My Avatar is Becoming the Ultimate BOSS-Chapter 52 - 043 Frenzy

As he reached the edge of the attic, a sudden heavy rain began outside. Amidst the sound of the pouring rain, Ji Minghuan looked at the locked wooden door and extended the restraint belt into the hole, unlocking the lock on the other side of the door.

Then he retracted the belt, pushed open the wooden door, carefully not to wake the girl behind him, and tiptoed down the stairs.

After many days, he arrived at this library. Ji Minghuan looked around, slightly twitched his nose, and took a breath of the smell of old book piles, unsure of how many days and evenings he had spent with this scent.

At this moment, the rain outside the window intensified, and the fierce wind made every window in the library rattle.

However, Ji Minghuan’s attention was not on the library interior, but on the staircase at the edge of the library leading downwards.

He cautiously observed his surroundings, muted his footsteps, and walked towards the basement entrance, stepping deeper into the darkness until he stood before the iron door he was forbidden to contact, as remembered.

He placed the restraint belt on the iron door, and his senses permeated forward like raindrops, bringing the scene behind the door to him.

Cramped, viscous, damp—perhaps it was just an ordinary basement, after all.

Ji Minghuan raised his right hand, lowered his gaze to the door lock, and skillfully picked the iron door lock one by one using the pitch black restraint without making a noise.

Then, with a light clatter, he gently pushed open the iron door. Behind it was a passage leading to a pitch-black place.

Maintaining the state of "restraint belt color change," he slowly walked deeper into the basement. Things were not as Ji Minghuan imagined; below the library wasn’t a research institute. The more he looked, the more it seemed like an unremarkable basement.

At that moment, the keen senses of the restraint belt allowed him to hear a faint panting sound.

Under the mask, Ji Minghuan raised an eyebrow, then moved towards the source of the sound, descended another flight of stairs, and finally reached a corner.

He raised his right hand and extended the restraint belt.

The restraint belt’s senses were particularly acute in the dark. In a cramped corner of the basement, he saw a black-haired girl in tattered clothes, her right hand and foot chained to a stone pillar beside her. Many of the girl’s wounds were bruises.

Through his senses, Ji Minghuan clearly saw her face.

He hesitated for a second, then slightly opened his eyes in the darkness.

When they first entered the institute, Ji Minghuan had seen this girl before. Her name was Xu Keyin. Both of them were frail and often nestled in the corner of the playground reading books together, eventually becoming friends. Although they didn’t speak much, she was one of the few people Ji Minghuan considered a true friend.

But later, the girl suddenly disappeared—vanished without a trace like a fleeting snowflake melting in the palm.

Soon after, the old director reported the girl’s disappearance to the police, but despite years of investigation, the police were never able to find the girl’s whereabouts. Inquiry after inquiry ended in vain, and eventually, the case was forcibly closed.

In the Welfare Institute, including Ji Minghuan, everyone thought the girl was either dead or kidnapped by traffickers.

No one expected that the girl had been confined in this basement all along, spending every night leaning against the cold, damp walls while they slept soundly in their dormitory beds.

Only one person could have done this, only one person had the key to this basement, and that was:

—The Director.

[Completed "Event Card ①," received reward: Event Card—"Caged Bird."]

Looking at the girl’s body, covered in wounds, Ji Minghuan’s pupils narrowed.

He tried to speak, but no words came out.

His drooping bangs covered the eyes behind the mask, his mouth twitching slightly, and every restraint belt wrapped around his body vibrated faintly, each one trying to constrain its senses, as if unwilling to let him continue to see the girl’s tragic state.

After a moment, he slowly raised his head, expressionlessly looking at the basement’s surveillance camera, as if staring through the lens at someone behind the screen.

.......

.......

Three minutes later, inside the director’s office.

Outside, the torrential rain poured down. The old director wiped his hair with a hot towel and, holding a cup of hot tea, walked into his office, sitting in front of his desk. Just as he was about to open his computer to check the surveillance logs, the window behind him suddenly opened. Immediately after, his neck was tightly bound by a pitch black band, yanked backward, and caught on the chair’s back.

"Speak... who took Ji Minghuan and Kong Youling away a month ago?" Black Cocoon, having lifted the color-changing effect of the restraint belt, revealed his form and whispered slowly into his ear.

"I... I don’t know..."

The director’s face turned red, his hands clutched tightly at the restraint belt around his neck, as if pulling at a giant black snake, but the belt remained unmoved, perpetually delivering a drowning sensation as if sinking deep into the ocean.

"You don’t know? Oh, there must be a way to make you know."

Saying this, Black Cocoon entwined the director’s lower body with the restraint belt and released the newly acquired skill—"Restraint Truth."

[Restraint Truth: Forces someone bound by your restraint belt to speak the truth.]

"No features... they wrapped themselves tightly." The director rasped.

"Then what else do you remember?" Black Cocoon asked, word by word, his speech like a thunderous rumble.

"I remember a pattern on the uniforms under their coats."

"A pattern? What kind of pattern?"

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