051 Silent Hunt

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Watching the departing Cadillac motorcade, Yang Tang secretly let out a sigh of relief.

Shen Chen caught his expression and couldn’t help but cover her mouth to suppress a laugh. “Are you thinking Yuhua is quite clingy, maybe even a bit off in the head?”

Yang Tang shook his head in denial. No matter what he really thought, he would never admit such a thing in front of someone he barely knew like Shen Chen.

“You’re not alone, actually. Anyone who knows her says the same.”

Yang Tang stayed silent, waiting for Shen Chen to continue.

“Yuhua’s had a rough life—of course, this is all hearsay. When she was seven, she and her mother were kidnapped by exiled mercenaries overseas. Her mother was brutally killed, and only Yuhua survived and was rescued. But the psychological trauma lingered, and the once innocent and lively girl changed completely after that.”

Yang Tang raised his eyebrows, expressing sympathy for such a fate, but he didn’t let himself feel too much pity. After all, in this world, there’s always someone worse off—if you let yourself be overwhelmed by sympathy, you’d never get anything done.

By half past four in the afternoon, the number of soldiers and police around had grown, sealing off the area around the Flower Building like an iron fortress. It was only then that someone from the detective squad finally remembered to take statements from Yang Tang and Shen Chen.

Before they split up for questioning, Shen Chen took a stack of hundred-yuan bills from her bag. “Here, the thousand you wanted.”

“Thank you!”

Yang Tang took the cash, pocketed it, and followed two police officers to a spot far from where Shen Chen was headed for his statement.

After a string of questions about his identity, they finally got to the point.

“What brought you to the Flower Building?”

“I came with a friend. We were going to her office to discuss some things.”

“Who’s your friend?”

“Shen Chen.”

“How did you first realize there was something wrong in the building?”

“Shen Chen noticed it first—she said the security guards seemed unfamiliar.”

“You’re sure that’s all?”

Yang Tang nodded.

“All right, check your statement—see if it matches what you told us.”

Yang Tang took the report and gave it a cursory glance, then nodded again.

“Sign here, leave your contact information, and you’re free to go.”

Yang Tang complied.

But just as he handed the notebook back to the officer, a muffled gunshot rang out from the direction of the Flower Building.

Thud.

A heavy sniper!

Yang Tang instantly made the assessment, then saw a commotion stir in the innermost police cordon. Soon after, an ambulance, sirens blaring, sped away like a streak of lightning.

He didn’t need to be told—he could guess that someone on the police side had been shot, but most likely not fatally. Otherwise, there’d be no need to rush a corpse to the hospital as if it would make a difference.

Having finished his statement, Yang Tang didn’t see Shen Chen, but assumed she’d be fine. As he withdrew from the cordoned area, he kept a close watch on the high vantage points around the Flower Building.

Only from a high place could an eagle eye truly observe.

Soon, Yang Tang settled on another nearby high-rise, the Tianxing Building, about three kilometers in a straight line from the Flower Building’s main tower. The area around it was open, making it an ideal vantage point.

He first headed to a commercial pedestrian street nearby, where he spent a hundred yuan on a secondhand bicycle. Then, at a street stall, he bought a well-fitting gray cloth jacket for thirty yuan, and another twenty for a pair of pants, which he changed into.

Cycling around a wide loop, Yang Tang finally found an old goods stall tucked away in a remote corner of the shopping street. Two dust-covered toy bows were thrown carelessly at the edge of the stall, ignored by all.

Yang Tang approached, first picking up a pair of synthetic leather gloves from the stall and slipping them on. He hefted one of the bows and pulled it gently, and when he received a prompt for “ready to shoot,” he didn’t bother to choose further. He asked the owner directly, “How much for this toy?”

“If you’re serious, ten yuan,” the owner said, clearly jacking up the price.

Yang Tang sneered, “Too expensive.” He dragged over an old tennis racket bag from the side. “Both for ten yuan. If you agree, I’ll pay now.”

“Ten’s too low—at least twelve!”

At this, Yang Tang put the items down and turned to leave. Seeing the deal slipping away, the stall owner hurriedly called after him, “Fine, fine, both for ten. The gloves are a freebie—losing my shirt today!”

Yang Tang chuckled, tossed ten yuan on the table, stuffed the bow into the tennis bag, and left.

Retrieving his bicycle, he bought a pair of secondhand sunglasses from another stall and put them on. He didn’t go to any upscale fishing supply shop with surveillance cameras; instead, he turned to the fish stalls at the farmers’ market.

“Got any fishing rod tips?”

“Sure, which part do you want?”

“The tip. What’s your cheapest?”

“Ten or twenty per piece. How many do you want?”

After some haggling, Yang Tang spent a hundred and fifty yuan on twenty fishing rod tips to use as arrows. He bought two flatbreads nearby, eating as he rode to the Tianxing Building.

Because it was an old building, security at Tianxing was lax. Wearing sunglasses, dressed in old clothes, and with a tennis bag slung over his shoulder, Yang Tang slipped inside without attracting notice and took the stairs straight up to the roof. Whenever he passed a surveillance camera, he kept his head down, showing only the crown to the lens.

He reached the rooftop as dusk was falling and immediately activated Eagle Eye. Despite the twilight, his vision was undimmed, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Looking toward the Flower Building, he saw searchlights being switched on one by one from every angle, flooding the entire building with stark brightness.

The criminals inside clearly weren’t used to being exposed under the spotlights, and someone soon began shouting from inside.

At such a distance, Yang Tang could only catch indistinct noises, not the actual words.

But soon enough, two people were thrown screaming from the building.

After that, he saw military and police squads begin a full assault on the Flower Building.

“What a spectacle!”

With a sigh, Yang Tang opened the tennis bag, took out the toy bow, and pulled out a fishing rod tip, nocking it to the string.

Shooting position engaged.

Weapon power detected. Range correction coefficient: 0.3.

A targeting reticle flickered far out in the sky on his retina, then bounced back to wander near his close vision.

At the same time, another prompt flashed before his mind.

Current maximum corrected range: 4,133.667!

What the—how could this be? Last time he’d used the bow in a robbery, there’d been plenty of light, yet the corrected range had barely topped a thousand meters. How was it possible that now he had more than four kilometers?

The answer wasn’t really so mysterious. In theory, human line of sight can approach infinity—look up at the moon and you can see mountains and valleys on its surface; this, too, is a line of sight. But it’s considered a pseudo-distance, since you can’t actually reach the point you’re seeing. True line of sight means a distance you can both see clearly and physically reach. For example, if you’re on a mountaintop and spot a strange fruit growing on a distant cliff, and you can quietly pick it without alerting anyone, then what you saw wasn’t in vain. Otherwise, it’s just a mirage.

At this moment, from the rooftop of Tianxing Building with Eagle Eye activated, Yang Tang could see for ten, even twenty kilometers. Multiply that by the 0.3 correction factor, and you still get six or seven kilometers. But the maximum range for the aiming-sniper skill defaults to two-thirds of the visible distance—hence the prompt for a little over four kilometers.

Rat-tat-tat!

Bang-bang-bang!

Gunfire echoed from the Flower Building—no longer muffled. Even with his ordinary hearing, Yang Tang could make out every shot: first sporadic single shots, then fierce firefights between the opposing sides, punctuated by the blasts of grenades.

After listening for a while, Yang Tang realized the criminals’ distinctive gunfire was being suppressed. Although they hadn’t completely lost the upper hand, their shooting was far less steady than before.

“Could these scumbags really be rounded up in one go?” Yang Tang felt a tinge of dissatisfaction.

In truth, the ones even more disgruntled were the criminals who had seized the Flower Building. When they stormed in, two security guards put up a desperate fight, resulting in the side entrance’s circuit being wrecked. Just as they were trying to repair it, Fang Yuhua’s Cadillac unwittingly drove into the underground lot.

When the police and soldiers surrounded them, the criminals weren’t too worried. After all, they’d killed the security staff but managed to capture more than twenty Peony Society employees—plenty of leverage for negotiations.

Of course, in the course of the standoff, the criminals killed a hostage or two to intimidate the police—but the overall commander on the scene turned out to be hot-tempered. When he saw the criminals killing hostages so brazenly, he simply ordered the SWAT teams and special forces to storm the building from multiple directions.

This bold and unexpected move completely disrupted the criminals’ plans. Their original intent in taking over the Flower Building was to delay the opening of the Peony Society’s annual event. The great standoff was supposed to take place the following morning at the event’s opening. Who could have guessed it would all unfold over ten hours ahead of schedule? Everything was ruined.

At this point, with Eagle Eye, Yang Tang saw a burly, bald thug yelling at the others nearby, “Damn it! Kill all the hostages, every last one!”

“You’re the one, baldy! Category One mode!”

The distant targeting reticle unflinchingly settled on the bald ruffian’s head. Standing atop the Tianxing Building, Yang Tang’s body suddenly rotated sixty degrees clockwise, putting the target at his ten o’clock instead of straight ahead.

Twang!

The faintest hum of a bowstring. The black fishing rod tip sliced through the dusk like a ghost, arcing across the sky in a strange, horizontal curve. It slipped easily through a shattered pane in the Flower Building’s floor-to-ceiling windows, and, like a javelin thrown by an Indian warrior, buried itself in the bald man’s temple.

The man, kneeling with his gun aimed to shoot the police, froze instantly.

“Boss!”

“Peter!!”

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

The motionless baldy was struck by several more bullets before finally collapsing in a heap.

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