I had no time for self-recrimination. I immediately ordered the tiger demon to smash the gate of the company opposite. All vehicles were directed into the abandoned factory, proceeding directly to the underground parking lot. By the time we reached that gate, Ya Nan had already opened it with the key.
The gate was about two meters wide. After retracting their side mirrors, our sedans could just squeeze through. We passed through an underground pedestrian tunnel and arrived at Cang Jing Group's underground space. The first basement level was just an ordinary parking lot with a few old cars scattered around, their windshields covered in dust. It was clearly a decoy.
Ya Nan found the entrance to the second and third basement levels and led the convoy. We turned a corner and descended to the third basement level. Using the same key again, she unlocked a warehouse door. Inside was a storage area, with antiques neatly packaged in wooden crates and arranged in rows.
There was no time to open the crates and verify the goods. Yao Yao was on lookout outside. I could only rely on my faint qi sensing technique to identify antiques that emitted qi. I instructed the demons to load the crates directly onto the vehicles. We had loaded eight items when, suddenly, Yao Yao's voice echoed in my mind: "Move it!"
"Go!" I ordered.
"We haven't loaded these two big ones yet!" Chen Ke shouted.
"Forget them, move it!"
Everyone immediately got into their cars and returned the way we came. As we sped out of the parking lot, we saw Yao Yao standing at the entrance, signaling us to turn east. I was driving the lead car and wanted to brake to pick her up. However, Yao Yao, running ahead, shouted back, "Don't slow down, open the sunroof!"
Chen Ke in the passenger seat opened the car's sunroof. After I turned onto the main road, I drove behind Yao Yao, chasing after her. Just as I was about to hit her, Yao Yao leaped up, spread her arms, and her forward momentum sharply decreased. I timed my acceleration perfectly, allowing Yao Yao to land on the car roof.
Yao Yao executed a front flip and dove headfirst into the car. She frowned, "Why are you so slow!"
"The distance inside was too long," I replied helplessly. Each time we descended to a lower level, we had to traverse the entire parking lot diagonally to reach the next section.
"Why are we going this way?" I asked, glancing at the navigation. Going further east, the sea was only a kilometer away – a dead end!
"See for yourself!" Yao Yao said.
I activated my qi sensing technique and "looked" behind us. All the pursuers were within my qi sensing range, approaching from three different directions in a pincer movement, leaving only the eastern direction open for escape.
Looking at the qi colors of the pursuers, they were all uniformly purple, not a single trace of blue. They were all human, no demons. Each group of pursuers consisted of five individuals with purple qi, totaling fifteen people. Three of them were familiar – the three female ninjas. The others with purple qi were unknown, and not among the ten individuals with purple qi who had gone to Fucheng.
This clearly demonstrated the Cang Jing Group's deep reserves and formidable strength.
This was clearly a trap, a "luring the tiger into the mountains" scenario. I even had reason to suspect that the "Cang Jing President" on the third floor was not the actual president, but merely a stand-in. Everyone in the office building was a pawn, with a single objective: to lure us in.
But if that were the case, why did they allow us to get the keys, open the treasury, and take some treasures? There was only one explanation: the treasures were also fake!
"Damn it! We fell for it!" I slammed the steering wheel in frustration.
"What's wrong?" Yao Yao asked.
"Seven or eight out of ten of the treasures we snatched are likely fakes," I analyzed.
"No, they're genuine," Yao Yao said. Right, I had chosen the treasures based on their qi. How could they be fakes? Yao Yao's qi sensing was even more precise, and the wooden crates weren't thick; she could tell with a single glance.
Perhaps the Cang Jing Group was too overconfident and didn't expect us to actually reach this point. Their encirclement speed was slow.
However, their pursuit speed was not slow. As we neared the coast, the three pursuing groups had already converged into one, less than five hundred meters behind us!
"The road ahead is the coastal highway," I pointed at the navigation. "Should we go north or south after we get on it?"
Going north would lead towards the Changbai Mountains. Going south would require us to circumvent the Liaodong Peninsula and return towards Fucheng...