No Villain Has the Word "Villain" Carved on Their Forehead

Click!

The lights came on.

Vina’s pupils contracted sharply.

Lin Mo stood in front of her, one hand resting on the light switch and the other tucked into his trouser pocket.

He looked at Vina with an utterly calm expression, like an ordinary office worker returning after hours and finding a colleague who had not yet left.

“Boss Wei.”

Lin Mo’s voice was quiet and casual. “It’s so late. Aren’t you going home?”

Vina’s throat tightened.

This wasn’t psychological tension. An invisible force had clamped around her neck.

Her breathing stopped for half a beat.

But soon, the obstruction loosened again, as if it had merely been teasing her and decided to let her take another breath.

Vina’s mind raced.

She had been in this line of work for more than a decade. What kind of situation hadn’t she seen? Being cornered in an office wasn’t a first for her—and she hoped it wouldn’t be the last.

Act.

She had to act.

“It’s you! Are you here to rob me or rape me?”

Vina screamed, shielding her chest with both hands as she stumbled backward two steps, her back slamming against the wall.

Fear and panic filled her eyes, along with a trace of the stubborn composure of a career woman trying to keep herself calm.

She acted very well.

If this had been a television drama, she would have earned a standing ovation.

But Lin Mo’s expression didn’t change in the slightest.

He did not even respond to her.

In the face of absolute strength, all disguises were meaningless.

Lin Mo raised his hand and slapped her.

The motion was casual, and not particularly fast. It was almost like swatting a mosquito.

The fear vanished from Vina’s eyes.

Since she couldn’t keep pretending, she stopped pretending. A spark flared in her gaze.

That was her ability: igniting flames from a distance.

Anything within her line of sight could be set ablaze.

For more than a decade, this ability had helped her resolve countless problems—burning evidence, destroying traces, and even killing two Yanhuang Awakening agents who had tried to investigate her background.

The flames had not even had time to take shape.

His hand had already struck her face.

Her brain was instantly shaken into a slurry.

Vina’s eyes bulged wide. Blood seeped from the corners and ran down along her cheekbones, leaving two red trails across her exquisite makeup.

Her body fell backward, rigid as a board.

Thud!

She was already a fully dead corpse.

Lin Mo shook his hand, as if disgusted by the filth on it.

Vina’s corpse quickly began to change, eventually turning into a thin sheet of paper.

Her soul, meanwhile, had been stripped from her body and was now clenched in Lin Mo’s palm.

An experienced spy who had spent more than a decade establishing an intelligence network had died in an ordinary office in a normal office building.

The entire process had taken less than a minute.

She had not even had time to leave a last message.

“So, you’re Vina.”

Lin Mo lowered his head and looked at the faint, ethereal mass in his hand.

“Soul Search.”

Her memories surged toward him like a flood.

Vina’s handlers, contacts, methods of communication, meeting codes, and more—there was a substantial amount of information.

Several of the names matched information Lin Mo had obtained from Shim Jae-hyeok’s villa, while others were completely new.

The two sets of intelligence overlapped, and with the information collected by the Superpowered Youth League’s headquarters during this period, the puzzle was gradually being completed piece by piece.

Tens of thousands of spies.

That number was no exaggeration.

The actual figure might well be even higher.

The ones from Neon and Goryeo were especially troublesome. Their appearances were too similar to those of Chinese people.

All they needed was a fluent command of Mandarin and a fake identity card. Once they blended into a crowd, not even a ghost could pick them out.

That was the biggest headache for Yanhuang Awakening.

It wasn’t that they couldn’t defeat them.

They simply couldn’t find them.

But Lin Mo had his own methods.

The intelligence obtained through Soul Search—minor agents and insignificant pawns could be handed over to the people from Oriental Leaves to handle.

As for anyone with even a little weight, Lin Mo dealt with them personally. It was more efficient, and he could perform another Soul Search in the process, making the information snowball until it grew larger and larger.

A few days later, over the weekend.

Cai Junhuang stepped out of the elevator with her bag on her back. She was just about to turn into the dance studio when the corner of her eye caught the entrance of the modeling agency across the hall, bringing her to a stop.

The doors were tightly shut, with an official seal pasted across them.

The kind of seal that was crossed into an X, stamped with an official emblem.

Cai Junhuang stared at it for several seconds, confusion appearing on her face.

It had still been fine the last time she passed by.

She turned and entered the dance studio, then walked over to the front desk, curiosity getting the better of her.

“Sister Xin, what happened to the company across the hall?”

Sister Xin had been worrying about having no one to gossip with. At once, she launched into the story with animated enthusiasm.

“You still don’t know? Vina—the boss of the company across the hall—is a spy!”

“What?”

“Really! She was arrested a couple of days ago. I heard the investigation led to a whole string of people. Her company looked like a legitimate modeling agency, but it was actually just a cover for her intelligence work.”

Sister Xin told the story with great relish, but the more Cai Junhuang listened, the quieter she became.

“How could that be? Vina didn’t seem like a bad person to me… Could they have arrested the wrong person?”

Sister Xin rolled her eyes.

“Caicaizi, you’re just too young. You haven’t been out in the real world yet. No bad person walks around with the word ‘evil’ stamped on their forehead. If they actually looked evil, how could they work as spies?

“They even do terrible things under the banner of helping you. And then you’re expected to thank them for it.”

At those words, Cai Junhuang felt her hands begin to tremble.

She remembered how Vina had tried to get close to her, and the things Vina had said when she offered her help.

Her fingers unconsciously tightened around the strap of her bag.

Ding!

The elevator doors opened.

Two agents from Yanhuang Awakening, both dressed in police uniforms, stepped out. They swept their eyes across the corridor, and their gazes settled on the dance studio’s front desk—or, more precisely, on Cai Junhuang.

“Hello. Are you Cai Junhuang?”

The agent in front took out his identification and flashed it briefly.

“There are a few things we’d like to ask you about. Would you mind talking with us for a few minutes?”

Cai Junhuang’s heart sank.

She turned to look at Sister Xin.

Sister Xin had spent years navigating the rough waters of society, and her reaction was much faster than Cai Junhuang’s.

She stood up from behind the front desk, a professional smile spreading across her face as she spoke warmly.

“Gentlemen, we have a private room here with good soundproofing. You can question her here, so Junhuang won’t have to go anywhere.”

The two agents exchanged a glance and nodded.

They had indeed never intended to take her away.

Cai Junhuang followed the agents toward the small room. As she passed Sister Xin, Sister Xin secretly tugged at her sleeve and mouthed three words:

“Don’t be nervous.”

Cai Junhuang nodded, took a deep breath, and pushed open the door.

Inside the room, she recounted everything about her interactions with Vina, including the talent competition.

The agent conducting the questioning nodded.

“She may have considered you a target. Fortunately, it wasn’t too late, and you didn’t do anything wrong. Don’t dwell on it. We’re simply concerned about every civilian who might have been deceived by her.”

“Okay. Thank you, officer.”

Cai Junhuang was indeed much more relaxed.

“All right, we’ll be leaving now. If anything comes up, we may contact you again.”

The two agents had accomplished their objective.

Lin Mo had arranged it through Oriental Leaves, just as Vina had imagined.

Lin Mo would find a way to protect the people around him.

Of course, that only applied to innocent people. Cai Junhuang had been dragged into all this because of him.

If someone brought trouble upon themselves, however, he wouldn’t care.