Chapter 959: Chapter 678: Missing_2
"What’s going on, Director?" Yang Xiao asked urgently as he entered.
"Director Liu from Luming Bureau just called, their investigation team has lost contact in a place outside the city called Jingping Town," Nalan Shuo got straight to the point.
"Jingping Town..." Yang Xiao felt slightly familiar with the name; he remembered that it wasn’t very close to Rongcheng, "Why would they go there?"
"In that village, two children went into the mountains to pick mushrooms and disappeared. The family members who went to look for them haven’t come back either. That place is an outlying area of the Luming Bureau’s jurisdiction."
"How long has Wu Zhengwu and his team been missing?" Yang Xiao pressed on.
"6 hours now."
"That long, why did they wait until now to say something?" Beibei was also anxious; she had a good private relationship with Wu Zhengwu. 6 hours—if something really happened, it was enough time for their entire team to be wiped out several times.
"The area is surrounded by mountains with poor signal. They agreed to make contact every 3 hours, and it was only after missing the second check-in that the Luming Bureau confirmed there was a problem. They can’t be blamed for this."
As a leader, Nalan Shuo understood Director Liu’s predicament—it wasn’t reasonable to call for reinforcements at every little incident. Out of an average of 100 accidents, not even half might be related to supernatural events.
Moreover, assembling personnel this time was highly confidential, to avoid leaks. He didn’t inform other departments until after Elder Yang and the woman engaged in combat, only then did he send out a notification.
"Do you think... Captain Wu might have run into that female evil cultivator?" Beibei’s words made everyone’s hearts jump.
It wasn’t an impossibility, in fact, quite likely—it’s no wonder they couldn’t find her in the city; she had run to the outskirts instead.
There’s no time to delay. Although it was uncertain whether this was a trap or not, after all, a team of brothers was in trouble there. Not attempting a rescue was out of the question. Morally and emotionally, Yang Xiao couldn’t get past this.
Nalan Shuo felt the same. He immediately called for action, having Yang Xiao lead the team, along with Qu Muzhi, Beibei, and the Dark Army Captain, to form a rescue team and rush to Jingping Town to save them.
He stayed behind to wait for news from Captain Yang Lao and the Dark Army woman, ready to rush to aid them as soon as the two dealt with the enemy.
"Director, Captain Qu and I are enough, Beibei and the other brothers should stay to protect you," Yang Xiao said immediately.
"I don’t need protection, there’s no time to waste, you set off now!"
With Nalan Shuo’s insistence, the Dark Army Captain left two men behind, and the rest followed Yang Xiao and set out.
Soon, three off-road vehicles left the Lin’an Patrol Office, racing through the night. Yang Xiao and his party of eight set out with Beibei driving the lead vehicle, carrying her, Yang Xiao, and Qu Muzhi, while the other two vehicles carried the 5-member team led by the Dark Army Captain.
This was a man of few words, with the surname Fang, dressed in a grey, worn tracksuit, carrying an ancient sword on his back with a rusted hilt. Even in front of Nalan Shuo, he did not show much respect, like a machine that had eroded its sense of self.
But he was undoubtedly a master as well. Yang Xiao had once subconsciously compared himself, not knowing how this man measured against him and Qu Muzhi.
At 3:30 in the morning, Yang Xiao and his party finally arrived at this small place called Jingping Town. Beibei brought up the electronic map, which showed that the town was long from east to west, narrow from north to south, surrounded by mountains on three sides, with only one narrow exit for entry and exit. On the map, it resembled a porcelain bottle, thus the name Jingping.
On the way, Yang Xiao also roughly learned about this place. Jingping Town had a very small permanent population, just like most resource-exhausted areas. People here used to live off the mountains and waters, leading a rather prosperous life.
However, following a governmental order, the factories in the town were closed down, with almost all the young people in the factory going out to work elsewhere to make a living. Only elderly people and children were left behind. Now it is almost like a ghost town, with a permanent population of just a few hundred people, estimatedly.
"Stop the car, let’s walk in."
Under Yang Xiao’s suggestion, everyone parked the car hundreds of meters away from the entrance to Jingping Town, hid the vehicle in a nearby forest, and then proceeded on foot.
Yang Xiao was aware that there might be an ambush waiting for them inside, so he proposed to go ahead alone to scout the path.
With the Soul-Capturing Mirror in hand, Yang Xiao was not too worried about his safety; even a Ghost-level Apostle could not invade his Mirror World.
At present, apart from ghosts, the only one capable of achieving this was the Old Clan Leader of the Ru Lin Academy, a true Netherworld-level Apostle who could imprison the Sect Master of the Yu Yuan Sect, a fearsome being.
However, Yang Xiao’s proposal was stopped by someone; it was the Dark Army Captain, who slightly shook his head, then took out a gourd from his bosom. The gourd was both broken and small, with a twisted shape, as if it had been picked before it was fully developed.
The man took a deep breath, placed the gourd in the palm of his hand, and with a slight trembling of his hand, a stream of black smoke quickly emerged from the gourd, enveloping Yang Xiao and the others without warning.
Only after a few breaths, the smoke had completely obscured the figures of the 8 people present. It was then that Yang Xiao realized the profoundness of this item; looking out through the black smoke, the view was almost unobstructed, but he could feel that if someone were to look at them from a distance, their figures would blend into the night.
"Nice item." Even Qu Muzhi, who seldom spoke, commented with appreciation. It was clear to anyone with eyes that this item was a sharp tool for night infiltrations, stealth attacks, or escapes.
Grasping the gourd tightly, the man was calm as he urged in a low voice, "We have too many people; under this state, we can maintain it for at most half an hour. Everyone, stay close to me as the center."
In such a concealed state, Yang Xiao and his group entered Jingping Town. The place was bigger than Yang Xiao had imagined, with all kinds of lingering signs indicating its former prosperity.
But now it had truly declined, with piles of miscellaneous items everywhere. Looking around, a large area had only a few scattered spots of light.
In the night, the distant buildings left only some vague dark silhouettes, intertwining with the mountains in the background.
There were few lit homes in this place, but that didn’t mean much, after all, this was not a bustling city; at dawn, both the old and children were asleep.
The silence of the night was extraordinary, also casting a layer of unease over everyone’s hearts. Yang Xiao couldn’t explain why, but ever since he stepped into this place, he felt as if he was being watched by a pair of icy eyes, his subconscious telling him that something terrifying lurked in the darkness.
"There’s a light over there." Beibei tiptoed to look into the distance; not far to the right side of the street, there was a bungalow with light shining through the windows, bordered by iron bars.
After getting closer, Yang Xiao noticed there was a makeshift parking lot behind the bungalow, with several vehicles haphazardly parked inside.
"It’s a makeshift parking area; that house is the security guard’s cabin," whispered a woman from the team.
Having arrived here, they had not seen a single living soul, which made them quicken their pace involuntarily.
Approaching the window cautiously, Yang Xiao peered inside and saw that there was a light on, an old-fashioned chandelier casting a faint yellow glow. The black-and-white television was on, playing some outdated country drama.
Yang Xiao focused slightly, and directly opposite the TV set was an old, worn-out leather sofa with a person lying on it.
Because of the angle, the person’s back was to him, obscuring the face, but judging from the attire, it seemed to be the security guard of the parking lot.
With white hair on top of his head and a pair of old, army-green cotton shoes, this matched Yang Xiao’s perception of that era.
Watching the old man’s body move up and down slightly, Beibei turned to look at Yang Xiao and asked quietly, "Is there a problem?"
While seeing the old man, the unease in Yang Xiao’s heart surged again. Utilizing the mirror on the wall, in the next second, Yang Xiao appeared silently in front of the old man. He lifted the lantern in his hand, and green light began to climb up the old man’s back.
