“Xiaoyu, what do you think about this mission? I’ll be there soon. We can talk it over first.”

Sitting in the car, Lu Yunzhi spoke softly into the device clipped to her chest.

“The mission, huh... I’m not sure either. It’s my first time joining one of your missions. I don’t understand any of this at all. I’m just a total newbie. I’m honestly scared I’ll hold you back.” Jiang Qianyu’s gentle voice came through the earpiece.

“But when it comes to the mission, I do have a few thoughts.”

“Since this mission is related to the woman in white, and she knocks every time she appears, I think we can start there. First, figure out how she died. Then figure out why she knocks. We need to treat the root cause. Otherwise, I’m afraid this thing can’t be completely cleared out.”

“The only problem is, once we get there and that woman knocks... do we open the door, or not?”

“My suggestion is that we absolutely shouldn’t open it recklessly. We can’t confirm how strong that female ghost is.”

“If opening the door strengthens her mental power, then we’ll be in real danger.”

After Jiang Qianyu finished, Lu Yunzhi nodded in clear agreement. “That makes sense. Sigh, I’m really not good at this stuff. If I were doing this alone, I’d definitely just rent a room, wait for the female ghost to knock, and the second she did, I’d throw the door open and capture her on the spot!”

The moment Lu Yunzhi finished speaking, her work phone suddenly buzzed a few times.

She pulled it from her pocket and lit up the screen. The instant she saw the message, she froze.

“Oh no, Xiaoyu. Something big happened.”

“What happened?”

“A team got there before us, and then... then they were ambushed. The situation is critical now.”

“How could someone have gone there ahead of you? And wasn’t that supposed to be an ordinary Class B Hunter mission? How could they get ambushed? They’re a whole team. Don’t tell me they couldn’t even handle that much?” Jiang Qianyu’s voice came through the earpiece.

“I don’t know either. Anyway, headquarters told me to go provide support.”

Jiang Qianyu fell silent. Only after half a minute did she speak again.

“Then... do you want to go?”

After saying that, she deliberately added, “Yunzhi, it’s this late. So how did a team just happen to arrive at the mission site before you? And before this, you didn’t even get any notice.”

“I’m not even bringing up the fact that someone at your headquarters has been targeting you lately. Just this matter alone.”

“A whole team got trapped in there. You know better than I do what that means.”

Jiang Qianyu sat in her wheelchair, staring at the image on her computer screen as she waited for Lu Yunzhi’s answer.

She believed Lu Yunzhi would understand what she meant.

If an entire team was already trapped inside, what could Lu Yunzhi do by going there?

Go feed herself to the enemy?

And why had that team appeared at that place, at that exact time?

Hadn’t she found that suspicious at all?

Everything she had gone through already proved that not everyone in the Nightwatchers was a good person.

Second by second, time passed.

Lu Yunzhi was hesitating. She was struggling.

Her mind was a complete mess. She wanted to ask Jiang Qianyu, but didn’t even know how to put it. She also understood perfectly well what Jiang Qianyu was implying.

She had already accepted the mission at Tomorrow Apartments. That meant no one had taken it before her. Otherwise, the captain would’ve informed her in advance.

Since no notice had been given, that meant the other side accepted the mission after she did.

That alone was a huge problem. Because for a Class B Hunter mission, only one team could handle it at a time. Even under special circumstances, the members of the first team had to be informed beforehand, so unnecessary misunderstandings could be avoided.

And when she connected that with everything that had happened recently, maybe... maybe there really was something wrong with that team.

The result was obvious too. That team had run into trouble, and to save themselves, they sent a distress signal to headquarters.

That was why she had received the message as well. After all, she was the Hunter closest to them, so the system had automatically sent her the emergency alert.

Lu Yunzhi let out a long breath.

“I’m going!”

“You... really want to go?” Jiang Qianyu sounded surprised.

Lu Yunzhi didn’t seem like the kind of person who’d rush in without thinking.

“Of course I’m going. I just need to make a few preparations first.”

Very soon, Jiang Qianyu found out exactly what Lu Yunzhi meant by “preparations.”

The car stopped outside the Tomorrow Apartments building. Lu Yunzhi got out and slung her gear onto her back.

Jiang Qianyu had been thinking about how to talk this justice-overflowing fool of a girl out of it. But then she watched Lu Yunzhi lift her head, glance at the eerie building hidden in the darkness, turn around, and walk away on the spot. She didn’t even enter the courtyard.

Then she slipped into a concealed corner nearby and crouched down without a word, actually hiding there in secret.

She had even deliberately worn an all-black outfit before coming out, blending perfectly into the dark.

And that still wasn’t the end of it. Lu Yunzhi took out her work phone and hurled it toward a patch of grass in the distance, afraid it could be used to track her location.

Jiang Qianyu was dumbfounded by that whole sequence. She held it in for a long while before finally speaking.

“Yunzhi... did you eat something bad?”

“Oh, get outta here. What are you saying? This is tactical backup-calling!” Lu Yunzhi huffed. “If I go in by myself, I’m definitely dead. So I’ll just wait here for the big shot to arrive. I called in an A-Class big shot. They’re one of the supervisors, so they’re absolutely trustworthy.”

“Actually, I was just thinking... that team really might’ve had bad intentions. But you know how it is, better safe than sorry. We can’t just assume everyone’s evil, right?”

“I’ll wait here for them to come. Depending on the situation, I might still be able to help out a little, maybe provide support. And if they really do have a problem, then with a supervisor here, I can also get the truth out in the open.”

“Xiaoyu, what do you think?”

“I...” In front of the screen, Jiang Qianyu’s eyes went slightly unfocused. “I agree.”

·

·

The world suddenly went quiet.

A sickening stench of blood drifted through the air.

The four Hunters were covered in blood. By now, they couldn’t even tell whether the blood on them was their own, or the tenants’.

Inside the rooms, in the hallways, everywhere they looked, there were only the cold corpses of tenants.

Just a little over an hour ago, they had still been living, breathing people.

They had families of their own. Lives of their own.

But all of it had ended at their hands.

Those tenants had all attacked in suicidal waves. If they wanted to restrain them instead of killing them, they would’ve had to pay a much greater price.

And a greater price meant greater danger. They didn’t want to put themselves in that kind of danger.

So killing those tenants was better than being killed themselves.

Aside from the captain, the other three all had their heads lowered, their eyes vacant.

“Why the hell aren’t you moving yet? What are you standing around for?!” the captain roared. Only then did they snap back to themselves and hurry after him, stepping over the corpses.

They were already at the end of their strength. If they didn’t leave now, they wouldn’t be leaving at all.

Unfortunately, luck didn’t seem to be on their side tonight.

The moment they reached the stairwell, they saw the woman in white standing downstairs. The captain’s face changed drastically, as if facing a great enemy.

He instinctively believed this woman in white was the mastermind. His nerves had been stretched too tight for too long, and at that moment, he finally snapped.

“Move. We’re going upstairs!”