Hu Bugui followed closely after him as though unwilling to waste a single glance on the dead blue seal. He jumped right down, leaving Lu Qingbai alone, cut off from the mortal world in his protective clothing, planted in the middle of hundreds of brains with a corpse beside him—an extremely hardcore scene.
"Wait for me, you assholes!" Lu Qingbai only caught up after a long time and clumsily crawled over to the hole. He raised his butt and stuck his head in downward. He found that there wasn't a single underground floor underneath. Looking down, it was pitch-black, of unknown depth. The big life chrysalis globe hung in midair, and the transparent covers holding people next to it were all mounted on the walls around it. Su Qing and Hu Bugui were clinging to the wall like geckoes. Dr. Lu felt instant acrophobia, so he yelled, "Hey, how am I going to get down?"
"Jump!" Hu Bugui said concisely.
"Bastard! I'm not a gorilla like you. If I jump from here, I'll end up missing body parts!"
"Oh," Su Qing's slightly smiling voice came up from below, "then we'll trouble you to keep guard up above."
Lu Qingbai, grinding his teeth, looked at the brain nearest to him. All the folds and blood vessels on it were crystal clear, and never mind how sickening it was. He thought, You two had better not get injured in the line of duty after this, or else you'll fall into my hands.
The indicator needle of the energy detector curved at a bigger and bigger angle. Hu Bugui pulled a steel rod out from the items he was carrying along and pressed the on/off switch. It immediately produced a laser chain, catching the edge of the hole with a bang. Lu Qingbai's startled cursing came from above. Hu Bugui said, "Shut up. Dr. Lu, reinforce us from above. We don't have much time left."
Then a long hook extended from the other end of the steel rod. Su Qing understood. He immediately caught the hook and tossed it with extreme accuracy, hooking onto a cover. There was a light click, and the hook automatically locked onto the thing it had hooked on. Hu Bugui pulled, found that it was firmly hooked, then pressed a button on the steel rod. The laser chain automatically hauled up the cover, along with the person inside it.
In no time at all, Lu Qingbai unhooked the cover up above and tossed back the chain. The technological content of this process wasn't high, but time was limited. It had to be done as quickly as possible. While waiting for Lu Qingbai's chain, Su Qing suddenly spoke softly: "Captain Hu, there's something that I haven't had a chance to tell you yet."
Hu Bugui stared, turning his head to look at him.
"Before Xu Ruchong died, he actually said some things to me..." Having said this much, Su Qing's words paused involuntarily. He looked at Hu Bugui, frowning. He didn't know why he suddenly wanted to say this to him, and he didn't know whether he should continue to speak. He began to waver.
Hu Bugui's gaze burned on Su Qing's face as though it could pierce through the thick protective clothing. His scorching expectation was palpable—what was he awaiting? Xu Ruchong's dying words?
When the words came to Su Qing's lips, he evaded practically out of instinct. "He told me that he was actually that Dr. Zheng's adopted son, that he had always been wavering. That was the hand he was dealt. He...had no way out. You shouldn't blame him."
Hu Bugui was bound to have already confirmed this information with Professor Cheng. As dying words went, this sounded right, but Hu Bugui and Su Qing were both well aware that before his death, Xu Ruchong had certainly revealed some other more important information.
Su Qing caught the hook Lu Qingbai had tossed and took the opportunity to avoid Hu Bugui's gaze.
After a long moment, Hu Bugui finally gave a dull "OK." As Su Qing pulled back on the hook after throwing it into position, he couldn't resist glancing at him.
Hu Bugui wasn't looking at him. He only had his head down and his eyes lowered. The life chrysalis's globe gave off a soft light that passed through the protective shield over his face and fell on his eyes. They looked inexpressibly dim.
It seemed that there was once again something cutting the two of them off. Neither spoke. Both sides were silent for a long time before Su Qing pressed the button and quietly said, "This is the last one. We should prepare to go up."
Hu Bugui nodded. Su Qing felt that he could see Hu Bugui's disappointment on the exposed half of his face. He even felt that he was pitiable. His heart suddenly softened.
Hu Bugui turned. "You go up first."
There was a colossal war being waged in Su Qing's heart. He didn't politely decline. He stepped carefully on the cracks in the irregular wall. When he passed by Hu Bugui, Hu Bugui automatically reached out a hand to support his waist in a protective gesture. Before Su Qing's raised foot could fall, it stopped in midair. At a very close distance, he raised his head to look at Hu Bugui for a while.
The scrutiny in his gaze was too heavy. Hu Bugui couldn't resist asking, "What's wrong?"
Su Qing pursed his lips, then finally quietly said, "When I went to see Professor Cheng that day, I had actually seen a drawing of Cheng Ge's that Tutu brought me."
Hu Bugui's eyes suddenly widened. He looked at him as though he didn't quite dare to believe it and also as though he was wild with joy. Su Qing avoided his gaze. The two of them were standing in an especially dangerous place. Their chests were pressed together. One of Hu Bugui's hands was supporting Su Qing's waist, and the other was holding the cable on his protective clothing. Between them was the bulky protective clothing. Even their heads were surrounded in ridiculous shields like pictures of American astronauts from the last century. But Hu Bugui felt that he had never before been so close to Su Qing.
Su Qing lowered his voice and quickly explained everything clearly. "In the end, Xu Ruchong told me that Cheng Ge's drawing wasn't related to him."
They both knew what this meant. Hu Bugui's little heart, blown upwards by spring breezes, finally landed on the ground. His breath caught. "That's what Xu Ruchong told you?"
Su Qing nodded.
Just then, Lu Qingbai's voice came from above. "Hey, you two, stop billing and cooing down there, hurry up!"
Hu Bugui gave him a profound look, and Su Qing finally put his foot down and grabbed the protective cable, planning to climb up. But Hu Bugui grabbed his wrist. "Telling me this, aren't you afraid that I'm the person he was hinting about? If I am...then what?"
Su Qing looked at him fixedly, drew his hand out of Hu Bugui's palm, and lightly swiped across Hu Bugui's neck with his glove. A smile slowly developed on his face. He said, "Then I'll slaughter you."
These words obviously weren't any kind of declaration of love, but when the two of them had climbed up, Lu Qingbai still somehow sniffed out a tiny hint of pink from Hu Bugui. He looked suspiciously at Hu Bugui's always expressionless face and shook his head with a shudder.
From the basement, they had pulled up altogether around ten people in clear covers. There were still wires attached to them. Lu Qingbai laid them out, carefully avoiding the brains and wires on the ground. Hu Bugui asked, "How do we handle them?"
Lu Qingbai hadn't been slacking off. He had pretty much worked out a rough understanding of the wires connected to the life chrysalis. He held his chin and thought for a while. He got out a little clip and clipped it to a wire on the life chrysalis connected to Gui Song's corpse. Blue numbers jumped up on it. He began to direct Su Qing and Hu Bugui. "First, carefully sever the wire on the first person and see what happens."
Su Qing brought down a knife, immediately cutting off the first filament.
The blue numbers obviously decreased a little. Lu Qingbai frowned. "Bring this person to the car."
Then he turned on the communicator linked to headquarters. "Chang Dou, calculate this for me, what's the critical threshold for support from conveying the twenty-one grams of substance?"
Chang Dou's voice was even more strongly distorted. He said intermittently, "If you break off about half, it should just about reach the critical threshold. Though the life chrysalis will probably have after-effects. After you pass the threshold, you'll have about ten minutes to withdraw. The defense platform has already been established. As soon as you withdraw from inside, I'll detonate immediately."
Su Qing said, "Let's move the first half of the people out. Give priority to the heavier-looking ones. For the remaining half, I can sever the connections in one cut, and we'll take them out as quickly as possible."
Lu Qingbai said, "Quickly, quickly. When the time comes, each of you gorillas can be responsible for two, and in my capacity and a gentle and frail doctor, I'll undertake to carry one. Perfect."
The three of them quickly handled these half-dead unlucky devils. Just as Su Qing had arranged one of them in the car and was heading back, a sudden tremor nailed him in place.
This was his third time being shrouded by this gaze.
Only the most acute senses could perceive the finest sniper's all-encompassing line of sight. When that gaze swept over, there were no blind spots. He would kill with one shot, leaving his prey with nowhere to run.
A thin layer of cold sweat instantly came up on Su Qing's back.
Lu Qingbai turned his head. "What are you doing? Hurry up!"
"The sniper," Su Qing said quietly, not moving half a step. All his muscles tensed.
He couldn't understand this elusive sniper no matter how much he pondered. The time with Xu Ruchong, there had been two bullets in all, and you could say that they had both helped him—the first bullet seemed to have been shot by Jiang Lan; it had simply seemed to be telling him how to escape the big net's control. The second bullet had been even more bizarre. It had killed Xu Ruchong, breaking off the net's energy system and restoring his freedom.
Of course, Su Qing didn't have any direct notion of the fact that after the net's energy source had been cut off, it had nearly drained him into a mummy.
Almost immediately after he spoke, Hu Bugui held down Lu Qingbai next to him. "Get down!"
A bullet burst through the air, hitting Gui Song. Unerringly, it bored directly into the blue seal on his shoulder.
A small tuft of sparks suddenly spurted out of the life chrysalis. The clip Lu Qingbai had put on it exploded.
A sharp alarm rang. The indicator needle on the energy detector went right over the critical threshold.
Chang Dou screamed: "Someone's broken the heart of the energy vortex, three minute countdown to the explosion beginning, get out of there now!"
Lu Qingbai looked at Hu Bugui in shocked indecision. Hu Bugui shouted to him: "Get out, at once!"
"You..."
"Two minutes fifty seconds!"
"Hurry, don't stand there getting in the way!"
There were five or six people on the ground with their filaments still uncut. Hu Bugui crouched back down. Suddenly, a hand reached out and uncompromisingly hauled him up by the shoulder, dragging him away against his will.
"Two minutes thirty...two minutes twenty-nine..."
This time, no one paid attention to the ground littered with brains and wires. No one had time to care about the soft and hard things they were stepping on. Naturally, the only person who would have the audacity to abduct Captain Hu was Su Qing. Hu Bugui struggled to throw him off. "There's..."
Before he could finish, the wires on the ground connected to countless brains turned into a flaming dragon. The chair Gui Song was sitting in was blown sky high. Small-scale explosions were already beginning. Su Qing shoved Hu Bugui into the car. "Shut up! Dr. Lu, drive!"
"Two minutes, one minute fifty-nine, one minute fifty-eight..."
Before the car door had closed, Lu Qingbai slammed on the gas pedal. The car leapt up at lightning speed. Soon after, there was an enormous sound behind them. The heart of the energy vortex had exploded.
"One minute. Fifty-nine seconds..."
Lu Qingbai didn't dare to turn his head. He pressed the gas pedal to the floor, driving the automobile like an airplane.
"Thirty-second countdown!"
"Eight, seven, six..."
Jolting and bumping the whole way, they crashed out of the ionosphere. Before they could leave altogether, the whole energy vortex at last collapsed five seconds ahead of schedule. Though they had already driven to the edge and had entered halfway into the defense platform, the enormous energy still threw the whole car up.
Lu Qingbai's head hit the front windshield. If not for his protective clothing, his brain probably would have been knocked flat.