Chapter 13: Catching the Human Trafficker

Mu Yin first used her ability to soak the paper, then took out a brush and quickly wrote several characters on it: Guard, Trap, and Sword. This was an attack method she had created herself, inspired by the talismans the cultivators spoke about. Since her drawings inherently possessed the power to become tangible objects, once she heard about Daoist talismans, she started writing words to manifest attacks, which also helped conserve her energy.

Turning the meaning of characters into reality proved to be a remarkable technique, granting her additional offensive strength. After all, her ability did not directly lend itself to attack—though she suspected this was only because she had yet to fully comprehend the true nature of her power. She remembered that, in the past, one of her teammates, a cultivator with Daoist heritage, had told her that if she could learn the lost seals and runes of the talismans, her characters would become even more formidable. After being reborn and regaining her memories, Mu Yin had sought out temples, trying to learn the talismans, but it was all in vain.

She realized then that those talismans were fake. Her characters drew upon the innate meaning and power of the words themselves; if the talismans weren’t authentic, they simply wouldn’t work. Of course, if she insisted, she could bestow power upon those talismans—just as she had created the gears of time and space—but that would stray from her original intent.

She put the characters away, grabbed her mother’s phone, opened the door, pulled out the room card, and left, heading for the second floor. All of their targets were located there, as if someone had deliberately arranged for the people they needed to be gathered in that area. There was an emergency staircase on the outside of the second floor—though it still required passing through the main entrance, it was clearly a better option than the ones inside.

Mu Yin didn’t know what set their targets apart, but it was obvious these people had not acted on impulse; this had been planned long in advance. What she couldn’t tell was what circumstances had caused those children to be singled out.

When she reached the second floor, she discovered they had already begun their operation—using some method to open the doors without alerting the parents, they had quietly taken the children. Mu Yin hid behind the stairwell door, watching their movements. She had thought there were only two of them, but now she saw five or six.

After a moment’s thought, she pulled out the remaining draft paper, wrote the character Maze, infused it with her power, and tossed it out, instantly transforming the hallway into a sprawling labyrinth.

In fact, her ability was still quite weak—anyone above the first rank could easily break her maze. But among those people, none were above the first rank; at most, they had only just begun to awaken their powers.

While some supernatural beings awakened at higher levels, the vast majority started as mere novices. For instance, a first-level fire wielder could conjure ten or more fist-sized fireballs at two hundred degrees, while a novice might only manage one or two fireballs, no more than ten, at a maximum of one hundred degrees. The difference was not only in quantity but in quality as well.

Among these intruders, a few carried the same foreign aura as the extraterrestrials—no doubt they had been altered by them—but none had reached first-level abilities. Mu Yin was confident her maze could confine them.

Then, she wrote herself a Concealment character, turned invisible, and slipped quietly into one of the rooms where a child had been taken. Using the landline, she dialed the police, disguising her voice as an adult and reporting that she had seen someone abducting children.

It was, after all, two or three in the morning—a child awake at this hour would be suspicious, but an adult might simply be a night owl, especially in a city whose lights still shone brightly through the night.

Afterward, Mu Yin returned to bed. She didn’t intend to get involved directly. Though those people might have connections to the extraterrestrials, she was still too weak—it was wiser not to provoke trouble. Her characters would last about ten minutes, which should be enough.

The next morning, as she and her mother went downstairs, they heard people in the hotel discussing the previous night’s attempted child abduction. Strangely enough, after taking the children, the criminals had wandered the corridors as if lost, until the police arrived and caught them.

Everyone knew the details because the parents, having returned from the police station, recounted the events, and the hotel staff—having cooperated with the police and watched the surveillance footage—had let it slip.

“What? They just kept wandering the hallways and couldn’t find their way out—that’s how they got caught?” Zhou Qi couldn’t help but join the conversation when she overheard the other parents.

“Yes, everyone’s saying it was a case of ghosts leading them astray,” one parent replied in a conspiratorial whisper.

The others nodded in agreement. “This hotel is strange. We’d best leave as soon as possible.”

“Yes, you’re right.”

Mu Yin’s lips twitched at that. Had her good intentions inadvertently caused trouble? Would this affect the hotel’s future business? She considered it, but there was little she could do. At least it wasn’t something truly bad—surely it would be resolved eventually.

Suddenly, she overheard a conversation in her ear. Ah, she’d forgotten to retrieve her mosquito—she’d fallen asleep after overexerting herself. The mosquito was too small to record, so all surveillance was real-time; now that they were speaking, Mu Yin focused her attention.

“Boss, what happened? First the hotel turned into a maze, then the police caught us.”

“Looks like someone’s noticed us.”

“So what now? How do we get out?”

“Don’t worry, we’ll be out soon.”

“Yeah, the higher-ups will get us out. It’s just a shame we missed our chance again.”

“We each had our own target, but because of this competition, we gathered together and decided to act as a group. Looks like we’ll need to find another way.”

“It’s fine. Those people have already been marked by the higher-ups—they won’t escape.”

“Boss, why do the higher-ups want these kids?”

“Don’t ask so much. Do you think you’re qualified to know?”

“Oh.”

Then there was silence. Mu Yin frowned. For them to speak so openly in the detention center, they must have been confident they weren’t being monitored. Clearly, their actions were targeted, not random.

It seemed those children must possess special qualities, though she didn’t know exactly what—her knowledge of such matters was limited to what the cultivators had once mentioned in passing.