Chapter 390: Threads, Interwoven
"Don't worry. Before that, I will pry your mouth open first." Toru Amuro stepped slowly toward Spider, his posture relaxed but his muscles coiled tight beneath his clothes. He fully intended to make the elusive assassin a great deal more honest.
However, a sudden shift in the atmosphere caught Amuro's sharp attention. He keenly noticed a subtle, unnatural stiffness in the hand Spider kept hidden behind his back. The assassin's fingers were trembling slightly, weaving some sort of covert movement in the shadows of his own silhouette.
Amuro's chest tightened. Without wasting a single breath on hesitation, he pushed off his back foot, his body flickering forward as he rushed to close the distance and neutralize the threat.
He was exactly one step too late. Just as Amuro reached out to grapple the man, three distinct points of light flared to life in the space between them. They pulsed with an eerie, blood-red glow, appearing entirely without warning.
In the very next instant, Spider vanished into thin air right before Amuro's eyes.
Seeing the blonde detective's forward momentum abruptly freeze, Spider allowed a cold smirk to touch his lips. He knew he had succeeded. He had perfectly timed the hypnotic illusion, catching Amuro in that fleeting moment of distraction.
With his primary obstacle temporarily incapacitated, Spider had absolutely no intention of sticking around to exchange blows with Ganyu. Moving with the sudden, explosive speed of a lightning bolt, he spun on his heel and dashed straight toward the lounge door.
Ganyu made no immediate move to physically block his escape path. Instead, she stood her ground, her voice mild and entirely unhurried as she offered a polite reminder. "I suggest you do not be in such a hurry to leave."
Naturally, Spider paid zero heed to the warning. His singular focus was to put as much distance between himself and this room as physically possible. He had no time to care about the strange secretary's words. He charged headlong toward the tightly closed heavy oak door, throwing it open.
Before his eyes could even adjust to the lighting in the hallway, a calm, sultry female voice echoed from the shadows just beyond the threshold.
"Threads, interwoven."
Spider felt a sudden surge of brilliant blue light flash past his peripheral vision. A split second later, his entire body locked up, completely unable to move a single muscle, as if tightly bound by invisible, glowing silk threads.
Panic spiking in his chest, he subconsciously wrenched his neck to look back into the room.
There stood Ganyu. The previously mild-mannered secretary was now aiming a magnificent, glowing blue longbow directly at his chest.
Spider's eyes widened to their absolute limits. Was this member of the Teyvat Organization truly this bold? To openly prepare to assassinate him right inside their own company building, in broad daylight?
"Sorry, I cannot let you leave like this." A faint, genuine trace of apology graced Ganyu's elegant features, yet the grip she maintained on the drawn longbow showed absolutely no signs of loosening.
Along with those softly spoken words, Ganyu slightly relaxed her fingers. The taut bowstring snapped forward with a resounding thrum. A crystalline arrow, flashing with a deadly, piercing cold light, tore through the air like a falling meteor. It hurtled toward Spider at an impossible speed, leaving a trail of frost in its wake.
In the blink of an eye, the projectile arrived right in front of him, bringing with it the sharp, shrieking sound of tearing wind.
At that exact moment, Spider felt a terrifying chill surge from the very bottom of his heart—a cold so absolute it felt capable of freezing his very thoughts. The glacial energy instantly flooded through his veins, spreading to every extremity of his paralyzed body.
The biting frost hit with such overwhelming force that Spider had no time to form a single coherent reaction.
Just one second later, his vision pitched into total blackness. He lost all consciousness, his mind plunging into an icy void where he could no longer perceive anything of the waking world.
Clatter!
Accompanied by the crisp, violently ear-piercing sound of shattering glass, Toru Amuro jolted awake. He had been trapped in a hazy, half-dreaming state, fighting tooth and nail to break free from the hypnotic restraint, and the sudden noise acted as the final catalyst to snap his mind back to reality.
His body trembled violently for a brief moment as his consciousness cleared. When his blurry vision finally sharpened, the very first thing that came into focus was Ganyu. She was standing quietly in the exact same spot, looking as though she had never moved an inch.
Amuro quickly shifted his gaze toward the open doorway. His breath hitched slightly. A woman with sharp, asymmetrical blue-black hair was casually dragging Spider away from the lounge entrance. The assassin's body was completely rigid, covered in a thick layer of frost, looking as if he had been frozen solid from the inside out.
At the same time, Amuro noticed the source of the noise. A massive hole had been blown straight through the thick glass window beside him. The edges of the frame were dangerously jagged, and thousands of large and small crystalline shards were scattered across the carpeted floor. Cold wind howled through the breach.
There was no doubt that the explosive noise of the window shattering was what had forcefully yanked him out of his chaotic, hypnotized state.
"That is Miss Yelan. She is responsible for handling certain unexpected situations here in the Jade Chamber. Spider will be handled by her from now on." Noticing Amuro staring intently at the doorway, Ganyu offered a polite introduction. "Please do not worry, Mr. Amuro. Miss Yelan is a consummate professional. She will certainly be able to make Spider open his mouth and divulge all the information he currently holds."
Watching Yelan and the frozen Spider disappear down the corridor together, Amuro slowly turned his gaze back to Ganyu. A dark storm of dissatisfaction and raw anger brewed in his eyes.
His jaw locked, and his lips curled into a cold, mocking smile. When he spoke, his tone was stiff and dripping with icy sarcasm. "So, after coming all the way to the Jade Chamber and helping to corner Spider, the grand result is that I get absolutely nothing. I still have to go through your organization just to get the subsequent intel?"
"In fact, your help was not strictly necessary, Mr. Amuro. And if it were not for Miss Yelan stepping in just now, Spider would likely have escaped the premises already," Ganyu pointed out, her tone remaining perfectly even.
Amuro clicked his tongue in irritation. He had to admit, Spider's visual hypnosis was incredibly difficult to guard against if one let their guard down for even a fraction of a second.
However, he did not buy the absolute nonsense Ganyu was feeding him about Spider almost escaping. Based on the terrifying display of power he had just witnessed the aftermath of, he strongly suspected Spider's parlor tricks would have had zero effect on the secretary. Ganyu alone could have easily kept the assassin pinned to the floor.
Seeing the genuinely unpleasant, stormy expression settling over the detective's face, Ganyu paused to think for a moment before offering a small olive branch. "Please do not worry, Mr. Amuro. For Kaeya's sake, we will ensure that a complete copy of the intelligence extracted from Spider is sent to you at the exact same time we deliver it to Cointreau."
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