647: Chapter 647: Do you want to enjoy the blessings of Heaven (long chapter, requesting monthly votes) 647: Chapter 647: Do you want to enjoy the blessings of Heaven (long chapter, requesting monthly votes) He Ao rolled off the sofa and with a flick of his toes, sent the curved handle of his cane flying into his hand.
He looked around.
Fire and thick smoke filled the entire living room, the acrid fus rushing into his nostrils, nearly choking him.
The bookcase, the sofa, the curtains—everything in the room that could burn was ablaze.
Moreover, there was a pungent odor of liquid fuel spreading throughout the room.
Before Cito had fallen asleep, there wasn’t such a sll in the room.
He Ao glanced at the open window in the living room and after a brief pause, he looked at the closed door not far away, then imdiately turned back and rushed deeper into the room.
A burning wooden coat rack was falling to one side, blocking his path; he extended his cane and forcefully struck it, snapping the coat rack in front of him.
Separated pieces of the coat rack scattered flas like unfolding petals, and He Ao passed through the blaze to reach the innermost room of the house.
The door of this room wasn’t tightly shut; he charged forward, bursting through the door into the room.
It was a delicately decorated pink children’s room, with a small bookshelf standing at the edge that was now part of the inferno.
He Ao looked ahead; the window of the children’s room was cracked open for ventilation.
“Cough—cough—”
A little girl in a pink pajama was curled up on the bed at the side of the room, with a thin cool blanket fallen beside her.
The thick smoke made her cough violently, but she did not wake up.
The rich sll of liquid fuel filled the room, mainly concentrated near the bookshelf and desk, and not by the bed.
He Ao rushed over and scooped up the little girl with one arm.
Then he imdiately dashed towards the outside of the room.
The bookshelf inside the room had completely burned into a tree of fire, leaning toward the doorway.
He Ao stretched out his arm, forcefully propped up the collapsing bookshelf with his cane for a mont, then slipped through the gap between the bookshelf and the wall, bursting out of the room.
At that mont, the little girl in his arms finally woke up, her eyes opening in confusion, “Cough…
Grandpa, is there a fire?
It’s so hot, so stuffy…
Cough cough cough…”
The smoke seared her throat, causing an even more intense bout of coughing.
“It’s okay.”
He Ao bowed his body and rushed forward.
By now, the flas in the living room were even more ferocious, the thick smoke virtually forming a black cloud, obscuring the ceiling along with the flas.
He Ao was already feeling a noticeable asphyxiation and physical weakness.
Flas would rob a person of oxygen, and thick smoke could suffocate.
He tried his best to press his body down to avoid the thickest smoke above.
Fortunately, the house wasn’t large, and he quickly made it out of the blaze and reached the front door.
But he didn’t imdiately reach for the doorknob.
The smart lock used in Cito’s son’s ho was a best-selling model from the Trison Group, equipped with an overheating auto-unlock feature to prevent death by fire.
The fact that the door remained locked despite such high temperatures ant either the Trison Group had made false claims, or the lock had been sabotaged.
In such a situation, pulling on the doorknob was pointless.
He Ao extended his cane and pressed open a hidden cover below the door lock, revealing a chanical latch that needed turning.
He Ao glanced at the chanical latch; the paint on the surface of the latch was oxidized and faded, indicating that the temperature of the lock surface was extrely high.
“Fetch Grandpa’s cane for .”
He Ao handed his cane to his granddaughter, then he covered his fingers with Divine Sense, gripped the lock, and gently twisted it.
The lock began to turn a bit, then seed to catch inside, unable to rotate any further with more force.
He took a deep breath, a faint energy gathering in his chest, which he quickly dispersed throughout his body.
He squatted halfway, trying to concentrate the strength of his waist and legs into his arms, and then applied force once more.
Click—
The lock turned.
The door swung open in response.
Without hesitation, he took his cane back from his granddaughter, sidestepped fiercely, and used the cane to hook and pull the door handle, opening the door.
Just then, a large storage cabinet behind him began to emit a squeaking noise as it toppled towards him.
Without a second thought, he rushed out of the room.
He glanced ahead; the doors of the neighboring apartnts remained closed.
He looked at his wristband, checked the ti; it was past nine in the evening.
Most residents on this floor should still be at work.
He Ao turned to look behind him at the raging fire, which seed to have only started a short while ago.
Yet, fueled by the liquid accelerant, it quickly beca uncontrollable.
As He Ao burst out of the room, thick smoke spread into the hallway.
He Ao extended his cane to pull the door shut, cutting off the smoke, and at the sa ti, noted the front panel of the lock was clearly smashed.
He then walked over to the window and looked down.
It seed like there were sirens on the street below.
It looked like the fire departnt had arrived.
Cito’s son’s ho had a fire alarm smoke detector, connected to the fire alarm center in Saint Joen City.
The fire departnt should have been alerted and dispatched as soon as the fire started.
The fire ergency services in Saint Joen City charged for their response, and it wasn’t cheap.
But Cito’s family had a habit of purchasing accidental fire insurance.
Usually, if you’ve bought insurance, the cost of the fire departnt’s response would be covered by the insurance payout, but this insurance only covered losses.
If the fire spread to other hos causing damage, and compensation was involved, insurance wouldn’t cover it.
The buildings in Saint Joen City were very densely packed, and high-rises were common.
If windows and doors were left open, allowing the fire to spread upwards, it was a typical occurrence.
It seed they were lucky this ti; the fire had only just started when the fire departnt arrived.
After all, the efficiency of Saint Joen’s fire departnt was always hit or miss; sotis they would arrive late, even after several hos or floors had been consud by flas.
The apartnt building where Cito’s son lived was considered one of the better ones, albeit old, but its fire prevention design was still not bad, and there were no obvious signs of the fire spreading yet.
However, after He Ao closed the door, he didn’t linger but imdiately carried his granddaughter and darted into the fire escape at the end of the hallway, descending quickly through the ergency passage.
His son’s apartnt was only on the twelfth floor.
He Ao’s figure swiftly traversed the fire evacuation route, triggering the motion-sensing lights to illuminate one after another.
His granddaughter in his arms carefully clutched at his collar.
From the sll of those fuels, it was clear that this ‘fire’ was intentionally set.
Since the fire might have only started a short while ago, the person who set it probably hadn’t gone far.
Cito had done nothing noteworthy in his life, neither good deeds nor had he made significant enemies; it was unlikely that soone would specifically co to his ho to set a fire, especially targeting his son’s room.
The strongest sll of the liquid fuel was not only found around flammable items like curtains but also on the bookshelf in the children’s room and the storage cabinet.
Obviously, the perpetrator wasn’t aiming to kill Cito and his grandson, the old and young; the more important goal was to burn certain special items in the room.
Moreover, it was quite apparent that the perpetrator didn’t have a lot of fuel, so they could only sprinkle it on so key areas rather than on Cito and his grandson.
Of course, it was also possible that the arsonist was worried that pouring the fuel on them would cause the flas to spread too quickly, waking the victims up and failing to burn the intended items.
In a relatively enclosed space, suffocation was more likely to kill than flas.
It could be a combination of both reasons, but it was certain that the perpetrator didn’t have much liquid fuel and didn’t break in by picking the lock.
Because once inside the house, a quick shot with a silencer at Cito and his grandson would solve the problem, a simple matter of two bullets and no need for such an elaborate sche.
The act the perpetrator had done clearly resembled the aftermath cleanup usually perford by a gang, where murder and arson were routine.
Although the rules and laws varied from city to city, the acts carried out by gangs were mostly similar.
This ti, the fire was likely set using a remote drone or a similar device that carried liquid fuel into the room through an open window and then spread the fuel to start the fire.
This kind of liquid fuel was probably the type that wouldn’t leave any trace after burning, and although it had a pungent sll, it wouldn’t leave substantial evidence for the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the city police.
In Regit’s younger days, gangs were committing such acts, and they are still at it now.
However, the gangs in Dawn City updated their thods frequently, part of the underground world leading the trends.
He Ao wasn’t familiar with the gangs in Saint Joen City, and it was possible they were just catching up to this stage of evolution.
During his contemplation, He Ao had already dashed through the fire escape and reached the ground.
The door to the fire escape led directly to an alley behind the building.
At the mont, a dense crowd had started to gather on the main street near the apartnt block, many people surrounding the building down below, watching the firefighters at work.
He Ao walked to the edge of the building, taking a quick glance at the crowd.
Among them, he spotted a person with a face full of smiles, taking photos of the commotion with a bracelet communicator.
This person looked vaguely familiar to him, almost like his son’s neighbor.
Then He Ao noticed the smile on the person’s face gradually becoming stiff.
Hmm…
It seed that the man had realized the fire was about to reach his own ho.
He Ao looked away.
There was no need to worry too much about the fire spreading at this point, even though the fire departnt’s service attitude and response speed in Saint Joen City could be hit-or-miss, their technical level was still there.
He Ao glanced at the night sky from beneath his clothes.
Normally, the drone that started the fire would hover nearby to monitor the aftermath.
With age, Cito’s eyesight had diminished, even with regular exercise, it was nowhere near as good as when he was young.
He Ao searched carefully for a while before he spotted a small drone tucked away in the darkness at the corner of a nearby building.
As the firefighters began their work, the drone in the night sky wobbled, then started flying away from the apartnt building.
Without hesitation, He Ao followed the drone’s departure route in pursuit.
This was an old-fashioned, point-to-point remote-controlled drone with a precise control range of within five kiloters.
Since these people were here to “deal with the aftermath,” they surely knew sothing.
About Cito’s son’s abnormal behavior, as well as the car accident that took his son and daughter-in-law’s lives.
The wind of a sumr night brushed through his grizzled hair and across his wrinkled cheeks.
The little girl huddled in his embrace clutched the elderly man’s collar tightly with her hand.
——
“Successful?
Did the fire ignite?”
The delicate drone enlarged in the night sky, slowly gliding down towards the secluded, dark alleyway, towards the off-road vehicle covered in tal patches and in front of the two n standing before it.
“Of course, didn’t you see what I do for a living?”
The man holding the remote control looked back at his companion and laughed, “It’s just that this ti it was really troubleso; my long-endurance drone ran out of battery.”
“How about the old man and the little girl?”
His companion asked in the aid of the conversation.
“Didn’t see,”
The man controlling the drone watched as it landed on the front hood of the off-road vehicle, “The fire departnt got here too quickly this ti, I didn’t have much ti to monitor, lest the onlookers see it,”
He took a suitcase from the off-road vehicle and began to pack the drone, all the while laughing,
“But we dosed such a heavy amount of Peaceful Sleeping dicine this ti, a lethal dose.
An almost seventy-year-old man and a ten-year-old girl.
That girl had a door between her, so she probably didn’t inhale much, but that old man is definitely a goner.
If the drug didn’t kill him, he wouldn’t wake up and would be burnt to death by the fire.”
“Rest easy, I’m cautious in my work.
These past couple of years, I’ve lost count of the number of jobs like this I’ve done.
Have you ever seen a survivor?
Besides, our mission this ti was to destroy the stuff in the house, silencing them was just incidental.
What could an almost dead old man and a child accomplish?
What threat could they possibly pose?”
“That’s true.”
The companion laughed and started to help pack up as well.
“If the window in that room hadn’t been so small, permitting only this little drone to get through,”
The man put the remote control into the suitcase and said, “I would have switched to a bigger one, strapped a silenced pistol on top, bang bang two shots, give them a swift end, better than being burnt alive in a fire.”
As he spoke, he chuckled, “What’s worse in this world, living or dying?
I’m sending him to enjoy the bliss of Heaven early, and if there really are spirits in this world, he should be thanking .”
The man closed the suitcase, snapped the clasps shut, and picked it up.
“Would you like to enjoy the bliss of Heaven early?”
Just at that mont, a slightly immature childish voice rang out from behind them in the darkness of the night.
“Who?!”
Both n spun around and each drew a handgun from their waists.
Imdiately after, ca the distinct sound of a cane tapping on the ground, accompanied by faint footsteps.
The man who had just controlled the drone kept his finger on the trigger, warily staring into the darkness.
“Two people asking for directions.”
An old, hoarse voice ca from deep within the darkness.
The faint light outlined the figure of a man, a tall silhouette.
The cor was dressed in a neat shirt, creased trousers, leaning on a cane with a wood-patterned handle, his short hair speckled with white.
Ti had left its mark on the wrinkled cheeks, yet the elderly man’s tall figure seed to break free from the fetters of the years, casting his own shadow in the darkness of the night.
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