【Ruijin】Eye of the Storm

Chapter 24

No one can escape the hint of an S-rank guide without looking straight ahead.

The bar announced an address with empty eyes. Jin and Gray glanced at each other, and the sentinel let go of the other's grip.

"You're continuing to work," Kim said, staring at the person in front of him who was already in control. "No one has ever approached you."

"I'm here, working... No one has ever approached me." The male bartender repeated after Jin like a manipulated puppet. After speaking, he took the initiative to take the empty tray and walked to the back kitchen of the bar, as if he had completely forgotten about it. What just happened.

Gray stood up from the high chair, picked up the glass in front of him and drank half of the lemonade in it.Jin watched his movements, put his right hand on the back of his neck and unconsciously scratched the joint mark there, and asked softly, "So, shall we go directly there now?"

Gray nodded, turned sideways and reached out to take out the guide ID card that Jin put in his jacket pocket, and placed it side by side with his sentry ID card on the table.

The small lamp at the bar exudes a dim and ambiguous warm color light, casting a halo of halo on the faces of the two teenagers who were fixed on the ID card photos.

Gray brushed the edge of the magnetic card with his fingers, and said with downcast eyes: "You still have one last chance to repent, you don't have to continue following me, Jin."

"Is there any point in talking about this now?" Jin picked up his ID card, and under Gray's gaze, he applied force to both ends without a trace of hesitation, snapping it in half from the middle. Only then did he raise his face to look at the sentinel, "Since we can never convince each other, we might as well face it together."

A small spark blown up by a weak electric current is fleeting at the break of the ID card. The ID card is the status symbol of the sentinel and guide in the tower. In a sense, once the ID card is destroyed, it will be destroyed in the tower. The screen of the intelligence department shows that the contact is lost, indicating that the sentry or guide has encountered a major danger, or has unilaterally chosen to defect.

In order to control and intimidate the S-class, although the ID cards of Gray and Jin have the highest authority of the sub-tower level-you can freely enter and exit any place in the tower and check all the archives sealed in the database, but at the same time, they are additionally blocked. Compulsory chip placement for location tracking.In other words, when Jin broke his ID card, it was equivalent to exposing his own location to a monitoring tower.

——The countdown to their "last mission" has begun. This is an unauthorized action without the permission of their superiors and without document approval. They must find the ghost fox and ask the truth before the arrival of the hunters from the first tower, otherwise everything will be lost In vain.

A trace of complicated emotions flashed in Gray's purple eyes, but he suppressed them in the end.The sentinel picked up his ID card and snapped it off in the same way without any regrets.Both of the destroyed magnetic cards were thrown into the trash bin by the bar, and the two followed the direction they had just asked, bypassing the crowd in the front hall, and walked to a remote corridor on the right.

According to the location provided by the bartender, Gray and Jin came to the end of the corridor on the west side, but they didn't see anything like an entrance.This is near the staff lounge, and there is a decorative cabinet stacked against the wall, as well as other miscellaneous cleaning tools.The silver-haired sentry raised his hand to signal Jin not to move. He walked forward and tapped his index and middle fingers on the wall a few times, listening attentively.Three seconds later, Gray nodded to Jin: "The back is empty."

The two cleared away the surrounding debris, and worked together to lift the cabinet and move it aside.All the occluded objects were removed, and a doorway hidden in the wall was completely exposed.

Gray pulled out his gun, loaded it and held it in his hand. At the same time, he made a tactical gesture of "follow forward" to Jin, stretched out his left hand and carefully pulled the doorknob.

The door was not locked, and it opened slowly after an abrupt noise, as if someone had already prepared and was waiting for their arrival.

The guide held his breath subconsciously, and the long-lost tension was transmitted to the limbs and bones through every capillary in the body.He followed Gray into the darkness behind the door, only to find that in front of him was a long staircase leading deep underground.

The rubber soles made a crisp sound when they stepped on the iron stairs, which reverberated strangely in the narrow vertical space.Jin turned his head sideways to observe the surrounding situation, while thinking secretly, his right hand unconsciously stretched out to scratch at the mark on the back of his neck again.At this moment, Ge Rui, who was beside him, suddenly stopped and grabbed Jin Shang's moving wrist with lightning speed.

Jin was stunned for a second, then looked back at Gray, only to find that the other party was looking at his right hand with a serious face.

"...What's wrong?" He asked in a low voice, still a little confused.

Gray frowned, pulled his hand in front of him, turned on the tiny flashlight he carried with him, and let Jin look at his right hand.The guide bowed his head according to his words, but this glance shocked him greatly. The blond young man realized that at some point in time, the gap between the fingernails of his right hand was covered with strands of dried blood.

The sentinel's sense of smell was much sharper than that of ordinary people. After smelling the subtle bloody smell floating in the air, Gray immediately pulled the man closer to his chest, and brushed the hair behind Jin's head involuntarily.Sure enough, the skin at the joint mark on the back of the guide's neck had been scratched with several messy bloodstains, and the surface was glowing an unnatural purple red.The sentry pressed lightly with his fingertips, and felt that the body temperature at the wound was very high.

"What's going on?" Gray's tone was heavy, with anxiety that couldn't be concealed.

Jin was also a little dazed. He just felt that the back of his neck was itchy from time to time, so he subconsciously reached out to grab it, but he never thought that there was already blood there.He didn't feel any pain at all, neither his body nor his guiding ability felt anything abnormal. "...Is it a side effect from the previous time?" He replied with some uncertainty, "I really don't feel any discomfort, really, don't worry."

The silver-haired sentinel's complexion didn't improve at all because of his apparently comforting words.He slowly slid down the hand that was holding the other party's wrist, grabbed Jin's palm, and squeezed the guide's five fingers in his wide palm, and then said again worriedly: "I have something to say." .”

Jin nodded and tried to show him a smile: "I know, I know."

The two continued to walk down the stairs, and after about 5 minutes, the stairs reached the last floor.A spacious and familiar basement appeared in front of them. There was no doubt that this was the place where Guihu Tianchong "agreed" with them to trade.

The underground environment is very quiet, as if there is no one there.Perhaps the water pipe was not tightened somewhere, and the sound of water droplets hitting the ground came from a far corner, adding a hint of terror to the place.I don't know if it's the guide's innate intuition, or purely psychological effects, but from the first second he entered here, Jin felt the creeps all over his body, and the chills spread all over his body.

Turning on a small light by the door, Jin and Gray raised their respective guns and began to patrol from the east and west respectively.

The interior of the basement does not appear to have changed.The interrogation table in the center, the two prisons behind, a large number of medical experiment equipment, and the position of the operating table are all exactly the same as a year ago.

Gray opened the drawer of the cabinet on the other side and found that it was filled with a thick stack of paper materials.He took out a few sheets at random, and all of them were densely written with the calculation process of some public data, as well as the results of individual chemical reaction experiments. This seems to be the core base for Ghost Fox to conduct his human experiments.Just as Gray was still seriously flipping through these materials, a dagger was caught off guard and stabbed fiercely into the sentinel's left abdomen from behind.

The moment the danger struck, Gray's heart was shocked - he was completely unaware that someone was approaching. Such a sneak attack was almost impossible for an S-rank sentinel.He stretched out his hand and slammed back, but was still dodged, and the opponent's dagger fell to the ground.Blood splashed out from the wound, Gray gritted his teeth enduring the pain and knelt on the ground on one knee, Jin over there also reacted quickly, shouted "Gerry", and immediately fired at the shadow that flashed by. gun.

The bullet left a deep bullet mark on the opposite wall, Jin ran to Gray in three steps at a time, and stood in front of the sentinel resolutely.His hands were still in the shooting motion, and he was staring at the person standing in front of them, with growing anger in his eyes: "Ghost Fox! It really is you!"

The person standing facing the light let out a burst of laughter, and took off the mask covering his face, revealing a pair of upturned eyes.An empty capsule fell out of his sleeve, landed right next to his feet, and was crushed by him without hesitation.

"You two, long time no see." Ghost fox maintained an unpredictable smile on his face, his contemptuous and proud eyes swept over the wounded sentry behind Jin, "I have heard that the chief sentry of the first tower and his bamboo horse The guide has deep feelings, and it is indeed true when I saw him today, Lord Gray is really defenseless against the pheromone of the golden guide."

Jin clenched the handle tightly: "You really used my pheromone to hide your original aura."

"This is just a trivial item among my many research results," Ghost Fox said with a smile, "After my modification, the S-level guide element can reproduce the 'taste' of any sentinel or guide at will—you know this little How high can one capsule of this product fetch on the black market?"

"...The knife just now," the gray-haired guide paused strangely, and raised his eyebrows, "I think it's my repayment for Lord Gray's 'care' of me in the first tower a few years ago."

"You are simply despicable...!" Jin gritted his teeth and cursed in a low voice.

"Jin! Calm down." The silver-haired sentry behind him suddenly called out and held down Jin's arm holding the gun.He stood up slowly, and the blood from his abdomen overflowed from the fingers of Gray's palm covering the wound.Jin glanced at him from the corner of his eye, unable to hide his worry: "Are you okay?"

Gray shook his head, and replied softly: "The sentinel's body is very self-healing, it's fine." He looked up at the ghost fox, and said in a harsh tone: "...If you do unrighteous actions, you will die yourself. No one has ever tried to persecute you. You, you ruined yourself."

The ghost fox seemed to have heard some big joke, and his hatred broke out in an instant: "You are right, Lord Gray. It's just that S-class is inherently superior. In your eyes, we low-level guides are of course It's just like an ant lying on the ground and just getting by, what value, what dignity, it's not worth mentioning at all!"

Gray's eyes were dark, and he didn't want to argue with him at all: "Give me my things."

Ghost Fox's smile deepened, he shrugged his shoulders exaggeratedly, walked to a machine on the other side of the basement, and said to him: "Don't worry, I know what you two have been looking for. Coincidentally, it happens to be in my hand right now."

He turned his head away, pressed a few buttons deftly, and the machine popped up a pretext similar to a player.The white-haired guide took out a small hard drive from his pocket and shook it at the two of them: "In order to show my sincerity, and to make our subsequent transactions go smoothly, this is a gift I will give to you two. A 'gift'. Enjoy it.

"

Gray remained silent, while Jin stared closely at the movements of Ghost Fox's hands, watching him insert/insert the hard disk into the interface, and then pressed the play button beside him.

The computer screen above lit up, and the player's red cursor began to flash rapidly.A moment later, a picture of a closed room appeared on the screen. Jin and Gray immediately looked up, but in the next second, they saw the image of Qiu walking into the picture at the same time.

——The air froze at that moment.

The blue pupils of the blond guide shrank quickly, and he watched Qiu sit down in the center of the screen in shock.The young female Sentinel has long, beautiful blonde hair that falls loosely behind her head in two braids.She stretched out her hand to adjust the camera lens facing her, and the screen image shook slightly with her movements.

Qiu withdrew his hands, crossed them on the edge of the table, and said calmly, "Observation Video Diary, A Tower of Sentinel Qiu, serial number 30214719, July 20, 7XX—"

"I have successfully entered the suspected organization."

TBC