After Zhang Bin and Wang Mei left, Yang Ce began preparing for the evening. His original plan had been to disguise himself carefully. He was still unwilling to reveal his true identity—after all, today's business had little to do with him, and there was no need to get himself entangled in it.

But now that plan was entirely unnecessary. Yang Ce could now alter his appearance without any adornment at all. To be honest, he had never imagined his glasses could have such a function.

Even though he had previously learned from Su Haikuo that Su Ya's disguise owed entirely to a pair of glasses like these, at the time Yang Ce had assumed that each pair had its own particular powers. It was not until Su Ya said that when she received her glasses, the old man had told her they were an incompletely developed pair, while Yang Cenbin's might be the fully functional version.

If he followed that line of reasoning, then his own pair could not possibly possess only the functions he had seen so far. There had to be other functions yet undiscovered—only Yang Ce had no way of discovering them one by one just now.

Yang Ce drew the curtains shut, then faced the mirror and began to change his appearance. He tried several faces, but none satisfied him—each was either too handsome or too ugly.

Of course, what concerned Yang Ce was not whether a face was handsome or ugly. Such things did not matter; it was not his real face anyway. What concerned him was that, as an assassin, his face should not be distinctive. It should be an ordinary, common face—one that made people think, upon seeing it, that he was utterly unremarkable, and forget him the moment they turned away.

In the end, Yang Ce blended the images of many people from memory and produced a thoroughly ordinary face—neither handsome nor ugly, as ordinary as could be.

Only then did Yang Cenbin nod in satisfaction. He took a pair of sunglasses from his suitcase and put them on, covering his eyes. A person's face could be changed, but the eyes were very hard to change. So, to be safe, Yang Ce put on the sunglasses.

Before going out, Yang Ce first swept the corridor with his ability and found that no guests or waiters were passing by. Only then did he slip swiftly out the door of his room.

He went downstairs and out of the hotel, and no one suspected Yang Juehuan's identity. Strangers came and went through the hotel every day in great numbers—especially now, when Yang Ce's common face was the most common of all.

To be continued.

837. So It Was Her

837. So It Was Her. Yang Ce casually bought a newspaper at the roadside and held it in his hand, so that he would look more like a local—a white-collar worker employed by some company.

Following the address given in the Macao Street Shopping Magazine, Yang Ce arrived near the venue of the gambling-technique symposium. It was a small private club. He was just about to go in when the security guard at the entrance stopped him: "Hello, sir. May I see your invitation, please?"

Yang Puqi was startled—he had not expected an invitation to be required here. It seemed entry involved strict scrutiny. Yang Yongjin smiled awkwardly and said, "I don't have an invitation. I thought this place was open to the public."

"Sorry, sir. No invitation, no entry." The guard politely extended a hand and blocked Yang Juehuan's way.

"I see. Never mind, then. It's nothing." Yang Ce shook his head as though it did not matter, turned, and walked away from the club.

The guard paid him no mind. There were always a few people like Yang Cenbin every day; he was long past being surprised.

Yang Ce did not leave at once, however. After turning and walking a good distance away, he doubled back—only this time he did not go to the club's front entrance, but began circling the area around the club.

The club was surrounded by a tall fence, and at the top of the fence one could see surveillance cameras in operation. Yang Ce could have climbed over, but he would certainly have been recorded by the cameras.

In other words, the security here was extremely tight. To get inside, apart from having an invitation, the only way was to force one's way in—and to carry out an assassination here would clearly be unwise.

First, getting inside was a major difficulty. Unless one had an invitation and walked in openly and legitimately, forcing an entry would have—well, the place would not look as it did now; those guards would long since have sprung into action.

Second, even if one got inside and the assassination succeeded, escape would be extremely difficult. But if the first possibility held, then such an attempt was not entirely out of the question.

The key problem, however, was that Yang Ce simply did not believe the assassin coming here could have obtained an invitation. The reason was simple: like Yan, he too had only learned from the magazine today where the target would be. It was impossible for him to have prepared an invitation in advance, and there was basically no time left now to forge one.

So that person had most likely been turned away just like Yan and left—or perhaps he had not yet arrived.

With this in mind, Yang Ce decided to keep watch at the club entrance for a while. If he could run into that assassin, so much the better.

To be safe, however, Yang Ce used his ability to survey the courtyard and the interior of the club. Apart from the security personnel, everyone else was gathered in a single conference room. They all seemed to know one another and were engaged in heated discussion about something. From this he could conclude that the assassin was not among them. Yang Ce relaxed slightly.

Still, he waited there nearly twenty minutes and saw no one else approach the club. Yang Yongjin could not help feeling a little disappointed. Yet by rights the assassin should not have arrived yet—when Yang Ce had come, the symposium had only just begun, unless the assassin had come even earlier.

Just as he was pondering this, Yang Ce suddenly noticed a young man in a baseball cap walking toward the club entrance. Yang Puqi tensed and was instantly on his guard.

"Brother Wang, you're on duty today?" the man in the cap said to the guard on duty. Yang Ce could not hear, but by reading his lips he could tell what they were saying.

"That's right, Boss Zhu. Twenty chicken cutlet takeout orders today," said the guard called Brother Wang.

"OK, no problem. Same time as usual?" asked the man in the cap, addressed as Boss Zhu.

"Yeah, same time every day." Brother Wang nodded. "Throw in a bit extra rice for the boys."

"Don't worry, you're all regulars. I'll make sure you're well fed," Boss Zhu nodded and promised with a chuckle, then turned and left.

Yang Ce sighed and shook his head helplessly. From the look of it, this was just a delivery boy—no chance he was the assassin. Still, Yang Ce had patience, and there was nowhere else to go at this hour, so he sat down on a bench by the roadside, the newspaper he had just bought in his hands. To all appearances he was reading it diligently, but in truth his eyes had already cut straight through the paper and fixed on the entrance of the club.

Another ten minutes or so passed, and a girl dressed in a fashionable, sun-bright style came walking toward the club entrance, a small bag slung over her shoulder. Judging by her clothes she was probably a student—not tall, but nicely proportioned—with a pair of sunglasses pushed up into her hair, which only made her look more delicately pretty and cute.

By any ordinary reasoning, this person should have nothing to do with an assassin. Such a pure, sweet girl really could not be connected to a killer in any way—but Yang Jiyan did not let his guard down because of that.

"Assassins have to look the part"—Yang Ce shook his head. His own everyday appearance was sunny enough, and his identity was that of a student at Songjiang Engineering University; the identity he carried in the shadows was no less shocking.