From the moment they stepped into the pyramid entrance of the Louvre, the faces of the ten billionaires were more tense than ever. At the moment, the Louvre was no longer a world museum for the masses to admire and worship, but a courtroom awaiting a life-or-death verdict. Just two hours after receiving the kidnappers' message, the Louvre was tightly secured.
Advance teams conducted a thorough search both inside and outside the palace, but found nothing unusual. The billionaires paced back and forth anxiously inside the Denon Wing, while the Mona Lisa behind bulletproof glass continued to smile as usual. However, perhaps due to a troubled mind, those magical eyes in the painting seemed to carry a hint of mockery no matter the angle, making the billionaires feel uneasy.
In their hands, each billionaire held a dark leather suitcase of various styles but with a similar understated design. The contents inside were enough to leave any ordinary person in awe. There was the world's largest and highest-quality diamond, the "Great Star of Africa," a millennium-old luminous pearl from the Far East, a new contract for oil exploration rights in a Middle Eastern country, and even a cashier's check worth over ten billion. According to the kidnappers' demands, they brought what they considered to be their most precious possessions.
Time passed slower than ever. Apart from the waves of heavy breathing echoing in the museum and the vigilant gazes crisscrossing in midair, there was no other movement. Even until sunset, there was no further communication from the kidnappers. Fully armed police officers and detectives surrounded the billionaires, their hands gripping guns now sweaty, and their hearts continually beating at a high frequency.
As the last rays of sunlight completely disappeared from the city's edge, a strange temperature drop began inside the museum. André saw his breath turning into the white mist that usually only occurs in winter... but it was July!
An hour ago, Mu Yeliang received a call from the China International MSS headquarters, asking him to return to the Paris Interpol immediately for a new mission. If he were here now, André speculated that the young man, who was like a talkative parrot, would surely be making a fuss, and then making absurd comments about the strange temperature change.
Just as André's attention wavered, a gray shadow suddenly shot out from the smooth floor, yes, indeed, it burst out from the thick underground and swiftly spun in a vortex-like movement. In the blink of an eye, like a river "partitioning," it created a gray-black "isolation zone" between the billionaires and the police.
A whistling air current assaulted their senses, bringing a tearing pain to the skin. André felt as if his eyes were being tightly covered by a pair of icy and rough hands, and he instantly lost his vision under this inexplicable agony. The bone-chilling freeze rapidly spread from his eyelids to his whole body, as if the entire person was frozen into a block of stubborn ice.
This sensation lasted for less than three seconds, but everyone felt as if they had spent a hundred years returning from hell to the mortal world.
Of course, after a moment of confusion, the first thing that crossed everyone's mind was the billionaires who were just within reach. Fortunately, they were all physically unharmed, standing in place bewilderedly, looking at each other. Unfortunately, however, all the suitcases they were holding had disappeared. There was another detail that even they themselves had not noticed, and perhaps they would never notice throughout their lives — the carotid arteries of all ten of them had tiny pinpricks so subtle that they were hard to detect with the naked eye.
"Am I dreaming..." murmured a young police officer to himself. They were all out and out materialists, not believing in the supernatural, not believing in the paranormal, and even their belief in God was just a matter of habit.
But those suitcases filled with "incomparably precious" things that the billionaires tightly held in their hands were swept away right under their noses. The key point was that no one had seen who the intruder was, or in what way they had successfully pulled off such a feat in the midst of a scene filled with armed officers.
The faces of the billionaires grew uglier by the second, much like the undead who had just crawled out of coffins. Mona Lisa continued to smile on the wall, and the more unsightly their expressions, the more beautiful her smile appeared in stark contrast.
André vigorously shook his head, repeatedly telling himself that what he had just seen might simply be an illusion. However, in his twenty years being on the force, he had never contradictorily doubted his own eyes like today. At that moment, the phone rang. André steadied himself, took out his cellphone, and saw that the number displayed was from police headquarters.
"Hello?" He pressed the answer button, trying to make his voice sound as normal as possible.
"Mu Yeliang? He went back to headquarters. What? In the hospital?" André's tone grew increasingly tense, and his complexion turned more and more abnormal. "Discovered three days ago? How is that possible! He has always been with me these past few days!"
The uproar around him grew louder and louder, quickly drowning out his voice.
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