, there was nothing he could not say.
The short man had not originally been one of Sister Sun’s subordinates. He had only been tempted over by the high reward this time. The person originally assigned to the job had suddenly felt unwell tonight, so he had stepped in instead. After the job was done, he would receive an extra week’s worth of food. If he had known this would be the outcome, he would not have come even if they had offered him a month’s worth of food.
When Ruan Ning heard that Sister Sun lived on the top floor, she was not particularly surprised.
The top floor of this four-star hotel contained the business suites. It was also the only place Chen Ling had not taken them to when he showed them around the hotel earlier.
At the time, she had thought only the leader of their base lived on the top floor. It turned out that this Sister Sun lived there too.
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