Different Paths, No Common Cause (Two Chapters Combined)

"Phew..."

It was the dead of night. A gentle breeze stirred the air, which should have felt refreshingly cool, but the criminals were so tense that their bodies and minds felt feverish.

"Boss, are they investigators?" one of the nervous underlings asked.

The tattooed man with ink around his neck frowned at the increasingly dense white mist and said, "They don't look like investigators.

"If they were investigators, they would have come out by now and told us to surrender instead of staying completely silent like this."

"Then what should we do now?" the nervous underling pressed again.

"..." The tattooed man around the neck was silent for several seconds. After thinking it over, he made up his mind and told his underlings, "We're leaving. Follow me."

The burly, heavily built man and his companions had no intention of returning to the speedboat. Instead, they chose to leave with their trade partners.

The reason was that their speedboat had already been swallowed by the white mist. If they went back aboard now, they had no idea what might happen—and if something did happen, it would certainly be something they did not want to face.

"Step, step, step..."

The criminals' footsteps rang out as they hurried into the distance.

However, after they had gone only four or five meters, the white mist that had been slowly closing in around them suddenly churned, then began spreading faster.

In the blink of an eye, the white mist blocked off the direction they had been heading. Now they were surrounded on all sides, unable to tell east from west, north from south.

"Fuck..." The tattooed man around the neck cursed and shouted at the unknown enemy, "If you've got the guts, come out! Otherwise, disperse this white mist right now!"

Hearing their boss curse