A master of both medicine and martial arts, he recruits a beautiful CEO to cultivate immortality tog

The next morning, the conference room on the top floor of the Su family's building was converted into a temporary operations room.

The blinds of the floor-to-ceiling window were half-drawn, allowing sunlight to stream in and cast bright lines on the long table. On the table were a hotel layout diagram, a financial statement, a guest list, and three laptops running simultaneously.

Ye Heng sat at the end of the long table, holding a cup of black coffee in his hand.

He didn't sleep much last night. His meridians haven't recovered yet, and he can feel the cracks throbbing faintly as soon as he closes his eyes.

Gong Yichu turned the computer around.

"Ruixin Trading is just the outermost layer," she said. "I traced its shareholders upwards and found that it had registered three other companies in Jinling, all of which were shell companies. The registered addresses of all three companies were on the third basement floor of the Jinling Hotel."

Gong Yichu opened a hotel floor plan. "The Jinling Hotel was built twenty years ago. The three underground floors have never been open to the public. The property rights are registered under the hotel's name, but they have never actually been used. I asked someone to check the property records. Last year, someone rented that floor under the guise of 'equipment renovation,' for a ten-year term."

Who rented it?

"Ruixin Trading," Gong Yichu said. "The rent is paid in full upfront, three million."

There was a moment of silence in the conference room.

"Three million for one floor, for ten years." Liu Zhixian leaned back in his chair, his fingers tapping lightly on the table. "At that price, you can't even rent a decent shop in Jinling."

"So, they didn't buy the building itself," Su Yingxue said.

"It's the foundation," Gong Yichu said.

Ye Heng looked at the structural diagram.

The third basement level is located directly beneath the main hotel building. Above it is the banquet hall, and above that is the rooftop garden used for weddings. If something happens to the third basement level, the entire building will shake.

"What's on that floor?" he asked.

"The property records say it's an 'equipment room'," Gong Yichu said. "But I hacked into the hotel's surveillance system and discovered that the elevator on the third basement level requires separate authorization, and ordinary employees can't get in. In the past six months, only three groups of people have gone down there. One group was Ruixin's construction team, one group was people from Beichen Capital, and then there was another group—"

She paused for a moment.

"A group of people wearing white coats."

Ye Heng's gaze darkened.

White lab coat. Laboratory.

"Can you find their faces?"

"The surveillance footage has been deleted," Gong Yichu said. "But the construction team foreman is still in Nanjing, and I have someone keeping an eye on him. He goes to a mahjong parlor in the south of the city every Wednesday night."

"Don't touch him yet," Ye Heng said. "We'll close the net the day before the wedding."

"clear."

Ye Heng turned to Xia He.

"Any progress on your brother's side?"

Xia He pushed a medical record onto the table.

"Xia Chen remembered something else yesterday," she said. "He said that the black box he saw by the river had a snakeskin pattern on the lid, and a cloud-shaped label. There was a line of small print on the label, which he couldn't make out, but he remembered what the cloud looked like."

"Clouds?" Ye Heng thought of Fang Boheng's list.

"I had the Spirit Group's technical team check it out," Xia He said. "That cloud-shaped mark is a dangerous goods classification label used by the Spirit Group's Technical Support Bureau twenty years ago, representing an 'unstable sealed entity'."

"Just like that box at the bottom of the river."

"Yes." Xia He nodded. "Moreover, Xia Chen said that when he saw those people loading the boxes onto the car, one of them answered a phone call. The call mentioned the word 'hotel'."

Ye Heng's fingers paused on the table for a moment.

hotel.

The box at the bottom of the river, the third basement level of the hotel, the three-million-dollar wedding. The three things finally connected.

"So, they have to get that box into the hotel," he said.

"It wasn't just transported in," Su Yingxue said. "It's already been transported in. That's what we bought for three million."

She stood up and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window.

"The third basement level of the Jinling Hotel was an old anchor point for the Spirit Group twenty years ago. I checked the Su family's real estate records from back then. That land originally belonged to the Spirit Group, but the Spirit Group later withdrew, and the land was transferred to the hotel developer. However, the foundation of the old anchor point was not completely demolished and has remained buried underground."

"How did you know?" Ye Heng asked.

"Because of my grandfather." Su Yingxue turned around. "The Su family was involved in the development of that land back then. My grandfather said that when the hotel was being built, the Spirit Group sent someone to come and see it. They said, 'There's something down there, don't dig too deep.' The developer didn't take it seriously and dug down three layers. Later, there were several accidents, so they stopped."

"What happened?"

"The workers have gone missing," Su Yingxue said. "Five people have gone missing in total, neither alive nor dead. The hotel paid compensation and sealed off the three basement levels."

The meeting room was silent for a few seconds.

Ye Heng suddenly remembered Fang Boheng's words.

"There is more than one cradle."

If the first cradle is in the southwest and the second is in Nanjing, then the hotel's third basement level is very likely the entrance to the second cradle.

"Sister Liu," he turned to Liu Zhixian, "how's the investigation at the hotel going?"

Liu Zhixian took out an employee list from her bag.

"The catering department, cleaning department, and security department have changed twelve people in the past month," she said. "Three of them had fake backgrounds. Their ID cards were real, but their social security records and work experience were all fabricated. I had someone follow them for two days and found that they would go to the hotel's underground parking garage every day after get off work and spend half an hour in a black van."

"What's in the car?"

"I don't know," Liu Zhixian said. "The car windows were tinted with privacy film, so my people didn't dare get too close. But I noted down the license plate and checked; it's registered under Ruixin's name."

"Don't alert them yet," Ye Heng said. "The day before the wedding, replace these three people with ours."

"It's all arranged." Liu Zhixian smiled. "Tianfeng Pavilion may not have much else, but it has a lot of people."

Ye Heng nodded.

Just as he was about to continue, there was a knock on the conference room door.

Canglang pushed the door open and came in, holding a tablet in his hand.

"Senior," he said, his expression grim, "Qin Wuyai has made a move."

Ye Heng took the tablet.

The screen displays a surveillance video. In the underground parking garage of the Jinling Hotel, a black minivan is parked in a corner with the door open, and a man in a black suit is standing beside the vehicle.

The man wore a black leather glove on his right hand, and the outline of mechanical joints could be vaguely seen beneath the glove.

Qin Wuyai.

He looked up at the security camera and smiled.

Then, he raised his left hand and made a "please" gesture towards the camera.

This concludes the video.

"He knows we're watching," said the wolf.

"He knew." Ye Heng placed the tablet on the table. "He did it on purpose."

"What do you mean?"

"It means he's inviting us," Ye Heng said. "He'll be waiting for us at the hotel on the wedding day."

Su Yingxue walked over and looked at the smiling face on the screen.

"What does he want?"

"You want me," Ye Heng said. "Or rather, you want the Heavenly Mark Blade."

"Then why didn't he just come to you directly?"

"Because he knew that if he came directly to me, he would die," Ye Heng said. "But at the wedding, there were hundreds of guests, including members of the Su family, the Su Corporation, and the media. He felt that I wouldn't dare to make a move there."

"He guessed wrong," Su Yingxue said.

Ye Heng glanced at her.

"What are you planning to do?" she asked.

"Let's play along," Ye Heng said. "He wants me to sit in the front row, right? Then I'll sit in the front row. He wants me to be too afraid to make a move, right? Then I'll show him whether I dare or not."