In Pei Ran’s mind, W was speaking: “The device likely creating the shielding effect is the white instrument on the table. I observed it just now, there’s a switch on it. I’ll find a chance to climb up and quietly turn it off.”
Pei Ran understood his plan.
If that white instrument could generate a shielding layer, then turning it off quietly would mean that once Xing Wuxian opened his mouth to speak again, he would directly explode into bits.
Once Xing Wuxian died, this place would surely descend into chaos. At that point, they could figure out a way to deal with the others.
If its function was to suppress the activity of the green light, then turning it off would be even better. She could freely use her powers to deal with everyone in this room.
Even if it turned out to be nothing at all, it didn’t matter. It was worth trying—there was no downside.
This was the simplest solution at the moment.
Pei Ran responded in her heart: “Okay. Be careful.”
In the flickering yellow candlelight, Pei Ran saw the mechanical spider.
She was lying on the floor, her angle of view lower than everyone else’s, just enough to see it—it had been hiding in the shadows behind the table leg, and now, nimbly, it crawled up along the leg of the table.
It lightly leapt up, hooking the tablecloth with its claws, hiding itself in the folds of the hanging fabric, and quickly climbed upward.
The mechanical spider moved very fast, and in the blink of an eye, it reached the tabletop, slipping behind the copper base of the candlestick.
It observed its surroundings for a moment, then lowered its body as much as possible, advancing toward the white instrument on the table.
There was no obstruction between the candlestick and the instrument. The next short stretch of the path was very easy to be spotted.
The insurance salesman was standing next to the table, very close to the instrument, his eyes still drifting around absentmindedly.
Pei Ran spoke: “At the time, I was kidnapped.”
She spoke, and everyone in the room turned their attention to her. Even the insurance salesman looked over.
Xing Wuxian sneered: “As expected, you have to press a knife to the face before someone confesses.”
He asked, “And then? When you and my brother were locked in that room alone, what exactly happened?”
Pei Ran thought to herself, So Shige Ye really is his brother.
W would definitely notify her before switching off the power, so Pei Ran continued speaking with confidence.
“He took out a knife and tried to kill me.”
Xing Wuxian wasn’t surprised at all. “So?”
Pei Ran thought: So I killed him. Just like I’m about to kill you.
The mechanical spider quietly and swiftly darted toward the white instrument.
W said in her ear: “Pei Ran, don’t speak anymore. I’m going to shut it off.”
At that moment, the insurance salesman probably caught something moving on the table from the corner of his eye and suddenly turned his head.
He snatched the instrument from the table and screamed, “Spider!!”
W clearly tried to beat him in speed—his claw bent, he leapt, diving toward the instrument. Unfortunately, he was just a little too late. His claw nearly touched it but still failed to press the switch in the final moment.
The mechanical spider missed its strike and immediately retreated.
Another bodyguard nearby reacted quickly, already drawing his gun and aiming at the spider.
“Bang!”
The tabletop was pierced with a hole, and the white tablecloth burned black.
The mechanical spider rapidly crawled toward the edge of the table and slid down along the table leg.
Xing Wuxian turned around, puzzled, “What spider? This manor is so old, it’s normal to have spiders. Is that something to be scared of?”
“Your Highness, it’s not an ordinary spider,” the insurance salesman hugged the white device to his chest, using his hands to guard the switch tightly. “It’s a mechanical spider, and it looked like it was trying to touch the shielding layer generator.”
He said, “shielding layer generator.”
So this device really was used to generate a shielding layer.
The insurance salesman freed one hand and pointed under the table. “It was a silver mechanical spider, it ran that way.”
Xing Wuxian furrowed his brow and signaled the bodyguards.
Several bodyguards immediately rushed over.
Xing Wuxian turned back and stared at Pei Ran: “Mechanical spider? Yours?”
Pei Ran calmly nodded: “Yes, mine.”
She admitted it directly, which instead made Xing Wuxian pause slightly. Then he turned his head and ordered: “If you can’t catch it, shoot it.”
With his command, the bodyguards all joined in to catch the spider.
A few of them bent down, trying to grab and stomp, while the mechanical spider darted back and forth at high speed.
“Bang! Bang!”
Someone found another chance to fire. But the spider moved even faster than an ordinary spider, darting up and down, slipping everywhere like a ghost—completely impossible to hit.
The spider’s body was so small that if it wasn’t careful, it could get caught. W was still looking for an opportunity, trying to climb onto the insurance salesman and press the switch.
The reception room descended into chaos, but Xing Wuxian acted as if he didn’t see it and continued interrogating Pei Ran.
“And then? How did he end up falling out of the wheelchair?”
W’s plan had failed, but Pei Ran had her own plan.
From the moment she was locked up in the quarantine center, she had been plotting the killing of Xing Wuxian, again and again, thinking it through thoroughly.
It wasn’t easy to make a move inside the Black Well, so she had been waiting for a chance outside of it.
Once out of the Black Well, she could remove the suppressive wristband and use Green Light No. 1 to kill him—it would be a piece of cake.
As long as she could get close enough for him to enter the effective range of Green Light No. 1 and write in her mind, “Xing Wuxian explodes into pieces,” he would immediately turn into fragments.
Silently eliminate him, silently disappear—they wouldn’t even be able to find the killer.
But the incident that later occurred in the mine tunnel made Pei Ran realize that Xing Wuxian might possess a device capable of suppressing the activity of the green light.
And Green Light No. 1, unfortunately, was extremely susceptible to suppression.
So there had to be another backup plan.
That was Green Light No. 2.
The Green Light No. 2 that could draw was very special—it was the least affected by suppression, whether it was while wearing the suppression wristband or that day in the mine tunnel with the suppression device, it could still move.
Inside and outside the Black Well, Pei Ran had repeatedly conducted various experiments, slowly figuring out the rules and functions of Green Light No. 2.
She had tested it in the dormitory: under suppression, even if Green Light No. 2 could appear at the tip of the pen, the drawings it made wouldn’t take effect.
But when not under suppression, if she had already drawn the final picture in advance, even under suppression, simply rotating the pen could still activate its effect.
For Green Light No. 2 to take effect, several conditions were required.
A comic panel that was laid out, with coherent and reasonable content, aligned with Green Light No. 2’s existing abilities; the target needed to be within the line of sight, visible; and there needed to be a pen capable of rotating with Green Light No. 2 attached.
All three had to be simultaneously present within a certain range.
Just now, outside the door, upon discovering that Green Light was being suppressed, Pei Ran had planned to call upon Green Light No. 2. The distance was right, and Xing Wuxian was within sight. Unfortunately, the door was suddenly opened by someone, interrupting her plan.
But it wasn’t too late even now.
The only problem was that the pen in her pocket had been tossed aside by Xing Wuxian during the body search.
Pei Ran silently estimated the distance between herself and the pen.
She struggled to raise her hand, turned her body slightly, and pointed to the collar of her combat uniform.
“At the time, the wheelchair went out of control, and he fell straight out. Don’t kill my spider—I have a hidden pocket here that contains something of Shige Ye’s. I can give it to you.”
Xing Wuxian gave her a wary look.
She was lying on the floor, completely powerless, even turning over was exhausting. The green light was also suppressed—she didn’t appear to pose any threat.
The insurance salesman was clutching the device to his chest, directing the bodyguards to catch the spider crawling all over the floor. Xing Wuxian set down the paring knife in his hand and personally opened the collar of Pei Ran’s uniform.
Inside the front of her combat uniform, there really was a hidden pocket. Because it lay flat, it felt like there was nothing inside, which was why it hadn’t been discovered earlier when he searched her body for the first time—this was the first time in his life Xing Wuxian had searched someone himself.
Xing Wuxian reached inside and pulled out a folded piece of paper from the hidden pocket.
Pei Ran said, “This is a page torn from Shige Ye’s notebook.”
Xing Wuxian had seen Shige Ye’s black leather notebook countless times. At a glance, the size of this sheet matched.
He immediately unfolded the paper.
Pei Ran’s gaze fell on the paring knife he had just put down.
No need to struggle to reach that pen anymore—someone had delivered a “pen” right to her.
She said silently to W in her heart: “I’m going to make my move. I’ll give you a signal—be ready to press the switch on that device at any time.”
Xing Wuxian unfolded the sheet of paper in his hand.
On the paper were four comic panels.
The largest panel at the top, also the most meticulously drawn, was unexpectedly a small half-body portrait of him.
There were no details on the clothing, but the head and hairstyle were drawn very precisely. The strokes weren’t skilled, and the penwork wasn’t very smooth—some areas had even been repeatedly traced—but the features had been captured very accurately.
The shape of the face, the lines of the jaw, the shape of the eyes, the flow of the hair—
It was as if it had been meticulously drawn based on a photo of him.
The figure in the drawing even showed half of his hand.
Hands were the hardest to draw, and this one was poorly done, but it still depicted fine details—he wore a wristband on his arm, and on his finger was that black ring of his.
The second panel still depicted him, slightly smaller, but it looked like a copy-paste of the first panel.
The difference was that a flame had erupted from the wristband.
In the next panel, it was as if the person drawing had finally sighed in relief, no longer needing to render any details—because his clothes and head were all ignited by the flames.
The burning flames were drawn with wild lines, engulfing the entire person, burning him completely.
In the fourth panel, only a fully blackened silhouette remained, lying alone on the ground—clearly charred by fire.
Seeing this curse-like four-panel comic, Xing Wuxian was briefly stunned.
He was very familiar with Shige Ye’s drawing style—this comic was so poorly drawn, it definitely wasn’t his brother’s work.
Pei Ran remained expressionless. Of course she was the one who had drawn it.
As soon as she left the quarantine chamber, she had asked W for the royal family members’ files. There were all sorts of photos and videos in those files—including Xing Wuxian’s.
She had been practicing continuously.
Her goal was clear—she just needed to practice a half-body portrait of Xing Wuxian based on his photos.
Pei Ran had carefully analyzed that Shige Ye’s comic style wasn’t strictly realistic. It just captured the key features of a character.
For example, when killing Shige Ye, all she did was alter the ponytail on the head of the figure lying on the floor, changing it to Shige Ye’s medium-length draping hairstyle—and it took effect.
This proved that Green Light No. 2 allowed for a certain margin of error in its judgment.
To activate Green Light No. 2, she needed to capture the main features of the person, and ensure that within the current scene, there was only one person whose characteristics basically matched.
Drawing slowly and calmly in advance based on a photo was also much friendlier to her skill level.
This was the final result of all her practice.
Over there, with the strange comic still in his hand, Xing Wuxian suddenly caught a glimpse—out of the corner of his eye—of Pei Ran’s weak hand grabbing the paring knife he had just set on the floor.
Xing Wuxian thought, she still dares attempt such a futile struggle?
The paring knife had a long, rod-like shape. Its peeling blade, while sharp, could only remove skin—definitely not a weapon capable of killing.
Maybe with the strength of her mechanical arm, she might have used it to kill someone. But now that she had inhaled the drug, just like how it affected biological limbs, it also disrupted the neural signal transmission between her brain and the mechanical arm. Her mechanical arm was just as weak as the rest of her body—wanting to kill someone with a paring knife was nothing but a dream.
That was also why he dared to toss the knife to the floor so carelessly.
Xing Wuxian didn’t think much of it and casually reached out to snatch the paring knife from her hand.
But suddenly, a drop of green light, like liquid water, appeared on the blade of the paring knife.
Pei Ran’s fingers moved.
The paring knife spun once between her fingers like a pen, the green light at its tip tracing a dazzling arc.
A burst of flame suddenly whooshed up, shooting out from the wristband on Xing Wuxian’s arm.
Just like on the red soil outside the Black Well, in the center of the instrument array, when Pei Ran had drawn a signal emitter bursting into flames and causing an energy block to ignite—now, the energy block inside Xing Wuxian’s wristband had caught fire as well.
Xing Wuxian panicked instantly.
He threw down the sheet of paper in his hand, jumped to his feet, and frantically patted at the flames before finally reacting—he quickly yanked off the burning wristband and threw it aside.
However, the comic had made it very clear—everything was unfolding exactly as the panels depicted.
The flames had already ignited the cuff of Xing Wuxian’s sleeve, rapidly climbing upward, racing along his arm to his shoulder, and catching his hair on fire.
In a state of utter panic, Xing Wuxian heard Pei Ran’s voice.
“You really wanted to know what Shige Ye said before he died? I can tell you.”
She said, “At the time, he said: ‘Pig head, pig head, not afraid of the rain, others have umbrellas, I have a pig head.’ Too bad time ran out, and he couldn’t finish it.”
She paused. “I forced him to say it.”
Rage surged from the depths of Xing Wuxian’s heart, but the flames on his body only burned fiercer, and in the blink of an eye, they swallowed his vision.
The comic’s plot continued—he rapidly turned into a ball of fire.
The searing pain made Xing Wuxian let out screams of agony. He collapsed to the ground,
Rolling wildly across the floor, while the rest of the room stood frozen in shock.
No one cared about the spider anymore—several bodyguards rushed toward him.
Pei Ran propped herself up, using all her strength to move a bit farther away from that ball of fire. In her mind, she said to W: “Now.”
She didn’t believe that in this chaotic situation, the insurance guy would still clutch the shielding device without letting go.
W replied, “Got it.”
However, the insurance guy’s reaction was completely different from everyone else’s.
He stood there in a daze.
Right before the fire started, he had glanced toward Pei Ran—and just happened to see a flicker of green light, like a drop of water, flowing onto the paring knife in her hand, hovering at the tip.
She had spun the paring knife, and Xing Wuxian immediately caught fire. The flames spread at an unbelievable speed, engulfing him in seconds, turning him into a fireball.
She was using an ability.
Even under the intense suppression of the device, she could still call upon the green light—still use her ability.
Forget putting out the fire.
The insurance guy hadn’t survived in the royal family this long for nothing—his mind was sharp, and he knew how to read the situation. Clutching the device to his chest, he turned and ran, yanking open the reception room door and bolting out at full speed.
Back on Pei Ran’s side, a strange sensation surged through her.
It was as if someone had suddenly taken off the suppression wristband on her arm.
The white instrument had fled with the insurance guy, and the sense of confinement vanished in an instant. The green lights within her finally came alive again.
Pei Ran immediately summoned Green Light No. 1.
Green Light No. 1 was full of energy and appeared the moment it was called, entering her mind’s visual field.
Pei Ran quickly wrote:
[All of Xing Wuxian’s subordinates explode.]
Tearing apart and blasting into pieces were specialties of Green Light No. 1. As soon as the sentence was written, it took effect immediately.
Although this reception room was large, it was still not larger than the effective range of Green Light No. 1. Every part of the room fell within its radius of effect.
The bodyguards were in chaos. Some were quickly taking off their jackets, swinging them to beat out the flames on Xing Wuxian; some turned to run out and look for a fire extinguisher.
“Boom—boom—boom—boom—”
A series of firework-like explosions rang out. One after another, the bodyguards in the reception room all exploded, flesh and blood flying, spraying crimson mist through the air.
Pei Ran lay within the blood mist and finally took a breath.
Only Xing Wuxian was still burning.
He was no longer moving, curled up on the ground. The flames on his body had also diminished significantly. The exposed parts were completely charred black.
The floor beneath him was also blackened, but just like the fourth panel of Pei Ran’s comic, until the flames fully went out, only he had been burned—he lay there alone, pitch black and lifeless, and the floor hadn’t caught fire.
This major threat, Xing Wuxian, was finally dead.
The only problem was, during the explosions just now, that insurance salesman reacted too fast—he had already escaped the reception room and had likely fled beyond the blast radius of Green Light No. 1.
The mechanical spider, upon seeing everyone else explode, immediately chased after him. But since Pei Ran was still lying in the room, before long, it came crawling back in through the half-open door.
W said, “He ran.”
Pei Ran couldn’t move right now—there was simply no way for her to chase him.
She tried her best to support herself and sit up.
Unfortunately, her body still had no strength, soft and weak.
The mechanical spider scurried over quickly. First, it used its head to push the discarded gun across the floor all the way to her side, then climbed up her leg, up to her shoulder, and asked, “Can you walk?”
Pei Ran tried, but she still couldn’t stand on her own.
She looked around, trying to find something to lean on, and suddenly realized—there was still one living person in this room.
It was the middle-aged man tied to the chair, covered in blood.
He wasn’t one of Xing Wuxian’s subordinates, so he hadn’t exploded. He slumped weakly against the chair back, completely still.
He had already regained consciousness from his coma, barely managing to open his eyes a sliver.
He had witnessed the entire scene with his own eyes—Xing Wuxian catching fire and being burned into charcoal, his subordinates exploding one after another. The furrow in the middle-aged man’s brow finally relaxed. The pain on his face faded, and he was now only gasping, slowly and shallowly.
He had been cut all over, blade by blade. The blood loss was too much—he looked like he was on the verge of death.
Suddenly, he spoke, his eyes fixed steadily on Pei Ran, his voice extremely faint:
“…Number Ten… went to the Black Well…”
Without the protection of the shielding layer, they couldn’t speak like that anymore. As soon as the three seconds were up, with a “boom,” he exploded as well.
His voice had been too muffled. Pei Ran asked W, “Did he say Number Ten went to the Black Well?”
W could hear clearly: “He said, ‘Kuchi took the Number Ten file to the Black Well.’”