For the first time, Su Qing felt a fierce sense of reluctance to part from that lunatic asylum grey house. He looked back three times for each step he took after Chen Lin. He wasn’t a person without a temper to begin with, and when he was irritated enough, there was nothing he wouldn’t do. But now he felt that a heavy responsibility lay on his shoulders, so he began to learn to swallow his anger. 

But blindly swallowing his anger wasn’t the way to go, either. He thought that there seemed to be something off about Chen Lin and that crowd of blue seals. He felt he would have more peace of mind returning to the grey house—at least there, he was a playground tyrant with his own territory. He had built a small alliance against the Type 4s. Using simple tools, he could contend with the forces of evil. 

But this Chen, with his mind-reading and his magnetic neckband—who knew how many other weapons were in his arsenal that he hadn’t brought out for a public appearance yet? Science could be a real scam sometimes. 

Apart from Jiang Lan’s abortive speech, it seemed that Shi Huizhang and the two people he led all had different degrees of serious enmity towards Chen Lin. Shi Huizhang must have been venting his anger when he killed his little grey. 

Su Qing was a little astonished. He thought, could Shi Huizhang and the others really be so useless that three of them couldn’t take down one Chen Lin? Otherwise, if they had a conflict, why couldn’t they bring it properly out into the open? 

As he thought this, he couldn’t resist rubbing the false earring. 

After a moment, Hu Bugui’s voice came from it: “I don’t know what that blue seal is thinking. You be careful. Don’t aggravate him. His condition is unstable.” 

Su Qing stared. He looked up and examined Chen Lin walking in front of him—he noticed that he was walking in especially large strides, a little rushed, but with a slight stagger. 

Cheng Weizhi had said that while the blue seals’ bodies and minds were hardier than the grey seals’ due to the existence of the new energy system, making them unlikely to be unable to distinguish their own emotions from external ones and lose control like the grey seals, that didn’t mean that could entirely avoid being impacted. 

Though the blue seals had complete energy systems, they didn’t have complete metabolic systems. After a period, they needed external intervention to clean out their bodies. Su Qing suddenly remembered something Chen Lin himself had said: “If we don’t go through a cleaning for a long time, we enter a very unsteady state, like a grey seal going into mental chaos on his first mission from lack of habit. Our seal dims, our eyes become bloodshot, and also…it becomes very hard for us to be responsible for our own behavior.” 

Dim seal, bloodshot eyes—wasn’t that Chen Lin’s condition now? Su Qing shuddered, feeling his gall bladder turn over in his belly, soaking his intestines in bile. 

He followed Chen Lin in even more resolute silence. 

Chen Lin took him through some woods, all the way to a “villa estate.” From outward appearances, the scenery was fairly good. Basic little villas with their own yards were scattered around. Su Qing noticed that the roofs of these little villas were different colors. They were separated into four types—red, blue, yellow, and green. The first villa they passed had a green roof. Su Qing looked up and saw the character “Shi” written on the door plate. He understood—this was where the blue seals lived. 

The treatment was as different as heaven and earth. Compared to the lunatic colony of the grey house, one was a presidential suite, the other was a multi-person bed in a pigeon coop hostel—one was American ostentation, the other was Haiti. 

Su Qing craned his neck to look into the yard and found that there was a doghouse in it. It looked pretty big. He was doubtful—was there a vicious dog inside? 

Just then, perhaps hearing movement, out of the doghouse crawled a…person. 

Su Qing’s eyes opened wide. He stood there staring blankly. He forgot to keep walking forward. 

It was a woman who had crawled out. Su Qing recognized her as a grey seal, because he could see the seal under her collarbone…because she wasn’t wearing any clothes. 

She lifted her head, and her eyes met Su Qing’s. She threw herself towards him as though mad, mouth open wide, but she couldn’t make a sound. Su Qing could only tell from the exaggerated movements of her lips that she was saying “help me.” But soon, she couldn’t go any further—because there was a collar with a chain around her neck like a dog’s. The chain was just long enough for her to crawl out of the “doghouse” and bend her head to drink some water from a basin. 

Su Qing couldn’t resist taking a step forward. He reached out to pull open the villa’s metal gate. When his fingers were about to touch the gate, Chen Lin, who had stopped at some point, all of a sudden quietly said, “There’s a fingerprint recognition system. It won’t let anyone but the owner in. Do you want to try out how it feels to be electrocuted?”  

Su Qing drew back his extended hand and squeezed it into a fist, clenching his teeth—as if this way he could keep a guard on his mouth. 

Chen Lin turned and looked indifferently at the woman dragging her clanking chain. He laughed mockingly. “Anyway, what do you think you can do to Shi Huizhang?” 

Su Qing had not thought that he was a good person to begin with. He was only a little punk, and he firmly believed that “good person” was an insult. A good person was a sap. 

When he had still been a lordling, he had heard a story, about the son of one of his dad’s friends, a person he had met a few times, another wastrel like him. Su Qing had gone partying with him once and thought he and this little scum had a strong common language. One day, the little scum went out drinking with his friends. He got drunk and went racing in the city, hit and killed a pedestrian, some migrant workers’s child. 

And what was the outcome? Nothing at all. His father had money and connections. A bribe here and there, and everything was all right. The migrant worker couple had more than just this one child. They received a large sum of money, swallowed their anger, kept silent and lay low. 

When the matter had passed with alarm but no danger, in order to get him over the shock, his family had invited a whole crowd of them to a meal. At the feast, the brat had prattled on: “It’s all right, don’t waste effort worrying about it. Do these trifling problems mean anything to people like us? You can settle them with some money, and it’s no big deal.” 

At the time, Su Qing had belonged to the “privileged class.” Having gotten lucky in his birth,  he was at the top of the food chain. He thought there was no such thing as justice; anyone who mentioned justice had a screw loose. 

So he had never before longed for “justice” as much as he did now. And never before in this cramped, morbid, deformed world had he, as one of the weak, been so angry, so…powerless. 

A phrase very much out of keeping with Su Qing’s personal style suddenly appeared in his head—there was no justice in this world; justice only existed in the resentment and self-consolation of the weak, and in the consciences of the strong. Suddenly, as a person without a conscience, in these circumstances where only resentment was left to him, he understood what conscience was. 

Su Qing understood what Chen Lin meant by taking him with him. There was no difference between his position and this woman’s. Living in the grey house, he was a “tool.” In the blue seals’ territory, he was a “pet.” 

His mouth tasted of rust. He had accidentally bitten through his lip—when Su Qing came around, he was already swinging his fist towards Chen Lin’s face. Chen Lin effortlessly grabbed him by the wrist. 

Su Qing’s thumb irresistibly rubbed the ring hidden on his middle finger—this thing could deliver a thunderbolt, and the blue seals were scourges who deserved to be struck by heavenly lightning. 

Suddenly, Hu Bugui’s voice sounded urgently: “Don’t! Su Qing, don’t take the risk! You don’t know how to control the shock ring, the likelihood that you’ll fatally wound him is low, don’t anger him!” 

“You want to hit me.” Chen Lin looked at him, head slightly tilted. His glasses slid down a little, and his bloodshot eyes appeared more clearly in front of Su Qing. “You keep wishing a bad end on me, I can sense it.” 

The strength of Chen Lin’s grip on Su Qing’s wrist increased. Su Qing’s thumb was forced to release the ring on his middle finger. He was pressed against the wall, bumping his back painfully. 

Chen Lin looked at him viciously. Then, suddenly, he began to laugh, louder and louder, until at last it was almost ear-piercingly sharp. He reached out and lightly twisted Su Qing’s chin with his fingers. Then, without warning, he let him go. His laughter came to an abrupt stop. “Don’t worry, I also think I’ll come to a bad end one day.” 

The rattling of the chain sounded in his ears, and a gruesome smell appeared out of nowhere in the air. Su Qing didn’t have the courage to turn to look at her again. He only silently followed Chen Lin, lightly rubbing his bruised wrist. He lowered his head, the clear look in his eyes turning a little ferocious—blue seal, he thought, you thing that eats but doesn’t shit, sooner or later the excrement will drive you mad. 

The place where Chen Lin lived had a red roof. Chen Lin opened the gate and pushed Su Qing inside. Su Qing reeled, then stood firm. He looked around the yard. 

The house was large, and the yard wasn’t small, but it seemed that no one had looked after it for a long time. It was overgrown with weeds, with the deathly stillness of an abandoned house. There was a tree in the yard with something heaped under it. Su Qing walked closer and saw that it was the corpse of a big cat. Though it was rotting, you could still tell that the cat’s body had been broken in two, as though something had torn it apart. 

Something had…torn it apart. 

Su Qing subconsciously looked at Chen Lin. Chen Lin had his head down. His expression was unreadable. After opening the door to the house, he said to Su Qing, “Go in.” 

Su Qing didn’t move. Pointing to the cat’s body, he asked, “Was that yours?” 

Chen Lin laughed. His smile had a peculiar look. Su Qing’s breathing became more and more rapid. He felt that his back was soaked with cold sweat. Even his breaths began to tremble. 

Hu Bugui said quietly into his ear, “Su Qing, calm yourself.” 

Su Qing closed his eyes and struggled to recall Professor Cheng in the grey house, recall Tian Feng’s heart-rending wails, recall Shi Huizhang’s yard with that woman living there like a dog… I have to calm myself, he repeated numbly to himself. Calm myself…

Then he took a step forward. His knees went weak, and he nearly went down. Clenching his teeth, he managed to steady himself and walk inside past Chen Lin. 

The front door of the villa closed behind him. He had arrived in a room with an unlived-in feeling. Chen Lin said, “The room furthest to the left on the second floor. You can use that one.” Then he paid no more attention to him. He left without a word. 

Su Qing stood in the living room for a while, decided that Chen Lin really wasn’t coming back, then let out a breath, wiped away his sweat, and crawled up the stairs. His not especially notable emotional resources were severely overworked. 

He came to the room Chen Lin had indicated. As soon as he walked through the door, he knew that someone had lived here before. The wooden table bore the marks of fingernails. Su Qing forced himself not to think of the disturbing question of where the person who had lived here before had gone. He walked in anxiously, then let his imagination run wild all afternoon. He heard no movement from Chen Lin. Then his guts, which had been filled up with the expired Sanlu milk, once again requested sustenance. He finally got up to go through the fridge and found a slice of pizza. This time he didn’t look at the manufacturing date to spare upsetting himself. He grabbed it and ate. 

When he was full, he rummaged through the room. It wasn’t very large, but it had its own bathroom and a bookshelf, as well as a wardrobe. Su Qing took a shirt out of it and measured it against himself. He found that it would be a good fit, only a little roomy. He figured it had been left by the person who had lived here before. 

After rummaging through everything, he was tired. He went into the bathroom to wash the day’s worth of blood and grime away. He changed into clean clothes. The shoulders were a little wide, so the sleeves were long. He rolled them up and sat in a chair, took a book from the bookshelf, and whiled away the time. 

By midnight, there had been no movement from Chen Lin. Su Qing couldn’t resist falling asleep. 

The next day, there was still no movement from Chen Lin. The third day… On the evening of the third day, when Su Qing was starting to relax a little, Chen Lin came to his room without warning. 

His bloodshot eyes were crimson. He grabbed Su Qing by the neck and pressed him against the table. Before Su Qing had worked out what was happening, his head was forced up. Then the shirt he was wearing was suddenly torn open—