When Su Qing squeezed the energy hub hook, it amounted to “short circuiting” his energy crystal system again. While the impact wasn’t large, he still swayed slightly in place. Hu Bugui had been ready and quickly put a hand on his waist, letting him lean on his shoulder. While changing positions, he helped him get his footing and quietly asked, “Are you all right?” 

Su Qing was distracted for no more than five seconds, or else they wouldn’t have dared to borrow his energy in such a dangerous situation to break the protective net by force. But before he could say anything, a hair-raising feeling of being watched suddenly climbed up his spine. 

Su Qing immediately pushed Hu Bugui. Meanwhile, he himself backed up three or four steps at an unbelievable speed. The two of them parted quickly, and between them, in the place where they had just been standing, a bullet raised a small handful of dust. 

Just then, in the sniper’s scope, Su Qing quickly raised his head and met 11235’s gaze. At that moment, the two of them were very far away, but it was as though they were face to face. 

11235 whistled and said to himself, “Pretty proper-looking.” 

As he delivered this praise, he took aim again, right at Su Qing’s head, which he thought was “proper.” 

The RZ Unit withdrew quickly under cover of the explosion, but while the explosion could block others’ lines of sight, it couldn’t block 11235’s—he was called the best gun; he was a legendary…assassin. 

And right now, this magical human-shaped weapon was for some reason aimed at Su Qing. 

Before, when Su Qing had been a newbie, his shooting had been fairly forgiving, suitable to a newbie level, like a cat teasing a mouse. Now that Su Qing had passed through a series of specialized training at the RZ Unit and wasn’t such a newbie anymore, 11235’s angle of aim had also become trickier. 

Over and over, bullets nearly brushed past the tip of Su Qing’s nose. 

Hu Bugui turned and got a sniper rifle out of the truck Kou Tong had driven over. He aimed in the direction the bullets were coming from, searching for 11235’s position. At this point, the bullets had forced Su Qing into a dead end. 

Su Qing suddenly gave a grim laugh and grabbed the metal pole of a broken streetlamp—when other people dodged bullets, they ducked, but he was going up, as though afraid the other side wouldn’t see him and couldn’t hit him. 

Chang Dou saw this and couldn’t resist crying out in alarm. The bullets followed Su Qing up, hitting the lamppost with non-stop ping-pong sounds. Further up, Chang Dou couldn’t clearly see where Su Qing had gone—he seemed to have turned into a shadow. 

Then an extremely bright light came from Su Qing’s hand, even brighter than the light in the truck’s carriage just now that had come from borrowing his energy. It made people unable to open their eyes. Even the distant sniper’s pupils contracted at this light, and he lost track of Su Qing for a moment. 

At some point, Su Qing had hidden another energy hub hook and an amplifier in his hand. He clenched his teeth and didn’t hesitate. His hand trembled slightly from touching the energy hub. The next instant, he took off another layer of coat—who knew how many layers he was wearing. A sniper rifle was revealed on his back. 

“It’s finally time for me to pay you back.” 

Su Qing’s vision had in fact already seen 11235’s position. Despite going through a period of training, his long-distance marksmanship didn’t come near to matching up to that of people like Qin Luo and Hu Bugui. So he didn’t aim. Relying entirely on feeling, he caught 11235’s extremely concealed figure and immediately shot a clip of bullets. 

11235 quickly rolled aside. In rolling like this, he couldn’t avoid revealing himself. Hu Bugui’s bullets followed closely after. 

The powerful light from the amplifier slowly dimmed. Before the vision of the people who had been staring at the strong light could recover, Su Qing quickly slid down the pole and grabbed Hu Bugui, who was still aiming at 11235 with indescribable rage. “Come on!” 

When they had just gotten into the truck one after the other, before they could close the door, Kou Tong slammed the gas pedal to the floor. 

Then, like Al-Qaeda terrorists, this group sorrowfully made their exit amidst explosions and gunfire. 

Su Qing was wearing only a single remaining layer of shirt. His back was soaked with cold sweat. He took no notice, plopping down in a corner of the echoing carriage that contained weapons and people. He loosened a collar button and gently let out a breath. 

No one spoke. The truck jolted as it drove. In the carriage, they could feel the ferocity as Kou Tong drove the automobile like a rocket. None of them had recovered yet from the profoundly affecting events just now. 

After a long time, when the jolting truck’s motion had smoothed out, a light sound came from outside. Looking out through the cracks, it was a layer of skin falling off the outside of the truck, revealing a completely different carriage and shape inside. It seemed that they had thrown off Utopia’s pursuit. 

At last, Fang Xiu was the first to react. He raised his head and looked at Hu Bugui silently wiping his gun. “Captain Hu, Xue…she was…” 

Lu Qingbai brought over a little thing that looked something like a radio and pressed a button. A red light on it flashed twice. Then a small screen popped up. There was no sound, only wave after wave of different frequency. After passing through through a line, they were decoded into crooked writing. 

11235’s dialogue with Xue Xiaolu and Xue Xiaolu’s dialogue with that unknown individual played in front of everyone like subtitles. 

“She had a grandmother,” Su Qing suddenly said after looking down and reading for a while. “Before, I received General Xiong’s order to get all your families settled. I received your personal backgrounds and materials about your families. It only said that she grew up with her grandmother. The records were vague about her parents.” 

“Is her father…” Chang Dou pointed at the screen the size of a radio. At this point, he foolishly clutched his hair. “Is… Who is it?” 

Fang Xiu rather crossly smacked him on the head. “Shut up, listen.” 

Chang Dou felt the back of his head, gave an “oh,” and didn’t speak. 

“I don’t think this person seems like Zheng Qinghua,” said Su Qing.

“Why?” asked Lu Qingbai. 

Su Qing frowned and thought for a long moment without coming up with anything. He could only say, “It’s a feeling.” 

“It’s not just a feeling. I also think this person isn’t Zheng Qinghua.” Hu Bugui looked at Su Qing and picked up the subject. “Before, Su Qing saw a drawing Cheng Ge had done. It was the place where the victim lived, when they were doing human experimentation. Before Xu Ruchong’s death he said…to us that he wasn’t the one who gave Cheng Ge that picture.” 

“So we had another…” 

“Right.” Hu Bugui nodded. “At the time, our team was in a very unstable condition. I didn’t dare to pursue this. It’s obvious that Xu Ruchong didn’t know this person, or else he wouldn’t only have given this vague hint. His death was peculiar. What happened then definitely wasn’t what he originally intended. Su Qing said that he had a period of mental breakdown before his death. It was that breakdown that activated the microchip in his body and supplied the net that trapped Su Qing with energy. I suspect that his mental breakdown was caused by some drug.” 

Su Qing’s seemed to have thought of something, but Qin Luo quickly covered her mouth. “A drug! 

“When he was running a fever, Xue Xiaolu and I brought him a flask of soup… That was…” Qin Luo’s eyes opened very wide. She had suddenly realized that perhaps Xu Ruchong’s death had to do with her. She had watched with her own eyes as the soup that had killed him had been placed at his bedside.

Fang Xiu sighed and lowered his head. A sliver of unspeakable emotion crossed his face, which was blocked by hair. Lu Qingbai patted Qin Luo on the shoulder. 

“Professor Cheng said that Xu Ruchong was Zheng Qinghua’s adopted son. If Xue Xiaolu was also an adopted child, why didn’t Xu Ruchong tell us before his death?” 

Of course Su Qing had also thought of this reasoning. He had just been unwilling to say it aloud. He thought that in this situation, when they could die on the road at any time, talking about the seeds of suspicion Xu Ruchong had planted was truly too hurtful. 

He hadn’t thought that Hu Bugui would pick it up so directly. 

So he interrupted Hu Bugui: “As the only other person in Utopia who can mobilize 11235, his identity must be very remarkable. His position is at least equal to Zheng Qinghua’s. What do you think, could he be the backer behind all of Utopia’s operations?” 

The others looked at each other. Just then, the truck stopped. Acting driver Kou Tong jumped out and opened the carriage in the back. Beaming, he said, “We’ve reached our base camp. Everyone, welcome back.” 

Too many things had happened that day, so much so that the three people who had just returned didn’t display too much surprise about Kou Tong’s appearance. 

Su Qing was the last to jump out of the truck. Kou Tong very naturally followed alongside him and quietly asked, “Did you…suspect her before?” 

Su Qing glanced at him, then shook his head in silence. 

Kou Tong smiled understandingly. “In terms of sentiment, you didn’t want to suspect her, but you must have analyzed it subconsciously. You just suppressed it. In reality, before I came, you had decided to run the risk of going for Utopia’s core secrets to expose this ‘Judas.’ What were you thinking?” 

“Give up a pawn to protect the chief.” Su Qing laughed briefly. “My thinking was simple. Those people, as soon as they get nervous, they lose sight of everything. If there was an opportunity, for example just now…as soon as they discovered that we suspected Xue Xiaolu, that she might not be able to accomplish their mission, they would…” 

He lowered his head slightly. Coldness appeared in his eyes. 

“Did you already know that that mysterious sniper would come?” 

Su Qing nodded. “When Xu Ruchong died, he was also there to mop up.” 

“…Awesome,” Kou Tong commented after a while. “You couldn’t bear to point out who the traitor was, so you wanted to find some means to use the other side’s hand to find them. That’s really…very atypical.” 

“Not as perfect as your way. The other side couldn’t have gotten involved so quickly.” Su Qing paused. Then he suddenly laughed wryly. “Enough, let’s not flatter each other anymore. Reasonably speaking, we’ve succeeded, pulled out the nail that’s been stuck in the RZ Unit all these years, but why do I feel like I’ve lost?” 

The two of them were silent for a while. 

“That’s right.” After a long time, Kou Tong nodded. He also sighed. “We have lost.” 

The RZ Unit, which had gathered once more, had lost a person, but for a long time, it also seemed that they had lost all their cheer. 

Chang Dou, Cheng Weizhi, and Lu Qingbai desperately matched their strength against Zheng Wan’s body, while the others were responsible for gathering all kinds of intelligence from outside and maintaining battle-readiness. 

At last, half a month later, during dinner, Lu Qingbai and the other two charged in like victims of an African famine. “The secret! We’ve found the secret of Zheng Wan’s body!”