The Black Swan Behind (Beauty of Fire)

178 In the Face

“AFEI!! Ah.. No. Lee.. Mu.. Fei..” Oscar exclaimed loudly with the twenty strongest men in his group behind him.

His smile widened when he saw a man in his proud uniform walking out of the glass door of the building.

Afei looked furious although his face still gave off a cold impression. His eyes were intensely staring straight ahead at a man with faded blue eyes, “You don’t recognize your strength, Oscar.”

“Same as you who don’t recognize my abilities,” Oscar chuckled.

“What do you want?” Afei asked flatly.

“What do I want?” Oscar smiled widely. “Certainly your destruction and.. the group you’ve stolen. The Creeper.”

“I never took anything from you. Everything was mine from the first place, even those people,” Afei pointed at the row of men standing behind Oscar, “..also mine.”

What Afei said made Oscar’s blood boil. He loathed Afei’s selfishness which thought everything was his. All this time, Afei only thought that Oscar was working under his feet and everything Oscar had was just a loan from Afei.

“You are a very selfish little coward. Hope you don’t cry back to your mother when you lost everything,” Oscar said furiously.

.....

“I told you to never mention my mother with your filthy mouth,” Afei replied by snapping his fingers. Just then, ten of his accomplices came out of the glass door and stood behind their commander.

Afei’s men did lose in number to Oscar’s. But of course, they were not less powerful at all. In fact, the total number of men Oscar had so far was more than the total group belonging to Afei in Chingsu District.

Oscar had more members because he had three branch groups with each member of theirs, while Afei only had one group in Chingsu District. Afei thought that there was no need to keep adding members because the area he needed to protect was only limited to the Chingsu District, unlike Oscar who continued to expand his territory by kept recruiting members.

For Oscar, the quantity was better than the quality. He had a very different mindset from Lee Mu Fei who preferred to have few followers but were strong people. The two conflicting thoughts were also what made the two people often disagree and secretly grow a mutual dislike in each other’s hearts.

Suddenly, from the side of the building, two men appeared carrying large stones and throwing them at Lee Mu Fei’s men who were standing in a row in front of the glass door. Swiftly, they dodged and made the stone hit the glass door behind them to shatter.

“ATTACK!!” Oscar exclaimed, pointing forward.

“Finish them,” Afei muttered as he stepped back while all the subordinates standing behind him, dashed forward past him to fight all of Oscar’s men.

In fact in that battle, there was a feeling of sadness in the hearts of several members of the two sides of the conflicted groups. An uncomfortable feeling was felt by the old Creeper members. That was because, basically, Lee Mu Fei’s men and Oscar Chopper’s men knew each other.

When the Creeper first stood up, they gathered together as a group in the same place. But ever since the Creeper decided to set up a branch headquarters, some of the old members were sent to follow Oscar. Of course, the selected members could not refuse. They could only obey the orders of their bosses. In the end, it was also because of their bosses so they had to attack each other because they were trapped on two different sides.

However, that was what happened in the dark world of gangsters. Friends could become enemies because of money. Those who did not have power were forced to submit and betray their own hearts at the behest of those in power.

The fierce battle finally spread into the lobby. What they didn’t know was that two intruders were watching their scene from behind the ceiling.

Emma smiled happily when she saw that the battle had finally entered the main palace. It seemed that Lee Mu Fei’s stronghold had already been torn down by Oscar Chopper.

Now, what determined the outcome was who fell first. But whoever won would later face RJC who was ready to enter the battlefield to clean up the rest of the war and plunder all the treasures.

Tasia crawled forward again though her bones felt like they were about to break with Rachel following behind. After checking almost the entire floor through the air passage, they found that the first floor contained only unimportant rooms. As Emma had expected, most likely the important rooms were on the second or third floor. But they couldn’t go upstairs through the air passage.

Finally, the two girls arrived at the air duct of the women’s toilet that Tasia had stopped while disguised as factory employees. After confirming that the women’s toilet was empty, Emma and Rachel came down from there.

“It’s time for RJC to step into the battle arena,” Emma muttered as she took out her cell phone.

In a mission, plans often could not go as smoothly as planned. Emma judged that they could not wait which group would fall first. From what she saw a little and heard a lot through the vent earlier, she could judge that Lee Mu Fei and Oscar’s group were nearly as strong, albeit with different versions. If they had to wait, it would be too long.

However, Emma knew that the two groups had used all their strength. If Oscar was finally able to reach the main base, it would be because they had managed to break through the strong defences of the Lee Mu Fei men guarding the front, which meant that the main Creeper strong members had already lost more than half of their power.

“I’ve told Kenny. They’re coming here now,” Emma said to Rachel in a low voice.

Rachel nodded, understanding that Emma had slightly changed their plans. They would no longer wait for Oscar to reach the treasure vault, but instead search for it themselves. Rachel also considered that with his minimal fighting ability, it was very likely that Oscar would not be able to make it to the treasure room.

Emma stepped slowly toward the toilet door and peeked outside. She could hear the commotion from the fighting that was still going on in the main lobby, but there was no one in sight in the second lobby where the stairs leading to the second floor were.

Emma moved her palms inward to signal to Rachel that things were safe ahead so they could move on. Quickly, the two girls went up the stairs in the second lobby.

The second floor of the building seemed very quiet, as all the members had already come down to help in the battle downstairs. That was the reason Emma had to wait until Oscar had made it to the main base first before she could continue her movement.

The second floor was dominated by wooden ornaments and a maroon carpet. Once there, Emma found several doors. “We need to open the doors one by one,” she said to Rachel.

Then each of them opened every door which turned out to be unlocked. Most of these doors lead to meeting rooms, weapons storage rooms, and other unimportant rooms until they arrived at the last locked door.

“Should we check upstairs?” Rachel asked.

Emma nodded, “We’d check it out later. I have a feeling this room has something important in it. You get what I mean, don’t you?”

“I know. How about we split up? I’ll check upstairs,” Rachel said as she pulled out a small door-locking device, “The training that RJC gave is pretty useful,” she said with a little giggle.

Emma smiled, “It’s practising time,” she said as she took the small object from Rachel’s hand.

“Take care of yourself. I’ll be right back,” Rachel said by gently patting Emma’s shoulder before running away.

“Okay.. Let us see,” Emma muttered as she put the small, thin object into the keyhole.

Meanwhile, Rachel went up to the third floor. It turned out that only two doors of rooms were on the third floor. The other was a glass door leading to the balcony that Rachel had seen from outside.

Cautiously, she opened one of the doors but found only a room with three bunk beds like in an old hospital or military bedroom. Then Rachel closed the door back and headed for another.

Just like the previous door, the door Rachel opened this time was also unlocked. As soon as she pushed the door, she found a room containing many tall wardrobes without doors full of hanging uniforms wrapped in plastic.

Rachel had been about to leave the room and return to Emma. But a small sound was heard from within the room.

Rachel’s brows furrowed. The noise sounded very suspicious and seemed to be coming from the wardrobes attached to the wall. Then she gave up her intention to leave and instead stepped into the room. She closed the door behind her.

With slow steps, she approached the wardrobes one by one and looked through the collection of uniforms hanging there, but found nothing but the inside board of the furniture. Then she paced again, doing the same thing with the other wardrobes until she got to the last big wardrobe in the far corner of the room.

When her hand was about to remove the uniform hanging from the last wardrobes, suddenly,

“GRAA!!”

A man jumped out of the bundle of uniforms right in Rachel’s face.

Rachel who was shocked, instantly fell backwards because she was pushed by the man who launched an attack on her.