Chapter 72: The Annihilated Judge

The atmosphere in the room remained gloomy. Even though Yuwen Zhuo had left, it didn’t make things any better for those still there.
Hearing Ye Feng’s question, Zheng Ze raised his head and shook it at him. “I don’t know what secret he was talking about.”
This answer was entirely within Ye Feng’s expectations. He nodded and then turned to Long Tian.
“Whatever it is, since he wants me to get stronger, it means he won’t have any conflicts with me for now,” Long Tian said, trying to reassure Ye Feng, knowing he was worried about himself.
“I’ll go back to school to get my notebook and see if they left any messages for me.” Ye Feng sighed, as the matters here were basically resolved. “I promised them I’d go back these days.”
Long Tian nodded. “You’ve already done what you could. Leave the rest to us!”
Ye Feng drove Long Tian’s car to the school entrance and called Xu Qiang, asking him to bring down the computer since he was blocked at the entrance.
About five minutes later, Xu Qiang arrived at the school entrance with the computer. “Are you leaving?”
He knew that since Ye Feng came to get the computer, everything else must be taken care of, and he just needed to leave with it.
“Maybe. If nothing goes wrong, I’ll leave in a couple of days,” Ye Feng nodded.
“When will you come back next time?” Xu Qiang asked after a long silence.
“I’m not sure. I’ll call you then,” Ye Feng said with a wry smile and shook his head.
“Then… be careful on the road!” Xu Qiang slowly turned and left.
Ye Feng nodded, watching him disappear into the teaching building before getting into the car and driving away.
After returning to his apartment, Ye Feng saw the still gloomy living room and went straight to his bedroom. He plugged in his notebook along with the power supply and mouse, then opened the official Hunter website.
“You have a new message!” A dialog box popped up immediately after Ye Feng logged in.
This private messaging feature could only be used by teammates in the same group, meaning this message must have been sent by William and the others.
“William and the others need me for something?” Ye Feng was slightly surprised before opening the message.
Seeing the sender, Ye Feng frowned. It was Kelly, that introverted girl who hardly ever spoke. She actually sent him a message, which made Ye Feng a bit nervous.

He took a deep breath, then opened his inbox and saw only one word: RUN! (Run!)
“RUN?” Ye Feng frowned slightly. In the Judger Squad, everyone could speak Chinese and English, but only he and Yi Fan could write Chinese characters.
Of course, Ye Feng understood what “RUN” meant, but he wasn’t entirely sure if that was indeed what Kelly meant. “Is she telling me to run away? The message was sent yesterday…”
Ye Feng tried to send her a short message back: “What-happened?Are-you-OK? (What happened? Are you okay?)”
While sending that message, Ye Feng also sent similar short messages to William and the others to ensure nothing was missed.
Ye Feng waited anxiously.
“Xiao Feng, it’s time for dinner!” After some time, Long Tian knocked on Ye Feng’s door.
“I won’t go. You guys eat first!” Ye Feng opened the door and sat back in front of his computer.
“Can the internet replace food?” Long Tian came over and glanced at the screen.
“Hey, is this a hunter’s page? It looks cool!” Long Tian laughed. “Aren’t short messages only meant to be sent within the group? Why are you staring at your inbox?”
Ye Feng remained silent for a while before looking up at Long Tian. “Look at this!”
He opened the short message from Kelly, and the simple word RUN appeared before them.
“Is this Kelly your teammate?” Long Tian frowned.
“Mm-hm. She usually doesn’t talk much. I don’t understand why she suddenly sent me such a message yesterday. Normally, Yi Fan handles message distribution—he receives messages and sends them to us. Kelly has never taken the initiative to send messages to anyone before… Is she trying to tell me to run away?” Ye Feng looked at Long Tian. Though he had guessed the outcome, he wasn’t sure.
“Send messages to them and tell them to reply to you right away!” Long Tian knew Ye Feng’s teammates might be in trouble.
“I already sent them. But from this morning until now, none of them have replied!” Ye Feng was worried.
“Don’t worry. It’s still early morning there. By the time it’s seven or eight o’clock here, it should be daylight there, and they might reply then! Let’s go have dinner first!” Long Tian tried to comfort him.
Only then did Ye Feng reluctantly put down his laptop and follow Long Tian away.

After dinner, Ye Feng stayed by the computer, waiting for a reply. By midnight, there was still no message, and it was already noon in New York. Ye Feng knew something must have happened to William and the others. Under normal circumstances, Yi Fan’s first thing every morning was to check the Hunter official website for tasks. As soon as he logged in, his messages would appear for him to see. Since he had sent messages to everyone, William, Kristin, and Kelly should have received them too. Normally, they would have replied to ask what was going on. But now, all his messages had gone unanswered.

“Hey, still up?” Long Tian pushed open Ye Feng’s door.

“They must have encountered an accident. I have to go back to New York tomorrow to find out what happened,” Ye Feng said, turning his gaze from the computer screen to Long Tian.

“I’ll go with you tomorrow. With my Golden Core cultivation level, I definitely won’t hold you back,” Long Tian said, standing at Ye Feng’s door, waiting for his response.

“Okay!” Ye Feng accepted Long Tian’s help, as he believed Long Tian’s strength was sufficient to protect him, and he indeed had nothing urgent to do at the moment.

“Call me before we leave tomorrow! I’m afraid I might oversleep!” Long Tian closed Ye Feng’s door and headed back to his own room.

Ye Feng also shut down the computer and slowly closed his eyes…

Early in the morning, as dawn broke, Ye Feng slowly woke up. He grabbed the watch on the bedside table and saw it was only 5:20. He turned on the computer beside the bed, entered the Hunter official website’s address again, logged in to his account, but still found no new messages in his inbox.

Ye Feng stared blankly at the computer screen. None of William and the others had replied to his messages, not even Kelly, who had sent him the messages, had responded. Although he had been prepared for this, Ye Feng still found it hard to believe.

After logging out of his personal management system and about to shut down the computer, Ye Feng suddenly caught sight of a news headline on the Hunter official website: “The Judger Squad Annihilated; Elders Lead Investigation!”

“Annihilated?!” Ye Feng’s breathing quickened. “Yi Ge and the others…”

After hesitating for a while, Ye Feng clicked on that news article.

The Judgment Squad consists of two gold-level members, two silver-level members, and one bronze-level newcomer. At their temporary residence in New York, we found the bodies of three men, identified as Squad Leader William, member Kristin, and member Yi Fan. The only female member, Kelly, is still missing. The newly joined member, Ye Feng, was temporarily away from the team due to personal matters and thus escaped harm…

Investigations revealed that all three bodies were killed with a single strike, including William, the squad leader who had been famous for years. The cause of death for the three still requires forensic analysis, and the missing Kelly is still being searched for… The origin of the incident needs further investigation…

“William, Yi Ge, Krist…” Ye Feng stared at the photos of the three bodies in the news, tears welling in his eyes.

“Who could have done this? Why attack them?” Ye Feng clenched his fists tightly, staring at the computer screen and talking to himself.

There was a light knock on the door. Long Tian pushed open Ye Feng’s room door. “Uh, I got up to use the bathroom and saw light here, so… Are you awake? Or have you been up all night?”

“William and the others… they were killed…” Ye Feng helplessly covered his head, tears streaming down. “I always considered them my family…”

Long Tian walked straight to Ye Feng’s bed and glanced at his laptop. The images from the news were extremely distressing. He turned off the laptop screen, sighed softly, then patted Ye Feng’s shoulder. “It’s already happened. Stop looking at it! I’ll buy a flight to New York right away to figure out what happened and find the bastard who did this!”

“Yi Ge and the others… they shouldn’t have died… I don’t know what happened… why…” Ye Feng covered his face with his hands and sobbed quietly.

Long Tian didn’t know what to say to comfort him at that moment. He knew very well what kind of person Ye Feng was: if you treated him well, he would treat you well. Now that Ye Feng had finally integrated into a group and lived together like a family for over four months, they were like his own family to this orphan.

“It’s okay to cry…” Long Tian shook his head and sighed, patting Ye Feng’s back…

Once Ye Feng’s emotions calmed down a bit, Long Tian stood up and knocked on Qing Lang’s room door.

“Green Wolf, Ye Feng and I are going to New York in a while. You guys stay at home and don’t cause trouble! Also, keep an eye on Pearl—after her father left, don’t let her do anything stupid!” Long Tian left Ye Feng’s room and then pulled Green Wolf aside.
“Brother Long, can we go with you this time?” Green Wolf asked with envy.
“No, only Ye Feng and I are going this time. Any of you would just be a burden. You might even get killed…” Long Tian’s expression was serious.
“What exactly happened over there?” Green Wolf asked cautiously.
“Ye Feng’s teammates, who are all quite strong, have been killed, and one is missing!” Long Tian’s expression made Green Wolf sure he wasn’t just lying to him.
“Okay, we’ll keep a close eye on Pearl!” Green Wolf nodded in agreement.