Chapter 251 - Villa in the Dark (2/2)
Our slow and gingerly approach of the pair of dim glows, concomitant with the low growls of my wolves, ended ignominiously with the discovery of what emitted the glows. It was not the eyes of a monstrous behemoth, but rather, two simple lamps smoldering harmlessly. In between both lamps, flanked by both of them, was a door, closed and locked.
With a look at Lin Feng, who swallowed a gulp of saliva in disquiet, I heard his voice asking me in the dark, “Open it?” which I responded with a nod and a wordless assent. He walked up to the door and before I could stop him, he slammed his foot into the door with a deep Bang! and it burst open, swiveling wildly on its hinges that threatened to give way. Cold winds rushed around us like the rapids of a raging river, coming from outside the door and the air made me shiver. Picking up my anxiety through my telepathic link with them, the wolves assembled and charged like an arrow out the door, their long jaws agape, sharp teeth bared, ready to snap at any foe they find!
I peered out the door carefully and found nothing wrong outside. The snarls of my wolves came to an end as my emotions began to simmer down. They stood outside the door, vigilantly keeping watch.
I walked out the door. Everything seemed fine outside, but in truth, nothing was fine at all and I was utterly shocked beyond words when I beheld the view outside. Lin Feng trailed just behind but unlike my more-reticent disposition, he spat and cursed when he saw what was waiting outside, “Sh*t! What in the godd*mned world is happening here?!”
The lonesome street lamp outside, which dull and dim glow did merely a perfunctory job in illuminating the darkened street that was howling ominously in the chilly air and the number blocks on the wall of the villa opposite that said “105” left me awestruck. Did we just walked out of Huang Li’s villa!? What the hell is this!? Why am I always caught in something like this?! But we had not been walking in circles just now; we were only walking in a straight file behind the line formed up by my wolves! I was fully alert now, despite the uncanny creepiness of our situation. Whatever this was, Huang Li and Cao Xuedong were making sure we were making every effort to earn our fee!
Feeling slightly angered, I instinctively looked back at the door we just walked through and what I saw made me shed cold sweat!
The door that we had just walked out of had closed without us knowing it and the lock that Lin Feng had savagely kicked on to open it looked utterly intact just like how it was when we first came! Lin Feng, with his eyes wide with disbelief, uttered, “What the hell?!” If we were not yet fully awake by all the shocking and inexplicable epiphany unfurling around us, we definitely were now. Being able to think more clearly, the first thing I did was to check the time. I dug for my cell phone and saw the time: A half-hour past midnight and still ticking. So whatever this is, time is not yet suspended.
Biting my lips, I thought hard. Everything about our entry into the house must be true and I was confident that the same could be said for exiting the building. So, something must have happened in the darkness. We must have either turned without knowing or somehow our directions had been switched when we had just entered the house by some unknown witchery! That could explain the reason why Lin Feng was suddenly crashing to the floor when he should be able to lean on the door right after coming in.
This reminded me of the time when we were at Mount San Feng Zi. Undoubtedly, this would never be any technique similar to Zhu Mei’s Windchaser magic or Ghost Barriers. So that left only one possibility: some sort of metaphysical bounded field! The pitch-black darkness inside the villa just now had rendered us vulnerable to spells and beguilement and it could just as easily be done by manipulating the scent of Cao Xuedong which was our only indication of any bearing to my wolves earlier.
Seeing my reserved taciturnity and mistaking me as being at a loss for solutions only made Lin Feng more irritable. He walked up to the door without so much as a word to me and rapped on the door. The knocking sound of him hitting the door awakened me from my thoughts and I spun around. There was nothing. Lin Feng applied more strength and banged on the door again and the door opened again, revealing Cao Xuedong.
“Good evening, Plat… I mean, former Platoon Leader.” Cao Xuedong greeting with a salute. Lin Feng’s eyes twitched, his brimming annoyance beginning to spill over. “What tricks are you playing at?!” He demanded but a seemingly-dubious Cao Xuedong merely gave a thin smile. “You know me, former Platoon Leader? I don’t believe we’ve met.” “Humph,” Lin Feng snorted derisively and said, “Stop faking it!”
But Cao Xuedong chuckled weakly and gave us an expression as if he was truly unclear of what we meant. I froze. Wait a minute. This sense of deja vu! The very same happened just now when we first came! And Cao Xuedong now looks as if he had never seen us before!