Fox Mask / The First Signs

Pardo calmed herself down, recalling the cat's movements, lowering her body and concealing her presence.

This is her usual trick. She has used similar techniques to steal many things, and many people don't even notice when she sneaks into their rooms and takes their treasures.

Her mentor was a cat, so she also picked up some of the cat's habits, including how she observes her environment.

Clinging to the rooftop, Pardo tossed aside her bangs and began carefully observing the surroundings for possible hiding places.

She is not the hunter, but the prey. This is the fundamental point. Pardo believes that her greatest strength is her ability to recognize herself. Her ability to hide, investigate, and ultimately achieve her goal all depend on her clear self-awareness.

"There's no one around..." Pardo paid attention to the sounds around her. She considered her eyesight to be quite good, and she wouldn't miss any information as long as the house was within about ten meters of her.

This should have been an excellent surveillance area, but there was no one there.

To ensure she hadn't made any mistakes, Pardo checked even more carefully, but still found nothing wrong.

"Could it be that Brother Lin is talking nonsense in his sleep..." She wondered if Lin was really sober at that moment.

What Pardo didn't know was that hundreds of meters away on a high slope, a sniper rifle with its scope hidden in the shade of a tree was pointed directly at her head, while next to it was the surveillance footage from the house.

After she leaped onto the roof, one finger rested on the trigger of the sniper rifle...

Immer couldn't sleep.

He had always prided himself on being calm, and in fact, he had always acted that way, following in Lin's footsteps. He hoped to become the team's analyst and serve as Lin's deputy.

But now he finds himself far less composed than he thought, and he loses his composure after the captain disappears.

Where is the captain now?

Immer didn't believe Lin would die so simply. Even if he were to die, he would die on the battlefield. Deep down, Immer didn't want to imagine Lin dying helplessly from the Honkai Sickness, like every elderly person who is irrevocably stepping into the abyss.

"Let's get up and organize the documents." Immer casually turned on the bedside lamp, looked at the stacks of documents on the cabinet that were originally intended for Lin, and sighed softly.

Confused.

It's not just a sense of confusion about themselves, but also about the future of the moths drawn to the flame and humanity itself.

With most of its functions gone, where will the Moth of Fire headquarters go next?

Immer remembered that there was another document in the team meeting room, so he silently got up, dressed, opened the door, and went out.

The desolate night, even under the bright lights, didn't feel particularly warm. At a glance, the endless corridor stretched into the depths beyond the reach of sight, as if a bloodthirsty monster might burst out from it at any moment.

With a not-so-easy gait, Immer walked toward the meeting room of the Squad Seven.

"Tap, tap, tap..."

Following the assassination attempt, the Moths did not impose a curfew.

Immer didn't know the reason behind it; it was information that should only be known to captains. But based on recent events, it was very likely that a dispute arose among the command level regarding their attitude towards the incident.

Those Titans that were supposed to be used to sweep through dangerous areas are now lying dormant in the storage warehouse because headquarters cannot afford to let any clues slip by. Therefore, the Titans, which are intended as weapons, must remain on standby until the event is over.

Many of Doctor Mei's research projects have not been approved, but she has not proposed any new research directions to High Council for a long time. She has been focusing solely on developing Artificial Intelligence, as if she has given up on her previous plans.

Beyond their unchanging exteriors lies a turbulent undercurrent within. Immer is weary of the endless fighting among humans and wants to save humanity. The captain also wants to save humanity, as do many other soldiers.

At least most people don't want to get bogged down in internal strife.

"Tick-tock".

Suddenly, Immer stopped in his tracks.

His gaze snapped forward.

The direction leads to an artificial lake, and the sound of the wind, along with the rising and falling damp air, blows in.

His fingers rested on the holster at his waist, and he drew it without hesitation.

The smell is off.

Immer smelled blood, the unique scent of human blood mixed with the smell of rust.

Considering the recent assassination attempts, Immer already had a guess in mind.

He could immediately return to his room and sound the alarm, but that would likely cause him to miss the opportunity to rescue the survivors. Besides returning to his room, there is also an alarm outside the artificial lake, so the best course of action would be to go there and sound the alarm.

If it were Lin, what would he do?

As he carefully approached the artificial lake without making a sound, Immer stood at the entrance and, to avoid alerting the enemy, refrained from sounding the alarm. He peered inside.

The pupils constrict slightly.

The blood stained the clear lake water red.

A corpse floated silently in the center of the lake; it belonged to one of the High Council.

But that wasn't what shocked Immer the most.

A tall, masked figure stood by the lake, silently watching the corpse. From his back, it was clear that he was male. His hands were covered with a pair of ferocious claws, and blood was still dripping from his fingertips.

Murderer.

Immer immediately understood the man's identity.

He was sweating bullets, never expecting to be the first to discover the murderer, especially given the coincidence. He now had two choices.

Either sound the alarm, then stall the killer and wait for backup.

Either don't sound the alarm, but instead ambush the culprit and take him down in one fell swoop.

These two drastically different choices made Immer hesitate for a second.

But then he knew this wasn't the time to play the hero.

If it were Lin, he would definitely choose the safest way. He would not allow himself to do something uncertain just to get ahead.

Lin will only do things for others if he's not sure he can do them.

Immer then turned around and sounded the alarm. After the alarm sounded normally, he breathed a sigh of relief, then solemnly raised the muzzle of his gun and turned to aim at the murderer.

"Bass."

"..."

Immer stared blankly at the man who had appeared before him at some unknown time, a hand gripping the pistol and easily crushing it into a pile of scrap.

A man wearing a smiling fox mask.

"Tick-tock".

The smell of blood was strong.

Immer convulsed and tilted his head to the side, seeing the sharp claws that pierced through his abdomen. Three thick claws mercilessly pierced through his unprotected body.

As the claw was pulled out, blood splattered onto the fox mask's eye corner, like tears, sliding down its side.

A chill swept over his consciousness.

Immer collapsed heavily to the ground, vomiting blood, and closed his eyes amidst the piercing alarm.

Chapter Thirty-Three: First Clues

Pardo tiptoed across the rooftop, searching her surroundings. "Is there really a watcher?"

She considered herself quite skilled at reconnaissance; the slightest disturbance could keep her on alert for a long time. Yet, she hadn't seen a single person, which made her wonder if Qi Lin was even conscious.

"But... I always feel like someone is watching me." Pardo smoothed the hair on her arm and shrank her neck in fear. "It must be what Brother Lin said that made me so paranoid."

On a slope a hundred meters away, in a sinister shadow, a sniper aimed at Pardo's unsuspecting head.

She can be sniped immediately if she does anything out of line or tries to attack the monitor; that's an order.

Wind direction, sunlight, descent... As a sniper who chases the moths of fire, he had already mastered all the techniques.

Shall we do it here?

His finger gradually pressed on the trigger, tightening it forcefully.

The girl in the scope suddenly jolted and looked up in his direction.

"Bang!"

"Huh? I felt a tingling sensation on my body just now. Was it just my imagination?" Pardo scratched a strand of hair by her ear. She looked around in the direction she had been looking, puzzled. A moment ago, a certain intuition had heightened to its maximum warning level, and then suddenly dropped.

But Pardo was not a warrior after all. She did not know that she had actually walked through the gates of hell, and that the sense of danger she had felt was just an illusion.

The sniper fell to the ground unconscious. Someone stood behind him, took out a syringe, and plunged it into his neck.

After seeing Lin on the monitor, the man pondered for a moment and then picked up the sniper rifle and the sniper head.

"Erwin, what are you doing here?"

Danzhu, who came to the Medical Department to pick up experimental materials, immediately spotted her sneaky best friend. She walked up behind him and patted him on the shoulder, which startled Erwin so much that he almost jumped up and hit his head.

"You scared me to death!" Erwin said with his hands on his hips, clearly annoyed, after seeing Danzhu.

He only felt confident in front of his friends. After joining Hen's team, he felt that the atmosphere in the team was extremely oppressive, and Hen was also preoccupied with recent events and had no time to work on the new team.

"You're the one who's scaring me to death... Shh, keep your voice down, this is the Medical Department." Danzhu noticed that the Medical Department staff were watching the two of them making noise, so she led Erwin to the outside corridor.

After Danzhu checked that the materials were all in order, she asked Erwin, "I heard you transferred to Hen's team. How have you been these days?"

"Don't mention it. There was a little incident Fifth Honkai War... Never mind, I can't say." Erwin wanted to tell Danzhu about the Fire Moths' plan to send them to their deaths Fifth Honkai War, but he was afraid of implicating Danzhu, so he didn't say it.

When he heard that the Firemoths intended to send them to their deaths, he ran away like the others. He was just an ordinary person. If it were a mission, Erwin believed he could keep up with the team, but his organization only intended to send them to their deaths. So the fear in his heart did not lie to him.

However, Erwin was different from the others who blamed Lin. He actually admired Lin for being able to intercept the Fifth Herrscher alone. Lin did what they dared not do, so they had no right to criticize Lin.

Erwin didn't want to continue the conversation, so he changed the subject and asked, "What are you doing at the Medical Department?"

"Doctor Mobius is short of some medicine for his experiment, so he asked me to get it." Danzhu wasn't in a hurry. The lab had been too quiet lately, and they couldn't find anything to do. The experiments Mobius was doing were not something that they, who were considered clumsy even when they were just doing odd jobs, could participate in. "The doctor has been very mysterious lately, always fiddling with some drugs. Before, he was always doing things that looked very dangerous."

"Oh..."

Erwin seemed a bit off. Danzhu thought it might be because the new team was putting too much pressure on him, so she decided to chat with him a little longer and try to find something to talk about. But before she could even open her mouth, Erwin said, "Yesterday... someone else was killed."

"Again—" Danzhu covered her mouth, her eyes widened, and she lowered her hand after adjusting her breathing and heartbeat. "No wonder the atmosphere in the Medical Department was strange today."

"You didn't know?" Erwin looked at Danzhu in confusion. Logically speaking, Danzhu should always know this kind of information before others. She is a gossipy person who loves to browse posts and chat. How could she look like she just found out about such a big thing?

Danzhu lowered her head awkwardly. "I... I worked on the model until very late the day before yesterday, and I slept almost all day yesterday. I even got scolded by the professor this morning..."

"..."

Knowing his female friend's unreliable personality, Erwin shook his head and said, "Last night, someone sounded the alarm. Two bodies were pulled from the artificial lake, both High Council of the Firemoth. There is also a soldier who is seriously injured and is still being treated."

"It is said that the seriously wounded soldier has important clues."

The atmosphere became slightly tense.

Kevin paced restlessly in front of the emergency room, his expression visibly grim.

The bright red warning light made him uneasy.

Hen's expression wasn't much better, but he was older and more experienced than Kevin, so Kevin was much calmer.

The fact that Lin's subordinates were injured plunged their already heavy hearts, burdened by the assassination attempt, into despair.

Hua sat absentmindedly on the cold bench, tucking one leg in, resting her face on her well-muscled thigh, covering her head, lost in thought.

"Drop."

The indicator light turned from red to green, and the three of them simultaneously looked at the door of the emergency room. The doctor pushed the door open, took off his mask, and frowned as he said to Kevin, who was standing at the front, "He's out of danger, but the massive blood loss and abdominal perforation will keep him in a coma for a while. We'll put him in the Medical Pod."

"Really..." Kevin was relieved to hear that Immer's life was no longer in danger.

He couldn't protect Lin, so at least he should protect Lin's subordinates.

"Was he unconscious for a period of time?" Hen then became concerned about something else. "Then there's no way to verify that matter."

"What?"

Hua Cai snapped out of her daze and, upon hearing their conversation, asked without hesitation.

After glancing at her, Hen said, "Immer left a message before he fell unconscious, describing the killer's physical characteristics."