Chapter 1086: The Tunnel

In the dark and deep tunnel, only the sound of Cheng Sihan's heavy breathing could be heard.

With only silence around her, it was as if she had been abandoned at the end of the world. However, Cheng Sihan did not panic. The sound of Beta's footsteps had disappeared. She had very likely stopped moving.

If nothing untoward happened, she shouldn't have gone too far. She should be somewhere nearby.

It was only at this moment that Cheng Sihan realized Beta wanted her to hand over her phone and search her body. Not only was it to prevent her from getting help and exposing her location but to ensure that there was no light source on her body. In other words, she had been preparing for this moment for a long time.

However, if this was how she wanted to escape, she would be underestimating Cheng Sihan.

Since Cheng Sihan could hide a knife on her when she was not paying attention, she could also hide something else. In the next moment, Cheng Sihan took out a phone from her bag.

This phone was not hers. It belonged to a female high school student in the car. There was a cute cat's head hanging from it. Cheng Sihan had seen her gossiping about celebrities with her phone and memorized her password. Then, when she put the phone back into her pocket and was about to get out of the car, she stole her phone.

Of course, all of this happened after Beta finished searching her body. Cheng Sihan had used the phone to send a location message to Fan Meinan before Beta left the iron gate. However, when Cheng Sihan turned on the phone's flashlight function, she couldn't help but frown.

Unlike what she had imagined, she couldn't see Beta anywhere near her. It was as if Beta had really disappeared into thin air. Cheng Sihan raised the phone to her face and rechecked the surroundings, but she didn't find any hidden passageways or exits nearby. At the moment, she was in an abandoned tunnel with thick concrete walls on both sides.

Beta's disappearance was like a magic trick.

However, for Cheng Sihan and her world, such a thing was not impossible. Cheng Sihan had played a similar trick in front of Zhang Heng not long ago. Beta was, after all, the second-ranked player in the first round of the proxy war, and since she was also Loki's personal agent, it would be strange if she did not have any trump cards to escape.

However, Cheng Sihan couldn't understand why Beta did not use it when she was in the hospital and on the road. She had to wait until here to use it. Perhaps, the items she was carrying could only be used here? Or was it purely to bring her here? Also, were some of the words she said on the subway true or false?

Cheng Sihan looked at the seemingly endless tunnel ahead, then at the phone in her hand. Perhaps she was too deep underground that the phone had no signal, and she couldn't communicate with the outside world.

Cheng Sihan hesitated for a moment and decided to go back the same way she came. She would wait for Zhang Heng and Fan Meinan to come over and discuss what to do next.

Fortunately, she didn't go too far ahead. According to Cheng Sihan's calculations, she had only run for about four to five minutes in the dark, and since she couldn't see the road beneath her feet, she wouldn't be moving that fast. Thus, as a result, it should only take her two to three minutes to turn on the flashlight and go back.

However, Cheng Sihan walked for a full six to seven minutes, but she still couldn't find the platform she came from. What was even stranger was, this time, Cheng Sihan paid extra attention to her surroundings, and in the end, found no difference between this place and the tunnel that was in use. Additionally, there were no forks in the middle, ruling out the possibility that she had taken the wrong path when she returned from the original path.

Cheng Sihan didn't overthink when she pursued Beta, but now that she was gone, she was the only one left in the tunnel, her heart sank. At the same time, the light from her phone cast her shadow on the tunnel's walls. Warped and elongated, it looked looking abnormally strange.

The Darkness before and behind her was bottomless, leaving only her lonely figure in the tunnel.

.....

On the other side, Fan Meinan had also received a message from Cheng Sihan. She rushed to the subway station with Zhang Heng, but they ran into a bit of trouble when they passed the security check. Zhang Heng's equipment, whether the Hidden Scabbard or Pestilence Bone Bow, were too eye-catching. Thus, he had no choice but to find an extra-large travel bag to pack them all up. At the same time, he also managed to create a minor disturbance at the entrance, attracting the attention of two security guards not far away.

After that, he and Fan Meinan swiped their cards through the gate, walked down the stairs, and arrived at the platform.

Fan Meinan looked around, but there was no sign of Cheng Sihan or Beta, so he said, "This is the last place my sister sent me. What do you think she means? Does she want us to take the subway here?"

"It doesn't look like it. This is the subway line that we first tracked. However, your sister's phone somehow ended up on that thief's body. She changed subway lines in the middle, but your sister and Beta should still be on the tracks at that time, so they should have gotten off here instead of getting on the train. However, if they were just leaving the station, your sister wouldn't have taken the risk to send a message. Also, when they reached the platform, there's a high chance that they're still here."

"I'll go take a look in the toilet," Fan Meinan said.

"Okay, then I'll try to find a way to adjust the surveillance cameras." Zhang Heng raised his head to look at the few cameras on the wall. These cameras basically covered the entire platform. If he could find the video, he should find out what was going on here.

However, Fan Meinan was a little worried. Unlike the security guards at the gate, the people in charge of monitoring in the surveillance room would normally stay inside no matter what happened. Furthermore, there were more than one or two people in the surveillance room.

Of course, these people combined would be no match for Zhang Heng, but if he really used violent methods to get his hands on the video, it would cause quite a stir. This was, after all, the real world and not a pocket dimension.

Logically speaking, this should have been the time for her to make her move. If she still had the ability to disguise herself, she could have pretended to be the leader of the subway station and swaggered in to watch the video.

That ability had now disappeared, and even though Zhang Heng's makeup skills were good, they were not good enough to disguise himself as another person without being recognized by his friends and subordinates.

Nonetheless, Zhang Heng wasn't too concerned about this.

Fan Meinan spent less than five minutes watching the toilet. She then headed upstairs to the surveillance room.