"No intruders detected?"

A shadow of unease crossed Chen Mo's brow. He even suspected that the Deep Sea system currently in control of the building might be an untrustworthy "false system."

He had personally witnessed "the other party" sever the cable and escape.

Although he hadn't clearly seen their face… he was certain that the other party was in that elevator!

Now, Deep Sea, having taken full control of the building, was telling him, after a scan… that no intruders were detected?

What a joke!

"Repeating, no intruders detected."

"Alarm cancelled."

"Alarm cancelled."

The flashing red lights slowly returned to normal.

All security personnel and workers looked at each other, lost and confused. They stared blankly at the building, which quickly returned to silence… Everyone inside was unclear about what had just happened.

It all came and went so quickly.

Like a farce.

More like a joke.

…

…

South Bay Building, nineteenth floor.

A chaotic pile of documents, along with old, damaged computers, desks, and chairs, were stacked in a cramped room. It was a sealed storage room that appeared to have been unattended for a long time.

The door to the storage room was tightly shut. The blackout curtains, constantly drawn, blocked all view inside. No one could see the scene within the storage room.

Nor could anyone see the teenager huddled among the clutter.

Gu Shen's forehead was covered in sweat. He stared ahead, his heart still pounding… Chen Mo's presence had left a deep psychological scar. The guy was as sharp as a wild dog. In that moment of looking out from the elevator, he had thought he was trapped in an inescapable situation.

Deep Sea had only controlled the building for less than ten seconds.

His only choice was to take advantage of the fact that Chu Ling still had some authority to jump out of the elevator… In fact, the two had the same thought at the critical moment. Gu Shen had barely conceived the idea of jumping when…

The doors of the rapidly descending elevator were forcibly opened.

This was his last chance. Gu Shen had decisively escaped the moment Chen Mo stepped onto the descending elevator.

In this building, there were floors not connected to Deep Sea… not just the thirty-ninth floor.

There was also the nineteenth floor.

Which was the "storage room" where he currently was.

"Chen Mo didn't follow… he didn't catch my movement of jumping out of the elevator."

After waiting for several seconds, Gu Shen took a deep breath. He was quite certain that if his escape had been seen, Chen Mo would have already been upon him.

Choosing the nineteenth floor was the right choice.

Now that Deep Sea had truly taken control of the building, Chen Mo should still be in a state of suspicion. He would need some time to figure out the situation.

Gu Shen stood up. Time was especially precious to him now, and he couldn't afford to waste any. In fact, he was also curious why the South Bay Building had five places not connected to Deep Sea… If the thirty-ninth floor, where Ye Ningqiu was located, held a secret like the closed-circuit mainframe, what could the nineteenth floor hold?

After Deep Sea fully took control of the building, Chu Ling's voice no longer sounded.

Gu Shen didn't know what price Chu Ling had to pay to replace Deep Sea's connection to the South Bay Building, but he knew it was no easy task and extremely risky… The elevator, the surveillance, the sky-eye in the shaft, and the false alarm would all be reported to Chen Mo.

After completing the connection this time, Chu Ling might need some time… to deal with the subsequent loopholes.

Exploring the nineteenth floor would have to rely on himself.

Gu Shen took a deep breath and used Blazing Fire to illuminate the room.

The storage room was small.

The clutter was piled up haphazardly, but judging from the extent of the dust cover… it didn't seem to be old objects. Items left for years usually had a layer of dust on the surface.

Someone had been here not long ago.

Gu Shen cleared away some cardboard boxes and old desks and chairs. As expected, he found a narrow hidden doorway.

"Another hidden door…"

Gu Shen narrowed his eyes, feeling somewhat hesitant.

Blazing Fire vaguely conveyed some ominous premonitions.

Now that the building was sealed, he was forced to flee to the nineteenth floor. The urgent task was to escape quickly… but Deep Sea had already taken full control of the South Bay Building. Apart from continuing forward, he seemed to have no other choice.

"Blazing Fire has a vague ominous premonition. Could this hidden door hide something even more important than Ye Ningqiu's secret?" Gu Shen frowned slightly, holding the Ruler of Truth in one hand and exposing the Six Fortune Hand Beads in the other.

Gu Shen decided to bite the bullet and move forward.

If anything unexpected happened, the Six Fortune Hand Beads would help him withstand a calamity.

If it really didn't work out, he could only try jumping down from the nineteenth floor… His intuition told him that this was the worst thing to do. That man named Chen Mo was likely watching the building, and forcibly breaking through would mean officially exposing himself.

There was a high probability that he would be caught up.

"Hoo…"

Gu Shen crawled forward. It was hard to imagine that the nineteenth floor still hid such a hidden passage… It was more like a corridor for imprisoning criminals, extremely depressing, with a very low ceiling. It didn't seem to be meant for people to walk through at all…

Winding and twisting.

Who would have thought that beneath the glamorous exterior of the South Bay Building, there was such a place hidden?

"Almost there."

After a difficult five minutes of crawling.

The winding passage finally reached its end. The Blazing Fire summoned by Gu Shen had been leading the way ahead, dispelling the darkness and expanding the view.

And the moment he poked his head out of the passage, a creepy feeling washed over him.

Something cold touched Gu Shen's cheek.

"Drip."

It was a drop of blood.

Viscous, but scarlet, like red agate.

Gu Shen looked up. He saw a slender figure suspended before him. It was a young woman, her swan-like white neck pierced by iron hooks, her face a bloody mess.

If you just looked at her from a distance.

This woman was as beautiful as a work of art.

But upon closer inspection… this work of art was filled with the气息 of death.

A strong sense of vomiting arose in his heart. Gu Shen resisted the nausea and crawled out of the winding passage. Blazing Fire illuminated the secret behind the hidden door on the nineteenth floor… It was an extremely narrow secret room, with an iron door fastened with a long lock. It seemed that the iron door connected to the outside world, because gusts of wind occasionally swept in, but the腥味 in the room still couldn't be dispersed.

"...Someone died here."

Gu Shen stared intently at the suspended person, trying to see her face clearly… But the dead woman's face was destroyed, leaving only a patch of scarlet.

Wait a minute.

He had seen this look before…

In Zhou Yexin's dream, Zhou Yu had died like this, with countless garbled characters covering the man's face.

Was it done by that Bloodfire Master?

The moment he saw this corpse, Gu Shen was certain that his investigation plan was absolutely correct. Although the information from the closed-circuit mainframe on the thirty-ninth floor had not yet been deciphered, this corpse… could already prove that the Bloodfire Master had a close connection with the South Bay Building.

Such a corpse was stored in a place not connected to Deep Sea.

This was no coincidence.

Gu Shen held his breath and slowly approached.

His face was a little pale, not because his psychological quality was not good enough, but because the scene in front of him was really a little strange. Snow white and darkness, death and holiness, a highly conflicting visual contrast, filled the small secret room.

"How long has she been dead..."

The surface of the woman's body seemed to be covered with a layer of powder.

Gu Shen couldn't get any useful information… Was this a way to preserve the body? Time seemed to have stopped flowing on her body. This was the origin of the artistic impression.

He did not touch the woman.

Crawling through the passage, Gu Shen was extremely careful.

When he confirmed that someone had been to the storage room on the nineteenth floor not long ago… he began to clear the traces. Before entering the passage, he specially restored the clutter used to cover the hidden door.

In any case, he couldn't let the entrant discover the traces of his "visit."

If the Bloodfire Master held the power of the Everlasting Foundation, and this woman was related to him… she was likely a sacrifice for the Bloodfire Master's private desires.

Then, the person who came here must also be a fanatical believer of the Everlasting Foundation.

The news of the building being invaded would soon spread.

Then this "believer" would definitely return here again for inspection.

After seeing the secrets of the secret room, Gu Shen didn't hesitate and prepared to leave.

It was enough for him to know about the existence of this secret room.

Everything here was impossible to take away.

The game with the Bloodfire Master… was actually an information war. Every trump card he hid increased his chances of winning.

Gu Shen slowly came to the iron door. Opening the lock was not difficult for him. What was difficult was eliminating all traces… His spiritual power slowly swept out, exploring the contours of the lock core. The Ruler of Truth transformed into a slender steel wire, and with the slow rotation of his fingers.

With a "click."

The iron door of the secret room was opened.

This connected to a small open-air terrace, just enough for a person to stand on… Since the secret room was not connected to Deep Sea and was not within the scope of surveillance, then this terrace was naturally not in the "eye" of Deep Sea.

The night was dark.

Gu Shen squeezed his body onto the terrace, closed the secret room door, and re-locked it slowly, using the Ruler of Truth across the iron door.

He closed his eyes and slowly recalled.

He confirmed that all traces of his visit had been eliminated.

Gu Shen jumped backward. The Ruler of Truth turned into a slender cable, and as he fell rapidly, the cable tightened and pulled him.

Gu Shen let go, and the cable disappeared.

He raised his hand again.

The cable shot out like a spider silk.

He then used the momentum to sweep out of the building and quickly disappeared into the night.

What Gu Shen didn't see was—

In the secret room on the nineteenth floor, the suspended white woman seemed to be moved by the wind.

She turned slowly.

Accompanied by the cracking sound of the iron hooks turning.

The bloody face slowly aimed at the direction Gu Shen left.