Chapter 147 — The Long-Awaited...

"I understand," the middle-aged man said hastily.

"The moment you have news, call me at once," Butler Mu instructed.

After hanging up, the middle-aged man wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. Even a fellow who killed without blinking an eye had his moments of fear.

The "young lady" the middle-aged man spoke of was, of course, Wang Yanqiu, and "that man" referred to Yang Ce. The master's original orders had been to guard the young lady in secret, but never to let her discover his presence. And so the middle-aged man dared not show himself before her rashly, nor could he go directly to Yang Ce to sound him out. He could only wait until Yang Ce and the young lady parted ways and then make his plans.

The middle-aged man had not resumed tailing Wang Yanqiu and Yan because he already knew which hotel Wang Yanqiu was staying at. He would simply go there in a while—no need for following at all.

Yang Ce and Wang Yanqiu took a cab to Xinhai Mall, where they wandered about for a while. Yang Shuoxuan had not intended to buy anything, but Wang Yanqiu took a fancy to a little butterfly-shaped hair clip. It was not expensive, so Yang Ce generously paid for it and gave it to her.

Wang Yanqiu did not thank him either, accepting it as if it were her due. In her view, what the two of them had just been through together counted as sharing life and death, and that made for some bond between them.

They were not far from the Xinhai Hotel now. After leaving the mall, the two of them simply walked back to the Xinhai Hotel where Wang Yanqiu was staying.

The Xinhai Hotel was a fairly large establishment, with people coming and going all day long, and the attendants could hardly remember every guest's face. Seeing Wang Yanqiu and Yan about to take the elevator, they merely checked Wang Yanqiu's room card, saw that she was a guest of the hotel, and let them pass.

Wang Yanqiu was staying in a couple's room, the kind furnished with one great big bed. She found that she slept more comfortably that way and disliked the cramped narrowness of a small bed.

Only once the two of them were fully inside the room and the door shut did Wang Yanqiu slip her hand from Yang Juehuan's arm. The performance was over.

"Liu Lei, just who exactly are you?" By now Wang Yanqiu no longer believed a word of what Yang Ce had told her before—all that talk of working here, or whatever it was. It had to be entirely made up, and the name "Liu Lei" was surely fake as well.

"Wait." Yang Ce did not answer her question. Instead he made a gesture for her to hold on, lifted his head, and let his gaze search the room. "Hm?" Wang Yanqiu was baffled. She was not afraid that Yang Ce meant her any harm—if he did, he would never have rescued her earlier—so whatever he was doing, she felt no wariness toward him.

Yang Ce waved a hand, signaling Wang Yanqiu to stay calm, then walked over to the writing desk on his own, picked up the chair beside it, and set it down by the room's door.

After that, Yang Puqi sprang up onto the chair, reached out, and took down a small black cube-shaped object from the very top of the door frame.

Once he had it down, Yang Ce casually tossed it onto the writing desk, then, still in his slippers, stood on Wang Yanqiu's bed and removed an identical little cube from the chandelier.

Wang Yanqiu just stared at Yang Ce, dumbfounded, her face full of disbelief.

In quick succession, Yang Ce found five identical little black cubes hidden all over the room. At last he threw them on the floor and hammered away at them with the leg of the chair until every one of the cubes was smashed to bits and the circuit chips inside lay exposed. Only then did he stop.

From the very first little cube Yang Ce took down, Wang Yanqiu knew what it was. She was an assassin herself; such gadgets were hardly unfamiliar to her.

It was a type of wireless listening device, capable of transmitting sound to a receiver within a radius of three hundred meters. Yet though Wang Yanqiu understood all this, she had never in her wildest dreams imagined that such a thing would be in the room where she was staying.

To be continued

846. Traveling Together

846 Traveling Together "Listening devices?" Though Wang Yanqiu had already confirmed in her heart what these things did, she could not help asking.

"Mm. Looks like this trip of yours to Macau was plotted out by someone long in advance." Yang Hengye smiled. It seemed Wang Yanqiu was still very green—after moving into the room, it had never occurred to her that someone might have planted listening devices there. "Was this hotel your choice from the start, or did you pick it on the spot?"

"On the spot." As she said it, Wang Yanqiu could not help blurting out in alarm, "Then that means the moment I arrived in Macau, I was already being watched."

It seemed Wang Yanqiu was not so foolish after all; she had grasped the crux of the matter in an instant.

"That's how it looks." Yang Yuting nodded. "Which means this whole business was probably staged by Zheng Shaopeng from start to finish—the whole point was to get at you."

"Get at me?" Wang Yanqiu was visibly taken aback.

"Yes. Have you offended someone?" Yang Yanchuan said.

"Me? Even if I had offended someone, it couldn't reach as far as Macau. This is my first time here." Wang Yanqiu was all the more puzzled.

"Then I couldn't say. At least, on the surface of things, that's how it appears." Yang Ce shrugged.

"You still haven't said who you really are." Wang Yanqiu suddenly remembered that Yang Ce had never told her why he had shown up there today.

"Me? Heh heh. You can think of me as a curious bystander," Yang Xu said with a laugh.

"A curious bystander? What does that mean?" Wang Yanqiu was at a loss. "There's no one else here now—just the two of us. You can tell me, can't you?"

"Wang Yan isn't your real name, is it?" Yang Ce did not answer. Instead he looked at Wang Yanqiu with a half-smile.

"No, it isn't. And I suppose you're not really called Liu Lei either." Wang Yanqiu smiled. "People in our line of work don't go around telling others their real names, do they?"

"It doesn't matter. Since you've already guessed what I am, why ask me again?" Yang Ce said. "I'm an assassin too—just a free one, not belonging to any organization."

In saying so, Yang Cenbin was not really lying to her, for the King of Assassins had always been a lone operator, never taking orders from anyone.

"Then why were you following me?" Wang Yanqiu did not doubt Yang Juehuan's words; in every respect Yang Ce had shown himself to be much like her, and he was surely a fellow professional.

"Macau Street Shopping—I doubt this magazine is unfamiliar to you." Yang Ce looked at Wang Yanqiu as he spoke, and her expression visibly changed. Yang Ce paid it no mind and went on: "I happened to see this magazine while having coffee in a café, and equally by chance, while leafing through its contents, I noticed a peculiar advertisement—it was filled with meaningless symbols.

But with an assassin's sensitivity, I felt at once that those markings still meant something. So I photographed them with my phone, and asked the café attendant for the previous issues of the magazine, and did the same with those.

After I got back, I sent these pictures to a friend of mine, and it happened that this friend understood the meaning of these symbols and translated them for me. And so I learned of your plan."

Of course, Yang Ce did not say that he himself could read this cipher; instead he casually invented a person. Because Fang Tian had said this was a cipher unique to the Butterfly family, not something just anyone could read.

But clearly Yang Juehuan's carefulness was wasted. When Wang Yanqiu had learned these ciphers, no one had ever told her where they came from, so it did not strike her as strange that someone else might know them too.