Chapter 170

Chapter 170

“Hah… hah…”

Harsh, ragged breaths echoed through the deathly silent room. Ji Feifan was submerged in darkness.

How could this happen? Why? Why had it locked him up? Had that Madman discovered something?

One terrified question after another exploded in his mind. Ji Feifan’s heart slammed violently against his chest, as though that lump of flesh might shatter his ribs and burst out.

Cold sweat soaked through his clothes, sending waves of bone-deep chills through him.

Calm down. He had to stay calm.

He forced his mouth open and took deep breaths. Listening to his thunderous heartbeat, he tried to untangle his hopelessly knotted thoughts one strand at a time.

He had drawn the encirclement map, shown Cat the route, and acted as obedient as ever. So why had Cat done this?

Ji Feifan closed his eyes and replayed every moment since he had entered Cat’s room. Cat had asked, “What are you afraid of?” and he had answered. Cat had asked, “How strong is she?” and he had answered honestly.

Why? Why the hell had it done this?!

His temples throbbed furiously. It felt as though someone was holding his mouth and nose shut underwater, leaving him to suffocate as the last of the air drained from his lungs. The sensation made him so nauseated that his hands and feet went numb.

He wanted to live. He wanted to live!

Just then, a pair of icy eyes surfaced in his mind.

Their owner had once killed someone without the slightest hesitation. No pleasantries. No pause. It had been as effortless as crushing an ant. Miraculously, Ji Feifan’s racing heart began to settle.

His taut mind suddenly grasped a terrifying truth: that Madman did not need evidence. It only needed a feeling.

It sensed that Ji Feifan was waiting for it to die, waiting for it to lose, waiting for it to leave the stronghold. That was why it had locked him up. This was not punishment, nor was it toying with him. It was a precaution! As simple and brutal as tying up a dog to stop it from running away.

Once he understood, Ji Feifan suddenly felt like laughing.

He had plotted for so long-hiding the gun, passing the note, drawing the map. He had taken every step with painstaking care, believing he was playing some monumental game of chess.

But that Madman had never been playing against him. It had simply flipped the board and crushed the pieces underfoot.

He could not beat it. He never stood a chance.

But he could not laugh, because he had staked everything on Qingshui. If Qingshui lost…

Ji Feifan gritted his teeth and forced himself up, then stumbled around the room searching. Every movement sent excruciating pain through him and brought fresh cold sweat pouring from his body, but he had to find a way out. After searching for ages without finding anything useful, fury gnawed at his insides like a venomous snake.

“Go to hell!”

Unable to contain himself, he kicked over the stack of files piled all the way to the ceiling.

Crash!

Sheets of paper erupted into the air like a blizzard. Amid the chaotic white storm, Ji Feifan’s gaze abruptly froze. Through the fluttering pages, he stared fixedly at the ceiling.

There was a louvered vent up there.

Ji Feifan had barely raised an arm toward it when a burst of agony made his vision go black. Gritting his teeth, he strained to reach upward, only to find his fingertips still fell short. He staggered over with a stack of files and stepped onto it. Teetering precariously, he finally managed to hook his fingers over the vent’s edge.

“Ugh…”

A bead of cold sweat slid down his temple and dripped into his eye, stinging viciously.

Ji Feifan pulled with everything he had. Pain and fear rapidly sapped his strength. Just as despair began to set in, the cover finally gave a piercing scrape and came open.

The opening was small, its edges caked with dust and rust. Given Ji Feifan’s build, squeezing through it would be nearly impossible. He regarded it calmly for a single second, then thrust his head inside.

“Urgh… ngh… Aaaaargh!”

An inhuman roar of rage tore from deep within his throat.

His shoulders jammed against the edges, and his bones creaked with a sickening sound. Agony surged through his body like an electric current. Yet his desperate desire to live somehow gave him strength beyond his limits, allowing him to force himself inch by inch through the narrow opening.

The duct was cramped and suffocating, and the dust inside tightened his throat. Ji Feifan felt as though he would become trapped here and die, his body drying into a withered corpse.

No.

He inched forward, his nails scraping shrilly against the sheet metal.

No. He could not die here.

The duct seemed impossibly long. Unrelenting pain tortured him every second. The lack of oxygen made his head swim, and darkness began closing in around the edges of his vision.

Ji Feifan curled up at a bend and bit down hard on the tip of his tongue, using the pain to keep himself conscious.

Veins bulged at his temples. The sensation of impending death drove him toward collapse, and the darkest parts of his heart began to grow unchecked.

That Madman–that bastard-should go join the encirclement. Hopefully, it would fucking die there and be torn to pieces.

Why was Qingshui still alive? Why did she get to be so strong?

He remembered the sight of her standing amid the corpses, her shots unerringly precise and her face devoid of emotion, like a tireless killing machine.

It disgusted him. Her strength disgusted him. While he clung miserably to life, crawling through a duct like a rat, she had survived yet again, still standing there pristine and untouched.

Resentment rose within him, accompanied by the faintest trace of a secret, twisted fantasy.

In his hallucination, she crouched before him and held out a hand, her fingertips carrying the faint scent of gunpowder.

If she were here now, would she save him?

“Ugh-blegh!”

Ji Feifan retched. The sudden thought filled him with overwhelming revulsion, but he could not stop it.

In this moment of utter fear and vulnerability, he actually… longed for Qingshui’s protection.

The acid in his throat burned painfully, yet that twisted fixation wound ever tighter around him like vines taking root in his despair. Someone he had once regarded with utter contempt had now become the only piece of driftwood he could grasp in this endless darkness.

The realization made him even more nauseated–and even more desperate.

He continued crawling forward, ignoring the trace of… fear he had deliberately buried in the deepest recesses of his heart.

Poised on the brink between life and death, caught between jealousy and yearning, he seemed to have forgotten what he had once… done.