General Xiong took out yet another cigarette and looked past two guards at the captured little mustache. “Is your Dr. Zheng still in good health?” 

When he said this sentence, his tone was indifferent, as though he was just idly chatting. But for some reason, an enraged expression appeared on the little mustache’s face, as though General Xiong hadn’t been making small talk but had made an offensive remark about a female elder of his family. 

General Xiong belatedly caught up. He nodded. “Oh, I see. It would appear that Dr. Zheng’s health isn’t at all good.” 

He looked up a little melancholically and blew a very elaborately-shaped smoke ring and slowly and ruefully said, “Ah, we’re all old. Look at me, then look at Zheng Qinghua. Both of us are the sun around eight or nine in the evening—we’ve crossed the whole country’s time zone, yet we haven’t retired or gone to our rest. What good is a final struggle?” 

The members of the RZ Unit were well-trained. Each stood by with a wooden expression, some holding guns and some holding the captive, turning a deaf ear to General Xiong’s words. 

General Xiong still felt he hadn’t spoken to his heart’s content, so, slapping a young guard nervously holding a gun next to him on the shoulder, he said, “Look—this Zheng Qinghua, I’ve always thought that he enjoys laying down the law for others, but he isn’t suited to being a teacher. I told him so long ago. But he didn’t listen; he insisted on being a spiritual guide to a crowd of young people. And what was the outcome?” 

The young guard didn’t know what to say. He could only divert part of his attention. Hands still holding the gun, he prepared to listen respectfully to the old leader’s enlightening remarks: “The outcome was that he fostered a crowd of silly children who can’t do anything but indulge in fantasies. Their own mothers wouldn’t know them! Ah!” 

For some reason, it seemed that after he spoke, someone not far away snickered. This startled the outer layer of guards, making them jittery with nerves for a long moment. 

The person who had accidentally laughed was in fact Su Qing. He had dug up an old brick-colored coat from somewhere. Wrapped up in it, he was clinging outside the window like a big gecko, seeming to have melted into the background. 

He had followed the individual who had changed clothes in the restroom, unexpectedly following him all the way to the conference room upstairs. He had watched with his own eyes as the man took down the team member who had hurriedly come to counsel General Xiong to relocate. 

Su Qing was a little taken aback—it would have been suspicious for anyone to leave their post in such tense circumstances and come to the conference room. Su Qing was looking on with the cool eye of a bystander. From the moment the alarm had rung in the RZ Unit headquarters, the core personnel, the response personnel, the guards, and the members of all the other departments, had all strictly followed regulations. 

Where there was a major question concerning national security, at such a sensitive time, demonstrating a tiny bit of suspicious behavior could incur a disaster for yourself and others. Reasonably speaking, how could there be a weirdo like this who would come dashing boldly into the conference room? 

Su Qing, taking the cynical view, believed that this person had bad intentions. 

He frowned. Abstracting the whole business into simple language, it was: “One person with bad intentions was shot dead in front of everyone by another person with bad intentions. Then a third person with bad intentions attempted to take advantage of the commotion to get rid of the old general.” 

While he was attempting to understand the whole business, he suddenly heard a huge sound. Su Qing nearly fell off the wall. He was startled. He hung on there and looked carefully—it turned out that after the third person with bad intentions was exposed, he “self-destructed.” 

It wasn’t the old-hat move of the Middle Eastern terrorists of the past—strapping on a pack of dynamite and charging towards the target, turning yourself into a bomb on legs. Compared to those “revolutionary martyrs,” this human bomb was obviously in a more fashionable style; the means of carrying were more convenient. 

Because he blew up from inside. 

The floor tiles were lifted by the explosion, and a big hole appeared in the conference room’s wall, but miraculously, no one was hurt. 

The instant the explosion occurred, an enormous clear shield suddenly stood up from the floor. Some of the guards hadn’t been expecting it and in their panic had their guns “seized” by the clear shield. Then, in the blink of an eye, the shield reached the conference room’s ceiling, firmly supporting the building and limiting the scope of the explosion’s damage. 

Su Qing clicked his tongue in admiration at this—now this was the standard of a developed country… He suddenly found that this RZ Unit truly had too many good things. They simply couldn’t be fished up. 

A great portion of men display interest in machinery from a very young age. Su Qing was the same. He observed with an almost unbearable itch, then looked down at himself and instantly felt sadness welling up. 

Then he suddenly noticed that the second “person with bad intentions,” the one who had fired the gun, was moving. Number 2 had been standing in a very distant corner. Before the rest had recovered from the aftereffects of the bomb and the protective shield that had come up out of nowhere, he turned and left without anyone noticing. 

Su Qing had an idea. Without overthinking it, he immediately followed Number 2. 

Right after he left, General Xiong puffed on his cigarette and glanced at the place where Su Qing had been hidden, a thoughtful expression appearing on his face. The sound of the explosion had disturbed many people. Qin Luo was the first to arrive with backup. After a moment, Hu Bugui came, too. But he didn’t go over to investigate. He only looked at General Xiong from far away. 

He saw General Xiong spread the webbing between his left thumb and forefinger, press his right forefinger and thumb respectively to the tip and the second joint of his left forefinger, and hold the tip of his left thumb to the base of his right thumb. It looked like an English capital letter “B.”  

Hu Bugui nodded and left in long strides. 

Su Qing didn’t see these little gestures. He dodged the RZ Unit headquarters’ security monitors and alarms along with the person he was following, moving quickly. Then he stood by and watched as the person he was following imitated him, ducking into the sewers. 

Su Qing wanted to cry. His sense of smell was much more sensitive than an average person’s. There had been nothing for it these last couple of weeks; he had spent quite a long time underground. Now he thought that even the air around him smelled putrid. Even though he wasn’t obsessed with cleanliness, he also wasn’t obsessed with filth. He really didn’t want to relive his past experience. 

But the man he was following had thrown himself right in and showed no signs of coming out anytime soon. Su Qing staked the place out for a while, hiding from several batches of searchers as he did so, then at last decided to lay down his life for the revolution. Gnashing his teeth and stamping his feet, he squeezed in after him to pass through the sewers. 

At this time, of the enemy agents hidden in the headquarters who had jumped out, four had been shot dead by mobile search teams and one had self-destructed. The work on the ground was drawing to a close. Cheng Ge had also been found. After he had put together that huge and difficult puzzle, he had felt hungry, so he had wandered out of the restroom on his own. 

The fuss had already taken up half the day. The RZ Unit’s core members and General Xiong went together to the emergency backup conference room. 

Only then did Hu Bugui take out a big document pouch and line up the things inside one by one. “Recently we have received considerable inside information from various channels.” 

The document pouch contained audio recordings and pieces of paper, even video. All the contents amounted to one sentence: the next target is Number 4. 

Hu Bugui set aside the recording device Su Qing had given him on its own, laced his fingers together, and put his elbows on the table. Qin Luo caught up at once. “I understand. Aside from the recording device I received on the street that day, the other information doesn’t include the information about ‘killing Number 4.’” 

After she said this, Qin Luo realized that she had actually spoken in public—even though everyone sitting there was familiar to her, she still blushed uncontrollably. 

Fang Xiu shook his head, thinking that if she didn’t have social anxiety, this colleague of his would be a quick-thinking genius. 

Hu Bugui said, “Up to this point, we haven’t received any information of value concerning Su Qing, and I trust that it’s the same for the other side. It would be hard for them to expect Su Qing to intervene in this matter. Or rather, even if they anticipated it, it would be hard for them to assess how he would intervene.” 

General Xiong smacked his lips and sat up a little straighter, looking at Hu Bugui with narrowed eyes. He was very interested in the subject of “Su Qing.” 

Fang Xiu frowned. “Then if we suppose that the information on the final recording device is the most accurate—in other words, that ‘killing Number 4’ is the information nearest to the truth—while the rest was to some extent disseminated to deceive us…” 

Hu Bugui shook his head. “We can’t say it was disseminated. They could anticipate that we would have our own informers and intelligence workers. So ‘Number 4 is the target’ is accurate information. What was concealed was the crucial information about ‘killing Number 4.’” 

At this point, since none those present were stupid, they understood at once—if Cheng Weizhi was Number 4, killing him would truly be a big loss. General Xiong accepted this without concern, nodding his head significantly. “An intellectual’s life is worth more than those of rough and ready fellows like us, who can only hold a gun. So it’s said that science and technology are the number one productive force. Xiao Hu, see about finding time next week to organize a lesson for our comrades with that as the specific topic.” 

Hu Bugui simply ignored him. “The death of Number 3, Zhao Yifei, and Cheng Ge’s disappearance, are both their smokescreens.” 

“And the true target was General Xiong?” Xu Ruchong pushed up his glasses, belatedly catching up. 

Hu Bugui didn’t respond, only took something else from the document pouch. 

Su Qing waited in the gas-chamber-like sewer for a full day and night before the unusually patient dear friend began to move. It was the small hours of the morning. The RZ Unit headquarters had already resumed normal operations. Even the guard on Cheng Weizhi had relaxed considerably. 

A human figure stealthily approached the sixth floor VIP room. His hand was stuck into his pocket, pressing on a small instrument. Waves of a particular frequency went out. The guards at Cheng Weizhi’s door silently fell over, and the security monitor’s screen broke immediately. 

This was precisely the time when a person was most fatigued. 

His whole way was smooth and unhindered. But just when he had easily pried open the door to Cheng Weizhi’s room open and was about to go in, he suddenly felt something was off—this seemed to be too easy. 

During his momentary hesitation, the sharp fire alarm in the corridor once again began to ring like an avalanche—the wicked tailer Su Qing had stuck a lit cigarette end into the alarm’s sensor. 

The location with the “fire” was immediately sealed off. Then Su Qing turned and ran. He broke the switch on the powered door to the emergency exit passage, completely sealing the way. He picked up a fire extinguisher, pulled a mask over his face, then quietly glided along the wall. 

The door to Cheng Weizhi’s room opened on its own, revealing a black gun muzzle inside. The concealed agent who had been startled by the fire alarm—call him He Yongkang, rather—backed up a step when the gun muzzle touched his head, slowly raising his hands—but one of his hands was squeezed into a fist. 

Su Qing also slowly retreated and put the fire extinguisher aside, thinking that this time around the RZ Unit was pretty impressive. 

When he had followed this last concealed agent into the sewer, he had understood that Utopia had complementary and supplementary Plans A and B. Each person had an assignment to carry out; each person was a front. The so-called Number 4 was both General Xiong and Cheng Weizhi. 

He had been a little worried, but it turned out that his fears had been groundless. Su Qing silently smiled in self-mockery, finding that he had underestimated that unlucky devil Hu Bugui. 

Fang Xiu coldly said, “Open your hand. Raise it.” 

There came the sound of footsteps. The emergency exit Su Qing had sealed to prevent the man from running was opened manually, and Qin Luo appeared leading people from the other side. 

A strange smile appeared on He Yongkang’s face. He opened his hand. Fang Xiu’s pupils contracted at once: he was holding a brown instrument the size of a thumb. 

He Yongkang quietly said, “Waves are a miraculous thing. Some can make people unconscious, and some can kill them. They can even form a resonance with the human body, instantly shattering all your internal organs. That feeling…bang.” 

Fang Xiu lifted the muzzle of his gun, his facial muscles tensing. 

But He Yongkang didn’t look at him. “One, two, three… There are over twenty elite personnel present. I think it’s worth it. We…” 

He seemed about to sigh with emotion. Just then, with everyone watching, there was a sudden change. 

He Yongkang’s wrist was pierced, and the wave-producing instrument fell and was quickly caught by the sharp-eyed and deft-handed Fang Xiu. Qin Luo cooperated faultlessly with him, hitting He Yongkang over the head with the butt of a gun, knocking him out. “Put the magnetic vest on him at once, don’t let the chip inside him explode.” 

Then she looked down and had a clear look at what had pierced He Yongkang’s wrist. It was a piece of candy. 

Qin Luo and Fang Xiu looked at each other helplessly. Fang Xiu nodded and quietly said, “Check each exit and window. Search.” 

But they searched the whole sixth floor from top to bottom and still came up empty-handed. At last, when day had fully broken, Qin Luo and Fang Xiu, having no alternative, withdrew with their people. 

Then, someone crawled out of an extremely realistic dummy guard that had been “taken down” at the very beginning. In such a short time, he had somehow disguised himself seamlessly. 

Su Qing pulled aside the uniform covering him, smiled, and quietly snuck into “Cheng Weizhi’s room,” thinking that he could retire after winning merit. He was planning to change his method. Cheng Weizhi’s danger had been resolved, and he would certainly leave the RZ Unit headquarters within a certain period of time. He decided to freeload off the old professor for a few days, then leave with him. The safety factor was higher, and he could reminisce about former times with an old friend. 

But when he walked in, Su Qing found that there was already someone waiting for him inside.