Stealth in the Dark

Icy despair and searing hatred grappled silently in the foul air of cell 107. Lin Feng lay curled up on his bunk, seemingly no different from usual, a numb shell drained of its soul. But now, all his will and perception were fastened tightly to a newly established link in his mind, one that led to a dark corner of the city.

The thief, Zhao Si.

The newly summoned deathsworn was like a shot of adrenaline injected into Lin Feng's heart, where the daily torture of a thousand cuts had nearly worn away his desire for revenge. The risk was enormous, but he had no choice. Fragments of information were no longer enough. He needed hard evidence; he needed to hear the truth from his enemy's own lips! He needed a blade sharp enough to pierce every hypocritical mask!

He had given the orders the previous night. Now, through that invisible link, he could vaguely sense Zhao Si's state: absolute calm, concentration, and the patience of a hunter.

Exercise, meals, scrubbing toilets, enduring bullying... The daylight hours crawled by in torment. Scar and Skinny Monkey's insults seemed more grating, Iron Head's shoves harder to bear, but Lin Feng endured it all with almost inhuman willpower. It was as though his soul had left his body, one half enduring the humiliation before him while the other lay hidden with Zhao Si in the city's night, waiting.

He could "feel" Zhao Si moving.

First came a measure of "resource acquisition." A brief fluctuation from the hacker deathsworn Wu Tao passed through the link. A small, insignificant sum of money, perhaps obtained by Wu Tao through some tiny online vulnerability, was placed beneath a bench in a secluded park by the deliveryman deathsworn Zhang Zhiqiang under the pretext of a "wrong delivery." Then Zhao Si collected it like a ghost.

Next came "equipment procurement." Through the link, Lin Feng sensed Zhao Si in a corner of a noisy, chaotic electronics market, perhaps a place the beggar Wang Wu had noticed during his usual observations. With that little bit of money, Zhao Si purchased a few of the most ordinary electronic components with extreme caution: a miniature microphone, a button cell, and a simple signal transmitter module. He bought no finished product; those were too easy to trace. What he needed was raw materials.

Then came "assembly and reconnaissance" during the long wait. Lin Feng could "feel" Zhao Si hiding in an abandoned house outside the university district, awaiting demolition. His fingers deftly soldered the components together, assembling them into an extremely crude miniature device that could nevertheless pick up and transmit sound. He then cleverly sealed it inside a hollowed-out old plastic lighter covered in tooth marks. It blended perfectly into the disguise of a piece of trash.

At the same time, fragments of information from the other deathsworn came together, and Lin Feng pieced them together and passed them on to Zhao Si:

Wang Wu: "Women's dorm... east wall... surveillance camera... one's broken... not fixed..."

Zhang Zhiqiang: "Delivered milk tea... third floor... westernmost... room... pink slippers outside the door..."

Liu Cuihua: "Fat dorm supervisor... ten at night... likes going to the next building... to chat... half an hour..."

Each scrap of information was like a piece of a puzzle, and Zhao Si calmly incorporated it into his plan.

Night finally fell in full.

When the cell lights went out and snores gradually rose, Lin Feng's nerves were stretched to their limit. He knew the operation was about to begin.

At the other end of the link, Zhao Si's status switched from "waiting" to "executing."

Like a black cat blending into the night, he approached the women's dormitory area of XX University without a sound. He did not choose the main entrance, where there were lights and a duty room. He circled around to the east side, where a row of dense holly bushes, untrimmed for years, grew right against the wall. Above them, a surveillance camera, just as Wang Wu had said, hung at an eerie angle, its lens pointed at the sky. Clearly, it had been broken for some time.

Zhao Si concealed himself in the shadows of the trees and waited patiently. The minutes and seconds ticked by.

At five past ten, Lin Feng finally "saw" through the link a fat dorm supervisor in pajamas, shuffling out of the dormitory building in her slippers and ambling toward the next building. She was clearly going to find someone to chat with.

The window of opportunity had opened!

Zhao Si moved. His movements were swift and light, nothing like those of an ordinary thief. Using the holly bushes for cover, he approached the base of the wall, then climbed silently upward like a gecko, using the tiny protrusions in the wall and the pipes. His target: a third-floor window left open for ventilation but fitted with an invisible security grille.

Hanging outside the window, he spat a thin, specially made wire from his mouth and carefully slipped it through a gap in the grille, moving so gently that he made almost no sound. His fingers made small movements at a dazzling speed.

At the other end of the link, Lin Feng almost held his breath. He could share that intense concentration and tension.

"Click."

The spring latch made an extremely faint, almost imperceptible sound. With practiced skill, Zhao Si worked open the grille's inner latch, creating a gap just wide enough for an arm.

He slipped inside like a loach, landing lightly and soundlessly on the cold floor of the third-floor corridor. The corridor was deserted, with only the faint sound of dripping water from the restroom at the far end.

He quickly located the room on the west side with the pink slippers outside its door: 307. Once again, he used his tools to open the dorm room's lock without a sound.

The door opened a crack. Inside, it was pitch-dark, and the even breathing and faint teeth-grinding of several girls could be heard. The air was filled with the mingled scents of cosmetics and snacks.

Zhao Si slipped into the room like a true shadow and gently pulled the door shut behind him. He crouched down and quickly scanned the room by the faint moonlight filtering through the window. His gaze swiftly settled on a desk beside the lower bunk by the window. An Apple laptop sat there with its indicator light pulsing, alongside a pink phone charger and a pile of scattered cosmetics and snack bags.

Sun Tingting's bed.

Time was short! He had to withdraw before the dorm supervisor returned.

He moved quickly to the desk without touching anything else. His target was clear: the phone charger plugged into the power strip. He carefully unplugged it and, moving as fast as lightning, used a tiny tool at his fingertips to unscrew the charger plug's casing. He cleverly fitted the core component of the listening device disguised as a lighter inside, then made a few connections to the existing wiring, using the charger itself as a power source.

The whole process took less than twenty seconds. When he was done, he put the casing back together and gently plugged it into the power strip. From the outside, nothing looked amiss.

Just as he was about to turn and leave-

"Mmm..." A muffled murmur came from the upper bunk near the door. A girl turned over, and the bedboard gave a faint creak.

Zhao Si froze instantly, pressing himself against the wall in the shadows, his breathing almost stopped. Lin Feng also felt the sudden danger through the link, and his heart clenched violently.

The girl mumbled a few indistinct words in her sleep and fell still again, seemingly sinking back into a deep sleep.

Zhao Si waited a full ten seconds. Only after making sure it was safe did he move again like a ghost, retracing his route with the same agility and silence: opening the door, darting out, closing it, crossing the corridor, slipping out the window, fastening the security grille, sliding down the pipe, melting into the shadows beneath the trees, and quickly leaving the dormitory area...

The series of movements flowed like clouds and water, breathtakingly professional.

Only after getting far from the dormitory area and hiding deep in a darker alley did Zhao Si send Lin Feng an exceptionally brief report through the link:

"Mission complete. Device activated and operating normally."

The moment the message arrived, Lin Feng let out a great breath on his bunk. Only then did he realize that the nails of his tightly clenched fists had dug deep into his palms, drawing tiny beads of blood. A tremendous, twisted excitement swept through him, nearly making him tremble.

He had succeeded!

He had actually succeeded!

A tremendous risk had brought a tremendous reward! An ear leading directly to his enemy's side had been planted!

He forcibly suppressed the wild laughter that almost burst from his mouth and struggled to keep his body calm so as not to alarm anyone. But inside, his emotions were overturning rivers and seas.

He immediately sent Zhao Si further instructions: "Stay hidden. Stand by. Prepare to receive and analyze information."

In the alley, Zhao Si nodded slightly and let his figure merge completely into the darkness, as though he had never existed.

Lin Feng closed his eyes again. This time, all the pain and humiliation seemed to leave him for the moment. His entire attention was immersed in the newly established, exceptionally faint signal link, coming from inside the pink charger in room 307 of the women's dormitory.

He was waiting.

Waiting for the first sound from his enemy's world.

Waiting for what would surely come, what would tear away every disguise...

A world-shaking secret.

The night was deep.

The cell still stank; it was still cold.

But the gears of revenge had meshed with their most crucial link and had begun to turn, silently but steadily.