Chapter 35: The Astounding Great Heist

"Wait..."

Aron Garcia sprang upright from the bed in a single, fluid motion, staring hard at Vigna. "Say that again. Who did Waai Fu say she was talking about?"

Vigna shot him a look of utter disdain, carefully setting down her thermos, and repeated, "Wang Chongyang. Is there something wrong with a person's name?"

Aron Garcia: "?"

He pressed the point. "Are you sure it's Wang Chongyang? What about the Seven Masters of Quanzhen, the Old Urchin, or Hero Guo? Have you ever heard of any of them?"

This was no longer just crossing boundaries; it had turned into a chaotic stew. He had only transmigrated into the world of *Arknights*, not stumbled into some infinite multiverse crossover.

"Never heard of them. Who are these people you're talking about? Wang Chongyang isn't particularly famous in Laterano or anywhere else, but in Yan and Higurashi, he's a household legendary figure. He was... well, an exceptional warrior, so exceptional that an entire region remembers his name."

Aron's expression eased considerably. So they weren't characters from Louis Cha's martial arts novels after all—just a coincidence of names.

"Making a fuss over nothing."

Vigna rested her chin in her hands, looking profoundly bored. "Are you going to sleep or not? If you're fine, I'm going outside to watch the recordings. Sitting here watching over you is so boring."

Aron scratched his head, fully aware that he had overreacted. "Oh, my apologies. What happened next?"

"Then Director Chen arrived. She smashed through the door and found you all on the 34th floor. You were still knocked out cold on the ground. She genuinely thought something had happened to you and was worried sick."

Why did that sound a little sour?

Aron wisely chose to keep listening, not daring to voice his internal commentary.

...

"Mr. A-guang! Is he just drunk?"

Bison checked Aron's condition and couldn't help breathing a sigh of relief. Being drunk was a minor issue; they could deal with it after he sobered up.

Roadroller never left Aron's side. Bison pulled away to check on Waai Fu, who had collapsed from sheer exhaustion. In an instant, two out of four people were down. If any more thugs showed up, the situation would become extremely difficult to handle.

"Miss Waai Fu, please don't fall asleep. We're not out of danger yet. You have to hold on..."

Bison's words fell on deaf ears; Waai Fu had already drifted into a deep sleep. Her breathtaking sword strike had neutralized every enemy, but the single attack had completely drained her combat capability.

Right at that moment, the security door at the end of the passage crashed inward. A Guard Department superintendent—Chen herself—burst through, instantly spotting Aron unconscious against the wall. "Medical team!" she roared.

"What on earth is wrong with him?"

Turtle-chan pouted, looking on the verge of tears. The sight startled Chen, who genuinely feared some catastrophe had occurred, until Turtle-chan whispered in a tiny voice, "The Doctor drank too much..."

Drunk...

In a situation like this, he still had the appetite to drink?

With a dark expression, Chen stood up abruptly and strode over to Bison, who was supporting Waai Fu. She was speechless. The Doctor's relationship with alcohol was certainly unique; she had to hand it to him.

"Director Chen, my companion has fainted. Do you have any spare stretchers?"

Chen looked down at the Ursus operatives scattered across the floor. Every single one of them was unconscious, none dead. As for the bodies slumped against the wall, the Guard Department's forensic team had already identified them as Ursus as well—perhaps casualties of some internal infighting. Everything would have to wait until they reviewed the surveillance footage.

Chen inspected the wounds on the Ursus men. She knew them intimately: all blade injuries. Among the four present, the scumbag Doctor was dead to the world from alcohol, Bison wielded a heavy shield, and Roadroller was also a Defender operator. The only plausible source of the damage was Waai Fu.

"She did this?"

Bison nodded.

It bore all the hallmarks of her quick-draw technique—blazing speed that left no room for parry, dealing massive damage with a single strike at the cost of immense physical exertion. Even for Waai Fu, consecutive strikes were impossible, so her collapse into unconsciousness afterward was entirely normal.

"Hand her over to the medical team. There's an ambulance downstairs. You can rest easy."

Chen gazed at the blown-out floor in deep contemplation before one of her subordinates hurried over. "Report, Director! The security staircase leading from the 34th floor to the 35th has been completely blocked off!"

Expected.

Chen grabbed a chain dangling from a hole in the ceiling and yanked hard a few times. "Right here then. Assign a squad to escort them down. Take the stairs—no elevators, understand? The rest of you, with me. And bring every single one of these live Ursus bastards back. I don't want a single one dying on us; these people are worth a fortune."

"Yes!"

"Time to end this farce."

Chen grabbed the chain and hoisted herself up to the 35th floor in a flurry of motion, so fast no one could quite track her movements.

Yet none of her subordinates possessed her acrobatic prowess, and they grimaced as they began hauling themselves up.

By the time they finally clawed their way to the upper level, Director Chen was sitting comfortably to one side, flipping leisurely through a magazine. Scattered all over the floor lay a dozen unidentified suspicious individuals, every last one of them knocked cold.

Director Chen remarked off-handedly, "Good work, everyone. Clear the security passage and take these people away."

As for what had transpired in the interim, nobody knew. However, a few days later, the director's cut of the latest Lungmen blockbuster, *The Great Heist*, revealed the full sequence of events on the 36th floor.

Aron broke out in a cold sweat watching it. In the film, all the primary crew members had successfully cast themselves as the thrilling leads, with the director herself appearing as a fictionalized version of herself. Another eye-catching role went to Iron Crawler, who gave the Lungmen audience a masterclass in the Iron-Will Six-Harmony style. Due to his lack of standout performance, the male lead Bai Qiyuan had been demoted to an unremarkable background extra, later jokingly dubbed the nameless NPC protagonist.

Their original footage had never been released, instead serving as a film-within-a-film inside *The Great Heist*. The production company harbored no complaints whatsoever, even promising to immediately assemble a new crew to remake the complete version of *The Great Heist*, striving for ultimate perfection to thoroughly entertain the Lungmen audiences.

The spectacular action sequence played out as follows: Iron Crawler coordinated with the director to stage a feint, instantly drawing the attention of two guards before Iron Crawler violently erupted, subduing the enemies with her iron fists. Subsequently, two rival factions with conflicting agendas engaged in a firefight within the financial tower, allowing Iron Crawler to launch a surprise attack. When the masked leader sought reinforcements, she leaped from the 36th floor down to the 35th, subduing the foes in a stunning display of lone-hero heroism, before the scene cut to the arrival of the Guard Department.

As the credits rolled, Aron's expression could only be described as a giant "囧". In the remoted version of *The Great Heist*, he caught sight of his own portrayal—utterly devoid of redeeming qualities, reduced to a liability for the female lead, and heavily criticized by viewers everywhere.

That, however, was a story for another day. Right now, Aron was facing Vigna's persistent interrogation:

"Doctor, why did you agree to take Turtle-chan to the amusement park without telling me? I had time too."

Aron felt a pang of guilt. "Look how late it is now. It's past nine o'clock in the evening; you should be heading back. A young girl shouldn't be wandering outside for too long. Watch out for bad guys..."

"They can't beat me!"

Vigna puffed out her cheeks, pulled out her phone, and dialed her manager's number. "Xiao Na? It's too late now. I'm staying at a friend's place and will come back tomorrow. Bye."

...

Listening to the dial tone echoing from the phone, Xiao Na raised her chin. *I cannot cry. If I cry, I lose.*

*I was clearly first—whether as a friend or anything else. Why did you two just meet once and...*

*Sob.*