Doomsday Wonderland

Logically speaking, what reason did she have to come back here?

This hotel was where Dong Luorong and her driver had seen her. It was also the location of Qiu Chantian’s kidnapping. Now that the attempt had failed and her ident.i.ty had been exposed, there was no benefit to coming back—only danger. Anyone with common sense would have stayed far away. If the security forces were looking for her, focusing their efforts on the hotel made no sense.

Since the heightened security wasn’t for her, it was obvious who it was for.

This realization was how she had managed to slip into the hotel. But it also meant she couldn’t just walk up to Dong Luorong’s door and knock.

She remembered the elevator had a phone. Could she use it to call Dong’s room? But what if Qiu Chantian answered? Then what?

Xie Feng only wanted to confirm that Dong was safe. Whether or not they could meet didn’t matter—once she knew Dong was okay, she planned to leave immediately. She kept her head low, covering her face as much as possible. As the elevator doors slowly opened, she raised her umbrella, using the back of her hand to wipe her face at just the right moment, blocking the camera from catching her face.

Even she was impressed with her quick reflexes.

Once inside the elevator lobby, she reached for the phone on the small table, but her hand froze. Instead, she pretended to check her reflection in the elevator’s mirror, turning slightly to scan the hallway with her peripheral vision.

At the far end of the hall, right outside Dong Luorong’s room, stood two men who looked like bodyguards.

Qiu Chantian really was here. Any lingering hope she’d had vanished.

He never liked Dong Luorong—he barely visited her, maybe once a week at most. And yet, the moment he escaped danger, he came straight to see her. That couldn’t be a good sign.

Xie Feng rubbed her lips nervously. Even though she was staring at her reflection, she could sense the two men at the end of the hall had noticed her. They didn’t move or say anything, but she knew they were watching.

Was her heightened awareness because of how anxious she was?

The thought flickered briefly through her mind and disappeared.

Lingering too long in the elevator lobby would be suspicious, so after another glance at the mirror, she turned and walked away. She made her way toward the hallway where her old room was located, holding the key card in her hand. As she walked slowly down the hall, a question suddenly surfaced in her mind.

She had a.s.sumed the key card Dong Luorong gave her was for Dong’s room. But was that really the case?

Dong hadn’t expected to run into Xie Feng when she went downstairs, so the card she took with her should logically have been for her own room. That was what Xie Feng had always a.s.sumed.

Frowning in thought, she decided to test it.

She walked up to the room she’d stayed in the night before. Before unlocking the door, she held her breath and listened carefully—no sound came from within.

With a soft exhale, she pressed the key card against the lock. A green light blinked, and the door clicked open.

It really was the key to her own room.

On second thought, it made sense. Dong Luorong had booked the room, and during the days when she was taking care of Xie Feng, she must have used the spare key to come and go. If she normally kept the card in her coin purse, it was only natural that she would have brought it along when she went to the convenience store earlier.

After all, it was just a coincidence that she ran into Xie Feng.

Though that was her plan, Xie Feng stayed on high alert.

She turned the doork.n.o.b slowly, waiting a few seconds before pus.h.i.+ng the door open just a crack to listen for any signs of movement inside.

Silence.

When she fully opened the door, she found the room exactly as she had left it. Even the half-empty gla.s.s of water still sat untouched on the table. The bathrobe she had tossed by the foot of the sofa remained in the same spot, and when she inspected it, she found a strand of her hair tangled in the fabric.

No one had been here. But why?

If the driver had already revealed her presence, why hadn’t he told them which room she’d been staying in? Knowing a suspect’s last known location, wouldn’t the security forces have searched it?

Had the driver not given her up after all?

The questions in her mind multiplied until she began to suspect this was a trap. But the undisturbed room said otherwise—no one had come.

Unable to make sense of it, Xie Feng pushed the thought aside and picked up the phone by the bed. She cleared her throat and dialed Dong Luorong’s room number.

The phone rang four, maybe five times before a soft click sounded on the other end.

Qiu Chantian’s voice came through, low and commanding, the same imposing tone he always carried. “Who is this?”

Xie Feng had antic.i.p.ated this, but the moment still made her freeze, her throat tight with panic. She pitched her voice higher and pressed the phone close to her lips, letting her breath hit the receiver to distort the sound on the other end.

“h.e.l.lo, sir. Would you like turndown service tonight?” she asked.

“No,” came Qiu Chantian’s curt reply without hesitation. It was so short that Xie Feng couldn’t gather anything from it.

Before he could hang up, she blurted out, “Ms. Dong said she wanted to send up a bottle of wine…”

“Wine?”

Qiu Chantian let out a low chuckle—a short sound, but there was a subtle s.h.i.+ft in the way his voice trailed off at the end, as if he had turned his head to glance at someone nearby, his voice drifting slightly from the receiver.

A moment later, he was back on the line, voice clearer and colder. “She won’t be drinking much wine anymore.”

Before Xie Feng could come up with a response, she heard the sharp click of the line disconnecting.

Sitting at the edge of the bed, Xie Feng began trembling uncontrollably. The soaked fabric clinging to her skin felt heavier and colder than before, as if the chill had finally sunk into her bones. Maybe her fever had returned, or maybe it was the emotional pressure that had built up inside her, now bursting from that single, ominous sentence.

She realized the sound of soft whimpering, mixed with the chattering of her teeth, was coming from her own mouth.

Unable to hold herself up, she slipped from the bed, hitting the floor with a dull thud.

Her mind fogged over, and she had no sense of how much time pa.s.sed. It wasn’t until she heard the door creak open that awareness snapped back into her, sharp and sudden.

“Get in,” Qiu Chantian’s voice barked from the doorway. Silence followed.

“I didn’t expect you to be this clever,” he said with a sneer as he stepped inside, closing the door behind him with a heavy thump. “If I hadn’t checked your credit card charges, I wouldn’t have figured out that you booked two extra rooms. You must’ve known she was hiding something all along, huh? That’s why you used a decoy room to throw off Huang?”