Chapter 210: Sniffing Out

Li Cheng didn't rush out of the room; instead, he set up a few things inside first.

Then he pushed open the door, casually pried a chunk of concrete from the corridor wall, flicked it off his fingertip, and shattered the surveillance camera in the parking lot below.

"Get in the car."

Li Cheng then called everyone to board the second-hand white Toyota Carolla that Caroline had driven here.

Because Grey Rain was too heavy and would crush the car, she stored part of her body in the dimensional warehouse, shrinking herself to 1.2 meters tall.

Li Cheng slid into the driver's seat, glanced at the map Caroline handed him, floored the accelerator heading west, and asked quickly, "Did you buy this car recently?"

"Mm."

Caroline nodded. "That Avalon organization taught me some counter-surveillance techniques. For example, ditching my old phone and switching to a prepaid burner;

hiring a middleman to get a fake passport and a fake driver's license;

buying a used car outright and removing the GPS tracker from it."

Some loan companies, to prevent borrowers who used their cars as collateral from denying the debt, secretly install GPS trackers on the vehicles to monitor their location.

Certain used-car dealers even collaborate with car-theft rings, fitting the cars with trackers so that once someone buys one, they steal it back after a while.

Caroline's caution had at least bought her a few hours.

Li Cheng asked, "Can you reach the Avalon organization?"

"Let me check."

Caroline picked up a prepaid phone, dialed the only number saved in its contacts. The ringtone sounded for a while with no answer. "Seems like no one's picking up?"

She frowned, set the phone down, and hesitantly asked Li Cheng, "Um... no offense, but may I ask why the Pioneer Company knew you were here?"

"You can think of it this way: there's another superpowered individual whose goal is to stop me from helping you. He's the one who tipped off the Pioneer Company about my existence."

Li Cheng gripped the steering wheel with both hands and said, "There's a fair chance he's far weaker than me."

"Huh? Why?"

Grey Rain, now only 1.2 meters tall, sat in the back seat eating liuliu plums, wearing an innocent, carefree expression.

Li Cheng shrugged. "Simple. The bounty updated way too fast, which proves he's the one feeding information to the Pioneer Company.

And a big company like that would almost never just trust a stranger and update the bounty on his word in such a short time.

Which indirectly proves that when the Arena teleported us in, it preset him with a reliable identity.

Or at least teleported him straight into the Pioneer Company's headquarters, into the boardroom, so he could quickly brainwash and persuade the top brass.

Deathmatch missions try to keep both sides balanced in strength. If the gap is really too big, the Arena will fudge things a little, tilting things toward the weaker side.

He was able to borrow the 'momentum' of an entire company, while we can't even get through to the Avalon organization. By the Arena's standards, my personal strength is most likely greater than his."

"I see."

Mini Grey Rain scratched her chin and asked, puzzled, "Then why don't we just turn around, head east, go straight to the Pioneer Company, drag that guy out and kill him?"

The Arena's mission completion criteria are: deliver Angelica to Angel City, or kill the opposing player.

Either one done, and you can teleport out.

"It's not that easy."

Li Cheng shook his head. "There aren't many idiots among high-level superhumans. A rule this simple, he'd figure it out too.

He'd definitely make sure to hole up somewhere safe right away.

Like hiring eighty or a hundred superhumans to guard him,

or hiding in a Pioneer Company underground bunker built to withstand nuclear strikes,

or boarding a large passenger plane flying east across the Atlantic. He'd be very hard to find."

"Second, I said he's probably weaker than me, not a hundred percent."

Mini Grey Rain blinked. "What do you mean?"

"He could be a support-type superhuman—weak himself but able to buff others.

He could be a charm-type superhuman who can bewitch others into charging ahead for him.

He could have suffered heavy burden recently and can't fight at full strength.

Or he could be a hostage-prisoner long held by a hostile organization in a dungeon, with only one or two pieces of gear left on him and everything else stripped away."

Li Cheng said casually, "Too many possibilities. Compared to driving over for a decapitation strike, sticking to the original plan is safer—as long as I keep pushing the mission forward, the other side will eventually lose patience and come out on their own."

Buzz!

The phone he'd brought into the scripted mission vibrated. He picked it up; the screen showed footage of the motel room.

Bang!

The glass window was smashed from outside, and a flashbang grenade was tossed through the breach into the room.

After the blinding flash and deafening bang, the door was kicked open and a squad of fully armed soldiers stormed in.

The room was a mess, the air thick with the smell of disinfectant, and a line of huge English letters was painted on the wall in red paint.

"Before you come for me, be prepared to die."

Bonus: a vivid middle-finger illustration. Maximum provocation.

The soldiers were well-trained; ignoring the wall graffiti, they silently searched under the bed and the bathroom.

Behind them, a middle-aged white man in a sharp suit with a grim expression walked in, accompanied by a timid-looking young man.

"Alexander?!"

Caroline saw the white man on Li Cheng's phone screen and gasped in fear, "He's a former FBI agent. After resigning, he joined the Pioneer Company and now commands Alpha Squad in the intelligence division—they specialize in catching illegal ability users.

The U. S. government doesn't want the public to know superhumans exist, so it partners with the Pioneer Company, letting the latter track down every superhuman it can find and register them.

If an ability user breaks the law and uses their powers to disrupt social order, the Pioneer Company will directly arrest, imprison, or even execute them."

It's easy to understand—if the U. S. government wanted to set up its own agency for this, it'd have to ask Congress for funding and explain everything about superpowers to lawmakers. Way too much hassle.

Better to outsource the job to a private company, pay them under the guise of 'funding domestic pharmaceutical companies to develop new drugs,' and if anything goes wrong, it's easy to pass the buck.

"Are you sure this is the place?"

Alexander looked at the timid young man beside him. The latter took out a white coat, sniffed it hard, and said somewhat awkwardly, "Using this coat Caroline wore, the best I can do is track her to here. The smell of disinfectant in the room is too strong."

Alexander's brow furrowed slightly, and the young man hurriedly added, "Besides Caroline and Angelica's scent, there are three more!

Two males, and some kind of metal?"

This young man apparently had a sense of smell-related superpower, able to sniff the air to gather information; he could even catch the scent of the shapeshifter who had only been in the room for half a minute.

"Also, I think I smell—" The young man strained to sniff the air, his expression gradually turning to terror. "Grenades! Get out of here!"

But it was already too late. At the very moment he shouted, a soldier noticed that the wardrobe door of the wooden wardrobe in the corner of the room wasn't shut tight.

He pulled open the wardrobe door. Inside was completely empty; on the only clothes hanger hung a string of grenades, with the pins of every grenade tied to silk threads, all connected together to the inside of the wardrobe door handle.

Boom!

In the next instant, all the grenades detonated with a roar. The blast wave tore the soldier to shreds, and every vehicle in the parking lot beneath the motel set off their alarms.

The room was wrecked beyond recognition. The armed personnel in bulletproof vests were blown into a complete mess, blood pooling across the floor—yet Alexander and that sniffer were still standing where they were.

"."

Alexander raised his palm, releasing an invisible wave that blocked all the grenade fragments and shielded himself and the sniffer.

His expression was hideously ugly. He stopped releasing his superpower, and as the grenade fragments fell to the ground,

he then stepped on the bed and used his pistol's grip to hammer open the ventilation duct cover in the corner of the ceiling, which had been knocked askew by the explosion.

Behind the cover sat a round, plump wireless smart camera.

That red paint had been smeared not only on the walls but had also splattered onto the ventilation cover, causing him to fail to spot the surveillance camera hidden behind the cover right away.

The blast wave hadn't damaged the camera. Alexander stared fixedly at the lens and said, word by word, "Caroline alone doesn't have the ability to set up these traps.

I don't know who you are, but I will find you, and I will kill you."

(End of this chapter)