Chapter 5

“Jinwu Pharmaceuticals.”

It was the woman who had stayed silent the whole time, sitting beside the short-haired woman, who spoke. She had been quiet all along, but now she suddenly broke her silence.

“Jinwu Pharmaceuticals’ work uniforms are yellow, and their factory is located in the Gray Tower Zone.”

The short-haired woman was startled. “You’re right. But isn’t Jinwu Pharmaceuticals a very famous emerging enterprise these past two years? And the owner is a well-known philanthropist.”

The woman beside Jiang Yun sneered. “Who knows what rotten things these capitalists are really up to behind closed doors.”

The silent woman retorted with light sarcasm: “Right, like you said—you don’t necessarily know everything either.”

Jiang Yun spoke up at the right moment, pretending to be struggling to overcome her fear. “Um, everyone, don’t argue. Since we’ve all been tied up and brought here, why don’t we exchange names first, and then think about how to save ourselves?”

So Jiang Yun learned that the somewhat cynical woman beside her was named Lian Qing, the short-haired woman sitting across from her was named Lico, and the quiet woman who didn’t talk much said her name was Xiao Mo.

Lian Qing frowned. “Xiao Mo—that sounds like a fake name at first glance, doesn’t it?”

Xiao Mo: “Mm, now you know.”

“You—!”

Lico still used her gentle big-sister tone: “Alright, stop arguing first. The urgent matter right now is how we escape.”

Jiang Yun: “We can help each other untie the ropes on our hands and feet, right?”

Lico nodded. “We could, but I’m worried those men might suddenly stop the truck and open the door, and we don’t have a corresponding escape plan. If they discover we’re all awake and have untied the ropes, they’ll definitely tighten their control over us, maybe even anger them—which would be counterproductive.”

Jiang Yun: “Lian Qing, can I ask you—when you opened your eyes to peek, did you see how many people there were? Also, when the truck stopped, did you hear them talking?”

Lian Qing had probably been a bit irritated, but seeing Jiang Yun timidly asking her a question—especially since the other was delicate and cute, like a little rabbit, making it really hard to feel any dislike—she answered briefly: “Couldn’t see very clearly, probably two or three. They didn’t communicate at all the whole time. They got everything done without a single word.”

“Then it’s most likely just two—the driver and the passenger in this truck, no one else,” Jiang Yun lowered her eyes, then raised them after a moment. “Everyone, I have a small plan.”

The bald man at the steering wheel yawned.

The sharp-faced man in the passenger seat frowned. “What are you doing? Don’t drive while fatigued.”

The bald man cursed. “It’s not like I want to be sleepy. Even the stimulants aren’t working. These past few days catching white mice, running nonstop—I haven’t rested at all. You think I don’t know I shouldn’t drive fatigued? I don’t want to die either.”

“Boss is really something, insisting on using such an antique vehicle. Can’t even install an autopilot system.”

The sharp-faced man: “Don’t talk about the boss. Boss said catching white mice is a black-market business. The older and more antique the tools, the better. New tech all has to connect to the [Tower]’s data network. When the Inspection Team comes for us, they’d catch us instantly.”

Bald: “But even an antique probably won’t save us now. I’ve heard rumors that our factory on the outskirts of Gray Tower Zone Ten has probably already been noticed by the Inspection Team.”

Sharp-face: “It’s not just the Inspection Team we need to worry about… Anyway, this is the last job. After we finish, we’ll go lay low for a while.”

The bald man let out a long sigh. “I hope so.”

The two were driving along a desolate road when suddenly a huge commotion came from the cargo compartment.

Bald: “What’s going on? Did the white mice wake up?”

Sharp-face spat. “Seriously, even the last job can’t go smoothly. Stop the truck—I’ll go deal with these dead rats.”

The bald man stepped on the brake.

“You don’t need me to come?”

Sharp-face laughed and cursed: “You just rest up, uncle. Don’t actually get so tired you crash the car and drag me down with you. If I’d known this day would come, I’d have gotten a driver’s license. Who’d have thought I’d ever have to drive manually.”

The bald man closed his eyes to rest. He vaguely heard the sharp-faced man open the door and climb into the back.

After that, there was no more sound.

Strange…

His eyelids were fighting each other. He really wanted to fall asleep, but he couldn’t overcome the worry in his heart and forced himself to sit up, open the door, and get out.

The moment his foot touched the ground, a sharp, stinging pain shot through him.

“Ah—”

The scream cut through the silent night.

On the empty, deserted road, this scream didn’t attract anyone’s attention.

In the grass by the roadside, a pair of deep, clear green eyes was watching everything.

It was Jiang Yun.

Earlier, Jiang Yun had proposed a plan. Because she’d noticed some cardboard boxes in the cargo compartment, she suggested they make some noise to lure the two men to check, then the four of them would hide, catch them off guard and knock them unconscious, and then scatter and flee.

It was worth mentioning that when Jiang Yun mentioned knocking the men unconscious, Lian Qing raised an eyebrow. “Who’s going to do the knocking? Let me say upfront, I didn’t undergo any strength-related gene activation as a child. I probably can’t handle that job.”

Lico: “Ah, I see Lian Qing, you’re so tall—almost one meter ninety, right? Completely above the average height for normal women. When you modified your height, didn’t you improve your strength along the way?”

Lian Qing: “It’s one meter ninety-one point six, my height—I only did gene activation in that area, because I wanted to be a model.”

Xiao Mo let out a light, mocking laugh, as if mocking Lian Qing for only modifying useless things.

Before Lian Qing could explode, Jiang Yun spoke up at the right moment to defuse the conflict: “I’ll do it. I can.”

The other three didn’t question how someone as thin and frail as Jiang Yun, like a fragile porcelain doll, could have any strength.

After all, gene activation engineering nowadays was as common as plastic surgery in the pre-Tower era. Merely greatly increasing a person’s strength wasn’t considered rare.

Besides, when it came to life and death, one would assume this delicate woman named Jiang Yun wouldn’t be foolishly overconfident.

When the four of them held their breath and watched a sharp-faced man open the door and climb into the cargo compartment, Jiang Yun, already prepared, immediately and cleanly struck the back of his neck with a knife-hand. He lost consciousness instantly, and she caught him around the waist and gently laid him down on the truck bed without making a sound.

Then the four of them quietly got out of the truck and quickly fled outward.

Jiang Yun jumped down, first surveyed the surroundings—it looked like a very remote, desolate suburban area—then she quickly used the [Modify Settings] ability to create an [Absolutely Sharp Injection Needle] from the grass by the roadside, placed it vertically pointing upward on the ground near the driver’s side door.

After doing all this, she hid.

Sure enough, as she’d expected, there was still a bald man in the truck who hadn’t come down, and he stepped right onto the needle trap she’d placed in advance.

The [Absolutely Sharp Injection Needle] pierced straight through the sole of his foot, which was why he’d let out such a pained cry.

Her anxious heart relaxed slightly.

Only by rendering both men who had kidnapped them unable to act could she run away more safely.

Fortunately, this account’s physical fitness was quite good. After her [Modification], running continuously for over an hour was no problem.

The character account she was currently using was, of course, not that vegetable-patient sister who couldn’t even move.

It was her character from the [Rule Horror] manga.

That character had only appeared once—just as she was being dragged by a supernatural being into the horror world, and because she didn’t believe supernatural beings existed and thought she was on a prank show, in one panel she was loudly yelling “Hurry up and let me out,” and in the next panel, her loudly screaming head fell to the ground while her body remained standing, the people around her screaming in panic.

She was a cannon-fodder background extra born to indirectly convey how terrifying and bloody the horror world was.

That character’s setting was that of a simple-minded, physically strong thug.

Thinking of this, Jiang Yun wanted to let out a long sigh. Getting a thug card in a rule-horror manga—what a cannon fodder character, cannon fodder to the extreme.

Beyond that, she was a frustrated researcher in the [Competitive Sports] manga, and a novelist who considered himself unrecognized in the [Esper Academy] manga.

Just—each one was like a [bicycle in the ocean].

AKA, at a glance, obviously completely unrelated to the main plotline cannon fodder.

But it didn’t matter. Even if these four characters seemed useless at first glance, as the saying went: there is no garbage in the world, only resources that haven’t been put to the right use.

Fish can’t ride bicycles, but people can.

A bicycle that’s useless in the ocean can be put to great use on the road.

Similarly, her four cannon-fodder background extra characters could be swapped and used in different manga.

There is no absolute cannon fodder, only characters who haven’t gone to the right manga.

Like this thug character—utterly useless in [Rule Horror], but in this [Suspense Revenge] manga, she was a perfect solution to her urgent problem.

Her plan was clear: use [Modify Settings] to make herself a victim caught up in the Gray Tower Zone case. Then, with some maneuvering, she would definitely appear in a new chapter of the manga and have a certain proportion of appearance and plot. Only then would she have a chance to gain high popularity and make things easier for what she needed to do next.

Except, if her abilities were stronger, she could have even let herself be taken by those two men to their hideout, giving her a chance to get closer to the core plot.

But right now she had no popularity and no way to modify her settings—there was nothing she could do about that.

This current “self-rescue” highlight scene was already the best she could do.

As for the earlier sniper duel with Yan Xieyue in the game—although she thought it was brilliant, it wasn’t related to the manga’s main plot, so it wouldn’t necessarily be drawn into the manga by the mangaka.

Of course, once she’d laid out all the clues, that scene would very likely be presented to manga readers in the future as a “flashback.”

Just as Jiang Yun was thinking this, the bald man suddenly pulled something out of his pocket and shoved it into his mouth.

Something bizarre happened. He seemed to instantly feel no pain, and the corners of his mouth curled into an outright horrifying smile.

Fueled by this strange drug’s effect, he yanked out the syringe that had pierced through his foot.

Then he made a phone call: “…Hello, boss. Something’s happened. Those four white mice escaped. But it’s fine—at least they ran off inside our compound. They can’t get out of the compound.”

“You’re right. White mice this lively are exactly the kind that can become selected experimental subjects and produce the best drugs.”

The bald man paused for a moment, seemingly listening carefully to the other party, then his expression suddenly became extremely frightened. The next second he was kneeling on the ground, his knees landing right in the blood he’d shed.

“The Inspection Team might be in our truck?! Boss! You have to believe me—at the very least, it’s absolutely impossible for me to betray you! I’m willing to guarantee it with my life!”

He was trembling, on the verge of crying from fear.

But very quickly, the man’s eyes nearly split with fury, and his whole body shook like a leaf in the wind, as if he’d seen the grim reaper from hell.

“Th-that person was actually in the truck just now too?! —Boss, Wang Hai and I really didn’t know that one of these four people today was actually that person! I-I—if we’ve caused any offense, boss, you have to save us! I’ve followed you for so long…”

He hadn’t expected the bald man’s phone call to contain so much information.

What made Jiang Yun most curious were naturally the last two lines.

Among Lico, Lian Qing, and Xiao Mo, one was very likely an undercover agent from the Inspection Team, and another seemed to be a big shot in disguise.

As for her—strictly speaking, she wasn’t an ordinary person either.

Well, well. Two bumbling thieves had worked all night and caught four people, and three of them turned out to have special identities. Only one was a plain civilian card.

Despite her inner shock, Jiang Yun put on a profound, unfathomable expression.

The woman hiding in the shadows slightly raised her delicate brows, her face cold and indifferent, not a trace of the timidity and panic she’d shown in the truck earlier.

A glimmer of interest shone in her eyes, like a wild beast that had spotted its prey.

Her lips parted slightly, and in a clear, cold, crisp voice, full of interest, she said softly: “No wonder. I caught the scent of an old friend.”

And at this moment, Jiang Yun’s inner thoughts—

LMAO.

Actually, just now she’d only smelled fish stench. It stank to death. 🙂

But on the surface, she had to maintain her badass aura!

Step one to gaining high popularity:

Become a [riddler] who makes others feel like you know a lot of things, but you just won’t say them. √