The footsteps in the first-floor corridor came to a halt.
The two black-robed figures walking through it looked up, warily staring toward the staircase on the second floor.
There, Bai Jingxuan lay motionless on the ground, refusing to get up like a turtle hiding in its shell.
Although she knew it was useless—whether she played dead or pretended not to know anything, neither could change the fact that she had already been exposed—she still found it hard to accept that her escape had failed in such a manner.
For her old illness to flare up at a time like this was far too ill-timed.
She suffered from a congenital disease that even hospitals could not diagnose. Its cause was unknown, and there had never been another case like hers in her family's medical history, yet it had happened to her alone.
Its symptoms were exactly like this: her limb muscles would suddenly lose control, accompanied by weakness, as though part of her body had become paralyzed. Unlike traditional epilepsy, Bai Jingxuan remained conscious throughout an episode and could perceive time and changes in her surroundings normally.
The attacks were unpredictable, and no known medicine could relieve them. The only fortunate thing was that the disease usually affected only skeletal muscles and lasted just a few minutes. Bai Jingxuan remembered hearing a caregiver say that if a similar condition affected the heart muscle, she might not have lived this long.
And now, for it to happen at such a critical moment, it made no difference to Bai Jingxuan which part of her body had been affected.
The two black-robed figures who had heard the noise were already coming up the stairs, and they saw her sprawled across the steps.
She even saw one of them take out something resembling a communication