1TWITF[C Chapter 98

The winter sun was cold and harsh, unable to warm anyone, only chilling them to the bone.

It was strange.

Lu Yanli walked and observed, one hand resting on the handle of the axe behind him, ready to draw it at any moment.

The feeling of being followed persisted like a shadow.

However, no matter how carefully he observed, he couldn’t find the source of the gaze.

There was no one, not a single person now. Every household had its doors and windows tightly shut. Who could be watching him?

No, or rather, what was watching him?

Passing a fashion store’s window, the feeling of being watched intensified. He lowered his head slightly, walked past quickly, and then suddenly turned back.

There was nothing.

The wind picked up a leaf and blew it away. The street was clean and empty, with nothing there.

He steadied himself and turned back again.

But just as he turned his head, an explosion suddenly roared, and the shop windows along the entire street shattered simultaneously. Glass shards flew everywhere, scattering a beautiful, colorful shimmer of reflected light in the sunlight.

Ever since he entered this town, that thing had been following him!

However, he still hadn’t found anything!

A flash of red light flickered past the corner of his eye, but when he looked closely, there was nothing there, as if it was just an illusion.

“Ahhhhh—”

He subconsciously looked up, and a red figure flashed past. But when he tried to focus on it, he couldn’t see anything again.

Another scream followed, and Lu Yanli looked towards the sound. A smear of blood stained a windowpane.

Get out of here!

He ran forward frantically without looking back. Not long after he escaped to the end of the street and turned the corner, the entire street erupted in a massive explosion.

A figure quickly fled before the explosion, glancing in the direction of Lu Yanli’s departure before it left.

The figure pressed a button, and the street Lu Yanli was about to enter exploded again. Lu Yanli had no choice but to stop and rush into another street.

It wasn’t until he entered a new street that the sound of explosions faded away. Lu Yanli kept moving, constantly pushing forward. But strangely, all the glass windows on this street were shattered, with glass shards scattered on both sides of the road, forcing him to run in the center of the road.

He realized that something was guiding his actions.

What was it? Why didn’t it want him to go that way? And why did it want all the windows destroyed?

Lu Yanli ran and thought.

Glass windows… glass…

What could glass do?

In the sunlight, glass shards reflected dazzling light.

Reflection!

The thing behind him seemed to be afraid of him seeing something in the glass windows.

Thinking of this answer, Lu Yanli’s heart sank.

What could be seen in the glass windows? The answer was obvious. Should he try it?

And what shocked him the most was that he was very familiar with the appearance of one of them.

Lin Chu?

She was here too?

It wasn’t that he wasn’t confident in dealing with these seven people, but… he would definitely be injured. In a weakened state, and with others alerted, he would have little chance of winning.

Lin Chu also saw him. Not only Lin Chu, but the others saw him too.

“Who is that man? He’s a bit strange, doesn’t look like he’s from the town.”

“Should we call him to stop?”

Lin Chu was giving him a warning!

Why? Wasn’t she a task-doer? Her task should be to kill him too.

Di Ying’s face darkened instantly, and she glared at Lin Chu. The others quickly realized what was happening and wished they could shut Lin Chu’s mouth.

If this was really Lu Yanli, wasn’t she giving him a heads up?

The moment Lu Yanli met her eyes, he understood that she didn’t plan to, or rather, she didn’t plan to complete the task for now. He shook his head, looking innocent. “I don’t know him, haven’t heard of him.”

Lin Chu was a little embarrassed to look directly at him, acting shy.

What kind of time was this? And she still had the heart to be infatuated?

Lu Yanli smiled kindly, his face still showing fear. “My name is Jiang, Jiang Bai, but I’m sorry, I’m not comfortable giving out my contact information.”

Of course, the others couldn’t appreciate it.

Di Ying was almost angered to death by Lin Chu. She walked over, scanning Lu Yanli warily. “Mr. Jiang Bai?”

Lin Chu’s shoulder was pinched painfully by her, tears welling up in her eyes. She apologized softly in a slightly aggrieved voice, but Di Ying only pinched her shoulder blades harder to prevent her from escaping.

Lu Yanli nodded amiably, his face pale from running for so long. He took a few breaths and pointed behind him. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, but you should run quickly. There have been explosions in the streets behind us.”

“What explosions?” Di Ying frowned.

Lu Yanli shook his head. “I don’t know. I was just going to the street to buy something when the explosions happened. I barely managed to escape.”

He certainly didn’t look too good right now. He had many scratches, and his clothes had several cuts. He looked disheveled, but he was indeed good-looking, which explained why Lin Chu was infatuated.

Lu Yanli: “An axe, why?”

He looked completely innocent.

He was too calm, which made Di Ying suspicious. She waved her hand for him to leave.

Lu Yanli breathed slightly. “I’ll go first. I don’t know who you’re looking for, but I advise you to leave quickly. If this place explodes too, it’ll be bad.” With that, he turned to leave.

Lin Chu watched his departing figure with great reluctance, her eyes filled with infatuation. Di Ying clenched her fists and suddenly called out, “Jiang Bai?”

Lu Yanli turned his head. “What is it?”

A person’s subconscious reactions couldn’t be faked. Di Ying was still uneasy, but she couldn’t just act rashly.

Just like they had guessed before, even if they really met Lu Yanli, they couldn’t attack immediately. If they killed him but didn’t find the missing person in time, it could lead to disaster.

Di Ying: “Nothing, just wanted to ask where you’re going?”

Lu Yanli: “I’m going to the hospital to get checked out.”

“I still feel like there’s something wrong with him. It’s a pity Yi Zhenzhen isn’t here, otherwise we could quickly find out if he really is who he says he is.” A task-doer named Chen Haiqing said.

Di Ying said, “Of course I know.”

Mentioning Yi Zhenzhen, her alarm bells rang again.

Before Yi Zhenzhen died, the person closest to her was Lin Chu.

And now Lin Chu was making such a misleading move…

She made a decisive decision, pointing at Lin Chu. “There may be a traitor among us! From now on, everyone will take turns guarding her! We must never let her interfere with us again.”

On the other side, Lu Yanli didn’t go to the hospital. Instead, he came to the town’s library.

It was like a hunter opening a net and driving the prey into it from other directions.

What information did the person behind him want him to get at the library?

Lu Yanli walked into the library. The librarian was a sleepy old man, sitting in front of the computer with his back to the window. Hearing someone come in, he didn’t even bother with registration, waving his hand to let him in.

The library in the town was quite well-built. Standing at the entrance, one could feel its spaciousness.

But…

Lu Yanli knocked on the small window, asking the librarian where the local chronicles were, but only received silence.

The old man ignored him, still slumped on the desk listening to the radio, which was playing a song.

Lu Yanli could only look for it himself, passing row after row of bookshelves.

Suddenly, his gaze froze.

He remembered!

The moment he took the jade pendant, his future self drew several numbers on his palm.

His future self must have used psychological suggestion on him, preventing him from remembering in time. Until now, staring at the codes on the bookshelves, he finally remembered the series of numbers.

0-4-0-9…

He found the corresponding books.

It was a very ordinary children’s picture book. From the surface, it told the story of an emperor of a country.

Lu Yanli opened the picture book, his pupils constricting slightly again.

This brushstroke… there was no mistake. This picture book was his work!

He immediately turned and walked towards the entrance, knocking on the glass window of the librarian’s booth. “Hello, can I borrow this book?” He planned to use the excuse of borrowing to ask when the book was cataloged. That way, he could roughly determine which time period his future self came from.

The old man was still slumped on his desk, with his back to him, as if he hadn’t heard.

He reached out and pushed the old man.

The old man fell to the ground, his glasses falling off, revealing bulging eyes and a hideous, blue-veined face. He looked terrifying.

Lu Yanli suddenly remembered that when he came in just now, the old man waved his hand at him with his back to him…

Was it really him waving?

The thought sent a chill down his spine. Lu Yanli steadied himself, looked around, and then pushed open the door and walked in.

But he ignored it and searched the computer according to the book code.

He found the book’s entry date.

January 20th.

January 20th, exactly the time the current task started.

Today was February 2nd. He entered the Spiritual Medium Town on February 1st. So why would his future self draw a picture book from the past?

Just as he was about to search for something else, his gaze stopped on the computer. Inadvertently, he vaguely saw his reflection…

Before he could confirm it, his eyes were filled with a vast expanse of blood red. Lu Yanli immediately turned his head and didn’t look any further.

He was still shaken.

What exactly was it?

Not long after he left, the library exploded.

“What’s going on? Why did it suddenly explode?”

Jiang Yu was originally leading the team to the town’s library to find clues, but they were delayed on the way by a street explosion and had to take a detour. Who knew that just as they passed the street corner and saw the library sign, the library exploded right in front of their eyes?

It made them suspect that someone was targeting them.

There were many paper books in the library, and the explosion quickly turned into a fire. Fortunately, there were no other buildings in the library area, otherwise the entire street could have burned down.

“Fire! Explosion!” The residents nearby screamed.

“Call the police!”

Some people called the fire department, but the answer they received was that there had been many explosions in the town today, and there weren’t enough police to go around. They were told to handle it themselves.

Jiang Yu stared at the raging fire. The flames seemed to burn from his eyes to his heart.

There must be secrets they needed in the library. That’s why it was destroyed before they arrived, to prevent them from discovering the clues.

It was either a ghost or man-made!

Jiang Yu’s expression was a little ugly. He looked around, memorized the locations of the nearby shops and corner cameras, and said, “Let’s go back.”

A task-doer named Zhang Yun asked, “Are we not going to check other places?”

Jiang Yu shook his head. “No, we’re going to find an internet cafe.”

He needed a computer.

There were, of course, internet cafes in the town. There were also computers in the library, but they should be a pile of scrap metal now. Jiang Yu casually found an internet cafe, registered briefly, connected to the internet, and quickly used the positions of the cameras he had observed to start hacking into them.

Soon, the surveillance footage was pulled up.

“This man is highly suspicious.” Jiang Yu concluded after just one glance.

As he spoke, he sent the man’s image to every surviving task-doer, telling them to be careful if they saw this man.

Soon, Di Ying sent him a message.

Jiang Bai…

Was Jiang Bai really his name?

*

“Sister Shen Zhu, if we’re really going to the police station to find information, why are we coming so late?” A task-doer following Shen Zhu asked.

Shen Zhu’s body stiffened imperceptibly, then replied, “It’s impossible for the police to give us the information, so we can only forcibly take it when there are fewer people after they get off work.”

“I’ve already found out that there have been several explosions on the streets today, and most of the police have gone to deal with them, with only a few remaining. If we’re careful, we might not even alarm them.”

What she said made sense, so the others didn’t ask any more questions.

Shen Zhu breathed a sigh of relief.

Because they would become the terror.

Twilight was falling.

In winter, it got dark early. It was only four or five o’clock, but it was already dark around.

Shen Zhu looked at the police station gate, her eyes filled with fear.

She knew that Yan Haoyue was dead. She had received a call from a dead person, and there was no way for her to survive, but she was not willing, unwilling to die in vain.

Even if she died the next second, she had to do something!

Thinking of this, a flash of determination flashed in Shen Zhu’s eyes, and she led the team to sneak into the police station.

Regarding Lu Yanli, they had suffered because they didn’t know what he looked like.

The task-doers all agreed and separated.

Soon, a task-doer found the records room.

Honestly, most people who had experienced multiple tasks would have some lock-picking skills. They easily picked the lock and sneaked in.

“There are too many files, when will we find what we’re looking for?”

“Let’s look at them slowly in chronological order. I think if we’re looking for missing people, it shouldn’t be too long ago?”

“I think so too. It’s likely to be this year or last year, otherwise the residents of the town wouldn’t have reacted so strongly. If it was a long time ago, they would have forgotten about it. Everyone look for this year’s files.”

One person’s suggestion was approved by everyone. The task-doers quickly found the files from the past two years, spread them out on the table, and slowly looked through them.

The door of the records room closed unknowingly, but they didn’t notice it and continued to check.

“This town is too strange.”

“Not to mention missing person cases, there are a lot of death cases too. Spiritual Medium Town… it’s really not normal, is it?”

…

Just as they continued to search, the lights in the records room began to flicker on and off, emitting a slight crackling sound.

A distorted black shadow slowly emerged.