Three days later, Yin Mei and Yao Heyan were at the Rong family's company headquarters with Rong Sheng and Wen Hua. As expected, even without interference from He Lanying, the two had still gotten progressively closer.
Rong Sheng had on a slightly annoyed expression as his work date had been crashed by this happy-go-lucky newly engaged couple, but he bore with it. He might as well let Yao Heyan boast while he could.
"I brought some muffins, would you like to eat them?" Wen Hua said with a shy expression, her cheeks slightly pink as she glanced toward Rong Sheng.
"Only for Rong Sheng?" Yao Heyan teased, and immediately Wen Hua's already pink cheeks turned bright red as she shook her head furiously.
"N-no, there are enough for everyone," she said, gripping at the basket in her arms.
"Then let's go to Rong Sheng's office to eat them," Yao Heyan said, and Rong Sheng nodded.
Yin Mei recalled that the female lead was very good at baking. But, it wasn't like she hadn't tried baking either. Since kids were fond of sweet things, even though sugar was a little difficult to get their hands on, Yin Mei would still occasionally bake them something - thankfully, baking was considered as part of the cooking skill to the system, so her sweets had turned out just as delicious as her normal dishes.
So although Yin Mei would be missing out on this opportunity, she wasn't really concerned. "Heyan, I'm gonna go to the bathroom real quick," she said with a blank expression, and Yao Heyan looked at her, finding it weird.
"Then-" He was about to suggest that he would accompany her, but Yin Mei guessed his intentions and shook her head.
"You go on ahead with the other two. I'll be right back," she said, and Yao Heyan nodded reluctantly.
Rong Sheng looked at this lovey dovey display that seemed as if they were parting for a million years and not five minutes, and his eyebrow twitched a little. He grabbed Yao Heyan by the shoulder, as he said, "Don't worry Lanying, I'll take care of your man for you. You can rest assured and go to the bathroom."
Yin Mei nodded so solemnly and seriously that Rong Sheng felt a little bad for teasing them. What the heck, it was like He Lanying was a soldier heading off to war, and Yao Heyan was her wife she was leaving at home. Rong Sheng immediately banished that image from his mind.
Yin Mei lingered for a moment, wanting to warn Yao Heyan not to kill anyone while she was gone, but after all, this wasn't really appropriate to say out loud, so in the end she went to the bathroom with a sad face. Once in the toilet stall, she texted this to him instead.
She checked the time, it was just about correct, and then looked up. It was a ventilation duct! Yes, that was right, Yin Mei wanted to try crawling through the air vents like in those movies. She took off her high heels, placing them on the top of the toilet paper dispenser before standing on the toilet lid barefoot. She reached up, on her tip toes as she pushed open the cover. It took a few tries, but she did it! Thank god no one else was in the bathroom, or they would have noticed.
After a few more efforts, she got up inside. It was a little cramped, but He Lanying's body had a slender build, so it was still manageable. She crawled, making a decent amount of sound in doing so. "Why is it so loud?" She mumbled. It wasn't like in the movies at all QwQ!!
While Yin Mei was struggling to navigate the air vents and getting extremely lost and covered in dust in the process, the building was quickly seized by a large group of armed terrorists, as they killed the guards and took the people inside the company hostage. They killed those who resisted and tried to run, and gathered the rest on a high floor meeting room that they cleared out of tables and chairs. Because there were simply too many people for them to all take hostage, they did allow some to go, but they kept a medium sized group of people here - and of course, those included all the executives and higher ranks.
Yao Heyan was kneeling along with the rest, his hands behind his head, but his expression was extremely dark. Obviously, it was because Yin Mei had gone to the bathroom and not come back yet, while they had been taken hostage by a group of terrorists.
But remembering how he had already promised He Lanying that he wouldn't kill anyone through text, he tried to calm himself down. It was no good, this dark and anxious feeling kept on rising up in his chest. He would lose her again. No, no, no, he couldn't lose her again...
He wasn't even able to stop and think how Yin Mei seemed to have predicted such a situation, instead struggling to contain himself from attempting to kill the terrorists and put everyone else in danger. It wasn't that he cared about everyone else, but he hadn't lost it so much as to perform such a deed in front of people who could be potential witnesses.
But, he was very close to losing it.
Right around this time, he was nudged by the elbow of his close friend, Rong Sheng. "Calm down. I'm sure He Lanying is fine." He said in a quiet voice to him.
Yao Heyan didn't really believe him, but he still took deep breaths to calm himself down. Even though he promised himself that he would protect her, why is it that every time he failed to do so? Useless, useless, useless! It was his fault. It was because of him that she was suffered all that pain. Because he was never there when it mattered.
Meanwhile, Yin Mei was tired of struggling to get through the air vents, and finding the nearest exit, unceremoniously kicked open the duct cover and dropped out onto the ground. It looked like she was in a hallway, but she was completely and utterly unable to figure out where she was exactly.
She heard the sounds of footsteps approaching and quickly ducked into the nearest room, squatting down as she kept her ear to the door.
"Did you hear some sort of sound from over here?" Person A said, his footsteps heavy.
"I don't think so- wait, what is that? Did someone go into the air vents?" Person B replied as the footsteps came to a stop.
Yin Mei knew that they had machine guns, handguns, knives, and bulletproof vests. She had no idea how they could've gotten anywhere being so heavily armed, but she also knew there was no point in wondering this.
She wanted to steal some of their weapons, but was a little cautious in going up against people with guns. After all, there's no way He Lanying was fast enough to dodge bullets, unlike her previous bodies. So, she would probably have to ambush one of them if she could catch one alone.
The two men talked for a little while more, before finally leaving. Yin Mei double checked before she left the room, keeping her footsteps quiet as she snuck up to the wall, using it as cover as she peeked around the hallway corner. She had no idea where she was, so she just picked a random direction to go in.
"Hey! You!!" A voice suddenly shouted loudly, and Yin Mei whipped her head around, to see a man decked out in a helmet, black bulletproof vest, and machine gun.
It was only one person though. Yin Mei didn't understand what kind of weird patrol system these guys were operating on, but that didn't matter right now. She dashed forward, but didn't dare to turn a corner in case she met someone else. Instead she chose a room to enter. It looked like a small storage space and she glanced around before looking like she had got an idea.
When the man entered the room, he looked back and forth but couldn't see the girl. He walked forward several steps, when Yin Mei dropped down behind him... and her knee hit the ground. "Ow! Sh*t, it hurts!" She said, and the man whipped his head around, to see Yin Mei clutching her knee with a teary eyed expression.
"Why doesn't anything go like in the movies? This isn't fair!" She complained as the man grabbed his machine gun, pointing it toward her. She grabbed his arm, whirling around and pushing him down to the ground with a force that he wouldn't have expected from such a slender girl. She stepped on his arm, and pulling it, it broke with a crunch. He stared at it in shock, and just as the pain was about to hit him and he was about to start screaming, Yin Mei knocked him unconscious with a metal pipe she found lying around. Man, storage closets really had everything, didn't they?
She also found a hose, that she used to tie him up as she looted his body for his handgun and machine gun. She also took the knife just in case.
"If I kill someone, could it be justified as self defense?" She mused to herself, her motions smooth and practiced. This was the norm in the apocalypse after all. She had already long been a veteran of corpse looting!
Well, considering the situation, and the amount of money and connections her parents had, it shouldn't be a problem to cover it up, right?
Though in the end, she sighed, still deciding to hold back. After all, it would be harder to defend if she ended up killing a bunch of people. One or two was still explainable, but she had to do it in a way that it looked like an accident...
Mm, and since she couldn't take them on as a group, she'd also need to pick them off one by one. She had to do it quickly as well, before they noticed anything was wrong. Curse the fact that their guns didn't have silencers. If she fired, everyone on the floor would be able to hear it!
And so Yin Mei continued on her quest of becoming a hero, conquering the world, getting rid of terrorists. The usual.
She was a little upset that both her attempts at imitating movie-like moves ended up in failure (dropping down from the ceiling and navigating the air vents), but she was still determined to enact a cool secret agent fight scene.
She tried recalling what was a cool scene from a movie.
She ticked off commonly used moves. Slamming a vase or wine bottle over someone's head. Throwing a knife at someone. Throwing someone over a table. No, none of these would work in this location. Oh! Oh! She got one. It was the classic move for the female fighter - the one where they would wrap their legs around a person's head or neck and swing around to bring them to the ground.
Uhh...
It was a cool move, but Yin Mei wondered if she could pull this off?
Chinese martial arts didn't have this sort of move, and Yin Mei had never learned it.
No, there was always a first for everything! She would pull off a badass movie worthy scene, goddammit!
Of course, there was no way that this was in any ways a good idea. In fact, it was a terrible idea. And so she proceeded to find patrolling groups of one or two people to try this move out, only to fail terribly each time.
She would miss, misjudge the distance, not jump high enough, not have enough momentum for the swing, or etc. etc.
Only after she had probably taken down 2/3rds of the terrorists did she finally feel like she got it down. As for the guns, pfft, who needed those things anyways.
Said Yin Mei as she ended up having to finish half of those terrorists with a gun because she had messed up for the nth time.
"Mm," Yin Mei was currently hiding out in a medium sized meeting room, considering her life choices. Of course she had gotten noticed by now, and there were a large influx of people running around the halls trying to find her.
"Wait! Wouldn't that mean that there are less people guarding the hostages?" Yin Mei thought out loud, but then remembered she still didn't know where the hostages were held. In addition, with so many people out there, it would hard to get to the room undetected even if she did now. Plus, the whole air vent thing hadn't worked out either, so that was a no go as well.
"Gosh, why is this so hard? I just wanted to reenact a spy movie fight scene..." Yin Mei lamented. Somewhere along the way, it seemed that her priorities had completely changed?
Sighing, she took out her phone, checking her messages. There were multiple from her family and friends, and Yao Heyan had also replied with a brief okay to her don't kill anyone message.
It looked like her family already got notified about the hostage situation. Maybe it was already on the news? She casually checked the news as well, confirming it.
"Mom," she texted, and immediately several messages came back.
"What's going on?"
"Are you okay?"
"You aren't taken hostage?"
"Are you still stuck inside the building?"
Yin Mei quickly responded to stop the influx of messages from continuing. "I'm hiding from the terrorists right now. I don't know where everyone else is."
"Don't move from there, then, okay? Those people are dangerous. Your father is already contacting some people he knows. Don't worry, we'll get you out soon." Her mother replied.
Yin Mei sighed, and put her hand down, seeming to think for a while before answering. "Don't worry about me." She said, before pocketing her phone. She then zipped up her pocket. Haha, she had worn a jacket with zipper pockets just for this reason!
"Okay, let's start the rescue operation, for real this time! Let's see if I can do it before the SWAT gets here." Yin Mei said, standing up with a happy expression on her face as she clenched her fist in anticipation. It wasn't that she was a battle junkie. She just was a fan of spy and superhero movies, okay?