193: Chapter 193 The Queen of Short Dramas is Forced to Show Off Her Acting Skills On Set

Yin Ruoying.

Li Li stood at the entrance of the gym, halting his steps.

The lights in the twenty-fourth-floor gym were still on.

A treadmill sat by the wall, half a bottle of mineral water rolled next to a rowing machine, and a high heel was pinned under a barbell rack.

In a place like the Mandarin Oriental, those who usually entered were members with annual fees in the hundreds of thousands.

Now, a terrorist was sitting inside.

The Team 2 Leader sat on a bench with his legs crossed, a cigarette held between his fingers.

He wasn't wearing a ski mask.

He was around thirty-five or thirty-six years old, wearing a white shirt, dress pants, with his tie loosened and glasses resting on the bridge of his nose.

He didn't look like he was here to kill.

He looked more like a middle manager who held meetings at ten in the morning and demanded reports at four in the afternoon.

He looked up and glanced at Li Li.

"From Team 2?"

"Yeah."

Li Li lowered his voice, muttering in slurred Cantonese.

The leader didn't suspect anything.

He took a drag from his cigarette, the tip glowing briefly as smoke billowed from his nostrils.

His expression wasn't that of someone stealing a quick puff during a break in a mission.

It was that of someone who had finally caught an opportunity to smoke indoors.

"Do you know why I'm doing this?"

Li Li didn't respond.

At a time like this, it was a good thing if the other party wanted to babble.

The more they babbled, the more flaws they would expose.

The leader flicked his cigarette ash.

The ash fell onto the rubber floor mat.

"I didn't want to defect at first."

"Where can I go after defecting? Great Britain to be a fourth-class citizen? Live in a moldy apartment in the London suburbs? Eat fish and chips every day?"

He cursed a couple of times and took another drag.

"But I just couldn't take it anymore."

Li Li didn't move.

The leader stood up with his cigarette, anger flaring in his voice.

"The Hong Kong smoking ban."

Li Li paused for half a second.

"It's getting stricter and stricter."

The leader gestured in the air with his cigarette.

"Just walking on the street smelling of smoke gets you fined. Five thousand dollars. Five thousand dollars!"

"I smoke a cigarette, and it costs five thousand."

He pressed the cigarette butt onto the treadmill's handrail.

A black spot was scorched into the plastic.

"I hate it."

Only one thought remained in Li Li's mind.

Buddy.

You defected because of a smoking ban?

If this motive were put in a file, the interrogator would have to rewrite psychology textbooks.

The system's blue text popped up.

[Friendly Reminder: This NPC's motive for defection has set a new low for human behavioral science.]

[It is recommended that when the host creates terrorist profiles in the future, "smoking ban" should be listed as a high-risk factor.]

The leader stuffed the cigarette pack back into his pants pocket.

He walked over to Li Li and patted his shoulder.

"That female star."

He nudged his chin toward the corner.

"She's yours."

Yin Ruoying sat kneeling on the floor, her shoulders trembling.

A sob caught in her throat, and she forced it back down.

The leader grimaced.

"Crying constantly, what a buzzkill."

He walked toward the door.

After taking two steps, he stopped again.

"The third floor below has lost contact. I'm going to see what's going on."

"Once you're done, go up to the twenty-fifth-floor banquet hall and keep watch."

"Those rich people are transferring money. Don't let them escape."

Li Li's heart stirred.

The twenty-fifth floor.

The banquet hall.

Transferring money.

The leader added another line.

"There's also a mainland influencer upstairs. I'll deal with her when I get back."

Li Li pressed his finger against the body of his gun.

A mainland influencer.

The footsteps faded away.

Only the hum of the ventilation ducts remained in the gym.

Li Li was in no rush to go over.

He stood by the door and listened for ten seconds.

He confirmed that the leader had entered the stairwell and was heading down.

There were still two people at the entrance of the stairs.

Yin Ruoying knelt on the floor, her evening gown crumpled into a mess, her long hair covering half her face.

She clutched her shoulders with both hands, her fingernails digging red marks into her arms.

Li Li walked over.

Her body shrank back.

She buried her head even lower.

She didn't dare to look.

She hadn't dared to look at that leader's face earlier, either.

That was how it always went in movies.

If you saw their face, you wouldn't survive.

The footsteps stopped in front of her.

Li Li bent down, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her up.

Yin Ruoying's legs were weak, and she almost fell over.

Li Li gave her a hand and led her straight outside.

The two men in dark jackets at the stairwell entrance saw this.

One of them whistled.

The other gave Li Li a thumbs-up, his face full of a lewd grin.

Li Li ignored them.

Dragging Yin Ruoying, he turned into the corridor and pushed open an unlocked guest room.

He entered.

He locked the door.

First, he pressed himself against the door to listen for any movement outside.

No one had followed.

The curtains were drawn, and only the bedside lamp was lit in the room.

There was welcome fruit on the coffee table, a water glass had tipped over, and half a broken lipstick lay on the carpet.

Li Li guided Yin Ruoying to sit down on the edge of the bed.

Yin Ruoying curled up at the head of the bed, clutching the hem of her skirt as she sobbed fitfully.

She still didn't dare to look up.

Before attending the banquet, she was still thinking about taking a few photos tonight, wondering if posting them on Weibo tomorrow would overshadow the second female lead of the same drama.

Now, everything was gone.

Bombs.

Guns.

Terrorists.

And that phrase, "She's yours."

She had never felt so much like an object.

Li Li took off his ski mask.

Yin Ruoying heard the rustle of fabric and shrank back again.

The next second.

A few tissues were handed to her.

"Stop crying."

Yin Ruoying's movement to take the tissues froze.

This voice.

She was too familiar with it.

She had heard it in the villa.

She had heard it on variety shows.

She had heard it on live streams.

The next sentence was even more familiar.

"Where is Jiang Rumu?"

Yin Ruoying jerked her head up.

The bedside lamp illuminated that face.

It was covered in blood.

The wound on his forehead had split open.

His hair was messy, his clothes were torn, and he was wearing a terrorist's jacket over himself.

But that was indeed Li Li.

Yin Ruoying opened her mouth, unable to make a sound for three seconds.

Then, she grabbed Li Li's sleeve, unable to hold back her cries any longer.

"Why are you here?"

"How did you—"

Li Li raised his hand to cover her mouth.

"Quiet."

"There are people outside."

Yin Ruoying choked back her voice, though tears were still falling.

She grabbed the tissues to wipe her face; after a couple of wipes, the tissues were stained dirty with blood and grime.

Li Li waited for a few seconds.

"Where is Jiang Rumu?"

Yin Ruoying sniffled.

"She left a long time ago."

"Not long after the banquet started, she said she wasn't feeling well."

"This place was fully booked, so she went to the neighboring Landmark Mandarin Oriental to get a room and rest."

Li Li's shoulders relaxed slightly.

The Landmark Mandarin Oriental.

Next door, there were two Mandarin Oriental hotels.

Jiang Rumu wasn't in this building.

Yossi's text message was either a bluff, or even Yossi didn't know about Jiang Rumu's temporary departure.

As long as she wasn't in this building, she was highly likely safe.

Then he could also just find a way to leave with Yin Ruoying directly, without having to take any risks.

[Optional Mission Prompt: Leave by yourself / Rescue one person and leave / Rescue all hostages]

[Mission Reward: None / None / Reward based on rescue performance]

[System Suggestion: Just leave. The difference between a hero and a martyr is sometimes just a single thought.]

Hearing the system prompt, Li Li actually hesitated.

If it were an ordinary matter, he would have just left.

But this incident was highly likely orchestrated by Yossi.

"I didn't kill Boruto, yet Naruto died because of me."

Walking away like this would leave a scar on his conscience.

Li Li's gaze grew increasingly determined.

He placed his ski mask by the bedside and asked Yin Ruoying.

"What's the situation upstairs?"

Yin Ruoying forced herself to swallow her sobs.

"The twenty-fifth-floor banquet hall."

"Seven or eight terrorists."

"There's a Black man who seems to be the leader."

"They are forcing everyone to transfer cryptocurrency."

"One hundred million Hong Kong dollars per life."

Li Li raised his chin slightly.

"One hundred million?"

"There are over a hundred people up there."

Yin Ruoying wiped the grime off her face.

"There are at least fifty billionaires."

"Little Superman is there, the Chief Executive's wife is there, and Eldest Daughter of the Gambling King is also there."

"There are also several capital investors from the mainland."

Li Li did the math.

Fifty billionaires, one hundred million each.

Just this wave alone would yield five billion HKD.

Plus the others.

Yossi didn't just want to create chaos this time.

He also wanted to bleed Hong Kong dry.

"How much has been transferred?"

"Before I was brought down, over a dozen people were already processing it. President Zhou has already transferred his."

Yin Ruoying paused.

"They also took photos of everyone's IDs."

"If someone didn't cooperate, they would hold a gun to the head of the person next to them."

Li Li nodded.

Seven or eight upstairs.

One leader.

Over a hundred hostages.

And there were over twenty ragtag soldiers downstairs.

Communications were cut.

The outside world didn't know the situation inside the building.

The Flying Tigers wouldn't be able to make it up in a short time.

He couldn't clear them all out alone.

But he could disrupt the game and stall for time.

Li Li put his ski mask back on and checked his magazine.

"Do something with me."

Yin Ruoying looked up.

"What?"

"Act."

"How?"

"Scream."

Yin Ruoying froze.

"What did you say?"

"You know exactly what those two outside think I brought you in here for."

Li Li tucked the pistol into his lower back.

"If there's no noise, they'll get suspicious."

"Scream for three minutes."

"After I leave, sob occasionally, but not too loudly."

Yin Ruoying's face instantly flushed red.

She had been shaking with fear just now, but now she was so angry she wanted to curse.

"You want me to act *this* out at a time like this?"

"You're the Queen of Short Dramas."

Li Li hid the submachine gun inside his jacket.

"This is exactly when you need to be professional."

Yin Ruoying glared at him for a few seconds.

Then she gritted her teeth.

"How long?"

"Three minutes."

Her voice squeezed out from between her teeth.

"You only last three minutes?"

Li Li's face darkened.

"I'm playing a useless loser right now."

"Three minutes for a loser is highly reasonable. It's even a bit long."

Yin Ruoying was so angry she almost cried.

But she still wiped her face, grabbed a pillow from the bed, and hugged it tightly.

Three seconds later.

Sounds began to echo from the room.

It was very stiff at first.

Soon, the sounds became increasingly exaggerated, even incorporating a crying tone.

The professional quality of the Queen of Short Dramas saved the day at this very moment.

Li Li leaned against the door, listening to the movement outside.

The three minutes were up.

Yin Ruoying's voice stopped.

In the corridor outside.

The two men in dark jackets at the stairwell entrance looked at each other.

One laughed and cursed.

"That fast?"

The other spat toward the guest room door.

"Useless loser."

Inside the room.

After another two minutes, she began to sob softly.

The timing was perfect.

Li Li glanced at her and lowered his voice.

"Keep the door locked."

"If anyone comes in, hide in the bathroom."

"Don't open the windows."

"Don't run around."

Yin Ruoying nodded.

Li Li opened the door and slipped out.

The door closed.

Click.

It was immediately locked from the inside.

The two at the stairwell entrance whistled at him.

"Are you even up to it?"

"Finished so quickly?"

Li Li slumped his shoulders and dragged his feet toward the stairwell.

"I'll finish her off when I come back down."

The two laughed even louder.

Li Li waved his hand, his steps weak, and he even intentionally stumbled slightly.

A useless loser who had just finished his business.

Highly plausible.

He turned into the stairwell.

The next second.

His shoulders tensed back up.

His footsteps fell silently.

The submachine gun slid out from his jacket, nesting into his shoulder.

The twenty-fifth floor.

The banquet hall.

Seven or eight terrorists.

One Black leader.

Over a hundred hostages.

Tens of billions in ransom were currently being transferred.

Li Li had just stepped onto the stairs.

Suddenly, there was a crackle of static in his earpiece.

A man's voice, thick with suppressed rage, came through.

"Damn it! Why hasn't anyone reported the situation?!"

"Everyone on the third floor below has been wiped out!"

"A team of Flying Tigers has entered the lobby, and the outside is crawling with police!"

"Get ready, everyone! Prepare for combat!"

The stairwell fell silent.

Li Li stopped on the steps, pressing his finger against his earpiece to listen carefully.

That was the voice of the Team 2 Leader just now. It seemed he had already gone down to the third, or even the second floor.

Now that the Flying Tigers were here, the risk of Li Li being discovered going upstairs was even lower.

He rushed upstairs quickly, pretending to be a panicked terrorist.

Reaching the twenty-fifth floor, he pushed open the lobby doors. In the massive banquet hall, tables and chairs had been cast aside to both sides.

In the center, over a hundred people were crouching with their hands behind their heads, divided into two groups.

One side had about twenty-odd people, while the other had nearly a hundred.

Beside the group of twenty-odd, two terrorists were operating two military-grade laptops respectively, helping a middle-aged man transfer money.

This was Zhou Hui, the boss of the Company.

Li Li recognized this former boss of Jiang Rumu at a single glance.

Five masked terrorists holding assault rifles patrolled the perimeter.

At the bar in the distance, a female bartender whose makeup was ruined from crying was tremblingly mixing drinks for a masked Black man and a masked Caucasian.

After Li Li entered, everyone's eyes locked onto him.

Li Li braced himself and shouted, "The Flying Tigers are here!"

However, the Black man showed no panic at all. He picked up a glass of Bloody Mary and clinked it with The Caucasian's glass.

He downed it in one gulp.

Then he stood up, grabbed his pistol, and fired a shot at the ceiling.

Bang!

"Let's blow these Flying Cats to pieces!"