While Thor and An searched for Zhang Heng's trail near the convenience store, Zhang Heng had already returned to the health club deep in the mountains, a thousand miles away, outside Isis's place.
It was just past midnight. Zhang Heng parked the car before the main gate, only to discover that unlike his first visit, the health club's gates were tightly shut, and the inside was pitch-black.
Zhang Heng got out with his travel bag and pressed the doorbell.
Yet after waiting about five minutes, there was still no response from inside. No one came to open the door, and Isis's maid, that Egyptian woman, was nowhere to be seen.
Zhang Heng frowned at this and took out the Pet Wire he carried with him. He shook the wire, telling it to get to work. But after the Pet Wire opened the gate before him, Zhang Heng withdrew the hand he had raised to push it open.
Instead, he climbed directly up the drainage pipe beside it to the fourth floor, arriving before a window on the eastern side.
Zhang Heng remembered clearly that this was the reception room where he had first met Isis.
The moment he landed, a dagger silently stabbed toward his waist from the darkness. At the same time, he heard the twang of a bowstring beside his ear, and a crossbow bolt shot from behind him, aimed straight at his heart.
The knife and arrow, one before and one behind, sealed off every possible route of escape. Yet despite the perilous situation, Zhang Heng remained calm. He had no time to draw Hidden Sheath from his waist, so he simply held the sheath across his body and knocked aside the dagger before him. Then, borrowing that force, he swung half a step to his left