The door drill managed to pierce the vault door but both teams were prepared and understood what needed to be done. Foxtrot A would delay and distract the robbers while Foxtrot B snuck past them to find the VIP.
How were they going to sneak past? Xue Ping's Grade 4 cultivation, the Prancing Puma, had the ability to make the entire team be invisible for a set amount of time. However, it was chi consuming. To solve this, Yue Wen took out a set of chi regeneration bottles, the one Xiong Da had used previously in the Zombie Dungeon Instance.
Like a character in a game, Xue Ping gulped the set of chi regeneration bottles before she unleashed her invisibility technique. If she used that technique alone, she would be able to stay in such a form for 10 minutes. It was extremely useful for her daily work when she was required to ambush and catch the criminals. However, she did not expect Lee An to formulate such a plan to catch the jackals off guard and let Foxtrot B slip away to find the hostage.
While it was true that having seven people to overpower the robbers would be the most ideal situation, they would never know if the mastermind had other plans in mind. Securing the VIP as fast as possible was clearly the best solution.
The vault door slowly creaked open and Foxtrot B stuck to the walls right beside the vault door while Foxtrot A readied their weapons.
"Boss, are you sure this is the right vault? There is literally nothing in here!" Brown shouted as he and Yellow stood in front of the vault door and noticed the vault room was sparkling clean.
"Let's check further in. Perhaps there are some-" Brown suddenly got tackled while Yellow felt a sense of pain pulsating through his chest. Suddenly, two men appeared right in front of them and knocked them away from the vault door.
These precious moments of confusion gave Foxtrot B enough time to dash past the werejackals and up the staircase. It was obvious where the stairway was since there were multiple werejackals guarding each section of the room. Meanwhile, Se Lang was tasked to guard Foxtrot B's rear so he followed them from behind until they reached basement 1, where there was an elevator they could take.
The werejackals were not senile either. Even though the female cultivators were invisible as they rushed up the stairwell, their scent betrayed Foxtrot B's position. Fortunately, Deng Long's and Lee An's distraction at the vault door worked, causing most of the werejackals to be caught in an dilemma.
But not for long. "Yellow, kill those invisible bastards! Brown, follow him. I will handle these two meatshields." Grey, who usually gave the orders, personally charged in and attacked Deng Long and Lee An, allowing Yellow and Brown to fall back momentarily.
"With pleasure Grey." Yellow sped up the stairwell to find that the elevator was closing. The stab delivered upon Yellow was not sufficient to stop a werejackal and his regeneration abilities kicked in, so now he was already close to full health. To Yellow, this was a walk in the park as long as he focused his strength on his legs. With that, a sudden burst of speed carried him towards the elevator.
"Scythe Art, Whirlwind Slice of the Wacky Wolf!" Se Lang, who was guarding the elevator revealed himself when he attacked Yellow. With an exquisite swing of his scythe, the chi energy reinforced the swing of the scythe, producing a wind effect as strong as a blade.
At the speed Yellow was moving, he was not able to evade in time and his tail was sliced into two pieces by Se Lang's surprise ambush. The attack nevertheless did not hamper Yellow. It instead made him even madder and he viciously crashed himself into Se Lang.
Se Lang was able to resist the charge attack as he used his scythe to defend. When he found his attack did not connect but the impact damaged the elevator's door, rendering it useless. Luckily, the lift had already closed by then due to Se Lang's timely intervention and Foxtrot B was headed to the top floor.
Separately, Xue Ping was sitting at the corner of lift feeling extremely exhausted. She even unbuttoned the top button of her shirt to feel more comfortable. She did not realise that the maintenance of the Invisibility Cloak of the Prancing Puma, when used on the whole team, would be so toilsome.
"At the very least, we are moving ahead," Shi Hui took out her weapon and fanned her teammate a little.
"I think I feel more uncomfortable having a war fan right in front of me." Xue Ping was blunt even though Shi Hui was just trying to be helpful. Both Jia Ying and Yue Wen giggled as Shi Hui blushed and kept her war fan away.
Suddenly, the lift jerked and it stopped moving, with the emergency lights turning on. The team of girls sighed as if they were half expecting it. "Never a smooth trip in Jin's dungeons." Yue Wen complained as she asked Jia Ying for a hand to force open the top hatch.
With Jia Ying's might, it was an easy task to pry open the hatch and Yue Wen was assisted out of the hatch. However, when she climbed up out of the elevator, it shook violently for a moment and it felt like the elevator was going to drop.
"LOSE SOME WEIGHT!" Both Jia Ying and Shi Hui shouted at the same time as they panicked and held onto the railings in the elevator.
"NO, IT'S NOT ME!" Yue Wen's face reddened as she looked up the elevator shaft. "The problem is over there!" Two familiar looking ants were biting on the wires of the elevator and one of the wires was already chewed off.
"Aren't those the wyrm ants in the Zither Mistress Dungeon? Are they the pets that CEO Scabba talked about?" Yue Wen was now fearful about dropping into oblivion if the wyrm ants managed to chew all the wires off. She quickly explained the situation to the whole group and Xue Ping finally stood up.
"Let me handle this. Are we close to a floor or in the middle of it?" Xue Ping took out her weapon, a power fist, which was an oversized plated gauntlet that surprisingly fit nicely onto her right hand. Although the rest she took was short, the chi regeneration potions were still in effect so Xue Ping managed to regain some chi energy back.
"We stopped exactly on the 19th floor, maybe just slightly higher. I think if you blast through the elevator doors, we might have a small passageway to go through" Yue Wen checked the elevator shaft and noticed a large number 20 was painted on the wall, which was quite a distance away from them. She also observed similar door mechanisms and compared it with the one on floor twenty before making the previous assumption.
"Then I shall do exactly that." Xue Ping applied some of her chi into power fist, which generated a visible energy field around the gauntlet and four puma silhouettes appeared above her.
"Step back!" Xue Ping warned Jia Ying and Shi Hui as she bent her legs a little and pulled her right arm back for a power punch.
"BOOM!" The elevator door was broken into smithereens but it also shook the elevator vigorously. "Quick, move out!" Xue Ping was acting like the older sister to these young university girls and even supported Yue Wen down.
However when Yue Wen crawled out of the broken elevator door and to the 19th floor, the elevator shook once more and the elevator cabin sunk further down, preventing Xue Ping from crawling through the passageway.
"No!" the three girls shouted in unison. They could not bear to leave their new big sister to her death.
"BOOM!" An abrupt explosion was heard and the girls realised that Xue Ping punched her way out of the elevator cabin but that caused the cabin to lose its one and only wire that was holding it. "Big Sis! Grab it!" Jia Ying with her quick reflexes took out her spear and thrust it forward the moment she saw Xue Ping jumping upwards.
The power uppercut was strong enough to let Xue Ping fly a few floors up but that attracted the attention of the wyrm ants since they were done with chewing the wires of the fallen elevator. Xue Ping heard the shouting and saw the spear poking out of the elevator shaft and she immediately readjusted herself to catch the spear.
Unfortunately, Xue Ping also used the spear to break her fall and the immense weight nearly caused Jia Ying to lose her balance a little. If not for Shi Hui and Yue Wen's immediate help, Jia Ying would have dropped the spear too.
"Thanks, cuties!" Xue Ping managed to get onto the 19th floor and unhesitantly hugged the three girls. "I will handle those nasty antsy ants, and you guys go find the hostage. I will catch up with you guys later." Xue Ping released them from her tight embrace.
"Big Sis, take this just in case." Yue Wen passed another chi regenerating potion to her.
"Yue Wen, you are too kind, and isn't this potion really expensive? The one you passed to me earlier seemed like they were top grade quality" Xue Ping was a little hesitant to accept it.
"No worries! I have more in my storage ring. I earned all these from Boss Jin's dungeons and they are quite cheap. I do not want you to die because of a little ant either!" Yue Wen teased as she signalled the rest of her team to follow her up the stairs.
"Well, time to squash some ants then." Xue Ping readied her fist.