“Hello, this is Cheng…” The words changed as they came to Cheng Weizhi’s lips. “This is Chen Zhu.” 

There was silence on the other end for a moment. Then came a deliberately lowered, very pleasant male voice: “Mr. Chen, did you order take-out an hour and four minutes ago?” 

Cheng Weizhi’s psychological quality really wasn’t up to this. As soon as he heard these words, sweat came up on his palms. As he clutched the telephone cord, he mumbled an agreement, stammering, “I… Yes, I ordered milk tea, mousse, two plates of ice cream, and six servings of starch jelly…for my son.” 

“I see. We’re out of the mango-flavored ice cream you ordered, sir. Could we exchange it for another one?” 

As Cheng Weizhi agreed, he picked up the address book next to the phone upside down in a fluster. He flipped to a page in the middle. There were symbols written on it that no one but him could understand. “What do you have? Go…go ahead.” 

“We have nectarine, mint, coffee, chocolate, strawberry, pineapple, and rum…” 

He hadn’t finished speaking when Cheng Weizhi let out a breath and interrupted: “Fine, I’ve got it, are you…Su Qing?” 

These were the signals they had arranged. It wasn’t enough for the other party to get the correct sense. Cheng Weizhi had to determine that the person was with the RZ Unit, including precisely saying “an hour and four minutes,” then reporting the ice cream flavors in correct order without a word out of place. Cheng Weizhi, meanwhile, apart from reporting the types of food in order without altering the sequence, also had to stress the words “for my son.” 

Su Qing gave an affirmative and softly said, “I’m outside now. Can I come up?” 

Cheng Weizhi looked out from the very antiquated little two-story house and found that apart from a window lattice covered in ivy, he couldn’t catch a glimpse of a single shadow. He couldn’t help asking, “Where are you?” 

“Already at your door,” Su Qing said, then hung up the phone. 

At the same time, there was a knock at the door. This means of appearance like a scene out of a ghost movie made Cheng Weizhi even more nervous. The old professor put down the phone. While passing Cheng Ge’s bedroom, he looked inside. Cheng Ge was taking an afternoon nap. Perhaps it was a little warm. He had kicked the covers aside and was sleeping in a very wild posture, like a child—he truly was a child who would never grow up. 

Cheng Weizhi sighed, shook his head, and closed the door. He hesitated, then opened the house’s front door. 

Standing at the door was a humpbacked middle-aged man who had a missing leg and a small wooden prosthetic sticking out of one pant leg. He stared. “You are…” 

The middle-aged man raised his head. Unexpectedly, he had a pair of very bright, very attractive eyes. Raising the whiskers around his mouth, he smiled at Cheng Weizhi. “It’s me.” 

The familiar voice startled Cheng Weizhi. He subconsciously grabbed the man’s shoulder and whispered, “Come in quick.” Then he furtively looked around outside and closed the door. 

Su Qing meanwhile had already straightened up and torn the whiskers off his face. This made a clear boundary between the color of the upper and lower halves of his face. It was a little comical. He self-assuredly sat down on the couch. “Uncle Cheng, pour me a glass of water.” 

Cheng Weizhi ignored him. He was simply like a startled bird, standing sideways by the window, looking out in all directions, repeatedly making sure that no one had followed Su Qing. He was about to draw the curtains closed when Su Qing firmly stopped him. “Enough, uncle. If you close the curtains in the middle of the day, what will people think you’re up to? Relax, the person who can follow me is still unborn in their mom’s belly. Don’t worry, we’re very safe now.” 

“I’m afraid if someone walks by outside and sees…” 

“The place I’m sitting in is a blind spot. You can’t see it from outside.” Su Qing calmly got a single-use cup out from under the coffee table, poured himself a cup of cool water, and drank it in one gulp. 

“How do you know?” Cheng Weizhi suddenly became wary. 

Su Qing put on a smile, took a small grey microchip from his pocket, and flashed it around. Cheng Weizhi’s gaze drew back. He couldn’t help feeling some bile turning over in his stomach. “You…you planted a monitor here…” 

Thirty-six in all, inside and out, Su Qing thought, but he didn’t say it to avoid breaking the old professor’s glass heart from fear. He only lightly said, “It’s so that I can get here quickly if there’s any threat to you and your son—Cheng Ge’s situation is a little eye-catching. It’s very easy for you two to be discovered.” 

Cheng Weizhi sat down across from him. He suddenly took a deep breath, bent over, and buried his entire face in his hands. 

Su Qing looked at him, then casually lit a cigarette sitting across from him. After a long moment, he heard Cheng Weizhi say dully, “It’s not that I won’t help you. Su Qing, you’re a good child. You know me, I really…” 

At this point, his voice became a little choked with sobs. Su Qing didn’t say anything, quietly waiting for him to speak. He still remembered, in the grey house, how the old professor, alone and without help, had confronted Chen Lin for his sake, had used his not remotely strapping body to protect him, had even taken Zhao Yifei and Tu Tutu through a hail of bullets, boldly run back to the grey house, and saved his life when he had been on the point of death. He actually…wasn’t this sort of foolish, cowardly person who clung to life. 

But that was when he was alone. If you had told him then to shoulder a gun and charge towards enemy lines, it would have been all right. But not now. He had Cheng Ge. After leaving the grey house, Cheng Weizhi had refused the RZ Unit over and over. Su Qing thought, after all, he was a person who had once been involved with Utopia. Could it be that he had known then that it would in the end come to this fierce fight, so he had avoided it from the start? 

Cheng Ge—starting from his birth, he had been Cheng Weizhi’s debt. 

Su Qing lowered his eyes and tapped cigarette ash into an ashtray. His fingers unconsciously moved around the edge of the paper cup. “Zheng Qinghua has put out a wanted notice for me. I’ve done something that’s a little wicked. Yeah, you could call it about the same as digging up his ancestral tomb—I know it’s not suitable for me to come looking for you. You may not be very willing to see me now.” 

Cheng Weizhi was silent, to some extent tacitly acknowledging this. 

“Professor Cheng.” Su Qing smiled, changing his form of address. “I know what you’re worried about. But with things at this stage, how can you still not understand this saying—a blessing won’t bring calamity, a calamity can’t be escaped. Are you really going to hide with Cheng Ge for the rest of your life?” 

Cheng Weizhi said nothing. Su Qing relaxed his body, in a highly difficult move crossing his magical wooden leg over the other one. He sighed. “Yes, you think that you just have to not annoy anyone or provoke anyone. That you can rely entirely on hiding, watching our two sides fighting to the death, and that whoever lives or dies in the future, you can carry on struggling. But even while others don’t understand, do you also not understand the principle? You’re a person who knows the ins and outs of Utopia, professor. You tell me, if one day the blue seals control the whole world, control our government, our laws, even if they suddenly change overnight, whitewashing themselves into first-rate civilized people, would you dare to believe in it?

“Do you believe in the mercy of lions? In the previous world order, there was graft, corruption, second-generations and third-generations, all kinds of demons and monsters, but at least none of them had humans in their cookbooks, right?” 

Cheng Weizhi’s lips moved. He seemed to want to say something, but he swallowed it back. 

Su Qing shook his head. “I don’t want to say that you’re a cynic. Everyone is selfish. You’re not wrong to think that this has nothing to do with you. In the future, no matter what, even if they form a class, in their own interests, Utopia will render the right to become a blue seal to a small number of people. At that point, the billions of people in this world will be enough to feed them. You only want to live your quiet life. You don’t want to concern yourself with human dignity or the course of the world. You aren’t even interested in gold or cash. But, professor, don’t forget your identity—you aren’t only a grey seal. You have a deep understanding of Utopia’s core principles. You yourself even had an incomplete energy hub system forcefully implanted.

“If I were Zheng Qinghua, I definitely wouldn’t abandon creating a complete double core system. What he most wants to find now, apart from Zheng Wan’s body, is probably you, an ‘incomplete’ energy hub that has nonetheless proven functional in reality. What do you think?”

All the blood drained out of Cheng Weizhi’s cheeks. 

Su Qing said, “An old man living with an adult son, and the son never comes into contact with the masses. Sooner or later, one day, your gossipy neighbors will find out about your family business and chat about it over tea. And what about Utopia, which can get in at every opening? It will hardly take a few months for them to be able to find you two. At that point, you’ll be a precious experiment, but what about your son?

“I also don’t want to say that we’re acting for the dignity of all humanity or anything. Personally, I just find them offensive and want to add a hole to that Zheng character’s head—I also know that the RZ Unit is currently a pirate ship that may sink any day.” Su Qing put out his cigarette butt and summed up, “But while others don’t have to get on board, you already have a foot on the deck. There’s no point in hiding.” 

Su Qing had been sent off scampering like a frightened rat by Hu Bugui’s deeply felt confession first thing in the morning. Only when everyone had begun to worry about his safety did he unhurriedly return—with a fruitful harvest. He had basically sussed out the situation outside, and he had picked up Professor Cheng and his son on the way. 

There were quite a few people like Cheng Ge in the orphanage. The middle-aged man who had gotten them settled in once again made an appearance. Later, Su Qing learned that his name was Sun Mingyun. On the surface, he was this orphanage’s director. In secret, he did some other unknown work. 

Director Sun took Cheng Ge away to go through some formalities, registering him using his false name and fake ID. This way, the orphanage’s employees could be responsible for looking after him, and Cheng Weizhi could make some time to do a bit of something else. Even if someone came to make a sudden inspection, the whole thing would still be seamless. 

“This is…Zheng Wan?!” 

Since Zheng Wan’s body had been removed from that mysterious basement, her strange tattoo had stopped moving. And, like an ordinary corpse, she had gradually begun to show lividity, and had even begun to rot. 

Lu Qingbai had worked for a day and a night straight without discovering what was going on with Zheng Wan’s tattoo. His temper was as irascible as a mad dog’s. He bit anyone he saw. Only when he saw Professor Cheng did he force himself to make his expression a little milder. He nodded. “Yes. Look at this, sir.” 

He cleaned up the rather blurry pictures Su Qing had taken, enlarged them, and brought them over to show Cheng Weizhi. “We can’t exactly go back now. It’s a pity I couldn’t have seen it with my own eyes. This platform is very strange. I investigated the log in Su Qing’s energy detector. The energy field in that basement at the time was of a type we’ve never seen before. I understand a little, but we don’t have our full complement now…” 

Cheng Weizhi accepted the log of the energy field, put on reading glasses, and bent over the table carefully looking at it. 

Just then, Director Sun came back from getting Cheng Ge settled in. A good-natured smile appeared on his honest face. He said to Hu Bugui, “I’ve already contacted that person.” 

Apart from Hu Bugui, Su Qing, who was just unloading items from himself, Lu Qingbai, who was rattling on about all the peculiarities about Zheng Wan to Cheng Weizhi, and Cheng Weizhi himself all raised their heads. Lu Qingbai asked in bewilderment, “‘That person’? Who is ‘that person’?” 

Beaming, Director Sun explained: “A person who has worked within Utopia for many years…and one of our people.”