Chapter 43: I’ve Found You

They had spent so much time gathering documents in the office earlier that both Qi Chen and the Warm-hearted Man had overlooked the closing time of the grand concert hall.

Now, the melodious music echoing throughout the vast space was a clear signal to all staff that it was time to go home.

"This isn’t good, we need to find a place to hide—now!" Qi Chen suddenly realized that there were still quite a few employees cleaning and tidying up in the various auditoriums. The end-of-shift music would send them flooding out of the halls at any moment.

He and the Warm-hearted Man were currently on the second-floor corridor, where staff could appear from any direction without warning.

If they were seen, simply being forced to leave the concert hall would be the best possible outcome.

Footsteps echoed up the stairwell between the first and second floors, making retreating that way suddenly much riskier.

“There’s a restroom ahead!” Qi Chen’s sharp eyes caught sight of a temporary refuge.

Without hesitation, he grabbed the Warm-hearted Man and hurried inside.

They squeezed into a stall, the acrid scent of disinfectant stabbing at their nostrils. But discomfort was the least of their concerns; surviving this tense window of time was all that mattered.

“If we assume the worst, it’ll probably take at least half an hour for all the staff to clear out…” The Warm-hearted Man, drawing on his experience, made a quick calculation. The result was not encouraging.

“We can’t stay in here forever. If someone comes in—and someone definitely will…” Qi Chen’s mind raced. The staff responsible for checking the concert hall would almost certainly inspect places like the restrooms before leaving.

If they stayed, their cover would be blown.

“Contact the people outside first,” the Warm-hearted Man decided, pressing his earpiece to communicate with their Analysis Department colleagues keeping watch outside. They needed to know if all the staff had left.

But the earpiece crackled with harsh electronic noise, and his expression twisted with unease.

“What’s wrong?” Qi Chen whispered, touching his own earpiece and receiving the same static.

They couldn’t get through to the Analysis Department.

“It can’t be electronic interference.”

The Warm-hearted Man immediately analyzed, “If it were, it would be too obvious. This must be some kind of supernatural force. That would prevent the tech team from detecting anything unusual, yet still cut off all communications between those inside and the outside world.”

In short, it was as if a strange barrier had enveloped the concert hall—undetectable by ordinary technology, but completely blocking conventional communication.

“Someone’s coming!” Qi Chen warned, then fell silent, listening intently for sounds outside the stall.

It felt like an ordinary employee coming in to use the restroom, but something about the sounds felt off—as if the person outside wasn’t truly alive, but rather a robot moving according to some programmed routine.

Fortunately, the noise soon passed, and silence returned.

After waiting a while longer, Qi Chen prepared to discuss their next move with the Warm-hearted Man. Now that supernatural phenomena had appeared, the grand concert hall clearly harbored secrets they had to uncover.

But the Warm-hearted Man silenced him with a gesture. Kindness flickered across his face as he activated his special ability, enveloping the entire stall. Externally, nothing seemed changed, but the interior became far more soundproof.

“Stay alert,” the Warm-hearted Man whispered with utmost caution. “We’ve lost contact with the department. They’ll soon initiate contingency plans.”

“I expect Deputy Fu will give us a little time, but if we exceed her maximum threshold, the Special Response Team might act.”

Once the Special Response Team was deployed, the entire purpose of their covert operation would be exposed.

That was precisely why only Qi Chen and the Warm-hearted Man had been sent in to investigate.

Qi Chen understood: for someone as cold on the surface as Fu Ying, she likely valued their lives more than flushing out the hidden threat. If the two of them stayed out of contact for too long, she would risk exposure and order a full lockdown of the concert hall.

“We can’t let that happen…” In the Warm-hearted Man’s eyes, Qi Chen saw the same determination.

Suddenly—

Bang! Bang!

The door to their stall was rapped sharply.

The dull, percussive sound echoed through the restroom, followed by a mechanical female voice:

“Work’s over. Time to leave.”

Qi Chen and his companion pressed their lips together, not so much fearing the enemy as dreading exposure.

The unknown presence outside, receiving no reply, knocked again—this time harder, more urgently.

“Come out! Hurry up and come out!”

The flimsy plastic door rattled under the blows. Whoever was outside seemed determined not to stop until the door was opened.

With a crash, the stall door burst open. A woman in a staff uniform, face blank and eyes vacant, stared inside—but saw no one.

In the adjacent, wide-open stall, Qi Chen and the Warm-hearted Man pressed themselves flat against the wall, holding their breath and making not a sound.

Footsteps receded, and the oppressive atmosphere in the restroom eased in an instant.

“That woman… she had a strange aura,” Qi Chen whispered, staring at the door. Just for a moment, he had sensed a clear supernatural force radiating from her.

The Warm-hearted Man, whose spiritual sense wasn’t as strong, nonetheless felt a similar, vague impression.

“It seems the secrets of the concert hall only emerge after closing time,” the Warm-hearted Man deduced. “Which means we absolutely can’t just walk out now. We need another way.”

He looked up at the ventilation shaft above the restroom.

“I remember the blueprints said all the vents are connected. If we go through here, we might even reach that sealed auditorium!”

Qi Chen agreed. With the Warm-hearted Man’s help, he climbed into the vent first. A chill wind swept over him from the darkness, raising goosebumps on his skin.

He reached back to help the Warm-hearted Man up—but suddenly, a flurry of footsteps sounded outside the restroom door.

A crowd of people in staff uniforms burst in, surrounding the Warm-hearted Man in an instant.

Qi Chen’s first instinct was to summon the Overlord and charge down.

But the Warm-hearted Man looked up and gave him a restraining glance, then adopted the same blank, expressionless face as the others.

With a snap, one of the staff threw a bundle of clothes to him—the uniform of the concert hall staff. The person’s mouth opened mechanically, their bloodless face as lifeless as a corpse in a freezer.

“Time for work. Get changed.”

…