Desperate people, accept the seed of my soul!

At the back door of the main building, grass seeds that had seeped in through the crack in the door had already taken root and sprouted under the carpet in the lobby.

As the patrol passed by, the vines precisely wrapped around the ankles of the last two people, and with a gentle pull, they fell to the ground silently as if tripped, falling into a coma.

……

Thirty minutes later, all thirteen hidden sentry posts on the perimeter were rendered inoperable.

Meng Zhaowen leaned against the cold tree trunk, a fine layer of cold sweat seeping from her forehead.

The prolonged and meticulous manipulation had taken a toll on his mental energy; his temples were throbbing. But he leaned against the wall to stand up and nodded in Liu Zhen's direction.

Having completed his own task, he handed it over to Liu Zhen.

Liu Zhen leaped over the wall, his toes landing without making a sound.

He slipped into the heart of the manor like a ghost.

……

But accidents always happen when things are at their calmest.

Liu Zhen had already reached within twenty meters of the main building's outer wall when suddenly a searchlight swept over him.

No, this is different from the intelligence Meng Zhaowen gave us—this isn't the rhythm of a regular patrol; someone has temporarily changed the scanning angle.

Liu Zhen's body lay flat on the ground, motionless.

The beam of the searchlight swept across his back, at one point less than half a meter away, and the heat penetrated through his clothes.

The light has passed.

He had just breathed a sigh of relief when he heard footsteps behind him.

It was a patrol team, three people in a group, changing shifts in advance—this was also outside the pattern that Meng Zhaowen had detected.

Liu Zhen didn't turn around; he simply judged the distance by the sound: thirty meters, twenty meters, fifteen meters—

There was a clump of holly three meters to his right, but rushing over would definitely make a sound and give away his whereabouts.

At this critical moment, the holly bush moved.

The branches parted to the sides, revealing a gap just big enough for a person to squeeze through.

Without hesitation, Liu Zhen rolled inside.

The holly branches quickly closed up behind him, without even a single leaf trembling.

Footsteps passed by outside the holly bushes, and at the closest point, the patrolman's flashlight beam shone through the gaps in the branches and leaves, flashing briefly on Liu Zhen's face.

He held his breath, gripped the overload trigger in his tactical bag, and felt the current in his fingertips ready to surge.

The footsteps faded into the distance.

Once the surroundings were completely quiet, Liu Zhen emerged from the holly bushes.

It was Meng Zhaowen who discovered the situation here and manipulated Dongqing to open the door.

No words were needed between the two; this tacit understanding between them, born from life and death, was honed through countless nights of despair.

……

Next, he moved towards the main building, hugging the wall, stepping into the blind spots marked by Meng Zhaowen with each step—the roots of the plants told him in advance that "it's safe here."

Upon reaching the exterior wall of the main building, Liu Zhen reached out and touched the wall, feeling a faint metallic texture at his fingertips—the copper mesh was indeed there.

Han Dongcheng really went to great lengths to guard against him.

But he was prepared.

Take the power overload trigger out of the tactical pack. It's not for attacking; it's for "deception."

He adjusted the output frequency of the trigger to simulate the weak current fluctuations of a normal household appliance, and then attached it to the wall.

The copper mesh sensed a "normal" current but did not trigger any alarms—it only knew how to intercept high-voltage attacks but could not distinguish between harmless disguises.

The window-breaking process went more smoothly than expected.

The ivy has covered the second-floor window, with layers upon layers of vines, making it appear from the outside as just a lush clump of plants.

But in reality, they are silently corroding the sealant around the window frame, and the secreted sap is causing the metal screws to rust at a visible rate.

Liu Zhen used the vines to climb up, using both his hands and feet, without making a sound.

When I reached the window, the window frame was already loose.

He gently pushed the window open inwards—there was no sound of breaking glass, no sound of metal scraping; all the points of contact that could make a sound were covered by plants beforehand.

Liu Zhen rolled over and stepped inside, landing on a thick layer of moss, which was the "soundproof carpet" that Meng Zhaowen had brought to the surface in advance.

He crouched by the window and listened intently for a few seconds.

The corridor was deathly silent, with only the low hum of the air conditioner unit running in the distance.

Liu Zhen glanced back out the window—Meng Zhaowen stood in the shadows below and nodded to him.

Then the ivy began to slowly retract, the window frame was gently pulled back into place, and the rust was covered by new leaves.

From the outside, it looks as if it has never been opened.

Liu Zhen turned around, pressed himself against the wall, and moved deeper into the corridor.

Each step was made silently, without a sound, on the moss.

……

The stairwell is ten meters ahead, and after two more turns, you'll reach Han Dongcheng's master bedroom area.

Meng Zhaowen's plants have chewed up all the surveillance cables in the building, leaving the cameras that should have been working properly now playing a loop of footage from twenty minutes ago in the empty corridor.

Everything was proceeding according to plan, so smoothly it almost felt unreal.

Just as Liu Zhen took his second step, he suddenly stopped.

Breathing at its shallowest, hearing sharpened to its limit—light footsteps echoed from the end of the corridor. It wasn't the rhythm of a regular patrol, but rather a deliberate, tentative approach, each step landing on the smallest crack in the floor, like a veteran who had walked on the edge of a knife for years.

That's not right.

Meng Zhaowen had been investigating for three days. The patrol routes inside the main building were fixed, with an hourly interval between patrols on each floor. Less than twenty minutes had passed since the last patrol, and the patrol route on this floor should not have gone to this corner at all.

Without any hesitation, Liu Zhen slipped to the side and slipped through the fire escape door next to him, then slightly tightened his fingers to leave a gap less than a finger's width in the door.

He held his breath and peered through the crack.

The footsteps grew closer.

A face appeared from around the corner of the corridor. The man was in his forties, with a buzz cut and a two-centimeter-long scar running diagonally across his cheekbone from the corner of his right eye, resembling an ugly centipede.

He wore the same black uniform as the other security personnel, with a walkie-talkie on his waist and insulated gloves on his hands. He walked with his back ramrod straight, and his eyes swept across every corner of the corridor like an eagle's.

Liu Zhen's pupils contracted slightly.

He had seen the photo of this person.

Meng Zhaowen's intelligence report highlighted this name in red: Jiang Jianping, the security captain of Han Dongcheng. He had spent eight years in the chaotic border region, worked as a mercenary, and had blood on his hands. He was a ruthless character who had crawled out of piles of corpses.

He designed the entire layout of the hidden sentry posts in Jingyuan Villa, drew all the patrol routes, and even personally approved the shift change times for the security personnel.

Meng Zhaowen had figured out all the patterns in the plants, but he hadn't anticipated that the old soldier had a habit of randomly selecting one floor for a surprise inspection between 1 and 2 a.m. every day. He never took a fixed route and never notified anyone in advance.

This is a caution ingrained in one's bones, a survival experience accumulated over eight years of navigating the border, something that cannot be predicted by any "pattern".