In the afternoon, in Hailing City.
Xiao’s car was parked in the lot of one of Chenghui Group’s logistics centers, the engine having just been turned off.
He was about to get out. The meeting was about to begin.
One second later, the lens over his right eye suddenly flickered.
【Alert: Level: S】
A razor-thin red notification floated on the left side of his field of vision, far more vivid than any message he had received before:
【Anomaly: Su Muchen has gone offline. Shared vehicle has been taken over. Shared vehicle destination locked: underground parking lot in the east of the city.】
Xiao’s hand stopped on the car door.
He sat back down in the driver’s seat and closed the door.
“Qianqian, report.”
Su Qianqian’s voice came through his earpiece over the communications channel, her speech faster than usual:
“His phone signal was cut off at 4:15 this afternoon. The shared vehicle’s route was remotely taken over, with the final location being an underground parking lot in the east of the city. The surrounding surveillance cameras captured an unmarked black van leaving ten minutes later. I’m tracking its route.”
“Cancel the meeting,” Xiao said.
His tone did not change.
He started the engine.
His fingers closed around the steering wheel again.
“Notify Ningning. Have her bring people to the old city district and assemble there.”
“Understood.”
He did not linger. He stepped on the accelerator.
The car made an extremely sharp turn inside the parking lot. The tires let out a brief, piercing squeal before it accelerated toward the exit.
The car did not accelerate to its limit, but neither did he impose a speed limit.
Xiao’s gaze remained fixed on the road ahead, while the sound of Su Qianqian’s keyboard continued in his earpiece.
“Qianqian, confirm all airports departing from the vicinity of the east-city underground parking lot. I want all recent flight records connected to the Sheng consortium.”
Xiao’s tone remained calm.
The voice in his earpiece replied, “Checking.”
The car was already on the highway, accelerating steadily as the engine rumbled low.
A few minutes later, Qianqian’s voice came again.
“After screening, there are four aircraft associated with or owned by the Sheng consortium that departed within the past ten minutes or are scheduled to depart within the next two hours. Their destinations are Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Singapore, and Seoul.”
She paused, as though cross-checking the data.
“There’s one more. It departs in forty minutes. It belongs to a shell company rented by Sheng’s people. It isn’t directly owned by the Sheng consortium.”
Xiao lightly tapped his fingertip against the steering wheel.
“What’s different about this batch compared with the flight schedules in the past?”
“There are more,” Su Qianqian said. “Over the past month, the regular flights on the same routes averaged two trips per week. But this week’s flight records show that number has more than doubled. And several of them are temporary charter flights. Their flight plans were only submitted four hours before departure.”
Xiao’s gaze darkened slightly.
This was not random scheduling.
It was a prearranged strategy to create confusion.
Sheng Chengxiu wanted to ensure that even if someone investigated the flights, they would need time to determine which aircraft was actually carrying Su Muchen. Multiple planes were taking off at the same time, heading to different destinations.
By the time the correct one was identified, the aircraft would already have flown beyond the range where it could be tracked.
“Only check the most recent ones,” Xiao said. “The airport closest to the east-city underground parking lot. Departing within forty minutes. Not owned by the Sheng consortium, but chartered. Eliminate all regular flights.”
The sound of Su Qianqian’s keyboard continued through the communications channel for nearly a minute.
Then she spoke.
“Found it. A Gulfstream G800, belonging to a holding company registered in the Cayman Islands. On the surface, it operates independently, but the company changed its legal representative only three days ago. Tracing the representative’s name backward shows a connection to an overseas branch of the Sheng consortium. Departure time: 5:20 p.m.”
Xiao glanced at the time on the dashboard.
—5:11 p.m. Nine minutes left.
Even if he rushed there at full speed, there was no longer enough time to stop it.
“I found the flight plan for that aircraft,” Su Qianqian continued, speaking slightly faster, as though she were chasing a target that was already moving. “The registered destination is Jakarta. No intermediate stop is listed.”
“Has it taken off?”
Su Qianqian was silent for several seconds.
The keyboard sounds became short and rapid.
Then she said, “It’s taking off now.”
Xiao’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel for a moment, but he continued maintaining his previous speed.
He lowered his head and glanced at the clock on the dashboard, his gaze pausing briefly on “17:20.”
His fingertips tapped the steering wheel twice.
“Qianqian, lock onto that aircraft’s flight path.”
His tone still contained little emotional fluctuation.
“Check its airspace authorization,” he said. “Satellite and ADS-B. Within one hour, I want to know where that aircraft went.”
Su Qianqian replied, “Checking.”
Xiao’s fingers tapped the steering wheel several times, his brows drawing together slightly.
This was not a spur-of-the-moment operation.
It was an operation that had already been calculated.
An operation Sheng Chengxiu had meticulously calculated and planned after prolonged surveillance and observation, finding today’s opening to make his move.
Aircraft could not simply take off whenever they wanted.
Everything was moving far too quickly. Sheng Chengxiu had deliberately arranged it this way so that Xiao would have no chance to intercept him.
He had been careless.
Sheng Chengxiu’s obsession had now reached a pathological level.
He had never once considered giving up.
Su Muchen might be safe in the short term.
But if this dragged on much longer, there was no way to guarantee what methods Sheng Chengxiu would use.
He had to rescue Su Muchen as quickly as possible.
As he thought this, he had already increased his speed.
◇◆◇◆◇
During the first hour after Su Muchen was taken away, the lights in Guichen Studio were still on.
The streetlights of Changning Alley illuminated the stone pavement outside the door. The shop was locked, and the curtains were half drawn.
An unfinished cup of coffee still sat on the counter, a faint ring of coffee stains left around the rim.
Everything remained exactly as it had when Su Muchen left.
When Xiao returned to Guichen Studio, it was already 5:44 p.m.
When the car stopped at the entrance to Changning Alley, his gaze swept over the door of Guichen Studio.
Locked.
When he got out of the car, he did not immediately open the door.
His eyes swept once between the crack of the door and the curtains, then he lowered his head and looked at his phone.
Su Muchen had not sent him any messages.
The last message had been sent an hour ago, but it was one Xiao had sent to Su Muchen.
Before leaving, he had told Su Muchen that he would be back later.
Su Muchen had neither read it nor replied.
That was not right.
When he pushed open the door and entered Guichen Studio, the temperature inside was several degrees cooler than outside.
A cup of coffee sat on the counter, already completely cold.
The first-aid kit was missing. The space beneath the counter was empty. The small first-aid kit that should have been there had been taken away.
Xiao stood where he was without moving.
His gaze shifted from the empty corner of the counter toward the backyard, then back to his phone.
He had already called Su Muchen on the way.
Unable to connect.
He called a second time.
Still unable to connect.
He did not call a third time.
Instead, he asked,
“Qianqian, how far have you gotten?”
Su Qianqian’s reply arrived four seconds later.
“I’ve sent the information over.”
The messages began arriving one by one.
【Evidence of an intrusion into Su Muchen’s phone detected. Time: 3:42 p.m.】
【Abnormal activity recorded in the shared vehicle system: Su Muchen called a vehicle through the app, boarded at the entrance to Changning Alley, and set the destination as a warehouse on Yong’an Road. Fifteen minutes later, the route was reassigned. The control panel was locked and remotely taken over. The shared vehicle was locked.】
Su Qianqian added through voice communication:
“The vehicle finally stopped at an underground parking lot in the eastern part of the city. The registered owner of the parking garage is a shell company. Tracing it upward leads to a subsidiary under the Sheng consortium. The parking lot’s surveillance cameras captured Su Muchen leaving with a man in a black suit.”
Xiao stood in front of the counter at Guichen Studio, listening as each piece of information was read aloud.
His expression did not change, but his fingers gradually tightened, his knuckles turning white.
“Have you found where the plane went?”
“Heading southeast. Based on the fuel load and flight speed, the range is approximately two thousand to two thousand five hundred kilometers. After comparing satellite imagery, there’s considerable cloud cover today, but AI analysis has narrowed the area down. It may be somewhere along the coast of Southeast Asia.”
Su Qianqian continued,
“The ADS-B signal has a gap. They shut off the transponder approximately an hour and a half after takeoff. The subsequent flight path can no longer be tracked through the civil aviation system.”
“Use other methods,” Xiao said.
Su Qianqian was silent for a moment. After searching through the information, she said,
“Logistics records from Sheng’s overseas subsidiaries. Over the past year, supply vessels have been registered in coastal areas of three Southeast Asian countries. One of the ships has abnormal supply activity over the past three days—food, drinking water, medical equipment. The quantities are higher than usual.”
“Where?”
“Off the coast of Sulawesi—Batula Island,” Su Qianqian said. “Satellite imagery shows a group of buildings there. Not particularly large, but the facilities are complete. Ownership is registered under an overseas holding company belonging to the Sheng consortium.”
After listening, Xiao said only one thing:
“Send the information to me.”
◆◇◆◇◆
That night, when Xiao Yuan stepped through the cold white light and entered Guichen Studio, he immediately noticed something unusual.
Normally, at this time, Guichen Studio would only have the single warm yellow light above the counter turned on, its glow soft.
But tonight, every light was on.
The front hall, counter, back room, and even the corner of the staircase leading to the second floor—every single light had been switched on, illuminating the entire shop so brightly that it was even brighter than during the day.
The counter had been pushed against the wall, and several tables had been pushed together. Their surfaces were covered with screens and tablets.
Several cables intertwined as they stretched from the tabletop to the outlets in the corners, resembling a makeshift neural network.
A map was pinned to the wall, with a certain location circled in red.
Several bottles of water sat on the table, while a coffee machine that was currently running had been added to the short cabinet in the corner.
Xiao was seated on the far left side of the joined tables. Three screens were open in front of him, simultaneously running several streams of data that Xiao Yuan could not understand.
Su Ningning stood by the window, holding a glass of water in her hand, her gaze fixed on the direction of the door as though waiting for confirmation.
Su Qianqian sat on the right side of the joined tables, six screens lined up in front of her. Her earphones hung around her neck, and her fingers moved rapidly across the keyboard.
The three of them simultaneously looked up toward the door of the back room.
Xiao moved the fastest.
He put down the pen in his hand, his gaze resting on Xiao Yuan’s face for a moment before moving away.
Xiao Yuan’s gaze swept across the temporarily assembled tabletop, passed over the map on the wall, and took in the expressions of the three people.
Then he spoke.
“Where did Mu’an go?”
Xiao did not answer immediately.
He was silent for several seconds, as though arranging a sentence he did not particularly want to say aloud.
Then he said,
“…He isn’t here.”
“Where?”
“With Sheng Chengxiu.”
Xiao Yuan’s expression did not change, but his fingers tightened slightly at his side.
He did not get angry. Instead, he asked,
“How long?”
“This afternoon,” Xiao said, his tone slightly lower than usual. “Sheng Chengxiu had someone hack into his phone and trick him into getting into a car. The vehicle was taken over, and he was sent to an airplane—to Sheng Chengxiu’s side.”
Xiao did not care how much Xiao Yuan could understand. He did not have time to explain each of these modern terms one by one.
“After investigating, we’ve determined that he is overseas now, at a medical research center owned by Sheng Chengxiu. He’s safe for the moment.”
Xiao Yuan listened quietly.
Then he repeated,
“For the moment.”
“Yes,” Xiao said. “There won’t be any danger in the short term.” His tone was certain. “Sheng Chengxiu keeps his operations clean. He needs to avoid legal risks, public pressure, and retaliation from Chenghui Group. So he’ll use other methods.”
“What methods?”
Xiao Yuan’s eyes narrowed slightly, his gaze cold and dark.
“I’ve received information that Sheng Chengxiu has continued restoring the Sheng family’s ancient texts. I suspect he may have already confirmed some of the information. That’s why he made his move against Mu’an.”
Xiao raised his eyes and looked at him.
As those words fell into the light of Guichen Studio, Su Qianqian’s movements stopped, and Su Ningning set down the glass of water in her hand.
Xiao Yuan stood there without speaking.
After a moment, he asked,
“How much has he found out?”
“Uncertain. The door, the door key, the Su family’s blood, the emperor’s blood—he may know some of it, but not everything. The fact that he dared to kidnap someone means he has at least confirmed one thing—Mu’an is the key. He’ll use confinement to extract information from Mu’an.”
Xiao lifted his eyes, the gaze behind his lens deeper than usual.
Xiao Yuan did not ask anything else.
He walked to the window and stood there for a while.
Outside, the streetlights of Changning Alley were still shining, their light falling across the damp stone pavement like a layer of silver-gray that had been repeatedly wiped clean.
This was not his world. There was very little he could do.
“What can I do?” he asked.
Xiao’s answer came faster than Xiao Yuan had expected.
“There is one thing I need to trouble Your Highness with.”
Xiao Yuan turned around.
“You are the Door Master,” Xiao said. His speech was unhurried, but there was a firm rhythm to it. “There is a powerful causal connection between the Door Master and the Door Key. The two of you can sense one another through the door. At the very least, you should be able to feel whether the other is safe.”
Xiao Yuan did not interrupt him and continued listening.
“He’s being confined in an unfamiliar place. He may be frightened, he may be trying to escape, or he may be trying to open the door. He doesn’t know that we’ve already found him. He needs to know that someone is coming to get him, so he shouldn’t act recklessly. That’s the only way to ensure our plan doesn’t encounter any variables.”
“So you want me to tell him this through the door?”
“Yes,” Xiao said. “Your Highness only needs to go to the back room, place your hand on the door, and establish a connection with Mu’an. If he can sense that you’re there, he won’t act recklessly.”
He was not sure how much Xiao Yuan could actually accomplish, but at the very least, being able to reassure Su Muchen would help.
Xiao Yuan asked nothing more.
He immediately turned and walked toward the back room, without the slightest hesitation in his steps.
The door to the back room was quietly closed.
He walked to the deep vermilion old wooden door and, without hesitation, pressed his palm against it.
The wood grain was cold, like the frozen surface of a river on a winter night in the northern frontier.
He closed his eyes, slowed his breathing, and concentrated.
At first, there was nothing.
Only the wooden texture beneath his palm and the faint scent of old wood deep inside Guichen Studio.
But Xiao Yuan did not withdraw his hand.
He maintained that position, as though standing at an invisible boundary, waiting.
He searched through that darkness, as though searching for the half of himself that belonged to him.
His Door Key.
Before long, he felt it.
An extremely faint tremor, almost impossible to describe in words, came from deep within the door panel.
It was neither sound nor light.
It was like someone breathing softly in the distance, pressing against the same door and tentatively drawing closer.
Xiao Yuan’s fingertips tightened slightly.
He felt his hand pressing against another hand, a hand he knew extremely well—the temperature, the texture.
It was the hand that had once treated his injuries.
He was not sure whether Su Muchen could hear him, or even whether Su Muchen could sense someone approaching.
But he still spoke.
His voice was very low.
“Mu’an.”
He could feel the warmth beneath his hand becoming clearer, as though someone were approaching the same spot from the other side.
“Don’t worry,” he continued, as though confirming that the message was slowly passing through the invisible distance. “I’m here. Xiao is here too.”
He felt the tremor on the other end stop for a brief moment, as though those words had touched some crack.
Suddenly, a voice softly sounded in the darkness, carrying a trace of unease.
“Jingyuan…”
Through the door, he could feel the hand pressed against his trembling slightly.
“I’m here,” he said.
At the same time, he felt the connection beginning to recede like a tide.
“Mu’an, wait for me. You’ll be safe,” he said to Su Muchen.
Not long afterward, he felt the tremor slowly retreat.
It had not disappeared. The feeling of the connection had simply faded.
Xiao Yuan did not immediately withdraw his hand.
He stood there for a while longer in the darkness, as though allowing those words—“I’m here”—to linger a little longer.
When he left the back room, his expression was not much different from when he had entered.
But as he passed the joined tables, he stopped for a moment and said quietly,
“He’s there. He’ll wait.”
Xiao did not ask how he had confirmed it.
He watched Xiao Yuan stop by the window, seemingly with no intention of leaving anytime soon.
Then he shifted his gaze back to the map on the screen.
The island circled in red on the map looked like a target that had been pinned in place.
Xiao picked up his phone, contacted several people, and continued making arrangements.
This time, he would not let Sheng Chengxiu off easily.
Since Sheng Chengxiu had dared to touch Su Muchen, he had to be prepared for the consequences.
The person who fires the gun must be prepared to be shot.
◆◇◆◇◆
Over the next thirty hours, a port city closest to the island seemed to be pushed forward by an invisible hand from the shadows.
Two companies were acquired by the same overseas holding company.
One was a logistics and warehousing company, and the other handled ship supplies.
The contracts were completed extremely quickly, at a price thirty percent above market value.
The sellers did not even negotiate. The figure offered by the other party had already exceeded their expectations.
The employees of the two companies did not even know their boss had changed.
There was only an email notification: operations would continue as normal, salaries would remain unchanged, and business would remain unchanged.
The employees only knew that a new face had recently appeared—a man wearing thin-rimmed glasses who did not talk much and would occasionally spend a long time in the warehouse.
He had no official title, but whenever the warehouse manager saw him, he would unconsciously straighten his posture.
◆
Su Qianqian sat inside Guichen Studio, six screens spread out in front of her.
Three of them displayed live surveillance footage from the research center on the island.
Two were running code.
The one in the very center was displaying the substitute footage she was generating.
She did not shut down the surveillance system directly.
Instead, she first copied all the surveillance footage from the entire island, then used an AI model to generate corresponding replacement footage one area at a time based on the environmental characteristics of each location.
The footage had to fool the human eye as well as the system’s automated comparisons.
“North logistics corridor. Estimated entry time: 3:17 p.m.,” she said quietly, as though confirming the schedule to herself. “Replacement footage complete. Vegetation, shadows, and lighting angles have all been calibrated.”
She pressed the confirmation key.
The generated footage was gradually inserted into the surveillance system’s data stream, covering every area that could be captured along the route.
When the people in the monitoring room looked at the screens, they would see a normally functioning corridor.
No abnormalities.
No intruders.
No one passing through.
Everything as usual.
She continued reporting.
“Forty percent complete. Northern section of the corridor replaced. The power cutoff point in the southern equipment room has been marked. Ningning can trigger it as soon as she arrives.”
“Remaining time: less than twenty-four hours.”
She said it to herself.
The sound of the keyboard began again.
◆
When Su Ningning arrived at the port with four people, they were wearing gray uniforms from a local logistics company, and the trucks bore the logo of the newly acquired company.
She stood at the front of the convoy, her gaze sweeping over the workers and cranes on the dock as she checked the surroundings.
“Equipment maintenance.”
She spoke to the dock manager, her tone casual, as though she were repeating something she had said countless times before.
“The supply ship’s air-conditioning system wasn’t operating properly last time. The compressor needs to be replaced.”
The manager looked at the logo on the truck, then at the work ID clipped to her chest, and nodded without asking further questions.
Su Ningning did not relax.
When she led the group in carrying the “equipment” onto the supply ship, one person paused for a moment on the deck, confirming the layout of the interior.
She quietly said, “Continue.”
That person resumed his movements and carried a box of standard parts.
The truck really was carrying equipment.
It was just that, besides compressors and wiring, several communication devices and a set of backup unlocking tools were hidden inside the equipment casings.
◆
The supply ship arrived at the island the following morning.
After the research center personnel briefly checked the cargo manifest at the dock, they allowed them through.
Su Ningning wore a white maintenance uniform, with an identification badge reading “Logistics Outsourcing · Equipment Maintenance” clipped to her chest. She walked at the front of the group.
She did not look around, behaving like a maintenance worker who had been here many times and was no longer curious about the surroundings.
The team members behind her dispersed individually, just like a normal maintenance crew, each heading toward a different equipment area.
Two of them remained in the southern equipment room for nearly twenty minutes. They opened the electrical distribution box, inspected the wiring, and then cut one of the lines at the scheduled time.
The power outage was small. It only affected the lighting and air-conditioning system in the southern equipment room. It would not trigger an island-wide alarm, but it was enough to make the research center’s security personnel spend time checking the situation.
Su Ningning stood at the corner of the corridor for less than five seconds before Su Qianqian’s voice came through the communications channel.
“The northern logistics corridor has been completely covered. The access-control system is gradually opening. By the time Xiao arrives, he should be able to reach the designated position.”
Su Ningning replied quietly,
“Understood.”
She said nothing else, simply turned around and continued down the corridor toward the southern equipment room.
Like someone carrying out routine maintenance.
No one noticed her, and there were no surveillance cameras she needed to avoid.
Because the images displayed by those cameras were currently showing an empty corridor.
◆
Su Qianqian’s fingers never stopped moving.
Her gaze darted rapidly between the six screens.
“The access-control system is gradually opening,” she said quietly. “Northern corridor, Door Three… unlocked. Elevator priority transfer complete. Fifth-floor corridor surveillance covered.”
She switched to another screen, checking that the replacement footage remained synchronized with the actual environment.
The people in the monitoring room would not notice anything unusual.
She had prepared more than forty-eight hours of replacement footage in advance, including corridor footage from different times, port footage under different weather conditions, and unloading-area scenes under different lighting angles.
Every segment was timestamped and would automatically switch according to the actual time.
“The internal map of the research center has been cross-referenced. The target room is at the end of the fifth-floor corridor… confirmed.”
She did not stop and simply continued typing.
◆
3:17 p.m.
The research center on the island was large, but its functions were clearly divided: living quarters, office areas, and laboratory areas.
Xiao had already obtained the internal map through the logistics system, with the location of the living quarters marked and projected through Jiguang.
At the entrance to the logistics corridor on the northern side of the research center, a gray transport truck stopped outside the unloading area.
When the door opened, five people wearing gray uniforms got out, identification badges from an outsourced logistics company clipped to their chests.
They naturally carried several boxes, looking as though they came here every week to make deliveries.
One of them wore thin-rimmed glasses and was dressed in gray port-worker trousers and a dark shirt.
He did not walk at the very front of the group.
Nor did he deliberately fall behind.
He simply walked in the middle of the group, like a logistics manager carrying out his daily duties.
When he entered the building, the surveillance camera at the end of the corridor turned toward him.
But in the monitoring room, the displayed footage was still of an empty corridor.
The replacement footage was functioning normally, covering every area he passed through.
He proceeded down the corridor.
When he reached the first security door, the lock automatically opened three seconds before he arrived.
He did not stop, as though he were simply walking through a door that was already open.
The second security door opened five seconds before he reached it.
When he approached the elevator, its doors opened as though someone had already pressed the button for his floor.
Su Qianqian’s voice came through the communications channel.
“Elevator priority transferred. Fifth-floor corridor cleared. Estimated arrival time: two minutes.”
Xiao did not respond.
He stepped into the elevator, and the doors closed behind him.
As the elevator ascended, Su Qianqian’s voice came through the communications channel again.
“The surveillance camera directly in front of the target room has been covered. Access control unlocked. No personnel movement nearby.”
When the elevator doors opened, the fifth-floor corridor was completely empty.
The lights were on, and it was so quiet that the corridor seemed to have been cleared out entirely.
Xiao stepped out of the elevator, turned left, passed through a door that had already been unlocked, and walked to the end of the corridor.
There was a white metal door at the very end.
He stopped in front of it for a moment.
Then he raised his hand and knocked twice.
There was no response from inside.
He knocked twice again, then spoke softly.
“Mu’an, I’ve come to take you home.”