Chapter 39: Vengeance

"So, that peasant voluntarily admitted his guilt, and the magistrate was so upright that he mistook you two for lovers and just took the people away?" On the bed in the luxury suite at the very top of the Ding Shang Hotel, Kenji Yanagimura said to the woman beneath him, his voice ragged with exertion.

This suite occupied the entire floor of the hotel, boasting a massive area that included not only a living room and bedroom, but also a swimming pool, bar, gym, game room, and more.

Rie Hanada gazed at her lover with tender, watery eyes. Recalling what had happened at the Hoshino Hotel an hour ago, she nodded. From her perspective, Jin Shiratori had simply confessed his guilt and expressed his admiration for her, moving the magistrate so deeply that he had just taken the people back. As for the heaps of bizarre things Shiratori had said, she viewed them merely as the ramblings of a man infatuated with her. They were unimportant and had been filtered out, so she hadn't bothered to mention them to Kenji. As for the female reporter who was taken away, she must have been a wanted criminal who had leaked state secrets. The magistrate had simply happened upon her tonight and made the arrest. It was only on her way here that she had managed to piece together the cause and effect of it all.

"Hahaha!" Kenji rolled over to lean against the headboard, laughing dryly. "Could that peasant be the son of some god? To have such good luck strike him twice in a row." He did not doubt Rie's words, even though the magistrate he knew wasn't typically like that. Still, he knew that anything was possible; he couldn't rule out the existence of such a truly upright official.

"Kenji, should we continue to deal with Jin Shiratori?" Rie also sat up, leaning into her lover's embrace. She extended a delicate fingertip to brush away a few strands of hair damp with sweat from her face, tilting her head to ask with a blissful expression.

"Why wouldn't we? He has good luck, doesn't he? I want to see just how many times his luck can favor him." A playful, cruel smile appeared in Kenji's eyes. Initially, he had only wanted to have a little fun at the peasant's expense. If the guy had "cooperated" from the start, everyone would be happy now. But having been slapped in the face repeatedly by him, especially in front of his own woman, he and Shiratori had reached the point where he wouldn't feel right until he destroyed him.

"What do you plan to do, Kenji?" Rie asked curiously. "I found out that although Jin Shiratori's family went bankrupt and his father drowned himself, he still has a mother and a younger sister. Perhaps we could target them... Kenji, why are you looking at me like that?"

Kenji looked into her eyes, the corners of his lips curving upward. "Your words remind me. Why should I, the young master of Ansen Pharmaceuticals, abandon my greatest advantage to engage in a battle of wits with a peasant? Tomorrow, I'll have him abducted. He's just a peasant with no background; no one will care if he goes missing." He remembered his father mentioning recently that the company needed a new batch of volunteers for drug testing. As a pharmaceutical company, the number of test subjects determined the pace of new drug development. Fortunately, the city of Sekigawa had no shortage of such volunteers. 'That brat is strong and sturdy; he'll make an excellent volunteer,' he sneered inwardly.

Rumble...!

The ground shook violently, the entire room swayed, and the magnificent crystal chandelier on the ceiling chimed as it rattled. Then, the lights suddenly died, plunging the room into darkness. A few seconds later, the hotel’s backup power kicked in, restoring the light. Kenji frowned slightly, unsure of what had happened.

"Kenji, what was that?" Rie snapped out of her panic, clinging tightly to her lover.

Kenji didn't speak. A stream of data appeared over his irises. These were external electronic eyes, disguised as contact lenses. They were a type of micro-computer far more powerful than the peptide-based auxiliary memory neural arrays available to the general public. At that moment, the electronic eyes began attempting to connect to the sunglasses of the bodyguards outside. If the connection succeeded, he could see the situation outside directly through their lenses and command them to act.

[Beep! Strong signal interference detected. Data bridge connection failed...]

Kenji watched the information on his electronic eyes and cursed under his breath. 'Someone is using a high-powered signal jammer to paralyze all communications here!' He leaped off the bed, disregarding his naked state, and sprinted toward the door, intending to flee.

*Slish, slish!*

The hotel’s exquisite solid wood door suddenly sprouted a web of crisscrossing lines before exploding outward. Countless wood fragments scattered, flying over ten meters and narrowly missing Kenji as he ran toward the threshold.

Yoshiba walked in, wearing a fox mask, strolling as if she were taking a leisurely walk. She left bloody footprints on the brown carpet. In the hallway behind her, the floor was covered in severed limbs and blood; there were no survivors.

"So that's how it is. You're the one behind Rie Hanada!" Yoshiba looked at Kenji, a cold sneer tugging at her lips.

After leaving the Hoshino Hotel, she hadn't gone home. Instead, she had secretly tailed Rie, intending to kill her for revenge. If you dare to frame me, you’d better be prepared for a fight to the death. But she hadn't expected Rie to climb into a sleek black luxury sedan after leaving the hotel. In that instant, it dawned on her—Rie had a lover! She had trailed them here, seen the bodyguards, returned home to retrieve explosives, and come back. She had blown out the building's power and network equipment, placed high-powered signal jammers in the hallway of this floor, and then started the slaughter. She didn't use guns because the bodyguards were armed; guns meant body armor, and magic was far more efficient. In less than ten seconds, she had carved her way from the elevator lobby to this room.

"Who are you?" Kenji looked at the masked youth before him, his guard up.

*Slish!*

Before he could finish his sentence, a brilliant silver light bloomed in his pupils. He felt a savage, sharp sensation erupt across his skin. In the next moment, he felt a wave of agony engulf his entire body—and then he knew nothing more. His body was shredded into hundreds of pieces by dense, razor-sharp silver threads. Like a water-filled vase smashed to the ground, he collapsed into a foul-smelling heap of minced meat, viscera, and bone. An acrid stench rapidly filled the air of the room. Yoshiba hadn't wasted a single word; she had finished him in one stroke.

Villains die from talking too much. As a model student and a good girl, Yoshiba was no villain, but she knew to avoid the mistake of prattling on.

Rie, on the bed, had been so terrified that she had wet herself—literally. The white sheets were stained dark.

"You... you're Jin Shiratori, you killed... you killed Kenji..." Rie's teeth chattered as she spoke, her voice trembling.

Seeing that she recognized her, Yoshiba admitted it plainly. "That's right, it's me. You two adulterers not only cheated on me but also framed me... I assume you were prepared for the consequences?"

"No, don't kill me!" Meeting Yoshiba's cold gaze, she trembled even more violently.

"Tell me, why did you two adulterers try to harm me?" Yoshiba asked, walking toward Rie. This was the one thing she still couldn't understand. She was a model student, kind-hearted, helpful, honest, and trustworthy... why would people try to harm someone as good as her?

"No, it wasn't me, it was all Young Master Yanagimura..." Rie spilled everything, blurting out the cause and effect in one go. Gone was the noble, elegant air of the school's "goddess," leaving only the primal instinct for survival.

"Just for a reason like that, you two adulterers not only cheated on me but also tried to put me to death?" Disbelief filled Yoshiba's eyes.

Rie was a bit confused. Harming you—that’s a fact. But what do you mean by "cheated on me"? I was never your woman.

But in the next moment, she felt a chill at her neck, and the world tilted in her vision...

Yoshiba watched the head roll onto the bed and retracted the silver spider thread she had just whipped out. Blood sprayed from the headless corpse of Rie Hanada, staining the massive bed like a blossoming red flower.

"Revenge is finished, I feel much better. I think I'll go have a bowl of ramen later," Yoshiba said to herself while cleaning up the scene. She took a bag of black powder from her pocket—about the size of an instant noodle packet—and sprinkled it in the corners of the room and out in the hallway. These were high-potency solid fuels she had purchased from her organization; a tiny amount generated heat comparable to a tank of gasoline, perfect for destroying evidence.

Once finished, she headed to the corner at the end of the hallway, packed away her water-cup-shaped signal jammer and the remaining explosives, and left via the fire escape.

Dozens of seconds after she left, a timer-based ignition device sparked, landing on the high-potency solid fuel on the floor.

*BOOM!*

The entire floor instantly turned into a sea of fire. The expanding hot air triggered a massive shockwave that shattered every window on the level. From the outside, one could see countless shards of glass raining down like flower petals.

*Puff, puff—!*

The top floor of the hotel roared with fire, the towering flames painting the dark sky a faint crimson, like a torch burning in the darkness.