Chapter 136

Chapter 136: Coincidence

“I’ve got the Star. Bring Misha to me now.” Gloria called the Clown Girl right in front of Okulet.  

The phone in her hand belonged to Night Owl—but not the organization’s official model.  

Night Owl phones could only communicate with others of the same model or those connected to the Night Owl network, making it inconvenient for external contacts at times.  

Here, “external” referred to people who weren’t employers, nor allies, but still needed to stay in touch.  

Night Owl didn’t need to aggressively expand its business—it automatically sought out those who needed help.  

Clearly, Gloria was one such outsider. The phone in her hand was the medium for her, an “outsider,” to contact Night Owl.  

It could only connect to one person, had a barely functional camera with photos only sendable to that one contact, and didn’t even have a speakerphone. It was, in every sense, utterly useless.  

“Really? Send a photo first.” The other side clearly didn’t believe her.  

“Let me hear Misha’s voice first,” Gloria demanded.  

“I’m on the street right now. Show me a picture of the Star first.”  

Hearing this, Gloria adjusted the angle of the phone Okulet handed her, trying to minimize pixelation as she snapped a photo.  

Since the device was limited to communication, she couldn’t even upload images from another device—forcing her to resort to the clunky method of photographing one phone’s screen with another.  

“When’s the trade?” Gloria asked.  

The other party might include their sworn enemies, but that day, she had indeed seen her sister, alive and vivid. She wanted to tear the Red Prince to shreds, yet feared doing so might mean Misha would never return.  

Logically, she knew she shouldn’t trust the enemy’s words—especially not those of a nemesis who would stop at nothing to kill her.  

“Your angle’s weird. Change it and—”  

The Clown Girl’s words were cut off as a deafening noise erupted from the call, followed by the roar of an approaching vehicle—even the faint sound of an explosion…  

The call disconnected.  

Gloria stared blankly.  

What the hell?  

She just made a call—was this person trying to scam her?  

“An accident?” Okulet took the phone from Gloria. “Now we know for sure—the Red Prince might be on their side.”  

—  

On the Clown Girl’s end, she clutched her head and let out a shrill scream, leaning over the railing of an overpass. Yet, on the busy street, she didn’t stand out much—other pedestrians were also peering down in shock.  

Her usual ghostly makeup had worn off, and her eccentric hair had reverted to its natural deep blue, though still tied in twin tails. With her above-average looks, she was actually quite cute.  

So, when Crow Man said she wasn’t as adorable as Princess from Unit 42, she’d been fuming.  

Dressed in casual clothes, she’d been strolling down the street while talking to the young miss on the phone—only to turn and accidentally bump her phone against someone’s back. It slipped from her grip, plummeting onto the highway below the overpass.  

And as if fate itself was mocking her, a massive truck happened to run over it at that exact moment.  

The phone cracked on impact, but Night Owl devices were built tough—it wasn’t completely destroyed yet. There was still hope for recovery.  

Then, as if the heavens had it out for her, a malfunctioning private helicopter also chose that moment to crash down—directly onto her phone—exploding on impact and reducing it to smithereens.  

This mission was more important than the damn server!  

The Clown Girl glared furiously at Mi Xiaoliu, the one she’d bumped into. “You don’t have eyes on the back of your head?!”  

“I’m sorry,” Mi Xiaoliu apologized.  

“Sorry for what? You’re the one who should apologize,” Yiwen snapped, stepping in front of Mi Xiaoliu protectively.

They were standing perfectly fine on the overpass, holding ice cream bought with Mi Xiaoliu’s money. Yiwen had already finished hers and was now mischievously trying to steal a bite from Mi Xiaoliu’s cone.  

Then, out of nowhere, this woman bumped into Mi Xiaoliu’s ticklish armpit. His hand jerked up reflexively—sending the ice cream smearing straight across Yiwen’s face.  

The Clown Girl’s eyes turned cold. Ever since becoming a mercenary, no one outside her own team had dared speak to her like this and lived to see the next day.  

“What’s the matter? Grown adult picking on a kid now?” A third voice cut in, accompanied by a large hand resting on Mi Xiaoliu’s head.  

The Clown Girl looked up.  

She saw a middle-aged man with graying temples, wearing a tattered military coat in the middle of summer.  

His face radiated nuclear kindness—the kind that screamed “Big Brother’s been into Buddhism lately, eats three coma patients a day” or “Big Brother thinks outside food is unclean, only consumes homegrown vegetables (Read: people he personally turned into plants).”  

The Clown Girl turned on her heel and slunk away without another word.  

Because she recognized exactly who this man was.  

This was not someone to mess with. She just wondered why he’d suddenly decided to meddle—maybe he simply had it out for her, or her boss?  

She didn’t even check if her organization phone could be salvaged, hurrying straight back to base instead.  

Pouting, she draped herself over Rutherford’s arm like a spoiled child. “Boss, my phone broke out of nowhere! And the young miss already had the Star in her hands!”  

Her thick, bare thighs—no stockings in sight—clamped around Rutherford’s arm as she hung off him, the firm muscle slightly distorting the soft flesh. The sight made Zhang Zikun nearby swallow hard, envy flashing in his eyes.  

“That’s my ability at work,” Rutherford said, utterly unfazed by the human accessory on his arm as he fiddled with a camera. He slotted in a hard-won memory card and hit play.  

“Which means she told her family.”  

There’d been a 50% chance Gloria wouldn’t involve her family. If she fell into the other 50% and did, there was another 50% chance her means of communication would be destroyed by unforeseen circumstances, cutting off contact with their side.  

If the communication device wasn’t destroyed, there was yet another 50% chance the Little Demon King had already left the city.  

Clearly, the Clown Girl had hit the jackpot of bad luck—every single one of those checks had passed. Fortunately, the final 50% roll—”When a deal turns unfavorable, external factors may forcibly terminate it”—had succeeded.  

“This is good. ‘Fate’ shielded you from danger.” Rutherford paused the footage on a specific frame.  

On screen, two little girls he’d taken hostage. Further back, a blonde woman knelt on the ground, begging desperately.  

The setting: the edge of a cliff, glowing blue light shimmering from below.  

With no audio, only the visuals remained.  

From a first-person perspective, two hands gripped the girls by their collars, dangling them over the abyss. Both were frozen in terror, trembling as silent tears streaked their faces.  

The kneeling woman shouted something. One hand released the older girl, letting her scramble back to her mother’s arms.  

Mother and daughter clung to each other—but the camera didn’t linger on their reunion.  

Instead, it focused solely on the younger girl as she was pushed off the cliff, shrinking into the distance until she vanished into the blue light below.  

Rutherford rewound and zoomed in, confirming the child had truly disappeared into the glow—no secret cave breaks, no last-second rescues by mysterious hermits.  

The door suddenly swung open. Rutherford paused the video and looked up.  

“The Tian Xing Dao brat is making a move on the server,” buzzed a voice from behind a plague doctor’s beak mask.  

—  

“Henry Rex. Resident of Duoyu City. Disappeared along with his daughter two years ago. Had a prior record for domestic violence—hospitalized his wife and daughter. Once even attempted to use his daughter as collateral for his gambling debts.” Jim’s father read from the file to Officer Chen.  

Earlier, while they were searching for the Black-Clothed One, three bizarrely dressed lunatics had inexplicably attacked them. The sheer audacity of it had stunned everyone present.  

Seventy of us are surrounding you from all sides—where the hell did you three get the confidence to assault police officers?  

With over seventy police officers sealing off every possible escape route, even a typical LV4 wouldn’t have stood a chance. But then, a series of coincidences so absurd not even fiction would dare write them unfolded.  

At one point, an officer tripped and instinctively grabbed the one in front of him, dragging them both down—triggering a domino effect that sent the entire squad tumbling like slapstick comedy extras.  

It was like something out of a ridiculous farce. Even their lower-ranking dispatchers were fuming, yelling at them to go back to the police academy and start over.  

With fate itself seemingly conspiring against them, it was no surprise the suspects got away—though not entirely. They did manage to catch one.  

The male clown, who hadn’t uttered a word the entire time.  

“Over the past two years, he’s operated under another identity—as the ‘Terror Clown,’ an active Night Owl member along the federal border. That would make the female clown among the trio likely his missing daughter.”  

“What about the autopsy results?” Officer Chen asked.  

That’s right—autopsy results.  

The moment they captured the male clown and the other two fled, he had stopped moving entirely.  

Vital signs like body temperature and pulse? Already nonexistent by then.  

“Can’t pinpoint the exact time of death, but he’d been dead for a while—at least since the fight.” Jim’s father replied.  

“I thought you said he used an ability during the confrontation? One that matched his records?” Officer Chen frowned.  

“That’s the problem.” Jim’s father produced a small vial. “We found large quantities of this in his system—the same substance recovered from the pseudo-humans. It’s what killed him.”

[Translator’s Note: See the index page for this Novel if you want to see the Amazon Link for the eBooks.]