The Missing Teammate

"Open an account. Put twenty on it."

Xia Zhi slid an ID card across the counter. The bleary-eyed attendant behind the desk scanned it, activating the card without even looking up.

Naturally, the ID wasn't hers.

It was one Liu Zheng had prepared for her. He likely knew Xia Zhi wouldn't remain idle—at the very least, she would scour the internet for information—so he had prepared a cache of supplies for her well in advance.

She found a seat in the corner and booted up the computer; its ancient fan whirred noisily.

Xia Zhi casually clicked through a few gaudy pirated movie sites before leisurely launching the internet cafe's copy of the single-player game *Prototype*.

Only after establishing this thorough disguise did she minimize the game window. In the address bar of a browser, she typed in an exceptionally long domain name.

Enter.

A crude message board popped up. With its tacky color scheme and outdated layout, it was clearly an obscure, fly-by-night website.

Scattered across it were a few hundred posts—either meaningless spam or hostile vitriol—making it look like a garbage dump of the internet.

There was plenty of nonsense, along with a fair share of profanity.

There were even links to various pornographic sites.

Xia Zhi’s gaze swept over the text line by line, not missing a single character.

Suddenly, her gaze froze.

A message from three days ago sat lonely amidst the filth.

"Where hills bend and streams wind and the pathway seems to end, past dark willows and flowers in bloom lies another village."

This was it!

Xia Zhi felt her heart give a violent thud, as if an invisible hand had clenched it tight.

The comment immediately following it read, "What the f*ck is this? Stop acting pretentious. You can't even quote poetry right."

There were no similar messages after that.

But Xia Zhi knew the truth. It was a signal.

A beacon lit in the darkness, meant only for them.

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, shedding their previous languor. Her knuckles stood out sharp and defined as she typed with force.

"Meeting on horseback with no paper or pen, I rely on you to take word that I am safe."

A simple response, yet an anxious inquiry.

After posting the line, Xia Zhi opened a very niche email service.

There wasn't a single message in the inbox.

Xia Zhi wasn't in a hurry. She clicked on a TV drama she had downloaded earlier and put on her headphones. Light and shadow shifted across the screen as the plot twisted and turned, but she didn't absorb a single word.

Time ticked by.

One hour, two hours, three hours.

As noon approached, the crowd in the internet cafe began to thin. Xia Zhi rubbed her sore eyes and was just about to shut down the computer and leave.

It seemed the other party couldn't access the internet frequently.

Coming back tomorrow would be just fine.

Just then, in the corner of the screen, a tiny email icon flashed.

Xia Zhi’s breath hitched.

She clicked open the email. A long, chaotic string of text and code filled the entire screen, looking like garbled virus data.

Yet, in Xia Zhi's eyes, these characters seemed to possess a life of their own, automatically rearranging and combining to form clear segments of information.

Her gaze was riveted to the screen. Her expression shifted from initial tension to disbelief, until finally, the tight line of her mouth completely relaxed.

A smile rippled across her face, growing deeper by the second, while a thin layer of mist uncontrollably welled up in her eyes.

She leaned back in her chair and let out a long exhale, as if expelling all the gloom and despair accumulated over the past few days.

She muttered to herself, "I knew you were alright. I knew you weren't dead."

She quickly typed on the keyboard, sending back an encrypted email in the same manner.

Hidden within those seemingly meaningless characters was a brand-new mobile phone number.

Shut down. Log off. Return the card.

Xia Zhi walked out of the internet cafe, squinting against the harsh sunlight.

She had just reached the street corner when the phone in her pocket vibrated without warning.

She pulled it out; a string of unfamiliar digits danced on the screen.

She pressed the answer key but didn't speak immediately. She simply held the receiver to her ear, listening quietly to the breathing and static on the other end.

After a few seconds of dead silence, a voice familiar to her very bones came through, carrying a raspiness as if it had been soaked in seawater.

"Are you... alright?"

She clamped her hand over her mouth, as if to stifle the sob threatening to burst from her throat, and practically fled into a deserted alley nearby.

The dam of tears broke, but her cries were firmly suppressed against her palm; only her shoulders trembled violently.

The sound of weeping drifted from the alley, kept very low.

The person on the other end seemed to breathe a sigh of relief as well.

"It's good that you're okay. I thought you were already dead."

"I'm not dead," Xia Zhi squeezed the words through her teeth, her voice trembling uncontrollably.

"Heh, what a coincidence. Neither am I." The voice on the other end held a touch of survivor's humor. "Luckily, yours truly jumped into the sea at the last moment and didn't get blown into a firework in the sky."

Xia Zhi took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down. "Where are you?"

"Yangcheng. Pengcheng is too dangerous; I can't go back there." The man's voice deepened. "I think... there's a mole in the Bureau."

Hearing this, Xia Zhi’s heart skipped a beat.

"Really? I'm in Yangcheng too. They..."

"It's not safe to talk on the phone." The man interrupted her decisively. "I'm injured and can't move easily. Come find me."

With that, the call ended.

A moment later, Xia Zhi's phone received a text message from a different unknown number.

It contained only an address.

Xia Zhi stared at the address for a full minute, then expressionlessly deleted the message and the call log.

She walked out of the alley; her face no longer showed any trace of tears.

She didn't go to the address. Instead, she turned a corner and walked straight toward a nearby, bustling vegetable market.

After buying groceries for lunch, she headed in the direction of her rental apartment.

She arrived back at the rental.

She didn't use her key to open the door; instead, Xia Zhi knocked with a specific rhythm.

Shouzhen opened the door cautiously.

If she had used the key directly, Shouzhen would have entered combat mode—that was the protocol they had established.

Through the crack in the door, Xia Zhi’s figure appeared. Her expression was complicated; beneath the tension lay a trace of barely perceptible apprehension.

"Layman Xia, is everything alright outside?"

Shouzhen observed the tension and slight apprehension on Xia Zhi's face.

As a cultivator, his perception of aura far exceeded that of ordinary people.

He could sense that Xia Zhi's usually condensed and unified essence and spirit were currently rippling faintly.

This wasn't due to physical injury; it was more like her mind had suffered a powerful shock.

Xia Zhi closed the door behind her and shook her head. "Nothing bad. I saw a file yesterday that mentioned my missing teammate. I went out today to see if I could make contact."

"And the result?" Shouzhen handed her a glass of warm water, his tone serious.

Xia Zhi took the glass; the warmth against her fingertips helped relax her taut nerves.

"I made contact. He's still alive, right here in Yangcheng." She paused, her voice dropping a notch. "But he's in bad shape. I was wondering... could we bring him here?"

As her words fell, the air in the room seemed to stagnate.