Another morning came, with bright warm sunlight impartially spreading across every inch of the city's land, awakening a new round of urban hustle and bustle.
Gu Yao busied herself embarrassedly in the ruined building, arranging the tidying work that should have been completed last night.
A large thick plastic mat served as both bed and seating, with basic living supplies taken from the travel bag and arranged in order.
Meanwhile, Xia Yan was cooking instant noodles on an alcohol stove. Despite staying awake all night, her face showed little fatigue. While waiting for the water to boil, Xia Yan took out the remaining half bag of blood.
Though she doesn't feel blood thirst now, without constant refrigeration, these blood supplies would be wasted if not consumed soon.
"Brother, should I try again?"
Gu Yao walked over, looking seriously at the blood bag in Xia Yan's hand.
Silently glancing at her, Xia Yan slowly handed over the blood bag.
She noticed that today's Gu Yao had subtle changes from yesterday. Her already tender face had become even smoother and more lustrous, and perhaps due to the morning sunlight's reflection—though it might be an illusion—her pale golden silky hair seemed purer and deeper in color.
Slowly bringing the opening to her nose, Gu Yao carefully sniffed.
Soon, that unbearable strange fishy smell from yesterday drilled into her nostrils again. Unable to bear it, her stomach churned, and she curled up with a dry heave.
"No good... What's wrong with me, brother? I can't drink ordinary people's blood? Does this mean I can only drink yours from now on..."
Gu Yao looked down at her own body, her face showing a rare expression of terror.
"I don't know either. Maybe from headquarters' perspective, frontline members like us shouldn't know these things, since we could be blood-infected at any time..." Xia Yan tilted her head back and squeezed an entire bag of blood into her mouth, equally puzzled. "But according to what Huang Gu said, we can get supplies from underground shops in the future."
"But we have no money. Future food, clothing, and shelter will all be problematic. We can't live like beggars huddled in places like this every day, right? If we're forced into desperation, won't we still have to attack ordinary people... If that's the case, why bother returning to C City? Wouldn't hiding in the countryside be better?"
Gu Yao hugged the back of her head with both hands and lay down on the plastic mat, looking dejected and listless.
Quietly glancing at the graceful girl lying flat, Xia Yan smiled bitterly: "The fewer people there are, the more inconvenient it becomes to find blood. Every little disturbance becomes known to everyone.
"Don't worry about money—I'll figure something out."
Xia Yan pointed in a certain direction, her tone becoming very relaxed: "After breakfast, I'll go to the place Huang Gu mentioned to solve our current identity problem first."
Gu Yao nodded slightly, but her anxious expression was clearly visible.
Recalling their youthful days together, Xia Yan felt this little brother might still be troubled by her inability to consume ordinary blood. Whenever she encountered unsolvable problems before, she would become dejected or anxious like this.
The military backpack and discarded Shadow Arrow combat uniform had long been buried. Xia Yan placed the last few items from the travel bag on the ground for inventory.
One handgun, bullets for two magazines, two special forces daggers, a tactical flashlight with almost no battery, several emergency adrenaline and painkiller injections, and besides these, half a bottle of warming medicine Huang Gu had given before leaving.
Finally, there was a bank card she had kept close to her body for a long time.
Excluding money she had donated to the orphanage over the years, the card still held one million yuan. This was all accumulated from Xia Yan's high salary and mission allowances during her service with the Shadow Arrow Force.
In this highly informatized modern society, the personal data hidden in bank cards was probably more than ordinary people imagined. For this reason, Xia Yan absolutely dared not go to street ATMs to withdraw money.
In her memory, two years ago, a former Xuan Jia Squad member who had been accidentally blood-infected during a mission and chose to kill teammates and flee was captured on ATM camera while secretly withdrawing money, then identified by the Shadow Arrow intelligence department's 24-hour identity data collection tracking system, and finally located and eliminated.
After a simple but filling instant noodle breakfast, Xia Yan shouldered her travel bag and turned toward the stairway.
"Brother, I don't want to change my name... I... I don't want to forget the past like Huang Gu...
"Brother, I kind of want to go back to the orphanage to see Grandma Jiang again..."
Just as she was about to leave the room, Gu Yao's murmur came from behind, and Xia Yan's steps froze for a few seconds.
...
...
On the bustling street with heavy traffic, crowds surged during the May Day holiday. Men, women, elderly, and children shuttled back and forth, entering and exiting various beautifully decorated shops and buildings.
Despite taking warming medicine before leaving, Xia Yan still cautiously avoided the various surveillance cameras that had become ubiquitous in society.
She knew that in southwestern provincial capital cities like C City, surveillance cameras in many important areas were equipped with miniature thermal recorders, with data directly linked to the Shadow Arrow intelligence department's central monitoring system.
This was one of civilization's many inconspicuous means of confronting and suppressing vampires after progress.
Perhaps not every vampire was worth the Shadow Arrow's attention, but every suspicious data collected by the system underwent thorough analysis and recording.
Holding the business card, the black-haired girl finally stopped in front of a towering luxury office building, with noisy traffic sounds in her ears and a magnificent spacious lobby before her eyes.
Taking the elevator straight to the twenty-seventh floor led to even more complex office building corridors. After nearly getting lost in the maze, she finally found a room marked "Shengxiang Investment Consulting Office" in a corner.
A typical run-of-the-mill shell company style—Xia Yan smiled.
Following Huang Gu's key information hints, Xia Yan knocked a rhythmic code on the door, but after knocking several times in succession, there was no response.
Looking at the door handle and the communicator with blinking signal lights beside it, Xia Yan tentatively reached for it.
...
Inside the room, most of the visual space was occupied by a luxurious wide desk at the front.
Two high-end large curved monitors sat on the desktop, with glass cabinets filled with books and various sized folders arranged on either side. A small guest sofa and matching coffee table could only squeeze pitifully into a corner.
On the other side was a small room half-open, revealing a corner of a bed—most likely a bedroom.
A young man about twenty years old was currently sitting behind the desk, playing some game with a complex expression.
The youth wore a formal shirt, his suit jacket carelessly hung on the chair back, his chest tie half-loosened. Several cigarette butts remained in the nearby ashtray, and despite a high-powered air filter, the room still reeked of secondhand smoke.
"Back to fountain camping in just a few minutes! You trash! So damn annoying!" (TN: Probably League reference since China, but Dota shares similar roots.)
Seemingly stimulated by some result in the game, the youth suddenly stood up, angrily threw down his mouse, waved his hands in fury, and mixed classic Führer rage into his outburst.
The youth wasn't particularly handsome, but had well-proportioned, refined features and retained a lively, rebellious boyish spirit.
"Ridiculous! Blind pick matches are full of elementary school kids!"
The youth vented with a shout, then picked up a cigarette from the side. Just as he was about to light it, he discovered another person in the room.
His eyes lit up, and the hand holding the cigarette actually froze a few centimeters from his mouth. Before him stood a girl with a plain face, delicate features, and calm expression, quietly positioned just two or three meters away.
Probably no more than twenty years old, wearing a slightly wrinkled light blue T-shirt and dark gray tight jeans. Tall and slender, with somewhat unkempt black hair cascading behind her head, one hand carrying a travel bag, the other hidden behind her back.
The two stared silently at each other, neither speaking.
After over ten seconds, the youth slowly straightened up, put down his cigarette, and groped under the desk with one hand for a moment before slowly drawing out a handgun!