Chapter 164: Puppet Technique (3)

Although they had shrunk in size, it did not diminish their status here in the slightest. Cold-Blood Five was rarely dispatched on missions nowadays; she mostly coordinated and gave orders. The rare occasions when she actually needed to take the field involved figures of immense power across the continent, and eliminating even one such person a year was already more than enough.

Normally, she only took on high-difficulty assignments to keep her skills from rusting and to prevent her killing intent from regressing.

"If you want to go, you go, and by the way, get rid of this eyesore." Ye Lang slipped right out of Cold Blood Five's grip, leaving her momentarily stunned, unable to figure out how she could have been so careless as to let him escape.

"If you aren't coming out with me, how am I supposed to leave! Hurry up, stop babbling!" Cold Blood Five grabbed Ye Lang firmly once again. This time, she was determined not to let him run off.

"What a hassle. I'll just dispose of Cold Blood Thirteen, and then you won't want to leave anymore." Ye Lang wriggled free once more, leaving Cold Blood Five dazed for a long time.

"If you can handle it properly, I'll stay here with you for a few days. I certainly don't want anyone else seeing me like this." Cold Blood Five said in a daze, staring at Ye Lang with a gaze that grew increasingly peculiar.

In her eyes, Ye Lang was becoming more and more mysterious. No matter how she looked at it, he didn't seem at all like a test subject who had been captured.

Had he been a mere test subject, upon seeing Cold Blood Thirteen dead, he would surely have rejoiced that he no longer had to die. Yet from beginning to end, he had not cared in the least, acting as though he had never worried about whether he would be experimented on.

This situation left only two possibilities: either this kid was an absolute fool, or he knew for a fact that he was not going to die.

Cold Blood Five felt that the first option went without saying—the kid was already a bit silly to begin with—but the second possibility was also extremely high. In other words, both possibilities were true!

No matter what, Cold Blood Five felt that Ye Lang was no ordinary person, and his purpose in coming here was hardly innocent, a conviction that grew even stronger after what happened next.

"Vanishing into thin air, you monsters! I am the emissary of justice... Uh, forgot..." Ye Lang struck a heroic pose and pulled out an alchemy tool, preparing to purify the object ahead of them.

Only, the moment he produced the tool, his entire body was pinned flat underneath it. "Xiao Wu, save me..." Ye Lang immediately cried out to Cold Blood Five for help.

"Can't be bothered with you. Can't you just put the thing away yourself?" Cold Blood Five said.

"That's true!" Ye Lang recalled the tool, then took it out once more. This time, he was much more careful and avoided being crushed, placing the tool neatly on the ground, aimed squarely at Cold Blood Thirteen's corpse.

"Purify!"

Ye Lang pressed his hand against the tool, emitting a flash of light. The alchemy instrument then whirred into operation, firing a beam of light that decomposed any matter in its path, scattering it into thin air.

Rest in peace, Cold Blood Thirteen. I will remember your contribution to the cause of alchemy!

"So you really do know alchemy!" Although the tool was common and Cold Blood Five had seen it before, she knew that anyone who could activate it directly without using a switch, the way Ye Lang had, must be a true alchemist.

Just now, Ye Lang hadn't been able to reach the switch because his body was simply too small and inconvenient, and since he had no intention of hiding his mastery of alchemy, he had simply activated it in this straightforward manner.

"I told you long ago, I am an alchemy genius; you folks just refused to believe it." Ye Lang waved his hand dismissively, retrieved the alchemy tool into his storage ring, and went back to studying the art of alchemical puppets.

Once relieved of the annoyance of the corpse stench and maggots, Cold Blood Five settled down here with peace of mind. Watching Ye Lang sit atop a book and read, she found it somewhat amusing, though she quickly remembered that she was doing the exact same thing.

*Actually, if we both remain like this forever, it might not be a bad thing at all. At least this way, we can stay far away from the strife and turmoil of the mortal world...* Cold Blood Five gazed at Ye Lang, lost in a hazy reverie.

And so, the two of them spent many days living in close quarters under these bizarre circumstances. How many days exactly? Both of them had forgotten.

Ye Lang had forgotten because he was consumed by his alchemy research, while Cold Blood Five simply didn't want to think about it, hence forgetting.

During these days, Cold Blood Five came to understand Ye Lang a little better. She realized that his mastery of alchemy was likely no less than that of Cold Blood Thirteen, because under his painstaking efforts, the puppets left behind by Cold Blood Thirteen were gradually being perfected until they were almost indistinguishable from real people.

At the same time, Cold Blood Five learned that Ye Lang was capable of multitasking. Whenever she asked him a question while he was busy with other tasks, he could still answer them one by one.

Moreover, his answers under such conditions were completely unreserved, benefiting her immensely and causing her assassination techniques to grow increasingly brilliant and profound.

Ye Lang had no idea what he was doing; he could never have guessed that because of his casual influence, the continent would give birth to a Reaper Maiden far more terrifying than the God of Death, eventually rising to become the reigning Queen of Assassins!

As many days drifted by, the physical forms of Ye Lang and Cold Blood Five remained unchanged—they were still a pair of tiny runts. This left Cold Blood Five feeling quite helpless, yet she no longer felt the intense resistance she once had.

Thanks to their spatial storage items, their daily survival was completely unproblematic; the provisions inside were more than enough to feed the two of them for a lifetime.

This wasn't necessarily because there was an astronomical amount of food inside—ordinarily, a normal person might exhaust it in just a few years—but because they had shrunk, the amount of food they consumed had naturally shrunk proportionally as well.

At one point, Ye Lang sighed emotionally, "I once dreamed of being able to eat a mountain of steamed buns, and now I think I've finally achieved it!"

On one occasion, Cold Blood Five wanted to change her clothes and decided to tailor them herself to make a brand new set. She was actually quite skilled at this, though no one else knew it.

However, right then, Ye Lang stopped her and uttered a single sentence. After that, Cold Blood Five gave up any thoughts of changing clothes; at most, she would simply wash her old garments, dry them, and put the worn ones back on.

What was that sentence?

"Xiao Wu, if you change into new clothes, what if our bodies suddenly recover their normal size? Your clothes will get ripped to shreds! If you're going to wear anything, wear the clothes that shrank with us—those should change back together with us..." Ye Lang said very casually, as if he didn't mind the implications of that happening at all.

"..." Cold Blood Five's face flushed red, and she said nothing more.

Little humorous anecdotes of daily life like these seemed to continually shorten the distance between Cold Blood Five and Ye Lang. Perhaps it was also due to sharing adversity; looking the way they did now, there was indeed a profound sense of going through thick and thin together.

Meanwhile, during this period, the members of the Cold Blood Group were baffled by the sudden disappearance of Ye Lang and Cold Blood Five. They had even sent people to search the laboratory, but since Ye Lang and Cold Blood Five had only burrowed in through a tiny hole, no one had noticed, leading everyone to assume that Cold Blood Thirteen was simply continuing his experiments in seclusion.