Chapter 423: Untitled
The seaside castle, in the night
Henry’s castle was along a cliff, and it was easy to defend. The threatening cliffs were hundreds of feet high and the waves beat against the protruding rocks. The castle was majestic and it looked like a solemn church from afar.
Ye Wei and Eleven saw the map of the castle and there were many hidden sentries. Count Henry was an avid collector of artifacts and the castle was specifically built to collect artwork and contained many valuable pieces of artwork. Many thieves laid their eyes on this castle as stealing anything from the castle would guarantee them enough for the rest of their lives. Stealing from the castle, however, was a Darwinian Award. Many did not return and died in the process.
There were almost fifty guards surrounding the perimeter that maintained a tight watch. This was on top of the many hidden traps in the castle.
Ye Wei and Eleven climbed up from the bottom as they were simply unable to approach the castle without being invited. Given how obvious the target was, they would definitely fail.
The only blind spot to the castle was the cliff behind it. Many thieves tended to climb up the face of the cliff, so the security along the cliff was also extremely tight. As the guards changed shifts every ten to fifteen minutes, they only had a five-minute window to enter the castle.
She could see many snipers in the castle, which were stealthily positioned, with her binoculars. With many bandits rampant in London, along with the many artifacts lost, Henry strengthened security in the castle out of fear that thieves tried to break into his place.
According to Ye Wei’s information, several top thieves collaborated and broke into the castle together but died together in the secret room. News of it was published in the papers the next day. Its publication was a warning to the bandits who were after the artifacts in the castle.
Ye Wei and Eleven had clearly figured out the times the guards change shifts and accurately calculated the time they needed to climb the cliffs. As the guards were changing shifts, they were guarding less diligently—some were talking, smoking, and cracking cold jokes. It all contributed to a very relaxed atmosphere. Given the sinister reputation of this castle and how one too many died in the past few years, they expected extremely few people to swing by the castle to steal paintings and were most relaxed.
With a distraction, Ye Wei and Eleven slipped into the castle when the guards were at their most relaxed.
The castle was extremely quiet.
As Henry’s castle was dedicated to the collection of artifacts, there were only dead people and guards in the castle. The castle was dead silent and the lights inside it faint. The silence of the castle, emphasized by the sound of waves, was sinister ala horror movies.
“Does it feel like a haunted house?” Ye Wei gently smiled. The two of them got into sporting attire and changed their faces. While their faces were different from before, they were as beautiful. They changed into identical faces this time.
“This castle is uninhabited and already without life. With so many people dying inside, it definitely feels much more sinister,” Eleven said. The inside of the castle was extremely grand, and everything, from the largest of the sculptures and paintings to the smallest chandeliers, was perfect. It was a shame nobody would appreciate it.
The two of them had thoroughly studied all the routes in the castle and quickly avoided the guards along the outer perimeter. They calmly reached the secret room the drawings were hidden in.
The secret room the drawings were kept in was at the highest part of the castle. Eleven and Ye Wei looked down from the highest floor to see the security below tightened up even more as guards milled around. Eleven, who was baffled, asked, “Why are the guards all along the outer perimeter?”
Barely anybody could be seen on the top three levels of the castle since most of them patrolled below. The two of them reached the top and had as though entered no man’s land. Since everything was going too smoothly, they were worried.
“With all the hidden traps overhead, they’d better not anyhow walk about,” Ye Wei smiled. “Besides, aren’t the mercenaries hired by the count from the lowest rungs of society? Or aren’t they the wildest and most intractable of people? While they may be the scum of society, they are agile and smart, and most importantly, they will do anything for a living. However strong-willed men may be, they will not be able to stand up to this temptation. Think about it. Given that they are walking outside treasure day and night, won’t they get greedy? That explains why they are guarding the outer perimeter.”
“You read all these too?” Eleven was baffled.
“I know how many toilets there are in this place,” Ye Wei smiled sweetly as the huge mirror showed two identical faces.
When Eleven looked down, she saw a good place to escape to. “Wei Wei, come over here. What are our odds of escaping through here?”
A cliff awaited beneath them. Ye Wei tucked her lips and said, “I am not sure if our bodies will remain intact if we jump off from here.”
“Do you want to give it a shot?”
“Let’s get out from where we came from.”
“That’s a much better idea.”
The castle was so ingeniously designed so that there was no easy escape from the top floor, and it took fifteen minutes to escape from the blind spot that was unguarded. The odds were not high.
Ye Wei smiled. A stone door sculpted with a lotus stood between them and the secret room at the top of the castle. There was a lotus-shaped lamp on each side that emitted a faint yellow. Eleven stuck a decoder onto the passcode lock to the side and the stone door opened in under three minutes when the passcode was decoded.
Once Eleven and Ye Wei entered, the stone door automatically closed. They were greeted with a long pathway that was extremely sinister and had a round light at the center of the path that directly shone a light down.
The floor shone eminently. There were countless lotus sculptures in the middle of the walls. While it seemed like any other path on first look, Ye Wei and Eleven discovered an IR line that weaved through the path once they wore their IR goggles.
“IR sure wastes the most time.” The two of them carefully stepped over each IR line. When they reached the center beam, Eleven frowned and said, “Wei Wei, look.”
There was a drop of blood around the beam of light that had yet to dry. The two of them looked at each other in the eye and Ye Wei plainly said, “Don’t touch this beam of light.”
The two of them kept close to the wall and moved forward through this path. Eleven turned her head and said, “What kind of beam of light is this? Many did not make it past this path.”
As one had to be extremely meticulous to avoid it, that beam explained why many died.
Ye Wei tucked her lips and removed her glasses to change its lenses to a normal pair. She plainly said, “Let’s not study it for now. Seems like we’ve got company, and we do not know whether our goals are aligned.”
Once they cleared the path, they reached an extremely large house that was akin to a discotheque. The floor was made up of black, red, and white tiles that seemed empty and it was, in total, fifteen meters long. Five huge lotuses were carved into the wall and a lamp was in the middle of three lotus carvings. The three lotuses were clear, red, and black, and they corresponded to the colors of the tiles on the ground. There was an extremely cryptic atmosphere.
To their surprise, the body of a person in black was to the left of the house whilst blood reddened the floor. The blood turned the white tiles titillating red and dyed parts of the black and red tiles next to it.
Ye Wei suddenly took off her glasses. Those who were able to make it through the path were considered lucky, but… died when they reached the second checkpoint?
They were about ten meters from him and could make out a woman in sporting attire who had long hair and looked inward. They could not make out how she looked and also could not see any wounds, only knowing that blood was pouring out.
“It seems like our company would not be making it out alive.” Eleven removed her glasses. The two of them each took out a coin and flicked it with their index fingers. The coin deflected off the opposite wall and flew back with no anomaly.
Ye Wei knelt and put the coin on the floor before flicking it with her index finger. The coin flew through a row of walls and blue-green lights swept through the house crazily.
Their faces changed.
Magnetic waves?
They were moving at an extremely quick speed to the point nobody could avoid them however fast they were. The magnetic waves were traveling at twenty times the speed of a bullet, triggering the hidden trap meant certain death.
Ye Wei and Eleven contemplated the distance between them. They were not able to make it past.
“That is quite an impressive trap array.” Ye Wei and Eleven looked at each other in the eye. Almost simultaneously, Ye Wei leaped onto A red tile whilst Eleven leaped onto a black tile. Their actions were very standard.
This was a tri-color array adapted in the layout of the labyrinth. Amongst these empty slots, nine of them were safe and they would be able to pass through the house precisely after clearing these four tiles.
The tri-color array in Henry’s castle was somewhat different from other places. Once Ye Wei and Eleven found two pieces, the tri-color tiles underneath their feet changed their orders. What was once an extremely orderly array became chaotic and unpredictable. As the tiles moved and rearranged themselves, two magnetic waves passed by Ye Wei and Eleven.
It was like an agile snake hissing at them in warning as it slithered past them.
A chill ran down both Ye Wei and Eleven, a thin sheen of sweat forming on their foreheads. These magnetic waves occupied a specific space, and it was so for each tile. If they stood slightly out of position, they would not be able to avoid the magnetic waves.
“Why did they get shot up by the magnetic waves despite stepping on the correct tiles?” Eleven struggled to stay calm. As they were in an extremely precarious situation, the escalation of the danger factor meant that any slightest discretion on their part would result in their dead bodies on the floor.
“This array has been improved. Oh, dear, there must be a time limit. Eleven, hasten across. If not, all the light beams will scan all around,” Ye Wei said. As killers, their instincts were always extremely keen. Ye Wei’s instincts were already racing against time in a life-and-death battle. She could not bear to think further.
The two of them calmed down and Eleven took a step forward. The tiles then moved in an instant. This time, the tiles moved slightly more specially and Eleven immediately turned back. Ye Wei grabbed Eleven’s hands and crossed over. The two of them stepped on the same, and thankfully larger, tile.
Another two magnetic wave beams passed through and showered down from the top as though they were about to break through. The beams did not miss any tile, and any person who was crouching would certainly be cleft into two.
Ye Wei and Eleven’s hearts thumped. This was their first time, in their many years as killers, encountering something as bizarre as this.
The two of them then stepped across another five tiles in the same manner.
A cold wind blew on amidst a terrifying buzzing sound. The two of them felt that death had been this close to them for once. Having crossed past the middle, the two of them, who had braved difficulty, were definitely not turning back.
“This array is not a dead array,” Eleven softly said. Ye Wei nodded in agreement. When they reached the middle, the tiles before them moved crazily, without order and quickly. She stared in disbelief. The tiles did not stop. When she was about to take a step forward, Eleven pulled her back.
“Something is wrong!” Eleven softly said. Ye Wei turned back and flatly said, “Eleven, we are at the middle and have to take the risk. If we do not take the risk, we will end up dying here.”
Eleven held her hand tightly and said, “I’ll do it!”
Ye Wei, without saying a word, slapped Eleven’s hand away and stepped onto a white tile in front of her without hesitation and looked at the wall sharply. Her eyes opened wide when she saw the blue-green light flashing on the wall. Eleven saw it too, and her heart leaped to her throat.
“Wei Wei…”
Surprisingly, the light flashed past and did not fire. Eleven, without hesitating, stepped onto the same tile and could not help but berate Ye Wei in her heart for taking too huge a risk. Ye Wei was typically too lazy to make a move, and Eleven always ended up protecting her. That was because Eleven knew that she was able to handle it with little fuss, but Ye Wei would always go before her whenever their lives were at risk.
On closer observation, the sweat on her forehead had built up and her heart thumped madly. As the sinister madness, tension, fear, and threat of death came upon them, they were both not too different and panicking despite having witnessed death once too often.
They were not afraid of death, but they did not want to die yet.
“It’s okay, it’s the last grid.” Ye Wei turned back and smiled. The tiles in front turned even more aggressively and quickly. They were bedazzling and the two of them were getting giddy from the spinning of the tiles.
“My goodness, how are we going to see?” Both of them were shocked at once. The tiles were spinning too quickly for them to identify which ones were booby-trapped. As time was not on their side, any slightest overthinking on their part would mean that they were that bit closer to death.
While Ye Wei and Eleven did not know how much longer they had on this array, they knew it was not much time.
Had they chosen to bulldoze through it, they would have met certain death.
The atmosphere became even more sinister. Ye Wei focused and tried hard to identify the only white spot amongst the three colors. As the two of them observed the tiles intently, they suddenly heard a very fine shuddering come from the wall. Ye Wei’s and Eleven’s hearts panicked. They looked at each other and secretly cursed, sweat coalescing on their foreheads and trickling their cheeks. Thanks to their sharp hearing, this was the sound of all the light beams activating. Eleven suddenly grabbed Ye Wei’s hands and yanked her forward. She shouted. “Wei Wei, go!”
Ye Wei was shocked but she could not think more. She used some force and vaulted toward the opposite side. Once she managed to stand still, she quickly stood up and wrapped a golden thread around Eleven’s waist. She pulled on the thread with force as Eleven leaped up and made a perfect flip midair. No sooner did she land, than the magnetic waves scanned the room crazily. Eleven, who was unable to duck in time, had a small portion of her hair clipped off.