Light Barrier - Chapter 17: Entrapment

“Do it now! Action!”

The moment Zhong Wei moved, Chu Ling’s voice sounded.

Gu Shen adjusted his breathing to its optimal state, and a sharp gleam flashed in his eyes.

He knew… the time had come!

Pressing down the brim of his hat, Gu Shen moved like a ghost. Following the original plan, he bypassed the surveillance and quickly headed for the old building. Chu Ling’s plan was truly flawless. Not only did this chaos lure away the most troublesome transcendent, but it even attracted the attention of all the guards!

Gu Shen’s infiltration went exceptionally smoothly.

He soon reached the shadowy interior of the old building. Under Chu Ling’s navigation, he made numerous turns to avoid the surveillance  cameras and finally arrived at the rooftop corridor protected by two layers of police tape.

One more step forward, and he would be at the crime scene.

Forty hours had passed.

The scene was well-preserved, with hardly any objects displaced.

“Due to the fire, the original surveillance  cameras on the roof have been damaged.” Chu Ling reminded, “See that pile of wooden boards? I buried the Ruler of Truth at the bottom.”

Gu Shen nodded, crossed under the police tape, squatted down, put on gloves, and lifted the not-so-thick wooden boards.

The silver ruler was lying in the dust.

Fortunately, no one had discovered the ruler…

The moment Gu Shen touched the Ruler of Truth, he let out a long sigh of relief. He held the ruler, and his tense nerves relaxed, as though a gentle stream were flowing through his heart. “Phew… Finally got it.”

Gu Shen didn’t leave immediately. Instead, he turned his gaze toward the nearby corpse, looking at it silently. This transcendent had long been burned into charcoal by the flames, and his  clothes had been reduced to ashes, leaving only a withered, charred skeleton.

“You’ve obtained the item. You can retreat now.”

Chu Ling reminded Gu Shen, but he didn’t move and instead asked in a low voice, “What are the technological means of the Adjudication Bureau?”

The girl was surprised and explained, “The usual means are extracting DNA from blood, bones, and bodily fluids and finding the owner in the Deep Sea database. But the genes of lives destroyed by transcendental power might mutate, rendering this method ineffective. This time, the Adjudication Bureau might dispatch a mental-type transcendent to investigate the well-preserved scene with Profile. There are many methods. Why are you asking?”

“Finger bones,” Gu Shen suddenly said. “This person’s finger bones are missing a piece.”

Chu Ling was stunned. Due to the lack of surveillance  cameras, she couldn’t use her access permissions to observe Gu Shen’s current situation. She could only communicate with him via voice.

But even if there were video, what could she do?

In such a dark environment, who would notice that… the burnt corpse’s little finger bones were missing a piece?

The missing finger bone meant that someone had already taken away the crucial evidence from the scene in advance.

“It’s Mr. Tree,” Gu Shen murmured softly. “The protection of the roof is just a cover. The information that needs to be extracted has long been completed. He set up this trap long ago and waited for someone to fall into it.”

Since they were prepared, why did the transcendent guarding the old building leave so easily?

A sentence popped into Gu Shen’s mind. Casting a long line to catch a big fish.

“Gu Shen, get out of here quickly.” Chu Ling’s voice suddenly became tense. “A transcendent has appeared… no, two! They’re closing in on your position!”

“Hmm.” Gu Shen wasn’t surprised. He quickly got up and went to the roof. With a casual glance, he could see the white bed sheets stained with blood fluttering everywhere. It was a shocking sight. Even he found it difficult to believe that he was responsible for this.

No wonder the people from the Adjudication Bureau rated him S-grade.

This was indeed something that only a devilish genius could accomplish.

If he wasn’t mistaken, Mr. Tree had extracted a severed finger and collected blood from the roof. These two pieces of evidence were enough to trace the genetic sequence. The details of his coma and rescue were classified, and Mr. Tree’s arrival at the crime scene was also classified.

The people who wanted to destroy the scene and erase the evidence had no idea about this information, so they could only choose to fight to the death passively.

The knife was already raised.

The fish could only accept their fate.

Swoosh!

The howling wind on the roof was biting cold.

Grasping the ruler firmly, Gu Shen jumped down. This time, he didn’t use too much mental power to imagine a grand scene. He simply imagined the wind behind him stretching out into wings.

A clear ring came from the ruler.

The biting cold wind supported his body and gently propelled him a short distance.

The young man glided with the night breeze and landed steadily on the roof of the shorter old building.

“Gu Shen, you’re smarter than I thought.”

Once out of the cramped corridor, Chu Ling’s ‘vision’ widened, and she saw the scene of the young man riding the wind.

It was only his second time using the Ruler of Truth, and Gu Shen had already mastered the knack.

Truly remarkable learning ability.

After landing, Gu Shen crouched on the ground, concealed in the darkness.

He grinned, but his face was clearly paler than before.

The sounds from the outside world were grating at this moment, and waves of pain pierced through his mind.

Gu Shen found that he couldn’t focus for a while after using the ruler, and his mind seemed scattered. This should be a side effect of using the ruler. It might have to do with his inexperience or lack of mental power.

He made an effort to draw a few deep breaths and regained his focus.

For him, visualizing scenes wasn’t difficult. And with the ruler in hand, it wasn’t an issue to activate them.

But the consumption of using the Ruler of Truth posed a significant danger.

Using the Ruler of Truth was like flipping a switch. As long as he used it for even a second, it would consume a lot of his mind.

It had only been a few seconds, but he already couldn’t take it anymore.

This couldn’t continue!

I wonder if Mr. Tree has any training methods to temper my mental power. Gu Shen made up his mind. The Ruler of Truth was now his greatest reliance, his life-saving trump card!

After returning, he had to improve his mental power to control it better.

“You just said you sensed transcendents approaching?” Gu Shen sat in a shadowy corner and took a few minutes to catch his breath.

“Yes.” Chu Ling sounded somewhat puzzled. “But these two transcendent… didn’t appear together.”

“Of course not.” Gu Shen chuckled softly. “It seems like you’re not omniscient and omnipotent.”

Chu Ling was even more puzzled.

“The transcendent stationed here from the Adjudication Bureau was lured away, but this is… actually a trap,” Gu Shen explained succinctly. “The true big fish will only appear after the watcher leaves. And now, it’s time to reel in the net.”

Only then did Chu Ling understand. “You mean, one of the two transcendents I detected is from the Adjudication Bureau?”

“Yes. The one who sneaked into the old building probably wanted to destroy the scene on the roof, but he didn’t know that he was already being targeted.” Gu Shen was amused. “We call this behavior ‘entrapment’.”

Just as she finished speaking…

Rumble!

At the entrance of the roof of the old building above, an explosion erupted.

Two figures, one in front of the other, burst out of the narrow passage on the roof.

Hidden in the darkness, Gu Shen looked up. He saw the familiar figure in a trench coat. She was valiant and heroic, wielding a saber in each hand, slashing and hacking skillfully, suppressing her opponent to the point he couldn’t fight back at all.

“I have something important to do tonight, so I won’t accompany you.”

So, this was what Nan Jin meant by… something important. Gu Shen breathed a sigh of relief, thankful that he had chosen to escape in time.

This battle was completely one-sided.

The mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind.

Thousands of saber lights bloomed in the darkness of the night.

With a furious and shrill scream, the poor mantis was skewered through the shoulder by the oriole’s blade and hung in the air above the roof.

Her trench coat rustled loudly.

Nan Jin displayed astonishing arm strength as she held the struggling man aloft at a ninety-degree angle with the tip of her saber. She said softly, “If you move again, I’ll kill you.”

“Hiss…” The opponent gritted his teeth and looked down at where he was hanging.

This place was eleven floors high. With his current injuries, if he broke free from the tip of the blade, falling from this height was certain death.

Moreover, this crazy woman’s combat prowess was terrifying.

After some thought, he chose to submit obediently and stop struggling.

Nan Jin flicked her saber expressionlessly. A ray of silver light returned to her sheath, and the crippled transcendent was thrown to the ground like a sandbag.

… Hmm? She suddenly furrowed his brow and fixed her gaze at a certain point in the shadows of the adjacent old building. Why do I feel like someone is spying on me?

Nan Jin raised her saber again and pointed the tip at the spot she sensed. A powerful aura surged out from the saber.

Gu Shen immediately retracted his head and hid behind the large earthen pot on the roof. His breathing froze. Aren’t this wicked woman’s senses too powerful? From so far away, she won’t actually throw the saber, will she?

Cold sweat drenched Gu Shen’s back.

His intuition told him that if Nan Jin really threw the saber, he might be minced into pieces.

Fortunately, after floating for a dozen seconds, this majestic saber aura slowly dissipated.

I didn’t sense the aura of a transcendent. Am I being too wary? Nan Jin relaxed her brow. The most important thing now was to bring the man in front of her back.

She sheathed her silver saber, jumped back onto the roof, picked up the half-dead sandbag, and said lightly, “Come with me.”