As the silhouette landed, Chi Qing flicked his wrist, sending the umbrella tip straight at him. The silhouette instantly rolled to the side, the umbrella tip grazing his cheek.
Chi Qing’s fighting skills were inferior, but the silhouette quickly realized this person’s night vision was far better than his own. The pitch-black elevator car didn’t affect his sight in the slightest.
“…What the hell,” the silhouette cursed under his breath.
Seeing the umbrella tip, gleaming with a cold silver light in the dark, flying toward him again, the silhouette leaped forcefully upward. Grabbing the crossbeam above, he kicked out, dodging the umbrella tip while viciously striking the umbrella in Chi Qing’s hand.
Chi Qing was a second too slow to pull the umbrella back; the handle snapped with a sharp crack!
Without the umbrella as a hidden weapon, the silhouette’s movements became much more agile, and the two immediately engaged in a scuffle.
The silhouette lunged at Chi Qing, brandishing his small knife. Chi Qing turned sideways and took a step back, but the silhouette pursued relentlessly. Chi Qing’s back slammed hard against the elevator doors. The moment the silhouette brought the knife down, Chi Qing accurately used the momentum of the blade to lock the man’s wrist.
The tip of the knife pierced the black glove on Chi Qing’s hand, leaving a very faint, bloody scratch.
Chi Qing had deliberately reached out to catch it. He didn’t have time to take off his glove himself, so he could only use this method to force the blade to slice it open. “Who sent you?”
“There’s no point asking that now. With that kind of free time, you’d better worry about yourself.” The silhouette shot a rapid glance at the top of the elevator and said harshly, “Even if you knew who it was, I’m afraid you won’t make it out alive.”
The silhouette roughly calculated the time until the steel cable would snap. He had to escape before that happened. According to his original plan, he only needed to wait for the elevator to fall, then pull himself up using the remaining cables to make a successful getaway.
Having temporarily restrained Chi Qing, his mind went back to the steel cables. He didn’t notice the black glove with a sliced opening. The hand beneath the glove was excessively pale, almost glowing in the dark. The tiny patch of exposed skin rested quietly against the hand holding the knife.
[The person who sought me out is a celebrity.]
A distorted voice rang out.
[I forgot the name. Damn it, if I knew I’d run into two lunatics, I wouldn’t have taken this job no matter what…]
In that exact moment, Xie Lin leaped down from the elevator roof, crashing heavily into the silhouette. The elevator violently jolted!
When a person sustains a heavy blow, their brain shuts down for a split second. The distorted voice by Chi Qing’s ear abruptly ceased.
Hearing that sentence didn’t make much difference anyway. It was obvious it was a celebrity; paparazzi wouldn’t follow an ordinary person. The question was which celebrity, and what their name was.
Chi Qing frowned, feeling that for the first time, he had suppressed his germaphobia to read a person’s mind, only to read absolutely nothing useful.
Xie Lin had just been stabbed by him. After jumping down, he couldn’t stand up immediately. Chi Qing squatted down to support him, assuming he might have hit something.
The silhouette took this opportunity to flip back up to the roof. There was no time left; the elevator could fall at any moment. Saving his own life was the priority.
Xie Lin said, “The elevator might have an emergency power unit. Try pressing all the buttons.”
Chi Qing pressed them all as instructed. Upon hitting the final button, the lights inside the elevator clicked back on, and the elevator resumed operation.
But before Chi Qing could press the open button, the elevator suddenly moved, carrying them rapidly upward!
“Someone pressed for the 13th floor,” Xie Lin said.
The elevator had been stopped for so long; surely someone needed to use it.
Meanwhile, on the 13th floor.
A resident, seeing the elevator taking forever to come up, kept mashing the button to “urge” it along.
The neighbor across the hall heard the commotion, opened their door, and asked, “Is the elevator broken?”
The person in a hurry replied, “Seems like it. I’ve been pressing it forever with no response.”
The tragedy happened in the blink of an eye.
As the roofless elevator ascended, one could look up and see the dark shaft. The car was shooting upward at breakneck speed. The silhouette, who had just climbed on top, didn’t even have time to gloat before being dragged toward the top floor by the rapidly rising elevator. His eyes widened drastically as he let out a scream: “No—”
“The 13th floor is the top floor,” Chi Qing said, picking up the snapped umbrella. “He’s going to be crushed to death by the elevator.”
The elevator was acting like a compactor plate. With the silhouette standing in that position, once the elevator fully reached the top, there wouldn’t be much clearance between the car and the ceiling of the shaft. He would be ground into the machinery alive.
Chi Qing could only do one thing right now—and that was to open the umbrella at hand.
As the umbrella opened, in less than three seconds, the man who had just been locked in a life-and-death struggle with them was turned into a splatter of blood and flesh. Even the silhouette’s final, agonized scream didn’t last long. It was as if a scarlet rain had fallen in the shaft, with pureed flesh slowly sliding down the surrounding walls.
The only relatively clean spot in the entire elevator was where he and Xie Lin were standing. Chi Qing rested his fingers on the umbrella handle; the clear canopy was covered in a horrifying patchwork of gore.
Xie Lin looked at the umbrella above their heads. “…You even went out of your way to open the umbrella.”
Chi Qing gave him a look. “You’re welcome.”
“…”
A germaphobe could always display exceptionally abnormal maneuvers in times like this.
Though the silhouette dying was highly inconvenient, they couldn’t afford to worry about that right now. After its rapid ascent, the elevator was shaking more and more violently—those brief few seconds of rising had undoubtedly accelerated the snapping of the steel cables.
The elevator doors did open—but that didn’t help them much. After crushing the man, the elevator had completely malfunctioned, slipped down halfway, and got stuck hovering between the 12th and 13th floors.
The person who had been pressing the button earlier had probably lost patience and walked down the emergency stairwell. Now, the 13th-floor doors were open, and the hallway was empty.
“Climb out from the top before the doors close,” Xie Lin calmly analyzed the situation, staring at the blood-soaked steel cable. “Hurry!”
His mobility was limited right now; letting Chi Qing go up first was the lowest-risk option.
No one could predict how long that half-severed cable would hold. It could snap the very next second. The doors on the 13th floor had been open for a while. Just as they were about to close, a pale, blood-stained hand thrust into the remaining gap between the doors.
Chi Qing pried the elevator doors apart, feeling Xie Lin give him a push from behind.
After getting up, he didn’t stand. He lay at the edge of the elevator doorway and reached his hand out to Xie Lin. “—Grab onto me.”
Usually, it seemed like Xie Lin was always the one reaching out to him. This was his first time reaching out to Xie Lin without any hesitation or second thoughts. Germaphobia, touching—all these words were thrown completely out the window.
Beneath Xie Lin’s feet was a shaft over a dozen stories high, looking like a bottomless abyss.
He stood in an elevator car that looked like it had been caught in a rain of blood. Chi Qing’s umbrella hadn’t covered a wide enough area; scattered drops of blood had still splattered onto him.
Just as Xie Lin flipped himself up and touched Chi Qing’s hand, a sharp snap echoed. The steel cable suspending the elevator finally gave out. The last strand completely broke, and the elevator plummeted straight down.
—Snap.
The cable broke.
—Crash!
The elevator smashed down.
The scene of the elevator falling replayed on a surveillance monitor.
After those two noises ended, a crisp click followed. It was the sound of a left mouse button being clicked to pause the footage.
“Impressive,” Wu Zhibin said in the hospital, manipulating the laptop to replay the footage. Smiling without reaching his eyes, he added, “One second later, or if that assistant of yours surnamed Chi hadn’t caught you, I wouldn’t be seeing you right now.”
On the hospital bed, in addition to the bandages for the stab wound inflicted by the silhouette, Xie Lin’s leg was encased in a thick cast. Jumping down from the elevator roof had put too much strain on it, resulting in a diagnosed minor fracture.
But looking at his face, you couldn’t tell he was a patient at all. He even remembered to smile at the nurse: “Thank you, the coffee you made is delicious.”
Wu Zhibin really wanted to swing a crutch and smash it right into his freshly casted leg!
Just watching the surveillance footage retrieved from the security room terrified him. That was the 13th floor! What did it mean for an elevator to plunge with people inside from the 13th floor?! The chances of survival were practically zero.
Xie Lin then asked, “How is he?”
Wu Zhibin instantly realized who ‘he’ referred to. “That assistant of yours, who didn’t forget to open an umbrella during a life-and-death crisis, doesn’t have any major problems. Just a slightly dislocated wrist. He should be on his way over now.”
Xie Lin chuckled. “Such a fiery temper. Aren’t I perfectly fine? Besides, that guy was indeed very dangerous. If I hadn’t taken the USB drive, it’s highly likely that paparazzo would have been killed.”
“Oh, so you do know he was dangerous?!” Wu Zhibin shot back. “If you ask me, you and your assistant are the dangerous ones.”
On the other side, Chi Qing was being held down by Ji Mingrui to finish his checkup. Medicine was applied to his scrapes, and then he followed Ji Mingrui to take Xie Lin’s statement.
Before Chi Qing stood up, Ji Mingrui said to the nurse at the medical station, “Hey, wait a sec. Do you have any calming pills or something to soothe the nerves? Give me a bottle.”
Chi Qing had changed his clothes and showered three times, almost scrubbing the skin off his hands. Wearing his black gloves, he sat there and said, “I have no emotions that need soothing.”
Ji Mingrui retorted, “Well, I do!”
“Do you know how terrifying that was?” Ji Mingrui yelled. “Do you two have a death wish?”
He continued, “I’ll definitely need this medicine when I take your statements later. Also, I’m very curious, have you two ever counted how many statements you’ve given? One file folder at the station isn’t even enough to hold all the statements concerning you two. Why are you guys everywhere? Wherever you go, a case happens… If the conditions aren’t right, you even manufacture the conditions yourselves! What normal person waits for an assassin to come and kill them? Think your lives are too long?”
Chi Qing: “…”
As they spoke, the two had already arrived at the door of Xie Lin’s hospital room.
Ji Mingrui went through the routine, flipping open his notepad. A person had died in the elevator—a human life. As the two people who had “close contact” with the deceased in the elevator, Chi Qing and Xie Lin still had to go through the proper procedures.
Mentally exhausted, Ji Mingrui wrote the names of the two individuals side by side on his notepad: Xie Lin, Chi Qing.
He was truly sick and tired of taking statements for these two.
