Stolen Love Chapter 40

Chapter 40: Invasion

Upon re-entering the main hall jubilantly, Li Xin noticed that the room that was previously filled with guests was now mostly empty, but for a handful of servants and guards. She knit her brows thoughtfully, swerving into the stairwell and climbing to the second floor. She had observed earlier that that was where the main fire extinguisher for the building was located.

She casually sauntered up to the extinguisher and slid an inconspicuous hand across the device, piercing a wire that connected it to an outlet behind the wall. Almost instantaneously, fire alarms sounded across the building and everything became enshrouded in mist that came from spouts in the ceiling.

In the building, shouts emanated from every direction: "Did a fire start? From where?" and frantic footsteps echoed all around.

A few seconds later, someone shouted, "It's nothing, it's all good! The extinguisher system malfunctioned is all. I guess it hasn't gone under maintenance in a while. Everyone, keep going, everything is fine!"

Li Xin had managed to bring herself to the very top floor of the building in the chaos. She stood on the sixth floor looking disdainfully at the two unconscious men lying on the ground before her. She'd gotten rid of them with just a wooden staff. To think these people were underworld criminals, how pathetic.

Still muttering, she went to sit where the two men had been stationed: the building's surveillance center. It was where she needed to be if she wanted to proceed with what she intended to do. Thankfully, she was a thief by profession and such a task was a piece of cake given its familiarity.

She eyed the twenty or so monitors before her, which covered every nook and cranny of the entire building. She smirked to herself. This was much faster than tediously combing through every room herself.

The footage on the monitors kept jumping from scene to scene, some of which made Li Xin blush furiously. There were dark, private areas where people were getting it on, entangled in s.e.xual intercourse; she turned her head away until the scene changed.

Eventually, she found what she was looking for.

The woman whose wrist Qi Mo had broken, along with her companions whom had been dragged out with her, were currently located in some sort of torture room. They were surrounded by a crowd of sinister-looking men who were taking turns tormenting them. The sight made Li Xin grimace.

Upon closer observation, there was no anger or fear on the women's faces and their screams held none either. Li Xin's face tightened. If she had known it was going to be like this, she wouldn't have risked coming to check on them. People needed to learn to love themselves instead of being codependent on others.

She was just about to swivel around and head out when she noticed something out of the corner of her eye. The girl whose wrist Qi Mo had broken was laying in a corner of the room on the screen, shrill screams coming out of her throat. Her entire body was covered in blood. The men around her were holding red-hot irons, walking towards her malevolently. Her body showed obvious signs of having been beaten severely; Qi Mo had broken one of her wrists, yet it became apparent that her other wrist had also been snapped.

Li Xin grit her teeth and let out a silent curse in her head.

When she had heard Feng Ji telling Qi Mo that he would deal with the girl appropriately, she'd known immediately that something bad was going to happen. And even though these women were in this profession and didn't deserve to be pitied, they certainly didn't deserve to die. Qi Mo was high up and powerful; Feng Ji would not easily spare someone who had offended him.

Li Xin didn't consider herself a great person or someone with a vast amount of sympathy, but life was precious. Dying over such a tiny incident wasn't worth it. This was why she had come.

She sighed, then inspected the computer and got herself into the system. She was lucky in that the men she had knocked out were already logged in, so it didn't take too much effort. She located the power toggle for the torture room's electric circuit and switched it off. Immediately, the monitor blacked out, indicating that she'd successfully shut off the lights in their room.

She reprogrammed several cameras through the system and meant to go in search of the girl, but all of a sudden she observed that the monitor revealed an infrared light in the pitch-black torture room. Infrared was something she was accustomed to, but it was strange that such high technology was placed in a torture room.

Frowning, she paused, deep in thought. It suddenly occurred to her that she hadn't seen surveillance footage from the room Qi Mo was in. She turned back to the monitors and began searching carefully — it was impossible that their room was not under surveillance.

She finally found it at the very bottom below the computer in a position that was easily missed. On the screen, Qi Mo looked p.i.s.sed off, his face taut. Feng Ji looked equally irked; the two men looked as if they were pointing daggers at each other out on a battlefield. Apparently after she left, something else had happened to make the tension between the two parties worse — it showed in the stiff way Yellow Falcon was holding himself.

It was obvious that Qi Mo had intended to take the Wind Clan territory from the start. He had only been waiting for the right moment to justify his actions. Li Xin crooked an eyebrow at Qi Mo's calm, steady expression. She shook her head in pity at Feng Ji. The man had given Qi Mo the perfect opening with his invitation; it was like a chicken walking into a wolf's den to say h.e.l.lo. He brought it upon himself.

She sighed again, but then she noticed something else. The monitor above Qi Mo showed a bunch of heavily armed men holding heavy a.s.sault weapons pointed towards the ground. The guns in their hands were extremely high tech. She wondered why they were pointing it at the floor.

Elsewhere, on another monitor, the same scene took place in another room, yet the men had their weapons pointed upwards towards the ceiling. A strange feeling took over as Li Xin's gaze traveled between the screens, and then she stiffened.

There were men in every room surrounding the one Qi Mo was in, and their weapons were all pointed towards him. Everyone's hands were on the triggers — they were simply waiting for a command. Li Xin wiped a hand over her forehead, which had suddenly broken out into cold sweat. To think that she had been in that dangerous room just a few moments ago… how terrifying. If Qi Mo made a single wrong move, he would be shot to smithereens.