You're All in This Together!

Huai Shi woke from his bed with a scream and saw his bedroom in complete disarray.

A nightmare.

Yet the gruesome way he had died in that nightmare was so vivid that his neck still ached phantomly from being torn apart.

Still shaken, he touched his neck and found his hand covered in cold sweat. But he was overwhelmingly sleepy, so after taking a drink of water, he lay back down and closed his eyes.

In his haze, he seemed to become a night-shift security guard, slipping outside for a smoke by the entrance when he heard footsteps coming from the hallway.

Someone was slowly approaching through the darkness.

When he crushed out his cigarette and turned around to ask what was going on, he saw a savage mask stained red with blood—Fierce Ape. Fierce Ape grinned at him.

The next instant, he died again.

Huai Shi sprang up from bed screaming once more, once again seeing his wrecked bedroom and the dust his scream had shaken down from the ceiling.

He panted violently and touched his stomach.

Another nightmare.

This time, his stomach had been cut open, from bottom to top, and then his neck had been pulled out...

"Fuck... what the hell was that?"

After panting for a long while, he lay in bed. He had intended to stay awake all night, but the moment he closed his eyes, he fell asleep again.

This time, he became a dead fat guy who had just finished having fun and was getting ready to head home. He washed his hands, sang a song, prepared to change clothes, and then saw blood seeping in beneath the door.

Footsteps in a pool of blood slowly drew closer.

Someone pushed open the door.

Then he died again.

"Fuck, what the hell was that!"

Huai Shi angrily opened his eyes, wrapped himself tighter in the blanket, and turned over. "I don't believe it!"

He closed his eyes, and then... had nightmares for the entire night.

It was not until near dawn that things finally returned to normal and he fell into a deep sleep. Before he completely lost consciousness, he vaguely saw a blood-red eye silently watching him from the deepest shadows of layer upon layer of dreams.

At three in the morning, Ai Qing heard the phone downstairs. It soon stopped ringing, and before long, someone knocked on her door.

"Miss, it's a C-Class Alert."

Ai Qing sighed. "Help me get dressed."

A woman in a fitted suit entered, helped her out of bed, removed her pajamas, and put underwear onto her bare, fair body.

The thin girl was helped to her feet and stood before the mirror, leaning on her cane.

"Which one are you wearing today?"

"The black one we bought a while ago. Pair it with the long skirt, and remember to bring a blanket."

"Okay."

Fifteen minutes later, Ai Qing sat in a wheelchair as the woman holding an umbrella pushed her into the car. The vehicle drove through the torrential rain, showed its credentials outside the cordon, and entered the scene.

The heavy rain had washed away the blood outdoors, leaving nothing behind. Only white sheets covering corpses could be seen, though the indoor scene remained intact.

Someone came over as soon as they saw the car arrive.

The window rolled down, revealing the girl's pale profile, made slightly pallid by lack of sleep. "What happened?"

"It's a special crime," the person outside said. "By regulation, we had to immediately notify the Astronomical Society's local inspector to handle it."

"As expected..."

Ai Qing sighed wearily and patted the armrest of her wheelchair. The woman driving got out with an umbrella and lifted Ai Qing and her wheelchair from the car with one hand, carefully setting her down somewhere the rain could not reach.

"How's the scene?"

As though it had nothing to do with her, Ai Qing asked coldly, "Any survivors?"

"No."

The man at the scene shook his head. "Jinhao Bathhouse, a newly opened club. Clients, prostitutes, security guards—there isn't a single survivor inside or out. A delivery driver discovered it. By the time we arrived, an hour had already passed... Then a police station in QP District was attacked, but there were no casualties."

"I understand."

Ai Qing did not ask further questions. She merely looked up at the capable female driver behind her. "Push me around. I've never toured a brothel before."

The scene was not large, just four floors and a basement.

There were only bloody footprints and horribly mangled body parts. The few shapely corpses in the lounge still bore all kinds of brutal traces of abuse too horrific to look at.

After looking around, Ai Qing yawned expressionlessly. "Any surveillance footage?"

"It was removed, and all the cameras were destroyed. But we just found footage from nearby traffic cameras."

"Let me see it first."

Ai Qing tapped the wheelchair armrest without much interest.

The man at the scene sighed helplessly. He was not angry, however, and instead waved for the technicians to send over the surveillance footage.

Whenever anyone saw Ai Qing, the first thing they noticed was undoubtedly her face, drawn in by those calm eyes that could almost be called indifferent.

Then came her wheelchair, followed by the heartfelt regret that such a beautiful girl had disabled legs. It was truly a waste of heaven's gifts.

Even if she had a strange, cold personality and had never smiled at anyone.

After working together so many times, the person in charge at the scene had long become accustomed to her aloof manner and no longer found it strange.

There was not much footage. Most of it merely showed fleeting shadows, followed by people being torn apart. Only at the very end, when that figure emerged from the main entrance, did the traffic camera across the street capture a frontal outline.

Nothing could be seen clearly.

"It's all useless. No need to watch."

Ai Qing shifted her gaze to the person at the scene. "What happened at the police station on the other side? No casualties?"

"That's right. It attacked the evidence room, broke straight through the wall. The doors were locked at night and no one was on duty, but there's footage."

The man hurriedly pulled up the recording and played it.

In the footage, the evidence room was silent. Then came a thunderous boom. The walls shook as if there had been an earthquake, and then a breach opened.

A hunched figure crawled inside. During the brief time before anyone arrived, it turned the place upside down. Finally, it smashed open a cabinet, pulled out something, noticed the surveillance camera, and threw something at it. The screen immediately went black.

Ai Qing reached out, paused the video, and rewound it a few seconds.

In the footage, the person facing the camera wore an ape mask. He was hunched over and held something in his arms...

"Zoom in here."

Ai Qing's eyes widened slightly. She leaned closer and stared at the enlarged image, at the box in the person's arms.

"What is that?"

"I don't know... a Rubik's Cube?" The man at the scene was equally baffled, then felt idiotic over his absurd guess.

After considering it for a moment, Ai Qing asked, "Is there a record of the evidence room's contents?"

Soon, a management catalog that had been locked in a cabinet was sent over. Near the end was a photograph of a strange iron box, along with dispatch records and case files from the crime scene.

"A corpse?"

Ai Qing frowned. "Whose corpse was discovered when the case was reported?"

"A local ex-convict named Liu Eryou. He had a record of drug use... The information is here. We saw him in surveillance footage from before the incident at the club."

All the files were sent to Ai Qing's phone.

First, a drug addict with a criminal record died in an alley after visiting a prostitute. Then the entire nightclub was slaughtered, and the police station holding the evidence was attacked as well.

In the end, the attacker took away a small box...

Ai Qing irritably rubbed between her brows.

"Another Border Relic?"

She tapped the armrest unhappily. "What are the people at Border Customs even paid for? How do they keep letting this garbage into the Present Realm? This is already the sixth case this year... Also, if that's the case, then the harbor explosion during the day must have been related too, right? Why wasn't I informed?"

"..."

The middle-aged man working with the scene froze, then his expression turned bitter. "I'm not sure. They're probably still going through the procedures?"

"If they love procedures so much, why didn't they keep following them a little longer after such a huge mess broke out tonight?"

Ai Qing's tone was openly mocking. She had long understood the local authorities' distrust of the Astronomical Society. "It's fine. I can understand if I put myself in their position. Who would enjoy having a crippled girl under twenty ordering them around?"

"..."

The middle-aged man could only force a bitter smile while cursing the idiots above him from the bottom of his heart.

After sending someone from the scene to buy her hot coffee, Ai Qing took one sip with a frown, then disdainfully tossed it aside.

"Instant."

"It's really too late. We couldn't get it from the place you wanted..."

"Enough. Stop acting pathetic."

Ai Qing gave him an uninterested glance and tapped the screen. "There may not be much footage from the time of the crime, but there must be footage from earlier, right? Who reported it when the first corpse was discovered?"

Soon, the footage at the entrance rapidly rewound, finally freezing on a boy with somewhat messy hair.

On the screen, he turned to glance back at the police station behind him, revealing his face.

In the silence, Ai Qing bit her finger and said nothing.

"Tch..."

As if it were an illusion, the middle-aged man heard her make an extremely displeased sound.

Morning after the storm.

Faint birdsong could be heard outside the window, and the fragrant scent of grass and trees drifted in through the gap. After a night of nightmares, Huai Shi finally woke from a long-lost blissful shut-in dream.

He opened his eyes.

Then saw the black muzzle of a gun.

Soldiers wearing body armor, their faces covered by masks and armed to the teeth, had already crammed the room full. Rifles and pistols alike were aimed squarely at his face.

"Brothers, don't shoot. We're on the same side..."

Huai Shi stared blankly for a while, swallowed, and slowly raised both hands.

Who the fuck is on the same side as you.jpg

Though the leader said nothing, his eyes conveyed unrestrained disgust. Then Huai Shi felt someone jab a needle into his neck.

After that, everything went black, and he knew nothing more...

.

"Name."

"Huai Shi..."

"Age."

"Seventeen..."

In the interrogation room, Huai Shi sat handcuffed to a chair with his head hanging limply. He was wondering whether this damn place recruited male escorts too.

What the hell was this!

What was going on!

What was he supposed to do now!

Huai Shi felt like his face had become a display screen for classic reaction memes, eventually settling into an incomprehensibly dense Black Guy Question Mark.jpg.

What the fuck was going on?

Several groups of people came and went, repeating the same questions over and over: where he had been yesterday, what he had done, who exactly he was, and what criminal forces stood behind him.

They clearly treated Huai Shi as some utterly vicious criminal.

The interrogators took turns at him, going from solo matches to team raids. Threats, inducements, casual conversation, good cop and bad cop, plus demonstrations and intimidation involving all sorts of interrogation techniques that left no visible injuries...

By the end, Huai Shi was on the verge of collapse.

"Gentlemen, just give me a quick death." Huai Shi lay on the table in tears. "I'll confess, I'll confess to everything, but at least tell me what I did! I'm a good citizen, a really good citizen! I even called the police after seeing a murder scene yesterday! You can't frame me..."

Behind the one-way mirror.

Ai Qing watched the entire process expressionlessly. Only when the middle-aged man in command grew impatient and waved to bring out the heavy methods did she speak.

"If this really involves a Border Relic, then even if you torture him, he probably won't say anything. Besides, can't you tell whether he's lying?"

"But this is our only lead..." The middle-aged man was at his wits' end. "What should we do?"

Ai Qing shook her head, took out her phone, opened her contacts, and finally found a number. "There may not be many registered Ascenders locally, but quite a few are willing to cooperate with the authorities. However, because your internal delays allowed this case to happen, the Astronomical Society will not cover the hiring fee. You understand?"

"I understand." The middle-aged man sighed. "It's only midyear, and we still have more than half the budget left. I'll pay double. Is that okay?"

The call connected.

Ai Qing got straight to the point. "Special Affairs Department. Fifteen minutes. Okay?"

The call ended shortly afterward.

Fifteen minutes later, someone was escorted inside by the guards. Clearly not here for the first time, he greeted Ai Qing familiarly. "Long time no see, Ms. Ai. Why don't you come sit at my place sometime?"

"Too dirty."

Ai Qing expressionlessly shoved a file at him, pointing at the boy behind the one-way mirror who was sprawled over the table shouting about exposing them on Weibo. "Make him talk. Can you do it?"

"Piece of cake."

The newcomer grinned, swept back his hair, and pushed open the door.

But when he saw Huai Shi's face, he froze.

Huai Shi was dumbfounded too.

"Wait, why is it you?"

He stared in shock at Brother Number One, the male escort who had once taught him to follow the rules, then shouted indignantly toward the outside, "I get it now, you're all in this together! You said you didn't recruit male escorts here! I just didn't sell my body, was that really enough for you to do this?"

In the awkward dead silence, only the boy's grief-stricken roar remained:

"—You're trying to force an honest man into prostitution!!!"

Today's sensational headline: My god! Wealthy woman imprisons teenage boy, only to force him into prostitution!

A sincere four-thousand-word chapter. Please recommend and bookmark. It seems Qidian has added an investment feature now? How about giving me one too?