"You were jealous," she accused coldly. "You couldn’t stand that Hua Jing outshone you. That everyone praised her while you stood in the background."
His eyes flashed.
"And you weren’t?" he countered imdiately. "You hated her long before I ever said a word against her."
Silence stretched between them, thick with accusation.
For a brief mont, neither denied it.
Hua Ling’s lips thinned.
"You were the one who executed the details," she said, her voice dropping but losing none of its venom. "You were the one who handled the logistics. If this has backfired, that’s on you."
"My job was business," Mao Li retorted. "What you wanted was revenge."
"And you were more than happy to help when it suited your ego," she snapped.
He leaned forward, glaring at her.
"You think I don’t see it now?" he said through clenched teeth. "You manipulated . You fed my resentnt. You told Hua Jing would eventually push out. That aligning with you was protection."
She scoffed.
"Oh, so now you’re the victim?"
"At least I didn’t bury soone alive!" he shot back impulsively.
The words slipped out before he could stop them.
The words seed to suck the oxygen out of the room.
For a fraction of a second, everything froze—the humming vent, the swaying bulb, even the faint echo of their own breathing. Hua Ling’s eyes widened before narrowing into sothing venomous. If looks could kill, Mao Li would have dropped dead on that concrete floor.
"What did you just say?" she demanded, her voice low at first, trembling with contained fury.
Mao Li imdiately realized what he had let slip, but exhaustion and anger dulled his instinct to retreat. "You heard ," he muttered, rubbing his bruised jaw. "Don’t pretend you didn’t."
Her composure shattered.
"Why would you say that?" she scread, stepping toward him. "Why would you say that out loud? Are you trying to drag down with you? Have you completely lost your mind?"
He was already tired—tired of her shrill accusations, tired of the spiral they had created, tired of pretending he had not been complicit. "Stop screaming," he snapped. "You think shouting will change what you did?"
Outside the room, beyond the thick tal door and hidden caras embedded within dark corners, Team One watched in silence.
Every word was recorded.
Every facial twitch analyzed.
When Mao Li uttered the phrase buried alive, one of the n monitoring the feed stiffened almost imperceptibly. His hand moved imdiately to his secure device. He typed with swift precision:
The madam has been buried alive. Location not yet confird. Extracting details.
The ssage was encrypted before being transmitted.
There was a quiet assurance in those words—extracting details—that carried a aning both efficient and rciless.
He slipped the device back into his pocket and glanced at the others.
A single nod passed between them.
They moved.
Inside the room, Hua Ling and Mao Li were still locked in their vicious exchange, so consud by bla that they montarily forgot the most crucial fact—they had not brought themselves here.
The tal door opened without warning.
The sound was not loud, yet it sliced through their argunt like a blade.
Both of them turned.
Several n entered, their expressions devoid of emotion, movents synchronized. There was no shouting, no explanation, no visible aggression. They simply advanced.
"What are you doing?" Mao Li demanded, backing away instinctively.
Hua Ling’s bravado flickered. "You can’t just—"
She did not finish.
Two n seized Mao Li, pulling him backward. Another two closed in on Hua Ling. They were separated with chanical efficiency, dragged toward different exits within the facility.
"Where are you taking ?" Hua Ling scread, thrashing violently. "Let go of ! You can’t do this! Do you know who I am?"
No one responded.
The doors shut behind them one after another, sealing each into separate chambers.
What followed was not shown.
The corridors remained silent except for what seeped through the thick walls—muffled cries, the scrape of furniture, a sharp gasp abruptly cut off. Hua Ling’s voice rose distinctly above the rest at intervals, strained and desperate.
"I won’t tell you! I won’t tell you where she is!"
Her defiance grew weaker with each repetition.
In another room, Mao Li’s composure fractured completely. His earlier argunts dissolved into incoherent pleas. The weight of consequences, once abstract, now pressed against him with suffocating force.
Ti stretched.
Then, gradually, the screams faded.
The silence that followed was heavier than the noise had been.
One of the Team One mbers exited a chamber, removing dark gloves with deliberate calm. He walked down the corridor toward the central command area where Ling Wei stood reviewing live feeds.
"I have the location," the man said evenly.
Ling Wei did not display surprise.
"Confirm," he instructed.
The man nodded. "She placed a tracker near the burial site. A personal marker. She intended to return and verify."
Even Ling Wei’s composed gaze sharpened at that detail.
Sick.
Calculating.
Hua Ling had buried Hua Jing alive and planted a tracker so she could co back later—to ensure death had done its work.
The coordinates were imdiately transmitted to the technical team stationed in the adjacent operations room. Multiple screens flickered as data streams updated. One of the analysts entered the coordinates and overlaid them onto a satellite map of Silian Forest.
Within seconds, a red marker pulsed on the screen.
"I have it," the analyst announced. "Cross-referencing with the sedan’s exit path... confird. Burial site is on the far eastern quadrant, opposite from Mr. Fu’s current position."
The information was encrypted and relayed through modified communication devices designed specifically for unstable terrain. Silian Forest’s dense canopy interfered with conventional signals, but Team One had anticipated that. Portable signal boosters and encrypted transmitters ensured contact remained intact.
Deep within the forest, Fu Jing Rong’s device vibrated.
He stopped mid-stride.
The ssage displayed with cold clarity.
Exact coordinates received. Eastern quadrant. Confird burial site.
For a mont, he did not move.
Buried alive.
The words struck him harder than any physical blow.
His face did not distort, but sothing in his eyes shifted—fear breaking through the iron control he had maintained all night. It had already been hours. Hours in suffocating soil, deprived of air, trapped in darkness.
Too long.
"Call the helicopter,"
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