Jack and Joseph desperately tried to resist, not because being captured was so terrifying, but because they feared being taken over to that mine shaft.
Unfortunately, several battle-hardened men had them pinned, and their mouths had been taped shut.
"Mmph... mmph..."...
When Baru came out of the guard booth, he saw two young men pinned to the ground, still struggling nonstop.
They wore casual clothes, and a security guard beside them held a bag of food and two pairs of binoculars.
They looked like ordinary civilians through and through.
Baru walked over and crouched beside them, pressing an M9 in each hand against Jack's and Josephine's heads.
The cold touch of the muzzles instantly stopped both young people in their tracks.
"Now, I'm going to peel the tape off your mouths. If either of you starts shouting, I'll shoot. Don't doubt my word."
Baru's low voice and fearsome appearance were clearly convincing. Both nodded in terror.
Seeing this, Baru signaled to the man beside him with a glance, and the man ripped the tape off both young people's mouths with two sharp tearing sounds.
Sure enough, Jack and Joseph didn't dare shout, or even speak. The guards holding them loosened their grip a little, allowing the two to shift from lying facedown to kneeling upright.
Both were breathing rapidly. Despite the cool night air, their foreheads were covered in sweat mixed with dirt rubbed off the ground.
Even as they looked at Baru, they couldn't help nervously glancing back at the mine shaft behind them.
Before Baru could ask any questions, their reaction made him frown.
"What are you two doing here? Do you have anything to do with our employees' disappearance?"
"We can't stay here! Let us leave! Your people going missing has nothing to do with us!"
Jack answered nervously, while Joseph kept nodding beside him.
"It's this mine shaft! It's the shaft! I-we can't stay here! You'd better not stay either!"
Joseph no longer cared about anything else.
"We saw it last night! Your people took off their clothes and went in on their own. They never came out!"
"We can't stay here."
"Let us go!"
Their voices grew louder and louder as they struggled to get up, only to be held firmly down by two security guards.
What the hell were they babbling about?
Baru exchanged looks with his colleagues.
The next day, people from Hercules Security Company arrived at the edge of the mine shaft with grim faces, while Old Ode stood nearby, looking deeply worried.
There were twelve more sets of clothes on the ground: ten security company uniforms and two sets of casual clothes whose owners were unknown.
"Even Eagle Baru went down?"
Hercules Security Company now felt rather at a loss, and Old Ode was weighed down by worries as well.
Whatever each side had on their minds, in the end, they chose to call the police.
With fifteen veteran security guards missing at once, along with two possible civilians, the police in this district of Los Angeles took the case very seriously.
They sent a number of experienced officers to investigate, along with plenty of supporting officers.
Unless they sent capable detectives to deal with Hercules Security Company, they were very likely to be laughed at.
Meanwhile, police within each American state operated as a relatively independent system. The national security authorities, still studying the "Anomaly" situation, knew nothing about this mine shaft yet.
Two days! Two whole days had passed.
There had been no word from Jack or Joseph.
Their families were frantic, constantly calling their friends for information. Once they reported them missing, the police immediately connected them with the two sets of civilian clothes. After showing the clothes to their parents for identification, they confirmed that they belonged to Jack and Joseph.
But that did little good. They still had no idea where the two had gone.
For some reason, although police had kept watch at the "crime scene" each night over the past two days, the mine shaft had not swallowed anyone else.
Joey and Mark had been on edge lately. They had been working the night shift that day and hadn't gone with Jack and Joseph, only for those two to disappear as well.
Yet the absurd "mine shaft swallowing people" incident they described never happened again. Instead, they were lectured for attempting to steal crystals and nearly arrested.
Even Jack's and Joseph's families didn't want to see them, but they knew in their hearts that their friends' disappearance was definitely connected to the mine shaft.
Their considerable guilt and anxiety had left them unable to sleep lately, terrified that the mine shaft was "keeping tabs" on everyone who had witnessed that scene.
As far as they were concerned, this was already a supernatural incident. The police were no use anymore!
And of everyone they knew, only one pretty girl might be able to help.
Qiantang, nine in the morning.
Su Su's rented apartment.
"What?! When did this happen?"
"Three days ago? Why are you only telling me now?!"
On the other end of the call, Jenny frowned. Joey and Mark were at her house, and the three of them were gathered around a phone on speaker, listening to Su Su.
"Fia, you don't actually believe those two, do you?"
Although her close friend was a Diviner, Jenny clearly didn't put much faith in Joey and Mark's story.
But on the other end, Su Su couldn't help believing it.
Just a single piece of information had made her whole body tingle and sent goosebumps rippling over her skin. As a Diviner, she recognized it as a premonitory signal.
She had no time to address her friend's doubts.
"Wait there. I'll find someone to help right away! Whatever you do, don't go near that mine shaft! Don't! Especially Mark and Joey. If the police don't believe you, let them be!"
At that moment, Qin Xiaoxia, Doudou, and Huang Jiutian were cleaning the old house in Qing Town.
This wasn't Huang Jiutian's first time seeing the building. As a child, he had played hide-and-seek there with the other kids under Qin Xiaoxia's lead.
But now, he had gained a deeper understanding of the building.
Even the enormous "Dawn" symbol on the hall floor gave him a powerful sense of history's weight and the passage of ages.
So, of the three, Huang Jiutian was by far the most enthusiastic about cleaning.
This wasn't going to be a cursory sweep like last time. They intended to clean the entire house thoroughly.
Although Doudou and Qin Xiaoxia were working much harder than before, with Huang Jiutian there for comparison, they looked as though they were slacking off.
And so, what had only looked like slacking soon became actual slacking.
Just then, Qin Xiaoxia's phone chimed with a notification as he sat in a chair in the main hall.
He opened it and saw a message from Su Su.
"Mr. Qin, help!!"
"Mr. Qin, help!!"
"Mr. Qin, help!!"
Qin Xiaoxia saw countless messages arriving one after another. Su Su had flooded his WeChat.
What was going on?