Chapter 1435: The First Failure
"Wait a moment, calm down." Regardless of how Advaita did it, she probably didn"t hear their conversation—otherwise, Lin Sanjiu would"ve been completely exposed. Maybe it"s a bit late to think about that now.
"Did she give you something to hold onto?" she asked Chen Hanwu.
The dark-skinned young man shook his head. "No. Maybe she has something that can monitor the scene. In any case, we are all on the same team, right?"
Lin Sanjiu forced herself to nod. He obviously had no reason to share the pressure she felt. Taking a deep breath, she let Caster lead the way, half her mind on Silvan behind the barrier and the other half on Advaita, whose whereabouts were unknown. She paid little attention to the shelf numbers, so when Chen Hanwu softly exclaimed, she wasn"t immediately aware of why.
"H6 is here," the dark-skinned man said, excited. "This is their team"s shelf domain!"
"As long as you think so."
Lin Sanjiu responded with generic phrases like "Really? Let"s search quickly," but intentionally lagged behind. Chen Hanwu rushed to the H6 shelf. He quickly knelt down, starting from the bottom—female tops were thrown out, bagged, melted ice cream discarded after a glance, and a neatly folded plush blanket with a ribbon was ignored.
So, there are no textiles among the items they"re looking for?
Lin Sanjiu pretended to search from the other side, thinking as she went. Besides the five target items she knew of, she had no clue about the others. If she wanted to secretly prevent Advaita from collecting everything, she needed to know what they were looking for. Chen Hanwu"s actions showed he didn"t care about textiles, dishes, or toys but paid attention to packaged food. This observation was useless to Lin Sanjiu: in this mall, what food, except fruits and vegetables, wasn"t packaged?
They soon went through the H6 shelf and found nothing. The subsequent aisles had one H10 shelf, also empty. Lin Sanjiu could see the growing confusion on Chen Hanwu"s face, as clear as a digital display.
He stood in the aisle, loudly reporting to Advaita, wherever she might be, "This isn"t right. We"ve searched two shelves in a row, H6 and H10, and haven"t found a single item. Could it be that our luck is just bad?"
Lin Sanjiu looked up. In the center of the mall, a curtain made of countless closely packed products still hung quietly and heavily in the air, filling every inch of s.p.a.ce so densely that not even a gaze could pa.s.s through the gaps. Advaita remained silent for a few seconds before responding, "None at all?"
"Yes."
"Including H7, there are three shelves without the target items," Advaita slowly said. Her voice floated eerily beneath the ceiling, like moss emerging from a damp, dark corner, only to spread into a swath of green before anyone realized it was there. Lin Sanjiu"s heart rate began to climb—she felt that Advaita might have noticed something was amiss.
"Stay where you are. I"ll come and see," Advaita whispered.
The aisles they had searched so far only covered half of their side of the mall, and already twenty minutes had pa.s.sed. It seemed Chen Hanwu wanted to hasten their search for the remaining shelves but hesitated to voice it. Since he raised no objections, Lin Sanjiu remained pa.s.sive as well.
Although she continually scanned the entire mall, when Advaita"s figure suddenly emerged from thin air, Lin Sanjiu couldn"t determine where she came from. She approached from the direction of the cas.h.i.+er"s counter and, in just a few steps, closed most of the distance between them. With a slight frown, she said, "I think they might have—"
"Silvan!" A sharp female voice suddenly rang out. Accompanying the shout was a figure leaping from the top of a shelf—it was the girl with the fox-like eyes. She jumped from the top shelf on their side of the mall, hopping over several others, charging towards the curtain of products, and yelling unclearly, "Over here! Catch me!"
Chen Hanwu"s eyes widened. "She"s on our side? When did she hide—"
Advaita let out a soft chuckle through her nose, cutting him off.
The next moment, the heavy curtain of products was violently dispersed from the other side. The unmistakable silhouette of Silvan burst through the curtain with a force that resembled a tidal wave, charging like lightning toward the fox-eyed girl. His momentum was so fierce and swift that the scattered products seemed to explode like a fountain behind him.
The fox-eyed girl let out a small cry from her throat, charging into Silvan"s arms as if her life depended on it. Yet, at this moment, Advaita remained unmoved. Her gaze, with a hint of amus.e.m.e.nt, lingered on Lin Sanjiu. The corner of her mouth curled into a smile. "I"ve been looking for her for quite a while now. This child is good at hiding."
Just as Silvan was about to reach out and grab the fox-eyed girl, half of the products on the shelves began to move. The dispersed products floating in the air quickly twisted into a sharp cone, piercing straight from behind Silvan. Although it was described as a cone, the surface formed by thousands of products was the size of a train locomotive. In an instant, it reached Silvan"s back. The blond man was mid-air, leaping towards another shelf. With no way to avoid it, he simply lowered his head and used his back to block this tsunami-like onslaught.
The various products, which people usually went to great lengths to love, became fierce and intense when cl.u.s.tered together. Amid the thundering noises reminiscent of a raging storm, the objects were scattered by the blockage of his back. However, not one of them slowed down. Instead, they hurtled past Silvan"s shoulders with a wild momentum. Thousands of items all headed straight for the fox-eyed girl, who was running towards Silvan and had no time to react.
By the time she was precisely knocked into the aisle where Advaita was, she hardly had any ability to move left. With countless shattered bones and torn muscles in her body, the fox-eyed girl wilted beside Advaita"s feet like a deflated balloon.
Most notable was her bulging mouth, stuffed with items.
"Not bad," Advaita said, bending down and tapping the girl"s swollen cheek. "It looks like we"ve managed to intercept at least two items from Silvan"s team."