“Hello, you’re Ms. Qin Sang, right?”
One day, before the sun had even set, Qin Sang received a call from a number she couldn’t see. She wasn’t keen on answering, but she remembered that Da Linzi had mentioned calls like this—they came from important organizations.
“Yes, who is this?”
“This is Professor Su’s team from the Southern Safety Zone branch of the Academy of Sciences. We have a project and sincerely invite you to come in for some coordination work…”
The moment she heard it was the Academy of Sciences, Qin Sang cut him off bluntly: “Sorry, not interested.”
With that, she hung up directly and promptly turned off her phone.
Professor Su’s team? Ha, wasn’t that Fang Ming’s group? Whatever their reason for contacting her, it couldn’t be anything good.
She couldn’t block the secure line, so Qin Sang simply powered off her phone. Of course, right after shutting it down, she used her backup phone to send a message to Xu Lin.
Xu Lin quickly replied: “You did the right thing. The Academy of Sciences and local authorities don’t have a direct hierarchical relationship. If you actually went there and they decided to detain you for something, it would be very troublesome for me to get you released.”
He sighed. Just a couple of days ago, the Exploration Team had come asking for her, and she had refused. He never expected the Academy of Sciences to come calling next, talking about “coordination for project research.” He knew it wasn’t that simple. Although the Academy wouldn’t conduct human experiments, that viper Fang Ming was still there!
Qin Sang: “Yeah, but see if you can find out whether the Academy actually has such a project. I suspect Fang Ming is up to something.”
After learning about this, Qin Sang’s parents cursed Fang Ming at home. Coming after her again and again—there must be something wrong with his brain.
“Don’t worry, I won’t walk into their trap, so there’s nothing he can do to me. Even though it’s the apocalypse, the official institutions are still functioning well!”
The arson, robbery, and looting that appeared in post-apocalyptic novels hadn’t happened. The various official departments acted firmly, nipping many illegal activities in the bud. The biggest cause of human casualties right now was the appearance of mutant insects.
Of course, it might also be that having a common enemy prevented excessive internal conflict among humans.
That’s what Qin Sang thought at the time. But that night, she was proven wrong.
—
At three in the morning, most of Xinling Village was fast asleep, except for a very few households.
The Qin family was no exception. Qin Sang was sleeping soundly in her room with the air conditioner on. She had even started dreaming—dreaming that the temperature had returned to normal, that everyone was back to their miserable daily grind, and that she was desperately job hunting again.
Suddenly, she felt a weight on her chest.
She groggily opened her eyes and saw that it was the little tabby she had adopted, bouncing around on her chest. Just as she was about to grab the little thing and put it back in its cat bed, she suddenly felt that something was off.
She pricked up her ears, focused her energy, and channeled it into her five senses. Soon, she realized what was wrong.
There was no sound of insects at all.
She knew that ever since the cockroach swarms appeared, there were always sounds of cockroach activity at night in the village. These things were constantly being killed, but they never stopped appearing entirely.
Every night, if she listened carefully, Qin Sang could hear the sounds of cockroaches moving outside.
But now, there was complete silence outside. As if all the cockroaches had been wiped out.
But that was impossible!
She immediately got up, signaled the little tabby to be quiet, changed into clothes suitable for movement, first crept into her parents’ room, sent both of them and the little cat into her space, then turned on her phone and started accessing all the cameras installed in this house and the one next door—Xu Lin’s place.
These cameras had been upgraded and replaced by Xu Lin; they were no longer the cheap models they used to be.
Soon, Qin Sang spotted a fleeting figure on one of the cameras.
The figure moved very fast, had counter-surveillance skills, and knew how to avoid the surrounding cameras.
Just then, all the monitoring feeds in the house went dead.
This scene was familiar—wasn’t this exactly what happened last time when Chen Longji sent someone to kill her? So, were these people also assassins?
Qin Sang thought for a moment and decided to wait and see. Of course, a wise person doesn’t stand under a dangerous wall. She directly retreated into her space.
Her space was as bright as day as always.
“What’s happening?” Qin Sang’s parents had been woken from sleep and sent into the space by their daughter. They were very worried that another mutant insect attack was happening.
Qin Sang: “It’s nothing. Some people have come.”
Qin Sang’s parents: “Who?”
Qin Sang: “Don’t worry. We’ll find out who it is later.” With that, she picked up the little tabby at her feet, found a chair, and sat down. She reminded her parents to get some rest—there might be a tough battle to fight during the day.
Seeing this, Qin Sang’s parents knew that with the whole family in the space, there was no danger. They yawned and went back to sleep.
Qin Sang sat there, using her consciousness to link with the space. That way, she could see what was happening outside.
—
One, two… twelve…
Twelve people had come. They were all fully armed, their heads and faces wrapped in gear. They wore infrared goggles. They didn’t have long guns slung over their backs, but each carried a handgun. Moreover, all twelve carried spatial energy on them. That meant they had spatial abilities. Which also meant there was no way to know what weapons they had stashed in their spaces.
These people headed straight for her home the moment they arrived—clearly, they were targeting her.
The only person she had truly offended recently was that Fang Ming. Da Linzi had mentioned before that this man had a complicated background. But she never imagined he could arrange for a fully armed squad like this to attack her.
Add to that the phone call from the Academy of Sciences earlier that evening. She had made her refusal crystal clear. And the very same night, they sent people to retaliate. This was truly…
Qin Sang felt relieved that she had made the quick decision to bring the whole family into the space. As for people later discovering that the family wasn’t home—that would be easy to explain. They had a hidden safe room in the basement, connected to Xu Lin’s basement. A few lies would be enough to brush it off.
Just then, the twelve people entered.
Unlike the ones Chen Longji had sent last time, this group was professional.
They didn’t even bother with the stairs. Instead, they took out military projectile launchers and fired. These devices shot climbing ropes with iron hooks. After the hooks latched onto the security bars, one person climbed up to the third floor. Then, from their space, they pulled out security bar cutters and snipped a hole straight through.
Clearly, these people had investigated the previous break-in at their home. They knew that each floor of their house had two doors. To break into their living quarters on the third floor, they would have needed to get through at least nine doors. So, they found another way—attacking from above.
Watching from her space, Qin Sang was impressed. At the same time, she grew even more curious about where these people came from.
What had she done to deserve being attacked by a team like this? Of course, by now, Qin Sang was certain these people hadn’t come for simple revenge. Otherwise, with their equipment, wouldn’t it have been faster to just toss a bomb or something?
So, they had come to capture her!
Reaching this conclusion, Qin Sang’s expression darkened.
What did she have that Fang Ming could possibly want? Just for two energy cores he hadn’t gotten? Impossible.
Deploying such a sophisticated team from outside just for two energy cores wouldn’t be worth it. With a team like this, they could just grab some weapons and hunt mutant insects themselves.
“Captain, no one’s here…”
While Qin Sang was analyzing the situation, six people entered her home one after another. After searching the place and finding no one, they immediately reported to the captain downstairs via walkie-talkie.
“That’s impossible!” The captain was puzzled. Then, from his space, he pulled out a spatial detection compass.
Seeing this, Qin Sang thought: that official compass really is… a good thing. But it always ends up being used by bad people.
Sure enough, the captain said: “There’s no spatial energy detected on the third floor of this building. Only one reading on the fourth floor.”
The captain gritted his teeth and said, “Search the entire building.”
He knew it was unlikely they would find their target—since the target and her family all had spatial abilities. But he wasn’t willing to give up. He decided to tear through the whole building. At the same time, he had his men take out spatial detection compasses and start searching the entire village.
In the end, they couldn’t find Qin Sang or her parents. But since they had come all this way, they simply took Qu Meijing, who lived on the fourth floor, with them. The organization needed spatial ability users as test subjects anyway.
Qin Sang’s attention had been focused on the captain downstairs, and she hadn’t noticed they had kidnapped Qu Meijing. By the time she did, she wanted to rescue her. But she didn’t know the extent of their firepower. And since this was an urban village with tightly packed housing, a firefight could easily harm innocent people.
After thinking it over, she carefully tossed a vegetable seed onto one of the retreating figures.
That seed wasn’t an ordinary seed. After glimpsing a sliver of this world’s progression, she had amplified it with her own energy. Simply put, the seed carried her energy—better than any tracker. She could sense its location within a certain range.
Once these people left, Qin Sang decided to make the act convincing. She went through the basement into Xu Lin’s basement. Seeing that dawn was approaching, she pretended to return home and “discovered” that the security bars on their third-floor balcony had been cut and all the doors in the house had been pried open.
“Hongxia! Your family is really unlucky. Thank goodness your family has spatial abilities, or your house would have been cleaned out!”
When the villagers woke up and saw the photos Qin’s mother posted in the group chat of the break-in, they consoled her one after another.
“Yeah! Thank goodness for the spatial ability.”
“Your family’s luck is hard to say. You happened to be cleaning at Da Linzi’s place and resting there, and then this happened.”
“Of course it’s good luck! Those thieves were so brazen. If you had run into them, you might have lost your lives!”
“I find big cockroaches safer than people!”
The discussion in the group started to go off-topic. Meanwhile, Qin Sang’s family had already called the police.
Not many things were stolen—valuables and food were all in the space. But the tenant upstairs was missing.
Qin’s father was explaining the situation to the responding officer. The experienced officer quickly determined that Qu Meijing hadn’t left on her own—she had been kidnapped. There were signs of a struggle in her apartment.
“This is a serious incident. We’ll find her as soon as possible.”
Qin’s father nodded repeatedly, feeling that his family had brought this upon Qu Meijing.
Qin Sang felt the same. But she didn’t place all the blame on her family either. Their relationship with Qu Meijing was simply that of upstairs and downstairs neighbors. No matter which family got into trouble, the other could easily be dragged into it.
Still, she wasn’t the type to wash her hands of the matter.
After seeing the police off, Qin Sang went straight to Xu Lin to discuss what had happened the night before. She had him help confirm some information. After they had worked out a plan, Qin Sang followed the faint sense of the seed, got in a car, and headed in its direction.
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