Fog Disperses

"..." Elysia thought there was something wrong with her communicator.

"Strange, why can't I reach Sakura?" Lightly tapping the side of the device did nothing to improve the connection. All she received in reply was static.

Try contacting Eden. She established a connection with Eden shortly afterward.

"Eden."

"Mm, I'm here, Elysia." Eden's pleasant voice lifted her mood somewhat.

"Can you reach Sakura?"

To her surprise, Eden said, "You can't reach her either?"

"I know why now. Goodbye, Eden." With a dark expression, Elysia ended the call. Her anger needed an explanation.

"Ah..." Eden had just been about to ask something when the call was cut off.

"Gray Serpent," she said. "May I ask where Sakura is?" Elysia deliberately drew out the words "may I ask."

"I don't know."

Elysia said calmly, "She went to investigate the lead you wanted investigated, and you're telling me you don't know where she is?"

"That's right, I don't know. Miss Sakura did not want me to know certain things. Without supporting clues, I do not know where she is."

"Sigh." Elysia let out a breath. "You always treat everyone else like gullible fools."

"Why would Sakura go somewhere no one can contact her?"

"That was determined by the clues she possessed, not because I sent her there. A person cannot know what they do not know. Everyone understands that principle."

"If you can't find her, then I can."

Gray Serpent replied unhurriedly, "I advise you not to be so impulsive. Dr. Mei may develop some unnecessary suspicions."

Elysia stared directly into Gray Serpent's emerald, sinister snake eyes. "Are you threatening me?"

"I thought we were partners." Gray Serpent spoke in an innocent tone. "This is merely advice."

"Miss Sakura's post is in Central Europe, yet she is now in the Southern Urals. I gave Dr. Mei a reason for her to leave her post without authorization—because I am here." A cunning gleam flickered in Gray Serpent's eyes. "But it will not be so easy to explain a second Fusion Warrior abandoning her post."

"..." Elysia silently cut off the call, gritting her teeth as she muttered, "You brought this on yourself..."

Words flashed rapidly across the terminal. Sakura's extraordinary memory as a Fusion Warrior allowed her to absorb every line of the information at a glance. The nearly thousand-word mass of complicated data, unfamiliar addresses, and disorderly passwords seemed to imprint themselves directly into her memory without the slightest error.

After committing the information to memory, she sliced the terminal in half with Cold Prison Ice Sky. Then she raced toward the address recorded in the data at the fastest speed of her life.

"No..." For the first time, Gray Serpent saw the course of his scheme begin to veer off track. "She should not be going there."

Yet he was not flustered. Nothing in this world was perfect. What people pursued was the shape of perfection, not perfection itself, because perfection itself existed only in the world of theory. A flawed plan did not mean failure; failure belonged to planners incapable of adapting to change.

Gray Serpent activated the communicator on his arm and contacted her himself. "Miss Sakura, this is Gray Serpent." His fingers tapped character after character onto the terminal as he sought to learn exactly what information Sakura had obtained.

"Speak." Her icy voice came through from the other end, accompanied by the howling of wind.

"I found an interesting lead."

"..." Only the wind answered Gray Serpent.

"Please tell me the location. Once I have finished investigating this side, I will go."

"Unfortunately, that approach carries a certain degree of risk. Through a series of tracking methods, we discovered that Niazepi's portable terminal is located in a suburban transport warehouse. The next freight truck will arrive in twenty-one minutes. If you do not get there in time, perhaps we will never uncover Niazepi's secrets."

Sakura stood atop the tallest building, her coat fluttering freely in the wind, Cold Prison Ice Sky in her hand giving off faint glimmers of frost. Her eyes rested on the horizon as her crimson lips exhaled a breath.

"I'm on my way."

"Mm..." With his hands behind his back, Gray Serpent slowly said, "The train is traveling along the second track."

Gray Serpent was no fool. He could keenly sense Sakura's growing suspicion and her increasingly uncontrollable actions.

When Sakura had not immediately reported the clue she obtained to Gray Serpent, he understood that Sakura knew her younger sister was at the heart of the vortex. However, he still did not know Sakura's precise reasons for investigating the matter. Gray Serpent guessed that Ling had been threatened by a mysterious organization—otherwise, Sakura would not have trusted the leads Gray Serpent offered.

As long as he released a clue related to Ling next, Sakura would follow the direction Gray Serpent pointed out.

"Once you seize a person's weakness, their mind and will become yours."

Sakura watched a gray-black truck drive into the suburban warehouse and come to a stop. The driver jumped down from the cab and fastened the hook. She leaped down from the green metal roof like a falling cherry blossom, without making a sound. Sakura knocked out the guard on duty and the truck driver with the hilt of Cold Prison Ice Sky.

"Where exactly is the portable terminal?"

That voice, steeped in cunning and malice, answered, "The container number is A203."

She swept past row after row of green and red containers like a shadow at midnight. The green container marked A203 stood conspicuously before her. She raised her hand, and Cold Prison Ice Sky swept lightly across it. The padlock on the container split in two like sliced butter and fell to the ground.

The container's metal door slowly opened with a piercing scraping sound. Niazepi's portable terminal lay inside an opened wooden crate. Sakura picked it up, and its indicator lit blue. The status bar showed that it still had sufficient battery power.

It had a lock-screen password, and none of the numbers she had seen before could unlock it.

Sakura thought for a moment. "A password with this many digits does resemble a date format." She entered Niazepi's birthday.

Incorrect password ×

She thought again for a moment, then swiped her finger across the terminal once more.

Unlocked

She had entered Niazepi's birthday in reverse order.

"Very good." Sakura nodded with a smile.

"Eden."

"Is something wrong?"

Sakura looked at the terminal, unsure where to begin. She was not particularly familiar with modern electronic devices. Modern portable terminals were already highly advanced: the upper half was a fully transparent touchscreen, while the lower half was a graphene casing housing a series of electronic components.

"Yes, I got Niazepi's personal terminal. See if you can find anything on it."

"Of course. You just need to connect the terminal to your communication device, and I'll handle the rest."

"Mm."

Sakura did as instructed. The terminal began operating automatically, and she waited patiently for the results. A dialog box suddenly appeared on the terminal's interface.

Disable silent mode?

Before Sakura could react, the dialog box automatically swiped away. Soon, another dialog box appeared.

Enable vibration mode?

This time, the dialog box did not disappear for a long while. Unsure what to do, Sakura hesitantly asked Eden, "Did you... find a problem?"

Eden's tone was as calm as usual. "No, we have not discovered any problems for now."

Sakura turned the terminal ninety degrees and looked at its side. Suddenly, she discovered another terminal pressed tightly against the back of it, the two nearly fused together. The fully transparent touchscreen had made her think that the dialog boxes displayed by the terminal behind it had popped up on Niazepi's terminal.

The terminal on the back had no password lock, but to be safe, she enabled vibration mode on both Niazepi's personal terminal and the terminal of unknown origin attached to its back.

Buzz buzz whirr, buzz buzz buzz, whirr whirr buzz whirr, whirr whirr, buzz whirr, buzz whirr whirr, whirr buzz whirr whirr, whirr whirr, buzz whirr, buzz buzz whirr

Sakura did not need to memorize the strange vibration pattern. Her profound knowledge of cryptography instantly translated the meaning of the sequence.

Find Ling

Sakura had often played hide-and-seek with the young Ling in the past, and she had liked taking the role of the seeker.

But Sakura realized one fact—she was not the seeker, but the one hiding.

PS: Happy New Year!