Nine Lives?

"..."

"This is Team Seven. Nothing found at thirty-five degrees southeast."

"This is Team Eight. Nothing found at sixty degrees southeast."

"..."

"This is Team Sixteen. Nothing found at thirty-five degrees northeast."

The officer in charge coordinated the reports from each search team and quickly noticed something was wrong.

"What about Team Ten? Why hasn't Team Ten responded?"

"Sir, we've been calling them continuously for thirty minutes. No response at all."

"What direction were they searching?"

"Sixty degrees northeast."

The officer slammed a hand on the table and shouted, "They've been drugged into hypnosis again! That has to be it!"

"Immediately send nearby teams to support them. Keep communications open every minute."

Although they had not found the enemy, this kind of unexplained loss of contact was all too familiar. It was exactly like what had happened on the mountaintop.

Having roughly identified the area where the enemy might be, the nearby teams began closing in to form an encirclement.

As for Team Ten, its four members were standing beneath a tree with their arms raised, utterly entranced.

They gazed longingly at the White Nine-tailed Fox in the tree as though she were a goddess. They kept trying to get closer to her, yet could never reach her.

In his beast form, Lan Mu lay dozing on a branch. His nine great tails hung softly beneath him like white curtains.

The tree was tall and straight. No matter how the four policemen climbed or jumped, they could not get anywhere near the Nine-tailed Fox perched high above.

In their hearts, that yearning fascination—so close yet forever out of reach—tormented them to the point of madness.

"A helicopter again. If it comes this close, then don't blame me."

Lights swept across the area ahead, while the sound of rotors drew steadily closer from low in the sky.

When the helicopter flew directly over Lan Mu's head, it came far too close. As though drawn by some strange allure, the pilot involuntarily looked toward the treetop.

He saw the elegant Nine-tailed Fox seated there. Her absolute beauty lured him into abandoning the helicopter as he actually leaped toward her.

Lan Mu raised his head and watched as the uncontrolled helicopter passed over him, eventually crashing into the distant jungle.

"Rustle..."

With a light leap, Lan Mu jumped onto another treetop, narrowly avoiding the pilot. The pilot snapped a branch as he fell from the tree and hit the ground hard.

The sound of breaking bones was unmistakable. Bewitched by Lan Mu, the pilot had actually jumped from the helicopter and crippled himself.

And that was not all. Police officers kept approaching from every direction. Whenever they came within a certain range, they would see him as though he were some priceless treasure, throwing themselves toward him in obsession, chattering and hopping about beneath the great tree.

As time passed, more and more police officers gathered beneath the tree.

In the end, more than fifty police officers stood beneath Lan Mu's tails, staring up at him.

Their communicators rang without pause, but none of them had the attention to answer. They all crowded together, desperate to get closer to Lan Mu.

They swarmed beneath the same tree, colliding and shoving one another, their hands held high like a group of desert survivors reaching for the only bottle of water.

More than fifty police officers had been out of contact for half an hour, and even a helicopter had crashed. The command center was going frantic.

"What about the remaining team? Team One hasn't arrived yet, right? Tell them immediately not to approach the target."

"Have them report the situation from a distance first, then stand by."

Fortunately, the commander caught on and stopped the remaining officers from approaching the area where the others had gone missing.

Before long, Team One reported, "Sir, the brothers from the other teams are all up ahead. They... they're gathered beneath a tree forty meters away from me. That fox is on the treetop."

"They're gathered around it? Just like what happened on the mountaintop?"

"Yes. They seem to have been hypnotized."

Sweat covered the commander's forehead. It was his first time facing an opponent like this—what kind of drug could hypnotize more than fifty people at once?

"Have you spotted any suspicious person?"

"Reporting, sir, no suspicious persons. Within visual range, all we can see is that fox..."

"Could it really be a Nine-tailed Fox? Is this actually a supernatural incident?"

The commander hesitated. The situation had reached an awkward impasse. He neither dared send anyone over nor could he simply let the matter drop.

More than fifty police officers had become hostages. He did not even dare report this to his superiors, leaving him trapped between advancing and retreating.

"Believe me! Everything must have been done by that fox!" Rabbin kept trying desperately to persuade him. This time, the commander was no longer entirely unconvinced.

"Professor Rabbin, do you have any way to rescue my subordinates?" the commander asked, intending to give it a try.

Rabbin said, "That fox is extremely elusive. You have only two choices. One is to report the situation and request more support, or simply ask the military to intervene."

"The other is to give up on capturing the Nine-tailed Fox alive and kill it directly with a sniper rifle."

The commander snapped, "Professor Rabbin, I didn't ask how to catch the Nine-tailed Fox. It's only a fox!"

Professor Rabbin flared up as well. "Fool! The fox caused everything. Kill the fox, and everything will be resolved."

"Still, you'd better tell the sniper to only seriously wound it. It would be more valuable to me alive."

The commander sighed. While reporting to his superiors, he ordered Team One to kill the fox from a distance.

The reporters also learned the truth about the predicament and promptly sent the footage to Kuala Lumpur's media outlets.

A helicopter had crashed, and more than fifty police officers had been taken hostage.

A mysterious White Nine-tailed Fox. An unknown criminal magician.

Malaya had not seen news this big in a long time, but it was also a disgrace for the Kuala Lumpur police.

The news spread throughout Kuala Lumpur that very day and even began spreading across the country.

The public began questioning the police's ability to handle cases. They had been toyed with by one person, yet had not even seen what their opponent looked like.

And now, for the first time ever, more than fifty police officers had become hostages. If even the police could be taken hostage, how could the public expect them to protect ordinary people?

Faced with questions from the public and the media, Kuala Lumpur's police commissioner made a public statement.

On one hand, he greatly exaggerated the opponent's power. On the other, he denied that the Nine-tailed Fox truly existed and classified the case as a murder incident involving someone disguised as a ghost or monster.

Nearly all police forces in the city were mobilized, and he made a promise to the public: "Even if we have to search every inch of the Great Han Mountain tropical rainforest, we will capture the culprit."

Meanwhile, Lan Mu continued silently waiting for the final moments before his transformation ended.

Suddenly, a muffled crack rang out. A bullet pierced through branches and leaves from an extreme distance and struck Lan Mu.

Lan Mu fell from the tree and slammed hard onto the ground.

At the bullet's point of origin, a sniper smiled confidently and spoke into his earpiece. "OK, target eliminated... Bullet hit the target's head... What? How is that possible?"

Lan Mu, whose head had been hit, shook his fox head and climbed to his feet, covered in blood.

The surrounding police officers had been deeply entranced, but now they seemed to have regained their senses, staring around in bafflement.

Lan Mu hurriedly cast his charm again, only to discover that this time, he had failed to control everyone. Several police officers had slipped through.

"The range shrank? How is that possible?"

"No, I was shot by the sniper just now, wasn't I? But why didn't I die?"

"I was clearly shot in the forehead. I felt like my head had exploded. How was I suddenly not dead?"

Lan Mu thought as he fled, not daring to linger.

He turned and ran. Being locked onto by a sniper was no small matter.

After running for a while, Lan Mu finally noticed something was wrong.

He... was missing a tail!

"What the hell? Why do I only have eight tails now?"

The missing tail was the ninth one, a tail whose function he had never known.

Now that he thought about it, there were two possibilities.

First, the ninth tail's ability was to die in his place. When the Nine-tailed Fox died, she would revive at the cost of one tail.

Second, every tail could die in her place! He had already died once just now, which was why one tail had vanished. Perhaps the Nine-tailed Fox's greatest secret was that she had nine lives.

In any case, Lan Mu was certain that he had truly died just now. His head had been blown apart by the sniper rifle, and he had died on the spot!

"Damn it! I was actually killed!"

"If the Nine-tailed Fox had only had one life just now, I really would have died. I would never have woken up again!"

The more he thought about it, the more stifled he felt. Lan Mu ground his teeth. If he had died so pathetically here just now, his unwillingness would have pierced the heavens.

"A sniper, huh? Just you wait!" Lan Mu fled wildly.

The feeling of dying once was impossible to describe. Those who had never died could never understand it. In that instant before death, emotions erupted; nearly every emotion a person possessed burst forth at once, yet all of them clogged within the heart, impossible to describe or make others feel.

After fleeing several kilometers away, Lan Mu slipped directly into a tree hollow.

Though he wanted dearly to make someone pay for his lost tail, he knew the Nine-tailed Fox was still too weak. Her power of charm might have been unmatched beneath the heavens, but her own frailty was a fatal weakness. All it took was one bullet to send him to his death.

"Time until the forced period ends..."

"Thirty minutes remaining!"