Welcome to the Ability Shop!

Chapter 255 Life hangs on a thread

The day after the Lunar New Year, Chen Xuan returned to Jiangcheng.

Although his parents didn't quite understand why he wanted to go back to work so soon, Chen Xuan insisted, and they didn't ask any more questions.

Chen Xuan certainly wasn't doing this for a job.

He needs to establish a new way of contact with Jiang Siqi as soon as possible.

“The safest way is face-to-face,” Lin Qing offered her opinion. “The absence of electronic devices does not equate to absolute safety, which will be difficult to achieve in the future, but there are plenty of places without cameras now.”

Chen Xuan agreed with this view, "Then how do we inform her of the meeting?"

"How about sending the letter?" Liu Shuyue said. "Although I don't quite understand the eavesdropping and tracking methods you mentioned, as long as I personally hand the letter to her and then watch it be destroyed, I shouldn't have to worry about it being leaked, right?"

"Hmm... use invisibility? I'm a little afraid of scaring her." Chen Xuan felt a chill just thinking about it. Jiang Siqi had been staying at the company lately, and now an invisible person was suddenly handing her a letter and insisting on staying by her side until she finished reading it before taking it back. If Jiang Siqi screamed in fright, that would be troublesome.

“There’s no need for such a complicated process,” Liu Shuyue laughed. “A talisman messenger will suffice.”

"A talismanic messenger?"

Before heading to Mount Everest, he had borrowed some talisman techniques from Liu Shuyue, but he had long since returned them.

After listening to her explanation, Chen Xuan realized that there was such a useful thing in the talisman technique - its letter paper is the talisman itself. After being folded into a bird, it can automatically fly to the recipient within visual range. It can also set a destruction time. When the time is up, the letter paper will spontaneously combust without fire, leaving not even ashes.

"The concept behind this magic is quite advanced."

"It's just a simple trick." Liu Shuyue shook her head. "Long-distance communication mainly relies on the Smoke Soul Pillar."

It's clearly impractical to place a cigarette holder in the office of a government agency.

“It’s okay. As long as we can connect normally this time, I can implant a hacking hardware into her phone. Its encryption algorithm is far stronger than software encryption,” Lin Qing replied.

"Disassemble her phone in front of her?" Chen Xuan asked skeptically. Jiang Siqi was currently willing to cooperate with them, firstly because she was reluctant to give up her abilities, and secondly because their requirements were lenient. If it were obvious that they wanted to install a backdoor in her phone, letting her know she was a spy before she went to work at the agency, the situation would be completely different.

After all, Jiang Siqi wasn't the kind of customer who would actively seek her out.

She wasn't even one of their own.

“I have a way to do this without her knowing,” Lin Qing said confidently.

"Okay." Chen Xuan glanced at the wall clock; it was roughly 10 a.m. Jiang Siqi's phone was still located at the company. She would come downstairs for lunch, so creating an opportunity to see her wouldn't be difficult. "Let's go together—"

Before he could finish speaking, the light outside the shop suddenly changed.

The three watched helplessly as the deserted neighborhood street scene transformed into a narrow room radiating a cold, white light.

"Looks like you have a guest." Lin Qing whistled.

Liu Shuyue even consciously flashed back behind the cashier and took on the role of a shop assistant.

"Why does this feel like a hospital?" Chen Xuan said, looking around the room outside.

It wasn't large; you could see it all at a glance. The operating room lights, the kind you'd find in any operating room, hung from the ceiling, and a movable bed sat in the center. The whitewashed walls and gray-white tiled floor, the shelves piled high with medicine bottles, and the ever-present beeping of the medical equipment all indicated that this was a hospital.

There was no one in the room.

Behind another door directly opposite the shop's main entrance, people were talking about something.

"They're speaking French," Lin Qing reminded her.

Another Frenchman?
Chen Xuan put on the translation headset that New Paris City had given him and stood in the center of the ward.

"Poor girl...has her identity been found out yet?"

"No, there is no matching DNA record in the database, and there is no data at immigration either. It's possible that the person is undocumented."

The voices came from two men.

Chen Xuan pressed himself against the ward door and peered out, discovering a long corridor outside. The people talking had their backs to the door, and their conspicuous police uniforms identified them.

Strange... These two don't seem like customers of the summoning ability shop.

“If she was undocumented, that makes sense. I heard from a colleague that there was cash scattered where she died, so she must have been targeted long ago. This was a violent street robbery, definitely done by those damned Vakkare gang.” “Who told her to go out with so much money at night? She deserved to be robbed.” Another person seemed a little distracted. “She was clearly dead on the spot, but they still had to take her to the hospital in an ambulance for some ‘rescue.’ When will this procedure be changed?”

"Stop complaining. Declaring death is the hospital's job. Our work will be finished once the forensic doctor arrives."

The girl...was murdered?

And the police were speaking French.

A very bad premonition suddenly arose in Chen Xuan's heart.

He turned around abruptly and saw that there was indeed a person lying on the bed, but their whole body was covered by a green non-woven fabric. He hesitated for a moment, then stepped back to the bedside and reached out to lift a corner of the cover.

Elori's pale face came into Chen Xuan's view.

In that instant, he felt as if his heart skipped a beat!

When we last parted, the little angel was lively and full of youthful energy, but now she lies quietly on the bed, motionless, her eyes closed, her lips purple, and there is a clearly visible bullet hole in the center of her forehead, with the blood seeping out not even completely wiped away.

She... is dead?
The enormous shock left Chen Xuan somewhat incredulous.

This was the second time he had witnessed a guest's death.

But Gildre at least died of old age, and his death was quite peaceful. Witnessing his death felt more like attending a destined funeral.

Elori, on the other hand, is completely different.

She was clearly murdered!

Wait a minute… something’s wrong. Chen Xuan suddenly realized something was amiss. If the shop door opened into the hospital, it meant it was responding to a customer’s call, but the deceased couldn’t have summoned the shop!
"Hello, this is Jason, the forensic pathologist. Is the victim in the ward?" came the voice of a third person from outside the door.

“Yes, but we can’t say she’s dead until you confirm it,” one policeman joked.

As soon as the doctor arrives, they will enter the room immediately!

Chen Xuan made a quick decision, removed the probes from Elori's body, and rushed into the store with the cart.

"Where is the guest?" Lin Qing was somewhat puzzled when he pushed in a hospital bed.

Chen Xuan had no time to explain. After entering the store, he immediately turned around and pressed the button for the roller shutter door.

To hasten the closing of the store, he even grabbed the bottom of the door and pulled it down.

As the roller shutter door landed, the ward door was pushed open.

"She's the victim of this violent robbery—" The policeman paused halfway through his sentence, "Where is she? No...where's the bed!?"

"What's going on?" The forensic doctor was equally bewildered. "Did you send him to the wrong room?"

"How is that possible! We've been guarding the door the whole time!" The policeman looked around in shock, but the room was so small that there was no way anyone could hide there. There was a door at the back of the room that connected to a dispensing room, but it was closed off and not connected to the outside, and the space was also not very large.

To confirm this, a police officer even went into the dispensing room to check, but found no one there either.

The dead they brought in disappeared along with their beds.

……

"This is Elori!?" Lin Qing was equally startled when she saw her paper-white face, but she immediately placed her hand on the other's neck. "No... there's no pulse."

As more of the shroud was removed, the horrific state of her body was revealed to the three men.

Anyone who saw Elori would not believe she was still alive—she had been shot multiple times, her right arm was almost torn apart by a bullet, and her clothes were soaked with blood. The bullet hole in her forehead was undoubtedly fatal, and the skin around the hole showed slight burn marks, as if it were the result of a close-range gunshot. Moreover, the blood on her body had already congealed, indicating that an hour or two had passed since the incident.

Only Chen Xuan disagreed.

He took out the barcode scanner and flipped to the guest list section—sure enough, Elori's name was still on the list, not completely disappearing like it had after Gildre's death!
That's why the shop's door connects to a hospital in another world.

It's likely that Elori called out to the store before she was shot.

The fact that her name is still there means that she is not truly dead, at least the ability shop believes that she is not dead yet!

(End of this chapter)