What Xinghai said produced a huge impact, just like the explosion of a nuclear bomb.
Zhang Zian was completely shocked. Even his senses and reactions were slowed down.
"An elfin is instructing these cats to steal things?"
Fina, who was using the screen as a mirror, also turned around in surprise. She jumped down from the desk and walked towards Zhang Zian, "What? There’s an elfin in this building?"
Xinghai nodded. "Meow — Xinghai saw it very clearly."
Fina and Old Time Tea glanced at each other. They were getting nervous.
"Xinghai, can you describe what the elfin looks like?" asked Old Time Tea.
"Well..." Xinghai tilted her head and thought, "It looked just like us..."
"Just like us... are you saying that the elfin is one of the Mytha?" asked Fina seriously, which was abnormal, because she usually was indifferent to everything.
Xinghai kept nodding, "Yes, it’s a cat, a beautiful one."
Seeing that Zhang Zian was absent-minded, Old Time Tea called out, "Zian!"
"Yes? Grandpa Tea, what’s wrong?"
Old Time Tea remained composed and instructed Zhang Zian to do the same, "To truly master martial arts, you must first have a big heart and remain calm even facing an impending catastrophe. And you seemed to be occupied by some thought just now."
"Understood, Grandpa Tea. I was thinking that, if an elfin occurred, why didn’t the game give out the tip of elfin detection?"
Normally,
when a new elfin appeared, the Pet Hunter game would give out the elfin detection tip. But this time, there was no tip. If Xinghai did see an elfin, then this event should be very interesting.
Old Time Tea pondered for a moment, "Xinghai, are you sure there were no other people or creatures alongside with that elfin?"
"No." Xinghai answered with certainty.
"Did the elfin look fierce?" asked Old Time Tea.
Xinghai shook her head, "No, not at all. It looked very pretty."
Fina chimed in, "I don’t know about you guys, but I am going to meet this elfin."
In Fina’s eyes, it was totally unacceptable that an elfin could tell cats what to do, especially when they did were terrible things like stealing. And Xinghai kept saying that it was a beautiful elfin. Nonsense! Fina believed that she was the most beautiful cat in this world. And that’s why she must meet this elfin.
Fina wanted to see the elfin, but Zhang Zian intended to leave. How about Old Time Tea?
Old Time Tea was thinking while pacing at a constant rate.
For fear of interfering with its thinking, Zhang Zian did not dare to breathe deeply.
Fina became impatient. She patted the ground with her paws, "Are you coming with me or not?"
"Can you have some patience?" Zhang Zian said to her.
Old Time Tea stopped her pacing, "I think we should go
go see it. If we don’t stop the elfin, I’m afraid similar thefts will be committed again and again. Also, Xinghai said that the elfin was not dangerous."
Fina was glad that Old Time Tea was on her side, and stared at Zhang Zian arrogantly. "Well, well, well. And you call yourself a man. You can go home first if you are afraid."
Zhang Zian shook his head in despondence, "I guess I have to follow you guys then. Let’s go find this elfin. But we must be very careful! If you sense any danger, you run, okay?"
"What a coward!" Fina muttered and looked up at the ventilation pipe, "I don’t have to go into that dirty place, right?"
"No, you don’t. I’ve never counted on you to do something like that." Zhang Zian continued. "It must be downstairs. Let’s walk downstairs through the emergency exit passage and see where the storage room is."
Through walking down from the emergency exit passage, he learned that there were five floors on the ground, and two floors underground, B1 and B2. Xinghai said she met the elfin on the lowest floor, so it must be on B2.
B2 was an underground garage, where the temperature was much lower than those upstairs. It was damp and cool. Since it was weekend, only a few cars were parked there. These cars seemed to have been parked there for
there for a long time. Some cars were covered with thick rain cloths, and the rest were covered with thick dust; some tires had even been deflated.
No one was there except Zhang Zian and his cats. It was so quiet that only the subtle and rhythmic tick-ta of water leaking from some pipes was heard. Shrouded by pale lights, the underground garage looked like the shooting scene of a thriller movie.
"Xinghai, do you remember in which direction?" asked Zhang Zian.
"Meow —" Xinghai looked around in confusion, "Xinghai..."
Old Time Tea reminded her, "Zian, look up. If we follow the ventilation pipes, we should be able to find it."
He looked up and saw the long ventilation pipe. Because they were at an underground garage with no extra walls or ceilings, the ventilation pipe was easy to be seen. But the garage was too large, it was not easy to follow the direction.
"We must remain alert." Zhang Zian tried to remind his cats, but no one was listening—Xinghai was bright and excited, Fina was unhappy and in doubt, and Old Time Tea was calm as always.
They followed the pipeline to walk across the underground garage. Zhang Zian saw that on the other side of the garage, there were several rooms with doors closed. And the ventilation pipe extended into the middle room.
Fina and Old Time Tea stopped and stared at that room, twitching their
room, twitching their ears.
"There are cats meowing," said Old Time Tea with a very low voice.
Zhang Zian also lowered his voice, "What are they talking about?"
He was asking Fina, because Fina seemed to be able to understand the meanings of the cats’ meowing.
But Fina turned her face away and ignored him.
"Some disgraceful things," answered Old Time Tea.
"Well… why don’t you guys wait here, and I go in there by myself? If they notice me, I will pretend to be the employee here," said Zhang Zian nervously.
Old Time Tea smiled, "No need for that. This elfin seems to be a very interesting one."
He calmed down with Old Time Tea’s words. He walked quietly to the front of the room and held the door handle with his right hand, praying that it was not locked. He twisted the handle clockwise, and door pushed open.
Just as Xinghai said, this was a storage room piled up with abandoned desks and chairs.
A few cats were chasing at each other in the room. A very pretty cat was lying lazily on a cushion and taking a nap.
They were alarmed by the door opening. They stopped playing and looked at the door.
He raised his phone quickly, opened the hunting interface of the game, and aimed it at that distinctive cat.
[Game Tip]: Target confirmation – Cat from the book (has been captured by others).