Stubble Bro was dead. Only five of the bodyguards Xing Wuxian had brought this time remained.
Pei Ran quietly followed the path Stubble Bro had taken. After turning a corner, she saw a spiral staircase leading upstairs.
Her movements became even lighter as she crept up the stairs like a cat, reaching the second floor.
W suddenly spoke: “Pei Ran, I hear something ahead—sounds like footsteps.”
Pei Ran pressed herself against the stairwell corner, peeking out slightly to scan the area.
The hallway was pitch black, but the night-vision goggles provided clear visibility. No one was there.
Pei Ran mentally calculated: W, when we were at Nan Yi’s villa, we saw light seeping through the curtain gaps. That room should be on this floor. Further ahead?
W replied: “Yes, some distance from here. You’ll need to go straight down the hallway, pass through, and reach the main section of the estate. It’ll be on the left side…”
Suddenly, a beam of light cut through the darkness in the hallway ahead, sweeping past. Pei Ran jerked her head back.
No sooner had she pulled back than another flashlight beam shone upward from below the spiral staircase.
Someone was coming up from downstairs, seemingly about to ascend the stairs. Meanwhile, someone else in the hallway above was approaching from the opposite direction. Pei Ran was now trapped in the middle.
This was the landing right after the stairs—empty, with nowhere to hide.
The flashlight beam swayed upward.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
The footsteps grew closer.
Pei Ran quickly gauged the distance from both sides, then braced her hands on the stair railing and vaulted over.
She landed right in front of the person preparing to climb upstairs.
The one intending to ascend was another of Xing Wuxian’s bodyguards—a man with curly, slightly long hair tied into a small ponytail at the back.
Her sudden, unexpected descent caught Ponytail completely off guard. Though flustered, his reflexes were sharp—he immediately reached for his gun.
It was a motion he had drilled thousands of times, almost instinctive.
But someone was faster.
The moment Ponytail’s fingers brushed the gun, a hand clamped over his mouth while another gripped his head.
The hand clutching his skull didn’t feel human—more like some cold, mechanical device, with terrifying strength.
With a crack, his cervical spine shattered.
Another one down. Four left.
Pei Ran didn’t waste a single second after her successful strike. She caught his limp body as it slumped, carefully lowering it to the ground before dragging it into the shadows beneath the staircase.
There was some space under the stairs—enough to stash the body with room to spare. Pei Ran glanced at it but didn’t hide there herself. Instead, she immediately turned and ducked behind the nearby floor-length curtains.
The curtains didn’t quite reach the ground, leaving a gap of about ten centimeters. If someone stood behind them, their feet would be visible from the outside.
Pei Ran gripped the window frame behind her and gently lifted herself up.
Almost at the same moment, footsteps sounded on the stairs—the person from the second-floor hallway was coming down.
He was holding a flashlight. From behind the curtain, Pei Ran could vaguely make out his silhouette through the fabric’s weave.
This man was quite tall and broad-shouldered, yet his footsteps descending the stairs were as light as a cat’s.
Just from the sound, Pei Ran knew he wouldn’t be easy to deal with.
Holding her breath, she waited quietly for the right moment.
Finally, he made his way down the spiral staircase.
More alert than the previous two, he paused on the last few steps, cautiously sweeping his flashlight around.
The beam faintly penetrated the curtains, sweeping back and forth. Pei Ran remained perfectly still—not even the tassels on the curtains trembled.
He took two more steps down.
His pace was slow—unnaturally slow. Maybe he had heard the faint sound of Pei Ran dragging the body earlier.
The footsteps stopped again. Just a few steps away.
The flashlight beam searched every corner.
The space under the spiral staircase was merely shadowed, not concealed. When the light swept over it, the hidden corpse was instantly exposed.
Sure enough, the flashlight paused there for a second.
But it quickly moved on, scanning the surroundings—even the ceiling wasn’t spared.
After a rapid search, he suddenly rushed forward and yanked the curtains open.
There was no one behind them.
The moment he pulled the curtains aside, Pei Ran—using the protruding wooden picture rail on the wall like a climbing hold—swung herself lightly to the outside of the curtains, pressing flat against the wall.
It was like a game of hide-and-seek. When you’re outside, I’m inside; when you come in, I slip out.
The burly man, finding no one behind the curtains, seemed slightly surprised.
He finally turned around, gun in hand, and walked toward the hiding spot of the corpse. At the same time, he extended his pinky to activate his wristband—probably to notify the others.
This left his entire back completely exposed to Pei Ran.
Such an opportunity would vanish in an instant.
Pei Ran decisively lunged forward.
He was too tall, making his head an awkward target. Instead, she swung her mechanical arm with full force, driving a punch into the middle of his spine.
A sickening crack echoed, followed by a muffled groan. His spine deformed grotesquely under the impact, caving inward unnaturally.
He made a sound—Pei Ran instantly retreated.
Boom—
His spine was shattered, and he was already dead. Yet, three seconds after the noise, his body still exploded.
Flesh and blood splattered everywhere, a gruesome mess.
Third one down.
Pei Ran, riding the momentum of her successive takedowns, felt her spirits lift as she headed back upstairs.
The second-floor hallway was quiet now—no more figures, no erratic flashlight beams. With her night-vision goggles on, she pressed forward.
Passing through the wing of the estate, she reached the main building.
W silently calculated the distance. “Pei Ran, the room with the light you saw earlier should be just ahead.”
Rounding a corner, Pei Ran spotted it.
In what should have been a pitch-black corridor, a thin sliver of light seeped from under a door—sharp as a blade, slicing through the darkness.
W let out a surprised “Huh?”
What’s wrong?
Pei Ran suddenly realized what he meant. From the lit room, faint, indistinct noises could be heard.
Moving closer, she could make them out more clearly—sounds of kicking, thrashing, impacts. That alone wasn’t strange. What was strange was that mixed in with those noises were unmistakably human sounds.
A man’s voice—grunt after grunt, labored breathing, extreme agony.
By Silence’s standards, this absolutely counted as making noise.
Yet, there was no explosion.
Even if the source of the sound had been a machine, it should have detonated by now.
Pei Ran frowned. “How is this possible?”
W: “I don’t know either.”
Pei Ran glanced at the door again but didn’t approach directly. Instead, she first surveyed her surroundings.
Beside the door was a large open area, empty except for an ornate woven carpet. The corridor had a staircase—if things went wrong, she could quickly retreat to the ground floor.
Once she had assessed the layout, she crept silently toward the room where the sounds were coming from.
Inside, the man’s labored breathing continued, punctuated by occasional groans of pain.
W warned her: “Whatever’s happening in there… doesn’t seem good.”
Pei Ran replied mentally: “We’ll know once we look.”
Whatever it was, what intrigued her was how someone could make noise under Silence’s rule without exploding.
The door was an old-fashioned double-leaf carved wooden one, its pattern the familiar three-headed iris. From a distance, Pei Ran noticed not only light seeping from the gap below but also a small hole near the handle where light leaked through.
It had an antique brass keyhole—like everything else in this centuries-old estate.
Pei Ran checked her surroundings again, then cautiously pressed her eye to the keyhole.
The view was limited, but she could make out what looked like a parlor inside.
Dark wooden paneling covered the walls, and the room was furnished with an intricately designed chaise lounge and high-backed chairs draped in embroidered cushions. The light came from a bronze candelabra on a table, its candles flickering.
They have wristbands for lighting, yet they’re still using something this archaic?
Several people were inside.
The most conspicuous was Xing Wuxian.
His long legs were spread wide as he lounged deep in the cushioned chaise, leaning back with half-lidded eyes. From Pei Ran’s angle, only his profile was visible.
Directly in front of him, a middle-aged man was tied to a chair.
This was the one gasping and groaning.
He was drenched in blood, his clothes soaked to the point of being unrecognizable.
Beside him stood two of Xing Wuxian’s men. One held a strange tool—
A metal rod about ten centimeters long, with a vertical blade at one end. It looked almost like a peeling knife.
Back in the bunker world, Pei Ran had seen people use similar tools to peel potatoes—pressing the blade against the curved surface, then pulling it smoothly to strip off a long ribbon of skin.
The man was pressing the blade against the bound middle-aged man’s exposed thigh.
Just like peeling a potato, he gave it a swift, practiced pull.
Human skin wasn’t as firm as a potato’s—far more delicate—but the blade was sharp enough to slice off a long, thin strip all the same.
The middle-aged man let out a hoarse, guttural scream.
He screamed.
And yet, he remained alive. Un-exploded.
His chest heaved violently as he gasped for air. Despite the winter cold, sweat mixed with streaks of blood dripped down his face.
His clothes had long been cut to tatters, his arms, legs, and torso exposed. His skin looked like it had already been “peeled” in multiple places, raw flesh weeping blood.
A modern interpretation of Lingchi—death by a thousand cuts.
Pei Ran pondered the real question: Why could he scream safely?
Her eye still pressed to the keyhole, the mechanical spider—unable to see anything—crawled silently onto her shoulder.
W asked: “What’s happening inside?”
Pei Ran answered: “Exactly what you’d expect. Not suitable for children.”
She tilted her head away from the keyhole.
The spider climbed closer to her neck, its tiny claws gripping her collar as it positioned its optical sensor to peer through.
The “not suitable for children” scene inside was not the kind W had imagined.
W fell silent.
Earlier, when Pei Ran had been efficiently eliminating Xing Wuxian’s bodyguards—one every few seconds—W had felt it was slightly beyond his comfort level.
As a federal security agent, he operated within a framework of laws and regulations. Pei Ran’s brutal, primal combat style was something even the most gruesome case files rarely depicted.
But seeing this, W began to think Xing Wuxian’s men hadn’t died unjustly.
Their movements were practiced, their expressions indifferent—treating a living person like an object. This wasn’t their first time.
W: “They’re interrogating him.”
Pei Ran agreed.
For Xing Wuxian to bring his men to this isolated estate under such dangerous circumstances, to torture someone like this—he had to be after something.
Pei Ran: “I wonder what they’re trying to force out of him.”
W said coolly, “Power. Money. What else could it be?”
He wasn’t wrong.
But Pei Ran thought—beyond power and money, Xing Wuxian seemed fixated on one more thing: Shige Ye.
Then, a voice spoke inside the room. Xing Wuxian’s.
“Honestly, I have no interest in your flesh…”
He, too, could speak freely.
The mechanical spider immediately shifted aside, yielding the keyhole to Pei Ran.
She peered through and saw Xing Wuxian lounging in the chaise, his tone almost conversational. “Tell me everything you know, and I’ll let you walk out right now.”
A classic interrogation. Yet in this room, both torturer and victim could speak without consequence.
Pei Ran’s gaze swept the room again—then froze.
Beside the bronze candelabra on the table sat a small, white, dome-shaped device, resembling an electronic clock.
She’d seen it before.
Yesterday noon, when Xing Wuxian was detained at Black Well’s west exit, this very device had been in his luggage.
The inspecting soldiers had demanded its specifications and manufacturer. The “insurance salesman” couldn’t provide them, stammering that it was custom-made. They’d scrambled to call in favors, trying to bypass the checkpoint—until, according to W, they secured approval from Basserway.
The device had no screen, just two glowing green lights. Tiny icons were etched above them, too distant to decipher.
Pei Ran yielded the keyhole to W. “That white device on the table—can you see the icons?”
The spider needed only a glance. “One light shows an umbrella, the other a lock. The unlit icon is a silhouette of a torso with a lock over it.”
No obvious meaning.
Pei Ran: “Could this be a shield generator? Like Black Well’s sound-dampening layer, but portable—creating a safe zone where speech is allowed?”
W: “Plausible. The Defense Ministry never invested in miniaturized versions—too costly for limited range. But theoretically, yes.”
The Defense Ministry hadn’t. Someone else had. And Xing Wuxian owned one.
With this device, he could carve out a safe bubble anywhere—speaking freely, even outside Black Well.
Inside, the middle-aged man rasped, “I’ve told you everything… There’s nothing left.”
Xing Wuxian flicked a finger, his patience gone.
The bodyguard pressed the peeling knife to the man’s thigh—another swift, excruciating pull. A fresh strip of flesh peeled away, blood welling instantly.