"Mo Ying? Mo Ying!" Mo Ying pulled her consciousness back to reality and saw Kagumo calling her. "What's wrong with you today? You keep spacing out." Kagumo opened the fridge and took out two cans of co. "Nothing, just thinking about something." Mo Ying replied. "What is it?" Kagumo asked. "Tonight... no, it's nothing. I was just wondering why Davis can make food taste so terrible." Mo Ying still didn’t mention Wei Zhiheng’s invitation from yesterday; she felt it was unnecessary. "I heard from Yvette that he can actually cook normally, he just loves to invent... creative dishes." Kagumo said. "Wasting food." Mo Ying commented succinctly. Kagumo wholeheartedly agreed, but unfortunately, her willpower was not enough to stop Davis’s relentless creativity.

  That night, after everyone had fallen asleep, Mo Ying quietly left. She went to the address Wei Zhiheng had given her—a deserted construction site. The streetlights here were broken, flickering on and off. The wind blew through the trees, casting shifting shadows on the ground, adding to the eerie atmosphere. Mo Ying walked straight in. Wei Zhiheng was already waiting.

  "You came." Wei Zhiheng said, as if he had expected it. "What do you know? And who are you?" Mo Ying got straight to the point. "Ah, don't be so hasty." Wei Zhiheng took a step forward, pcing a hand on Mo Ying’s shoulder. The tree shadows danced across his face, flickering between light and dark. "Don’t you feel something's wrong?" "What?" Mo Ying narrowed her eyes. A bad premonition welled up inside her. "When you met me yesterday, you didn’t ask anything, even though you knew nothing about me. And today, you came here alone without any precautions. You trusted me completely—that’s not like you." Wei Zhiheng whispered into her ear.

  Mo Ying finally realized what had been bothering her—trust. She had trusted this man who had suddenly appeared. When she left earlier, she hadn’t told anyone where she was going, simply because she believed Wei Zhiheng meant no harm.

  Without thinking further, Mo Ying reacted immediately. She drew her gun and tried to seize Wei Zhiheng, but he quickly retreated before she could act. At the same time, a gunshot rang out—bang!—forcing Mo Ying to step back and widening the distance between them.

  "Trying to take me hostage? Very rational of you, but I can’t let that happen." Wei Zhiheng snapped his fingers. Pa! Many figures suddenly appeared, surrounding Mo Ying—at least ten people, all Affinity Users.

  "Allow me to reintroduce myself: Wei Zhiheng, Fraud Affinity, ranked tenth in the Poker hierarchy." Wei Zhiheng pulled out a pying card showing a clown wearing a white mask. "Codename: Trickster." Wei Zhiheng bowed gracefully. "Miss Mo Ying, would you kindly surrender and come with me?"

  The preparation was thorough—a setup to lure her here. As expected from someone with a Fraud Affinity. But what did they want from her? Something she possessed? Or was it reted to her companions?

  Mo Ying pulled out her scythe, speaking calmly, "Allow me to put up a bit of resistance." Whoosh! The bde caught the cold moonlight and sshed down.

  Thud! The sound of a heavy bde hitting wooden boards.

  Meanwhile, Davis was slicing fruit for breakfast. In fact, Davis was quite reliable—so long as he didn’t suddenly get "creative." He pced the sliced apples onto a pte and brought it to the living room. Ansel took a piece with a fork and popped it into his mouth.

  "Crisp and sweet. Delicious." Ansel praised the apples. "You’re up pretty early today." Yvette commented. "It’s already nine-thirty!" Kagumo pointed at the clock. "You call this early?" "Compared to my usual wake-up time, it’s very early." Ansel said, eating another piece of apple.

  "But it’s weird that Mo Ying hasn’t gotten up yet. She usually wakes up before eight." Davis said. "Maybe she stayed up all night gaming and overslept. I’ve done that before and missed my eight AM css." Ansel recalled his university days. "And got marked absent?" Kagumo said gleefully. "Nope. That css had over a hundred students, and the professor didn’t take attendance." Ansel replied.

  Kagumo clicked her tongue and grabbed another apple slice.

  The clock struck noon, but still no sign of Mo Ying. Kagumo went upstairs to call her for lunch.

  "It’s rare for you to sleep until noon. Maybe you really stayed up gaming... Huh?" Kagumo stared at the empty room, blinking. Mo Ying wasn’t there. She pulled out her phone and dialed Mo Ying’s number several times, but no one answered. A sense of unease rose in her chest.

  She went back downstairs and asked, "Mo Ying’s not in her room. Does anyone know where she went?" The three others shook their heads.

  "I don’t know. She didn’t message anything either." Yvette said. Kagumo asked them to try calling Mo Ying as well, but there was still no response.

  Current situation: no information, no clue where Mo Ying had gone. "Could she have run into trouble?" Ansel asked worriedly, realizing something was wrong. Yvette tapped the table thoughtfully, then picked up her phone and started typing. After sending a message, she put her phone down and said, "I’ve asked someone to help check the nearby security cameras. But there aren’t many cameras around here, so there’s no guarantee."

  "If she doesn’t come back by tonight..." Yvette hesitated. Calling the police was a good idea, but for someone missing less than a day, they might not take it seriously. Plus, dealing with the police might risk running into agents from the Special Operations Department.

  "Anyway, let’s not panic yet. Maybe she’s just handling something she can’t talk to us about." Yvette said, trying to reassure everyone. Maybe it was just a false arm.

  Beep, beep, beep. Kagumo stared at the unanswered calls. She gnced at the time: 10 PM. She had already made dozens of calls and sent nine messages, but still no reply.

  Everyone else was getting restless too. Ansel opened his game interface but quickly closed it. Yvette kept tapping on the table. Davis stood up from the couch, then sat back down.

  Ding! A notification popped up on Yvette’s phone. She immediately picked it up.

  It was a surveilnce clip: footage of Mo Ying leaving the building around midnight.

  "This is the only footage we could find. There aren’t many cameras around here," the sender messaged.

  Now they could confirm that Mo Ying had left on her own. But—where did she go? And why?

  "And... I just received an anonymous message. You should take a look." Yvette opened it—and her expression changed.

  "You’re incredible, catching her so quickly." In a hallway, a man fttered Wei Zhiheng. "It’s not all my doing. Compared to the great God of Deception, Loki, I’m still far behind." Wei Zhiheng replied. "You don't need to compare yourself to a god." the man said.

  "Enough. You said the same thing to Carolyn too, didn’t you? Stop buttering me up—do something useful." Wei Zhiheng, clearly annoyed by empty fttery, waved him off.

  Then he walked to a door, unlocked it with a key, and stepped inside. The room looked like an interrogation room. A crucifix-shaped frame stood at one side, and various torture instruments hung on the walls.

  A girl sat on an iron chair. She was chained tightly to it, her feet bound, and her hands cuffed behind her back with suppression cuffs that blocked her abilities. There were some wounds on her body, and droplets of blood dotted the floor.

  Wei Zhiheng walked to the chair and looked at Mo Ying. "I know you're awake. No need to pretend." The girl moved slightly. After a short silence, she sighed.

  "I got tricked." she said.

  "As the tenth seat in Poker, failing would’ve ruined my reputation." Wei Zhiheng said. "But even in a one-on-eleven fight, we still had three severely injured on our side, and others lightly wounded. You’re no pushover."

  The fight sted around fifteen minutes. In the end, Wei Zhiheng used his ability to steal her thoughts, causing Mo Ying to bnk out for two seconds, giving them the chance to strike her on the head and knock her unconscious. The blood trickling from her forehead told the story.

  This ability... is really troublesome. Mo Ying’s head still throbbed painfully. That hit had felt like it was going to crush her skull.

  "What time is it?" Mo Ying asked. "Nine PM. You’ve been out for almost a full day." Wei Zhiheng said, gncing at his phone.

  That long? Mo Ying tried to adjust her position slightly, but the chains were too tight, and the suppression cuffs were cmped almost perfectly around her wrists. She couldn’t move at all.

  "Sorry about that. We accidentally gave you too much sedative. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have slept so long." Wei Zhiheng said, though his face showed zero remorse.

  Mo Ying: "..." Accidentally, huh? More like you did it on purpose.

  "Ah, it was definitely the right call to bring extra people. You were tough to deal with. Those guys are still whining about how terrifying your scythe is. Our Life Affinity Users had a rough night patching everyone up." Wei Zhiheng seemed quite pleased with himself.

  "Maybe because you just stood around and watched the whole time?" "I'm a Fraud Affinity user. My job was only to lure you here. Plus, I didn’t want to get hurt. I had to be careful. As for the others—well, they can just heal up." Wei Zhiheng said nonchantly.

  "You really don’t care about your subordinates, huh? Or is there internal conflict in your organization?" "Heh, who knows?" Wei Zhiheng casually sat down on the floor.

  "By the way, aren’t you curious why we kidnapped you?" "What?" She was just about to ask that very question.

  "Because of your teammates." Wei Zhiheng said with a smile.