Translator: WontonChaos
Translation Checker: 7qqy
Editor: yuki_shuichi
Crushing down wild grasses on a deserted highway, a Hummer flew by. In the trunk of the car was a stack of ornate doll boxes with gold trimmings, wrapped in waterproof bags.
Sarcosuchus drove the car with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing robust arms covered in tough scales. Odd Bones sat in the front passenger seat, supporting her head against the window and dozing off. She occasionally fanned herself with a feather fan to ease her boredom.
Puppet Master had a laptop placed on his knee, and the screen displayed a satellite map that could be zoomed in to observe the situation at every corner of Red Fox City. He was not wearing a suit today, still dressed in the blue shirt that he wore for work and a leather apron that was stained with some paint and colors.
In the last row, Specter hugged a glass hourglass in his arms as he nodded off.
The seats were spaced quite far apart, and Eris left his seat multiple times, crouching down next to Puppet Master and using the muzzle of his shotgun to push aside Specter’s head, which was pasted against Puppet Master’s seat.
The news that they received was that on the night of the 18th of this month, the research institute would gather and destroy thirty thousand experimental subjects. Today was already the 10th, and most of the experimental subjects transported from various cultivation bases had been placed in Warwick Pharmaceutical Factory in Red Fox City by this time.
The experimental subject disposal procedure was run by a computer-controlled device. It was not carried out through the common practice of incineration, instead, it used CNC cutting equipment to separate the flesh from the spines of experimental subjects. The blood, flesh, and internal organs were then concentrated and crushed. Subsequently, it was molded into meat blocks and made into a dry feed, which was further supplied as food to other advanced experimental subjects left in the research institute. The left-over spines were all stored in an active cooling refrigeration facility, as they would be extensively used when the institute modified animal experimental subjects.
The cost of starting the device to execute one full cycle under this setup would be extremely expensive. Therefore, Puppet Master concluded that the research institute would wait until all the experimental subjects slated for destruction were gathered before activating the device once to complete the entire process.
Thus, they must rush to the Warwick Pharmaceutical Factory before the setup started.
The wind at night blew stronger with each breath, and dark clouds gathered, tightly obscuring the moon. Several fine streaks of lightning danced across the horizon, followed by the rumble of thunder that spread from afar. A light drizzle appeared on the car windows, and fog gradually enveloped the glass.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Eris drew a few strokes on the glass of the car window with his fingers and patted Puppet Master to tell him to look.
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“Ahhhh!” Eris exclaimed, startled, and leaned backward. Upon closer inspection, he realized it was just a missing person poster—the black and white face was the photo on the notice.
Odd Bones woke up startled and said impatiently, “Quiet down, don’t be so jumpy.”
“Oh.” Eris rubbed his chin, using the light from Puppet Master’s computer to make out the contents. The photo showed an alpha wearing a high school uniform, with long and disheveled hair covering their eyes, a wide white scarf around their neck, and a uniform that was worn neatly on their body according to the dress code, looking like a person with a quiet and introverted personality.
Under the photo were the contact information and pleas left by the parents, stating that the child had run away from home after arguing with their family and had been missing ever since. They hoped that if anyone saw the child, they could call the xxxx contact number to inform them. Unfortunately, the date on the signature indicated that it was already a year old.
The deluge grew in ferocity, and the missing person poster was battered by raindrops and flung into the mud by the racing Hummer.
The billboard that stood on the bend of the highway was mottled with rust. Under the massive billboard was a narrow beam, which Bai Chunian steadily squatted on to avoid the rain. His white lion tail hung in the air, maintaining balance. In his hand, Bai Chunian held a stack of various missing person posters that he scanned through one by one.
“More and more people have gone missing in the past two years.” Bai Chunian casually folded the stack of papers and threw them away. He stood up, shaking off the rainwater from his tail, which caused the crystal bell hanging from the tip of his tail to make a pleasant chime. From a height of dozens of meters, he lightly leaped down off the beam and chased after the Hummer into Red Fox City.
Bai Chunian kept an eye on them from the shadows as they concealed their car near the Warwick Pharmaceutical Factory. Including Puppet Master, a total of five familiar faces got out of the car.
Each of them took an exquisitely patterned box from the trunk of the car and then dispersed into the factory, with Eris following closely beside Puppet Master.
Only after their silhouettes had completely disappeared into the darkness did Bai Chunian step out of the awning of an abandoned factory building and followed them into the pharmaceutical factory. Noiselessly, he climbed upwards along the outside of the building covered in steel cladding and finally reached the topmost balcony, where he hid his tracks and looked around.
This factory didn’t seem to be the kind of facility that has frequent business dealings and was in operation regularly. Many pieces of equipment as well as furnishings were covered in dust, and all rooms were dark except for a few offices with turned-on lights and factory employees in uniforms walking around inside.
Nearly three hundred heavy-duty trucks were parked in an open space in the northernmost part of the factory with their cargo compartments tightly closed and locked. A dozen or so security guards patrolled the aisles between the trucks with QBZ-95 automatic rifle, all of which were visually estimated to be above M2-grade.
Two searchlights were operating inside the factory, and their intense, dazzling beams intersected paths from time to time. After observing the searchlights’ sweeping trajectory for a while, Bai Chunian memorized their operational sequence, then flipped over and jumped down from the balcony. His inherent ability, silent cat-walking, cushioned his landing from heights without making any noise.
As the searchlight swept over, Bai Chunian quickly dropped to the ground and rolled behind a stack of packing cartons to avoid the ray of light. The moment the light moved away, he swiftly rolled out from behind the cartons, nimbly leaped, grabbed onto the roof of a trailer parked outside the warehouse with both hands, and swiftly climbed up as the next wave of searchlights swept by. His movements were like floating clouds and flowing water, yet even now, any hesitation would have exposed him to the searchlight’s beam.
This was also the reason why Bai Chunian didn’t bring other members of the Search Division with him. Not all agents were competent in such covert investigation missions, and they were usually assigned to feline special agents. Apart from Bai Chunian, the Search Division also has a Bengal cat omega and a snow tiger omega, but both agents were currently on other missions abroad. Bai Chunian couldn’t find a suitable partner on the fly, so he had to go alone.
He dodged the searchlights, flipped into the shadow behind the factory building, shifted a few steps along the base of the wall, bypassed the patrolling security guards, and then silently entered the open space that was full of trucks.
But the security guards’ patrol route was even more dense than he had imagined. Just as Bai Chunian eyed a suitably positioned truck and prepared to inspect it, there were two armed security guards who simultaneously and steadily strode over from two different entrances.
Bai Chunian immediately flipped himself over onto the roof of the truck and laid flat on it to avoid the security guards’ line of sight. Tasks like this covert investigation were not meant for rookies; to execute it, it required sufficient adaptability and experience. A single careless mistake could lead to irreversible consequences that would result in mission failure.
Bai Chunian suppressed his breathing to the best of his ability. Due to his rich experience, he remained calm, his heartbeat and breathing didn’t quicken, so the probability of him being detected was minuscule.
Through a layer of iron plating, Bai Chunian faintly heard the feeble sounds of breathing coming from inside the cargo compartment.
Bai Chunian perked up his ears. He tilted his head and pressed it against the top of the cargo compartment, carefully listening to the situation inside.
In addition to the sound of breathing, there were also some faint wails and the chafing of limbs entangled with one another. The sounds of suffering seemed to penetrate through an airtight layer of iron, drilling into Bai Chunian’s ears.
After the security guards left, Bai Chunian poked his head out from the roof of the truck. In the instant when the searchlights swept over, he climbed down, stretched his toes to hook on the truck roof, and hung his whole body upside down next to the cargo compartment’s sliding door.
The cargo compartment was locked, but in the face of Bai Chunian’s J1 differentiation ability, Bone Armor, several heavy locks were of no use. Bai Chunian only used two fingers to lightly nudge it, and the latch was pried open like wet clay.
The cargo compartment door slowly swung open, and the scene inside sent a shiver down Bai Chunian’s spine.
He had initially thought that these experimental subjects would be confined in narrow glass containers, unable to stretch their limbs or even turn over. The cylindrical glass containers would be neatly stacked in the cargo compartment. They would be immobile and deprived of light. This was already the most painful situation Bai Chunian could ever imagine.
Yet the reality was even more horrifying. These experimental bodies were haphazardly squeezed into a large rectangular glass container that was even smaller than the cargo compartment. It was impossible to distinguish whose head belongs to whom and whose foot belongs to whom. They were like stuffed animals in a claw machine, filling the glass container to the brim. A layer of waste products has already accumulated at the bottom of the glass case, and dirty water has soaked the corpses of those who have already suffocated to death at the bottom, much like hundreds of locusts caught in a mineral water bottle.
Bai Chunian used a miniature camera to capture the scene before him. He remained collected, but his lips trembled involuntarily due to the overwhelming sense of empathy arising from sharing the same background with the experimental subjects.
Bai Chunian sent all the photos taken in the factory back to the Tech Department and noted, “Puppet Master has entered the factory, and his motive was likely these low-level experimental subjects that have yet to mature. The security level here is not high enough, and they are likely to succeed.”
The Tech Department replied back, “Continue tracking.”
After receiving orders from the headquarters, all major cultivation bases packaged and loaded the screened test subjects and eliminated them as instructed, then they were sent to Red Fox City for disposal. However, due to the large number of cultivation bases, the disposal process wouldn’t be very swift.
In the pitch-black darkness of the laboratory, Xiao Yang sat in front of a desktop computer, attentively observing the surveillance images on the screen, with Aileen’s work badge placed on the identity authentication device next to the computer.
The images sent back from Red Fox City showed Bai Chunian as well as Puppet Master’s group entering the pharmaceutical factory separately.
Xiao Yang remotely controlled the surveillance cameras in the pharmaceutical factory, deflecting their angles until they reached an orientation where they couldn’t be seen. Then he activated the searchlights’ settings program and slightly modified the searchlight’s trajectory, moving it away from the parking lot and reducing its scanning speed.
After completing these tasks, Xiao Yang cleared all login traces, shut down the computer, and picked up Aileen’s work badge from the identity authentication device. He then walked towards the door in the pitch darkness.
As Xiao Yang stepped out of the laboratory’s automatic door, his footsteps froze slightly. The ice-cold muzzle of a gun pressed against his gland, and a blue rose pheromone filled with malevolence abruptly approached.
In the darkness, Aileen leaned over from behind, embracing Xiao Yang’s slender waist with one hand and pressing a gun against his gland with the other.
Xiao Yang’s body tensed up, and the work badge in his hand fell to the ground. He slowly raised both hands, turning his back to Aileen.
“Why?” Aileen asked with some sorrow, resting her chin on Xiao Yang’s shoulder and softly questioning him, “The person I love always ends up stealing from me. You keep saying that you are different from Lin Deng, but where exactly are you different?”
Thank You for the new chapter ♥(ˆ⌣ˆԅ)