It was as if an invisible hand was gently yet firmly pushing her, signaling her to leave.
About two hours passed. Su Wan silently estimated the time in her heart, not a minute more, not a minute less.
The repulsive force suddenly intensified, and she felt her vision blur, her body strangely lighten, and the next moment, she had already returned to her room in the villa, still maintaining her previous cross-legged sitting posture, the sensation beneath her buttocks changing from the solid ground of the space to the soft mattress.
She was back.
Su Wan blinked, and almost without hesitation, immediately tried again. As soon as the thought arose, that familiar suction reappeared, and she smoothly entered the space once more. Sure enough! She almost wanted to laugh out loud.
After exiting the space, she carefully assessed her physical condition, touched her forehead, and found no common fatigue or weakness associated with mental exhaustion, only a slight, natural weariness like after normal activity for a period.
She even tried walking a few laps in the space and moving a box of biscuits—the weight was real, so it seemed she couldn't move things out of thin air; she had to rely on her own strength. She then tried to organize a few bags of rice, stacking them neatly. While doing these things, she didn't feel any mental energy depletion, just like when she was working outside.
Two hours, no more, no less. Once she exited the space, she could immediately re-enter, and the countdown for her stay would restart.
If she encountered an irresistible danger, she could directly hide in this space! As long as her reaction was fast enough, this was practically an extra life!
She looked up at the window—of course, this was only the “outside the window” scene in her consciousness; there were no real windows in the space.
Lu Shiyan's figure on the training ground remained tall and straight, the gunshots steady and powerful, each one striking her heart.
Late night.
Su Wan lay on the bed, stroking her bulging abdomen. Her skin was stretched taut, the curve astonishing, feeling heavy to the touch.
“Baby…” Her voice was a little hoarse.
The terrifying plots from apocalyptic novels, where the pregnant female protagonist's fetus would frantically absorb the mother's energy, eventually leaving the mother a dried-up husk, uncontrollably exploded in her mind, replaying over and over.
Would she? Would she also become like that?
She subconsciously touched her cheek; it seemed she really had lost some weight, and her eye sockets had deepened.
A strong sense of suffocation seized her, her heart pounding frantically in her chest, almost leaping out of her throat. She desperately tried to shake off those terrible thoughts, but she couldn't.
In her world, she was just a 19-year-old university student who had just started college. She didn't even know how pregnancy cycles were calculated. Was it 4 months now? Or 5 months?
Suddenly!
Her abdomen sharply contracted, the baby… seemed to be responding to her…
“No!”
“No! We… we won't become like that!” She pressed her hands tightly against her lower abdomen, her knuckles turning bluish-white from the force.
“Right… baby?” Her voice broke at the end, carrying a despair she hadn't even noticed and a faint plea.
She was scared, truly scared to death.
Lu Shiyan had just finished handling some matters and walked to Su Wan's door, about to knock, but his movements paused.
The room's soundproofing was good, but it couldn't block his hearing, which was far more acute than an ordinary person's. A suppressed, almost inaudible sobbing sound, intermittent.
His raised hand, knuckles suspended half an inch from the door, finally slowly lowered. His palm silently clenched, bones distinct, then slowly relaxed.
Her fear, her helplessness, clearly transmitted through that suppressed crying.
He couldn't wait any longer; he had to take the initiative, completely disrupt all of Scorpion's plans, and force him to reveal his final trump card prematurely.
Over the next week, Lu Shiyan's actions became more ruthless and decisive. Often, he would receive relevant intelligence one day, and the next day, a key stronghold or an effective liaison under Scorpion would completely vanish from this base, leaving no trace.
Lei Laohu was pleased with this, even actively providing more manpower and material support. Under the combined assault of his old rival and the formidable Lu Shiyan, Scorpion retreated steadily, his sphere of influence constantly eroded and compressed, almost being pressed firmly into the most chaotic fringes of Sector B, barely clinging to life.
Every time the name “Lu Shiyan” reached his ears, Scorpion's hatred intensified, and his already ferocious face twisted into an even more savage grimace. He knew better than anyone that if this continued, it wouldn't even take two months for Lei Laohu to completely erase him and everything he had painstakingly accumulated over the years from this base!
“Lei Laohu! Lu Shiyan!” Scorpion's bloodshot eyes stared fixedly at the wall, his teeth grinding, as if he wanted to chew these two names into pieces and swallow them. “You've pushed me to this point, so don't blame me for being ruthless and going for a scorched-earth policy!”
He suddenly pulled out a palm-sized, entirely black, unusually strange-looking communicator from his 懷裡. The communicator had no manufacturer's markings, only a few strangely arranged buttons, exuding an ominous aura.
Scorpion stared intently at the communicator, his chest heaving a few times, as if he had made some kind of decision. He activated the communicator, brought it to his mouth, and in a very low, hoarse voice, rapidly spoke a few unintelligible syllables to the other end of the communicator, sending a highly encrypted message.
After doing all this, a terrifyingly sinister sneer slowly spread across his face, a smile filled with the madness of mutual destruction and the venom of a desperate gamble.
“Just wait… Soon, the entire base, everyone, will pay for your foolishness!”
Lu Shiyan stood by the window on the second floor of their new residence, looking down at the scattered lights of Sector A below. The night wind rustled his hair. In the room behind him, Su Wan seemed to have fallen asleep, her breathing gradually becoming steady and long.
“Scorpion should be reaching his limit soon,” he said softly, as if talking to himself, or perhaps to the night outside the window.
“He's going to contact people outside the base?” Su Wan had woken up at some point, or perhaps had never truly been deeply asleep. She sat up from the bed, the blanket slipping from her shoulders, her voice still carrying a hint of sleep-induced hoarseness and languor.
Lu Shiyan turned around. The room was dark, so her exact expression couldn't be seen, but her eyes were exceptionally bright in the night, and her voice was as calm and unruffled as ever: “The net has been cast; now we just wait for the fish to swim into it.”
This was the moment he had been waiting for.
Lei Laohu thought he controlled everything, seeing him as his sharpest blade. And Scorpion, he thought he could still counterattack and fight to the death.
Little did they know, they were both merely carefully calculated pieces on his chessboard.
This play was only just beginning to enter its true climax.
The office door was urgently knocked from outside.
“Boss!” Li Kui's voice, filled with barely suppressed anxiety and tension, came from outside the door. “Over in Sector B… Scorpion's people seem to be making a big move! Our informant there just desperately sent word that they are gathering a large number of people, and… and it seems quite a few unfamiliar faces have infiltrated their stronghold! They don't look like people from the base!”