Chapter 311 - Chapter 311: 243, The mastermind

Chapter 311: 243, The mastermind

In the elevator shaft, Qing Chen carried Li Changqing on his back, while Li Changqing carried his sniper rifle for him.

“I’m really not a Transcendent, it was just because I was nervous that I clung on so tightly,” Li Changqing said, lying on Qing Chen’s back, “If I made it hard for you to breathe, then I apologize, but I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“You’re really not a Transcendent? Your arm is so strong, I can’t even pry it open,” Qing Chen continued to climb upwards expressionlessly, while the elevator kept stopping on each floor.

He wanted Li Changqing to climb the ladder himself, but Li Changqing refused to agree.

It wasn’t until they reached the twelfth floor that they found a maintenance hatch for the central air conditioning. He said to Li Changqing, “Can you get off my back now? We can’t both pass through this central air conditioning maintenance hatch at the same time. I’ll climb in front, and you follow behind.”

“Alright,” Li Changqing reluctantly let go.

The two of them finally breathed a sigh of relief when they were hidden in the central air conditioning duct.

Climbing the elevator shaft was not a long-term plan because someone would always come to inspect the elevator. Once someone discovered the elevator ceiling had been smashed open, they would definitely follow into the shaft.

At that time, all the opponents had to do was shoot a volley above their heads, and Qing Chen and Li Changqing would die together right there.

Indeed, not long after the two of them had crawled in, shouts came from the elevator shaft: “Someone climbed into the elevator shaft from the elevator ceiling!”

As soon as the voice fell, someone with a cluster-style bright flashlight shone through the hole in the ceiling into the shaft, but the light swept past the walls of the shaft next to them, finding nothing.

Li Changqing glanced at Qing Chen, thinking it was lucky they had crawled into the duct in advance.

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Gradually, the elevator continued to rise, slowly passing by the shaft next to them, and the assassins got off the elevator on the next floor, apparently to search upstairs.

“Aren’t you afraid?” Li Changqing asked curiously.

“Afraid,” Qing Chen said, “but at this point, fear won’t help me, so I have to discard it.”

Li Changqing looked surprised. Discard it? Can you just discard it whenever you want?

The central air conditioning duct in this kind of building was quite spacious, accommodating two people sitting side by side.

The two sat in the dim duct and unexpectedly felt a sense of leisure as if they were stealing half a day of idleness.

Qing Chen knew that what they were feeling was a calm brought on by the secretion of endorphins after being tense.

There was a lot of accumulated dust in the central air conditioning duct, and the woman had gotten quite a bit on her when she had crawled in, her face covered in dust as well.

This was the first time the woman had hidden in such a place, and she unexpectedly felt a sense of novelty for a while. In this enclosed environment, she could hear the breathing and heartbeat of the young man beside her, and it seemed she could even feel his body temperature.

“I can feel your warmth,” Li Changqing said softly.

Qing Chen calmly said, “It’s December now, that’s the warm air sent to the entire building by the central air conditioning, not my body temperature…”

“Uh,” Li Changqing felt somewhat embarrassed. She stuffed the sniper rifle into Qing Chen’s arms, “Next time you want to go to the shooting range, you don’t need to look for Lao Liu anymore. I’ll give you a card. Unless you want to go to Baopu Tower, you’ll have unimpeded access everywhere else.”

Qing Chen asked, “Don’t change the subject. Does anyone else in the outside world know you’re a Transcendent, or do I need to keep it a secret?”

Li Changqing thought for a moment, “I might as well not hide it from you, I’m indeed a Transcendent, but no one in the outside world knows.”

“Lao Liu doesn’t know either?” Qing Chen asked.

He suddenly thought, no wonder Li Changqing dared to use herself as bait. As it turned out, she was a Transcendent and thus fearless.

However, at that moment, Li Changqing explained, “Actually, I’ve only been a Transcendent for just over a month. Lately, there’s been a lot of noise about the Time Travelers, and the think tank within the consortium has suggested that if the gene is changed, it should no longer be possible to be replaced by time travelers. Many people don’t want to use this method because genetic potions have side effects, but I’m not afraid of those, so I injected a genetic potion. If you don’t believe me, feel my waist, you might still be able to feel the needle mark.”

Saying that, Li Changqing, in the darkness, took Qing Chen’s hand and was about to move it toward her waist, but Qing Chen quickly pulled his hand back.

“To come up with such an excuse on the spot, you are quite quick-witted,” Qing Chen sighed. The other person was confident that he wouldn’t feel it, so she dared to fabricate such a lie.

Just based on the way her body stiffened in the car earlier, if Qing Chen really tried to feel, Li Changqing would probably have ducked away instead.

Qing Chen asked, “After being injected with the genetic potion, you really can’t be replaced by time travelers anymore?”

“You’re a Genetic Warrior, you don’t have to worry about that kind of thing,” Li Changqing said, “the Li family has captured more than three hundred Time Travelers, including Transcendents, but no Genetic Warriors.”

This information did match what Qing Chen’s group had gathered.

Qing Chen asked, “Why did you capture so many Time Travelers?”

Li Changqing turned to look at him, “Since you protected me, it’s no problem to divulge some information to you. We’ve already successfully replaced someone from a direct bloodline of a clan up north.”

Qing Chen was greatly shocked; he didn’t expect that this method of reverse time travel would actually work, and the Li family had already succeeded in one case!

The Outer World had just been immersed in the joy of protecting census information, while here a new breakthrough had been made.

At that moment, Li Changqing suddenly said, “You probably haven’t had the chance to learn about the Outer World. After this incident is over, come to my room, and I’ll tell you all about it. The Outer World is quite interesting… and I didn’t expect that people from the Jindai family and Deer Island family in the Outer World would not be on the same land as the Federation, nor are they part of the same country.”

Qing Chen asked curiously, “Do those Time Travelers listen to you?”

Li Changqing said, “A small portion of Time Travelers has voluntarily sided with the Li Family, which is to be expected, but the majority of them are resistant. However, we’ve noticed that it’s tough to get them to carry out missions in their home countries in the Outer World, but they’re exceptionally eager to undertake tasks in Jindai and Deer Island Clan territories. This seems to relate to national hatred in the Outer World. They’re quite willing to antagonize the Deer Island and Jindai families, which coincidentally aligns with the Li Family’s principles.”

“Let’s go,” Qing Chen continued to crawl forward along the central air-conditioning ducts, “The assassins inside the building must have realized by now that we’ve climbed up through the elevator shaft. If they can’t find us on any floor, their next step will be to check all the maintenance ports of the central air conditioning.”

“What do you plan to do now?” Li Changqing asked, “Are you going to kill those assassins?”

“Of course not,” Qing Chen replied, “Just find a place to wait for your reinforcements to arrive. There’s no need to risk our lives unnecessarily.”

Qing Chen wasn’t foolish. He had guessed that Li Changqing had laid an ambush nearby. The demise of the assassins was only a matter of time, and there was no need for him to kill them personally.

The two crawled through a central air-conditioning vent into a residential bedroom. After making sure no one was outside, Qing Chen carefully dismantled the metal grille of the air conditioner and gently jumped down.

Qing Chen pressed his ear against the door between the bedroom and living room, listening for a while to confirm there was no movement outside before he cautiously turned the knob and stepped out.

In the living room, a middle-aged man wearing a headset, seemingly oblivious to anyone’s presence behind him, held a pair of binoculars and spoke into what appeared to be a remote control setup.

The man’s hand holding the binoculars was conspicuously a mechanical limb.

Qing Chen thought to himself, could it be that I’ve stumbled upon the mastermind so easily?

But oddly enough, if this person was the mastermind, why was there no one to ensure his safety?

Qing Chen didn’t act rashly. Instead, while the other’s attention was still focused downstairs, he turned back to look at Li Changqing and noticed that she looked incredibly tense, as if she really was just an F-Class Genetic Warrior.

In a world with Transcendents, in the Outer World, you could even claim they were Immortals, and it wouldn’t be far-fetched.

So in the Inner World, when you accidentally stumble upon the BOSS, don’t be too thrilled; the other party might even thank you for sending a head their way.

You have no idea what level they’re at!

But Qing Chen knew there had to be a reason why this middle-aged man had no bodyguards…

Li Changqing gestured to the sniper rifle in Qing Chen’s hands and mouthed the words: Take him out!

Just then, the middle-aged man finally sensed something off and quickly turned around, only to find Li Changqing had already moved past Qing Chen, striking him squarely in the chest with a swift, thunderous palm.

Qing Chen suddenly realized this middle-aged person must be a master, and Li Changqing clearly knew exactly who he was.

Jokes could be made at any other time, but in such a critical moment, she could no longer hide her true capabilities.

The next second, Qing Chen watched the ‘just injected with a Genetic Potion, still only F-Class’ junior Transcendent slam her palm into the chest of the panic-stricken middle-aged man.

With a loud boom, like being hit with a 155mm caliber howitzer, the middle-aged man was sent flying backward, his shirt burst from the sheer force.

When the man’s back collided with the thick, multi-layered window glass, the entire window shattered!

Desperately trying to grab onto something to prevent himself from falling from the twelfth floor, he found nothing to clutch at around him.

The shattered window, the middle-aged man dangling in the air, the coldly striking Valkyrie standing by the window – before Qing Chen, it was an absurdly dramatic scene.

Tension filled the air.

This is F-Class?! At the very least it’s B-Class!

Li Changqing’s immediate concern wasn’t on how her opponent died, though. Instead, she turned to explain to Qing Chen, “You definitely won’t believe me if I said I just awakened to this level…”

The next second, Qing Chen roared, “Watch out!”

A black rope flung out from the middle-aged man’s mechanical arm, perfectly coiling around Li Changqing’s ankle. Using his own falling momentum, he yanked Li Changqing out of the room, plummeting together from the sky to the ground!

Even after being hit so hard, that middle-aged man was not dead and even tried to take Li Changqing down with him!

Qing Chen rushed to the window, hoping to grab the woman, but he was half a second too late.

Peering down, he saw Li Changqing’s descending figure light as a feather; she somersaulted, breaking the black rope around her ankle, and then floated down to land firmly on the ground.

Qing Chen breathed a sigh of relief. That feather-light falling technique, he had seen Uncle Li Dong perform it as well.

He had thought it was a natural ability that Knights attained at a certain level, but now it seemed that it might be a unique secret inheritance of the Li Clan.

But then the problem arose, with Li Changqing gone, what was he to do?

The commotion in the room just now had been huge; surely every assassin in the building… was converging here right now?!

…

I’m going to have dinner, another chapter coming tonight.

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