Era of Mist

The other flight attendant chattered on, a bit of a talker, but well-meaning. Yet no matter what she said, Flight Attendant Tanaka turned a deaf ear. Expressionless, she stood up and stalked toward the front of the cabin. A closer look revealed her movements were somewhat stiff, as if she had trouble controlling her balance.

Meanwhile, in the plane’s cargo hold, a massive crate suddenly bulged. With a BANG, a thick, powerful, yet pale and bluish-gray arm punched through the side of the crate and stretched out.

CREAK… With a twist, the arm ripped the lock off the crate and tossed it aside.

CRACKLE… The crate shattered, and an impossibly tall and powerful figure stood up. The being’s skin was a strange color, and its face was fixed in an even stranger smile.

It grinned, revealing blackened teeth. Though it was smiling, its eyes were completely soulless, as if the very skin on its face was no longer under its control. It twisted its head from side to side, its neck vertebrae letting out a series of loud POPS. Then, wearing that bizarre smile, it strode toward the rear of the cargo hold.

THUD, THUD, THUD. Its footsteps were slow and heavy, like a walking battle tank.

In the passenger cabin above, Officer Gao heard a strange noise.

“Hm?” His brow furrowed as he cautiously reached for the pistol at the small of his back.

Beside him, Ouyang Hong’s face was twitching uncontrollably, while Ouyang Shun still wore that same strange smile, as if his facial muscles had been permanently locked in place.

…

「Outside Narita Airport」 A taxi screeched to a halt at the curb.

“Young man, need a ride?”

“Yes.” Shi Tiexin had been wanting to talk to Old Jia anyway, so he immediately pulled open the door and got in. His two-hundred-plus-pound frame settled into the back seat, causing the car to dip slightly as the driver pulled away.

WHOOSH. A plane soared into the sky—Officer Gao’s flight back to his home country. The plane would trace an arc over the sea before turning southwest, heading straight for Shanghai.

Watching the plane in the sky, Old Jia silently pressed a button on the center console, then spoke. “So Ouyang Hong and Ouyang Shun have been sent back to the country?”

“Yes.”

“Sending them back is for the best. The organization has its ways of getting people out of police custody. Even if they’re dead, the organization can still dig the secrets out of their corpses. You did a beautiful job on this one, didn’t implicate the organization at all. The only thing is, the police were involved, so your ‘Brother Fa’ might get suspicious. You need to be careful.”

Listening silently to Old Jia, a doubt suddenly surfaced in Shi Tiexin’s mind.

‘From the sound of it, our organization isn’t part of the Eastern Realm’s police force.’

‘So which side am I actually on?’

Shi Tiexin wanted to ask, but he didn’t know how. ‘Besides,’ he thought, ‘if I’m being objective, how can I even be sure Old Jia and I are on the same side? And even if we are, couldn’t I be a double or even a triple agent?’

‘Agh, damn it! The more I think about it, the more complicated it gets. It’s giving me a headache!’

‘Hey, me-from-this-timeline! Can’t you just be straight with me and tell me everything? I’m totally lost here!’

The knot of consciousness in his mind gave no response. It was far more silent than the Champion Scholar Stone’s original knot had been, like a tight-lipped intelligence officer guarding a secret.

“Still, the Ouyang brothers being sent away has its pros and cons. With them gone, we’ve lost a lead. We’re in deep cover, so getting real-time intel support is difficult. From now on, we’ll have to find our own breakthroughs for the mission.”

Old Jia drove southwest, and the plane in the sky flew southwest as well.

“The Hongshun Society was taken down, but there’s no way it didn’t leave a stink behind. Your next step is to listen for any news from inside Daxing. There’s no such thing as a perfect secret; something’s bound to surface.” Old Jia glanced back from the wheel, looking at Shi Tiexin seriously. “There have been some worrying signs lately. We need to pick up the pace.”

“That’s reckless driving.”

“You think I need you to tell me that?”

Despite his words, Old Jia turned his head back to face the front.

Staring at the back of Old Jia’s head, Shi Tiexin found he really hated this feeling of being lost in a fog. He desperately wanted to just ask him directly: What was his mission? Who was he, really? And what was he doing here?

His face remained impassive, but his mind was racing.

It was precisely because he didn’t want Old Jia to see the look in his eyes that Shi Tiexin always took the back seat. He mulled it over and thought of a relatively safe way to probe for information. He considered his words, then spoke. “Old Jia, how much does the organization know about our current situation?”

“Why ask that?” Old Jia shot him a strange glance. “It’s not like you don’t know, the organization has always—wait! Holy shit!”

Old Jia’s cry made Shi Tiexin jump, thinking he had somehow given himself away.

But in the next moment, he realized Old Jia’s outburst wasn’t directed at him.

High in the blue sky, a ball of fire had suddenly erupted.

It was the plane!

The plane carrying Officer Gao and the Ouyang brothers!

Focusing his gaze, he saw a burst of flame explode from the plane’s rear engine. Billowing black smoke trailed behind it, scarring the sky with a dark streak. Like a bird with a broken wing, the plane abruptly stopped climbing and plunged downward.

“Dammit!!”

With a SCREECH, the taxi slammed to a halt. Old Jia and Shi Tiexin could only watch helplessly as the plane fell. BOOM… BOOM… A line of fire snaked across the fuselage, erupting in a series of small explosions. The initial blast in the rear engine was clearly spreading along the fuel lines.

Shi Tiexin’s ears were filled with a chorus of screams and gasps, though he couldn’t tell if they came from nearby pedestrians or were just hallucinations produced by his own mind as he witnessed the horrifying scene.

Uncharacteristically stunned, Shi Tiexin watched the plane continue its dive, finally plunging headfirst into the sea below. There was no deceleration, no change in trajectory; the pilots seemed to make no attempt to save the aircraft. The massive plane simply, solidly, slammed head-on into the ocean.

BOOM!

A colossal wave erupted as the fuselage broke apart and disintegrated.

Leaking fuel ignited, triggering an even larger explosion.

In an instant, the surface of the ocean became a sea of flames.

“This…” Shi Tiexin didn’t know what to say.

He had never witnessed such a scene before. His mind went blank.

In a daze, he thought of Officer Gao. Watching the rolling Red Flames, he pictured the brave officer, buried in a foreign land, dying in the final moments before his victory.

RING RING RING. His phone suddenly rang.

It was Shi Tiexin’s cell phone.

“Hello!” Shi Tiexin quickly answered. The voice of Wang Dafu came through the receiver.

“Stone, you’ve done well. I was waiting with great interest to see how you would handle this, and I have to say, you truly left no loose ends. You really didn’t disappoint me.” Wang Dafu’s voice sounded gentle and full of admiration. “Keep up the good work. I guarantee you’ll be moving up in the world very soon.”

‘It wasn’t me.’

‘It wasn’t me.’

‘I really didn’t do it!’

‘I would never kill Officer Gao, much less murder over a hundred innocent people on that plane along with him!’

Shi Tiexin roared frantically in his mind, but after five seconds of silence, he could only reply in a low voice:

“Thank you for your guidance, Brother Fa.”

CLICK. He hung up the phone, his face ashen.

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