Chapter 39

He immediately yanked at the bedsheet with all his strength. When it wouldn’t tear, he sliced it open with his knife. His resistance drew the attention of more vagrants around him. Amid a siege of reeking, vomit-inducing stench, Horne kicked one person after another away, tore off the bedsheet clinging to him, and began sprinting along the inside of the tents. But his mad dash was swallowed by the night.

“Grab the thief!!”

“Who the hell tore a hole in my bedsheet!”

Hels was an enigmatic person, impossible to pin down with a single label. If called a madman, he could engage in elegant discussions with his knowledge. If deemed a good man, he could kill without hesitation. If labeled a devil, he could soothe others with such gentleness.

When Horne considered what relation the slum might have with someone like Hels, his first reaction was none at all.

But he had forgotten the rumor about Hels.

Hels drove away those living happy lives. Those who wouldn’t leave, he killed. Though this rumor was flatly denied by every boy in the Red Light District—Hels hadn’t killed a single one of them.

The last time he went to question them, he had already found it strange. If they had been forced, he might have gotten more information, but they didn’t seem willing to betray the Red Light District.

What were these people, kicked out of their homes, before entering the Red Light District?

Vagrants.

This slum was fundamentally Hels’s territory.

Likewise, because of the rumors, everyone assumed Hels had done those things, that the vagrants bore him an irreconcilable grudge.

Humans would think that way, let alone the aliens.

Yet the truth was, this group of vagrants was completely covering for Hels.

Of course Wang Wudao was familiar with him.

A figure darted through the crisscrossing tents, pursued by a crowd shouting and screaming behind. But there were too many people; the initial formation fell apart in minutes. Instead, they knocked down several tent supports, drawing more angry yells.

Pandemonium broke loose, dogs barking and chickens scattering.

Horne ran between every tent.

There were several hundred tents here, and even excluding those hastily set up at night, there were still over a hundred. But only under one tent, one bedsheet, hid that entrance.

“Don’t let him get away!!!”

Bedsheets were flung into the sky one after another, forming massive camouflage nets. From above, aside from the air distortion from the bonfires blurring the view, dozens of bedsheets flying up were enough to cover half the open ground.

In the chaos and panting breaths, inside a certain tent, Horne’s foot stepped on a hard board.

His eyes sharpened. He immediately lifted the bedsheet and dug away the surrounding dirt, revealing an iron door beneath.

As expected.

The instant screams and roars reached him from behind, he pulled down the bedsheet, flipped open the inner door, and leaped down. The door closed above him.

Bang!

All sounds were instantly cut off.

His ears rang.

Darkness.

Damp and muddy.

A secret passage.

Horne leaned against the wall, gasping for breath. Moments later, he steadied himself.

He had no idea how Hels had come up with such a concealment method, or what exactly he was hiding.

It was too dark here, pitch black where he couldn’t see his own hand. Horne adapted for a while, then groped around.

The walls were stone, dry and uneven. It wasn’t some high-tech secret passage; just a primitive, ordinary underground tunnel.

Horne kept one hand touching the stone on the right as he slowly moved forward. When he couldn’t see or feared getting lost in a maze, he used this method: always sticking to one side, rather than zigzagging left and right.

This method didn’t take many steps before he hit a 180-degree turn. Horne sensed he had looped back.

The previous direction had an end, meaning this passage didn’t connect the Red Light District to outside the city. The entrance was right in the slum.

Fortunately, the path underfoot was relatively flat. Whoever built this tunnel must have considered that. In pitch darkness, if the road wasn’t smooth, it wouldn’t be a secret passage—it would be an expedition.

Listening carefully, there was a faint whistle of wind, but distant. His military boots echoed slightly on the ground. He could roughly judge this was a passage no taller than three meters or wider than two, though its length was indeterminable—no sound echoed back.

Though he always kept his right hand on the wall, Horne still extended his left arm straight to maintain his sense of space.

From the surface, the slum was only about 200 meters from the city gate. If this passage led outside the city, it probably wasn’t too long.

Horne moved forward slowly. From start to finish, he saw nothing. His breathing was obvious in the layered echoes, so he lightened his steps and breath.

Darkness spread. For a moment, Horne wasn’t sure if his eyes were open or closed. The echoing sounds trailed behind him. If not for the volume nearly matching but gradually fading, he would have felt chills down his spine.

He just needed to walk straight out to catch up with Hels.

But this thought shattered after twenty minutes.

Horne’s right fingertips touched the wall, and at the same time, his left fingertips hit another wall. He shifted left a bit, swapped right for left, then continued leftward, allowing his left hand to reach even further left.

A fork: two directions.

In the complete darkness, he couldn’t tell the difference between left and right paths.

Groping with hands and skin, Horne quickly concluded.

They were identical paths, at least at the start.

Following the not-so-smart maze method, he stuck to the right path. If wrong, he could follow the wall back to the left one.

This idea hit a wall again after twenty minutes into the right path.

Another fork: three directions.

Horne stood there for a while, silently thinking. He decided to stick with the method.

No matter what, a man-made path had to end somewhere. It might just be troublesome.

Finding this passage had been a backup goal anyway.

He walked deeper. From the echoes, the space size hadn’t changed, but as he went, something granular slipped through his fingers, extremely fast and light.

Horne halted instantly, backtracked a step, and groped the spot again.

Empty. Hallucination.

Twenty minutes later, four forks.

Horne stopped moving. He realized he had underestimated Hels’s vigilance. Now there were countless combinations. If he continued, he might eventually find the right exit, but he had no time.

Not only no time, no method—unless he backtracked now, charged into the Tower to save Ains. Otherwise, only the worst option: accept Ains’s death.

And this was just ten days’ result. What about three months from now? Less than three months left.

This place was just like Hels’s holographic game: easy to enter, hard to exit. Even if discovered someday, finding the right path would be tough. Considering prepared intruders, like with a flashlight, there must be countermeasures further in.

Horne sped up. Sure enough, twenty minutes later, a five-way fork.

Unlike before, one path’s end faintly glowed, minuscule but easily caught by eyes adapted to darkness.

As Horne turned toward that path and took his first step, a familiar laugh echoed from the darkness, close at hand—right behind.

In the total blackness, Horne felt his scalp explode.

The voice softly said, “Don’t go any further.”

The words barely fell when Horne lunged toward the source. The instant he made contact, he was blocked. The other grabbed his wrist and twisted back. Horne’s other hand swung hard, elbow aimed straight at the opponent’s chest. Before it connected, the opponent dodged, and his arm slammed straight into the wall.

Bang!

While his attention focused on the new attack, the grabbed hand was lightly lifted. The knife popped from his sleeve cuff. He gripped the handle and thrust upward.

This angle would pierce the opponent’s forearm for sure, but the reaction was swift: a reverse grip and twist. The knife veered off-angle, stabbing empty upward.

In that miss, he used the momentum, spun the blade tip in place, and stabbed down viciously from another angle.

Horne heard the opponent’s light chuckle again. Before he could react, his arm went numb, nearly dropping the knife. In that blink, the opponent swiftly knocked it away.

Clink! The knife flew off, hit the ground, and vanished into darkness.

Thud! Massive force spun Horne around and pinned him to the wall. The instant his back hit, he felt a hand cushion between him and the wall, absorbing the impact—but he had already raised his knee to strike.

The opponent grunted but didn’t let go. He only said lowly, “Horne, too ruthless. Why kick so hard?”

All the way here, Horne hadn’t detected this person behind him at all—not when he arrived, whether trailing the whole time or waiting. If not trailing, how did he know which fork he’d choose?

If trailing the whole time, how—no sound, no breath, no heartbeat, no footsteps.

Impossible.

Horne struggled twice, but his hands were pinned at his sides, immobile. He said coldly, “Let go!”

Hels’s grip didn’t budge. He asked, “Let go? What if you try to kill me after?”

His eyes saw nothing, only hearing the voice—that low, gentle tone amplified endlessly in the dark.

Horne didn’t know how close Hels was, but he felt the body heat, breath coiling around his ear. In the darkness, sans sight, all senses sharpened.

Horne’s face was icy cold, though unseen: “If I kill you, I kill you.”

Hels chuckled “pfft,” leaning to his ear and drawling, “See? Don’t need me around, and you kick me away?”

Before Horne spoke, Hels continued: “Here’s a tip: next time the knife misses, don’t spin in place same angle. The wind-up exposes your tendon.”

“Oh no,” he immediately added himself, “there won’t be a next time.”

His voice was soft; clear up close by the ear, dissipating entirely farther away in the dark.

The moment Horne exerted force, Hels pressed him back. He tried with his right arm, but no strength came.

Hels sighed lazily: “Aside from that flaw, everything was perfect. Subduing you might’ve taken more effort. Pity you slipped. Don’t move now; won’t recover quickly.”

Before Horne replied, Hels laughed to himself.

Horne’s wrists were grabbed and pinned behind him against the wall. The stone was cold, but Hels seemed to notice, shifting his palm so Horne’s own fingers padded between skin and stone.

Horne held his breath, feeling the once-cold skin gradually warm.

After a long time, Hels asked: “Is this why you’ve been probing me lately? Tracking me here—what do you want to know?”

Horne calmed and answered: “Where you are, what you’re doing.”

He waited for the arm numbness to fade, but Hels’s next words were: “Might be numb for half an hour. Really not gonna tell the truth this half hour?”

Horne fell silent.

He couldn’t tell if his preparations were too scant or if Hels was simply terrifying. He just couldn’t fathom how a person could move soundlessly in such a space—not even he could guarantee zero noise, let alone prolonged tailing.

Horne asked coldly: “When did you spot me?”