Hearing Lei Xin’s words, the members of the Special Affairs Bureau standing in front of the cell holding Maca immediately stepped aside, clearing a path.
Seeing this, Lei Xin glanced at Bai Yuling standing beside her. Noticing the other woman turn her head and give a nod, Lei Xin proceeded with her down the path cleared by the Bureau members and entered the cell through the already open door.
As soon as they entered the cell, Bai Yuling and Lei Xin’s gazes quickly fell upon Maca , who was sitting on the bed. He was foaming at the mouth, his eyes rolled back white; he was clearly no longer breathing.
Without lingering by the entrance for too long, Bai Yuling and Lei Xin quickly walked over to Maca’s side. Using their respective professional knowledge, they began to carefully examine him.
“It looks like he was poisoned,” said Bai Yuling to Lei Xin beside her, after finishing her examination and confirming that Maca was truly dead, not pretending.
“Chief, I think so too,” replied Lei Xin, sharing the same view after glancing at the sheets torn by Maca’s hands before his death and the recently delivered meal box lying on the floor, still slightly warm.
“Was he poisoned because someone was afraid he might leak crucial information?” Lei Xin wondered aloud, knowing Maca was a member of that organization. Now that he was dead, suspicion naturally arose.
Hearing this, Bai Yuling thought for a moment, then quickly shook her head in denial. “No, if he truly possessed such critical information that couldn’t be leaked, your interrogation team should have already extracted it from him in the past few days.”
“Then why did he die?” Lei Xin asked, turning to Bai Yuling.
“I don’t know,” Bai Yuling replied simply and directly.
“What should we do next?” Lei Xin pressed, looking at Bai Yuling.
Pondering this briefly, Bai Yuling quickly made a decision. “Of course, we immediately dispatch personnel to detain everyone who might potentially be involved in poisoning the prisoner. Then, we proceed according to the standard investigation procedures.”
“Understood. Should I go convey your orders now?”
“Please do.”
“Okay, I’m on it.”
With that, Lei Xin left Maca’s cell to relay Bai Yuling’s commands outside.
Bai Yuling, remaining in the cell, continued to stare at Maca’s corpse, her thoughts unreadable.
…
Just as the Special Affairs Bureau in Fangfeng City was buzzing due to Maca’s sudden death…
Yan Qi, who had already said goodnight to her parents, taken a bath, and changed into her cute bear-themed pajamas, was back in her own room, lying comfortably in her familiar bed.
“Whew, what a day full of events. Good thing I think fast, and with all the groundwork I laid earlier, otherwise someone would have definitely seen through my lies,” Yan Qi murmured to herself quietly, staring at her bedroom ceiling and recalling the series of events that had transpired that day.
After lying daze on her bed for a while, Yan Qi sat up again.
Picking up her phone from nearby, she checked the time. It was only 9:30 PM, still early compared to her usual bedtime.
Feeling she still had plenty of energy, Yan Qi simply got up, turned off the light in her room, and sat back down on her bed. Following the habit she had developed over the past few weeks, she began her daily cultivation session.
“Hmm? Why do I have this feeling that something strange might happen during tonight’s cultivation?”
After activating the spiritual energy vortex in her dantian to absorb energy, Yan Qi inexplicably felt a subtle, mysterious premonition.
However, being in a meditative state, she didn’t dwell on the origin of this feeling. She soon calmed her mind and immersed herself fully into the cultivation process.
As Yan Qi repeatedly guided spiritual energy through the vortex into her body, circulated it through her meridians, and finally condensed it into magical power within her dantian, an unexpected change suddenly occurred within the spiritual energy vortex in her dantian.
“Huh? What’s going on? Why is my spiritual energy vortex shrinking so rapidly!”
Through the internal vision gained from her cultivation, Yan Qi quickly noticed the anomaly within her dantian. She couldn’t help but feel surprised and confused.
She immediately wanted to stop cultivating and prevent her spiritual energy vortex from shrinking further.
But it was at this moment Yan Qi discovered she had lost control of her body. She could only watch helplessly as the vortex in her dantian, voraciously absorbing vast amounts of external spiritual energy, grew smaller and smaller.
“What in the world is happening?” Yan Qi thought, feeling utterly helpless and on the verge of tears.
An indeterminate amount of time passed—perhaps a minute, maybe an hour.
The spiritual energy vortex in Yan Qi’s dantian, now shrunk to less than a tenth of its original size, finally stopped absorbing external energy.
And at that very moment, Yan Qi finally regained control of her body.
The instant she realized she had control back, Yan Qi, not daring to continue cultivating, immediately withdrew from her meditative state. She jumped from her bed onto the floor of her room, clutching her flat chest as if she had just narrowly escaped a life-threatening danger, a look of lingering fear on her face.
It took quite a while before Yan Qi slowly calmed down and began carefully recalling the events that had just occurred.
“That was strange. What exactly happened just now? How could I suddenly lose the ability to move? And my spiritual energy vortex has become so small. This won’t cause the magical power I worked so hard to obtain to decrease as well, will it?”
Remembering the strangely shrinking vortex and knowing her combat prowess in this form relied entirely on the magical power condensed by that vortex, Yan Qi grew worried that her hard-earned strength might have been severely diminished. She quickly activated her internal vision again, just as before, to carefully inspect the spiritual energy vortex within her dantian.
But when Yan Qi focused her attention on the vortex—now less than a tenth of its former size—she suddenly froze completely.
Because what now resided in her dantian was no longer the swirling vortex of spiritual energy from before. Instead, it was a golden, spherical object with nine apertures, slowly rotating within her dantian.