Splitting Up (21)

Cen Yao was just about to creep a little closer to see if there were any keys, patrol schedules, or vehicle registration logs.

Suddenly, a chill ran down her spine.

It wasn't psychological.

It was a physical chill.

It felt as if a cold, sticky gaze had suddenly dropped onto her from above.

In an instant, every hair on Cen Yao's body puffed out.

Before she could even think, her biological instincts took over.

She let out a sharp growl.

“Run!”

Before the word even fully left her mouth, she shot forward like an arrow from a bow.

Zhu Lingxi was half a beat slower.

But her reflexes were still quick, and she immediately bolted after Cen Yao in the opposite direction.

Almost the exact second they left, a capture net slammed down hard onto the spot where they had just been hiding.

Dust exploded everywhere.

The metal weights lining the net struck the ground with a heavy thud.

Had they been even a second slower, they would have been trapped right then and there.

A coarse curse echoed from behind them.

“Dammit, you filthy cats!”

“You must have a death wish!”

“Just wait until I catch you, I'll teach you a lesson!”

Cen Yao looked back as she ran.

A fierce-looking, burly man was standing next to the guardhouse, holding a net-launching tool in his hands.

Having missed his mark, his expression was incredibly ugly.

He quickly pulled out a walkie-talkie and bellowed into it.

“What the hell are you guys doing?”

“You can't even catch a single cat!”

“Get over here right now! Two furballs are escaping from the main gate!”

Two furballs?

Cen Yao was so annoyed she almost turned around to curse him out.

You're the furball!

Your whole family are furballs!

But she didn't dare stop.

Because the call had clearly worked.

Footsteps quickly approached from all directions.

“Where are they?”

“At the main gate!”

“Quick, don't let them get into the production area!”

“Bring nets! Bring stun batons!”

More people were joining the chase.

The sounds of the pursuit closed in from behind, the sides, and ahead all at once.

Cen Yao and Zhu Lingxi sprinted through the coffee trees, one after the other, as nets rained down behind them.

Once, the weights on the edge of a net grazed the very tip of Cen Yao's tail, startling her so much she tucked her tail in and nearly tumbled into a drainage ditch.

Zhu Lingxi slipped through from the other side and turned back, wanting to wait for her.

Cen Yao immediately meowed at her.

“Split up!”

Zhu Lingxi looked at her.

A flash of hesitation appeared in her feline eyes, but she quickly nodded, turned, and darted into the shadows in another direction.

The two cats split up, one to the left and one to the right.

As expected, their pursuers were forced to split up as well.

Cen Yao chose a direction at random and ran with all her might.

She had no time to figure out where she was going.

Wherever she could squeeze through, she did; wherever there were obstacles, she headed straight for them.

She dashed into some baskets filled with coffee cherries and intentionally kicked over two large ones.

The reddish-black coffee cherries spilled all over the floor, causing the pursuers who stepped on them to slip and crash to the ground in a heap.

“Shit!”

“Catch it!”

Cen Yao then slipped under a water pipe, hooking her claws onto the joint and giving it a violent yank.

A jet of water sprayed out, blasting the face of a staff member right behind her.

Taking advantage of the chaos, she leaped onto a pile of sacks and rolled down the other side, sending a row of empty barrels clattering and banging to the ground.

She turned the entire production area upside down.

“Over there!”

“It ran behind the drying room!”

“No! On the left!”

“Damn, has this cat become a spirit or something?”

Cen Yao ran until her lungs felt like they were going to burst.

She was small, fast, and could squeeze into many places, making her far more agile than the humans.

But right now, she was just a civet cat.

Her stamina was limited.

After all the sprinting, dodging, and causing chaos, she could clearly feel her limbs turning to jelly, and her throat felt like she had swallowed fire.

Her heart hammered wildly, beating so fast it felt like it would burst from her chest.

The footsteps behind her still hadn't stopped.

Someone was catching up with a stun baton, its metal tip crackling with blue-white electrical sparks.

Cen Yao smelled the scent of ozone burning in the air.

Her mind flashed back to the civet cat she had seen earlier, twitching from being electrocuted.

Fear and anger surged up together.

She grit her teeth, forced out one last burst of strength, and bolted forward.

A crude little shack appeared ahead.

It was made of wooden planks, its door was half-ajar, one corner of its window was broken, and a few discarded iron barrels were piled outside.

It looked like a temporary storage room.

Cen Yao couldn't care less if there was danger inside.

She used the last of her energy to rush over, staying low to the ground, and slipped through the gap of the half-open door.

As soon as she was inside, she immediately rolled to the side, hiding behind a pile of rags and cardboard boxes.

Almost at the exact same time, her pursuers ran past the door.

“Where did it go?”

“It was clearly running this way just now!”

“Search!”

Cen Yao lay flat behind the cardboard boxes, holding her breath tightly.

Her heartbeat thundered in her ears like a drum.

She entire body was trembling, her paws weak from exhaustion.

The footsteps outside grew closer and closer.

A shadow fell across the gap in the door.

The person stopped.

Cen Yao's pupils contracted bit by bit.

In the next second, the half-ajar wooden door was slowly pushed open from the outside.

The grating sound echoed through the small shack.

A sliver of light filtered through the opening, slowly sweeping across the floor and creeping closer and closer to the cardboard boxes where Cen Yao was hiding.

Cen Yao pressed her body even lower.

She tucked her tail tightly against herself.

But the person still walked in.

One step.

Two steps.

Three steps.

The blue-white spark of the stun baton flickered in the dark shack.

Cen Yao closed her eyes, her claws digging silently into the floor.

She didn't have much strength left.

But if she really was discovered, even if she had to risk exposing herself, she would bite through this person's wrist first.

The person walked up to the cardboard boxes and stopped.