He took five steps out and nearly keeled over again. This time Su Qing felt he couldn’t even draw breath. When he inhaled, the air only lingered in his throat, unable to get in, before being pushed back out. 

As soon as his brain began to lack oxygen, his limbs turned cold and lost control. His legs went weak, and he fell to the ground again and curled into the shape of a comma, formally ascending to the rank of “commander.”¹

The sun passed through the eaves and fell on the side of his face, warm and a little itchy. Su Qing strained to lift his head, desperately straightening himself out, fingers clawing at the ground. He crawled forward another step as though climbing up a rock face. 

His chin scraped the ground. Maybe the skin broke. At any rate, there was a burning sensation, but it didn’t hurt—right now, compared to the stimulus of the magnetic neckband, Su Qing could no longer feel the slight pains of bumps and scratches. 

His fingers dug into the ground. His hands, which at a stretch could be called delicate, were quickly rubbed raw. Blood dyed his nails, and the veins on the backs of his hands stood out. Su Qing squirmed on the ground like a big caterpillar. His breathing was short and rapid. He crawled two steps, then flopped on the ground to rest again. When he was used to the new wave of pain, he continued forward. 

Su Qing thought himself a typical example of the type who would go where he pleased and dig in his heels when he didn’t want to budge. When he had lived in comfort, he had been so spoiled by money that he had been more demon than human. He hadn’t even been able to bear the “hardship” of waking up in the morning to go to class. But forced to such a pass, he endured a pain like being subjected to the death of a thousand cuts, crawling out step by step. 

At first his brain could still function a little. Slowly, all his mental force went to warding off the pain. Only Cheng Weizhi’s words echoed repeatedly: "Draw a line for yourself and look at it often, tell yourself you can’t retreat over that line. This way, you’ll know what kind of person you are. You’ll never go astray.” 

Su Qing felt that line following behind him moment by moment. When he crawled forward a step, the line shuffled forward a step, so he couldn’t turn back. 

He had made up his mind the moment he had charged out the door—never mind that he was, at any rate, a man; even if he had been a dog, he still couldn’t let himself be confined by an invisible, untouchable ring. 

The feeling of suffocation enveloped his whole body. Su Qing’s throat began to issue unnatural gurgles. His face was ashen. It was as if there was a metal chain in the air, tightly choking him. 

He thought he was going to die. 

But for some reason, he wasn’t afraid. Perhaps it was because he had spent too much time lately thinking he was going to die; after all that time dying, he was used to it. Perhaps it was his anger at being at the mercy of others and his fragile self-respect; having drawn that line for him, they were constantly urging him forward—

Even if I die taking the next step, he thought, I still have to get away. 

Slowly, Su Qing left a trail of dirt and blood where he had crawled. His vision became more and more blurred. Finally he couldn’t even see his own hands clearly. Su Qing felt that he had already gone very, very far. He had never made such a trek in his life. So he used the very last of his strength to look back to see how far he had gone. He found it was so “far” that he couldn’t see clearly and was satisfied. He thought he really was amazing. 

Then his vision went dark and his body spasmed. His consciousness abruptly sank. 

In a haze, he heard a car braking. Someone seemed to be getting out of the car. Warm hands lifted his shoulders and picked him up off the ground. Su Qing couldn’t see who it was, but he instinctively panicked and began to struggle. His limbs were held down tightly. Then a fiercer pain surged up. The taste of blood rose in his throat, and he knew absolutely nothing more. 

Passing by this residential area, Hu Bugui had felt at once that something was off—it looked like an ordinary residential community, slightly dilapidated, with “No Stopping At The Intersection” written in chalk on the wall to one side with an “Eight Honors and Eight Shames” missing a corner pasted next to it. It really couldn’t be more normal. But it was too quiet here, as though something had cut it off from its surroundings. There wasn’t a shadow, not even a single one of the stray cats and dogs that were everywhere in the city. 

Hu Bugui stopped his car at the intersection and took out an energy indicator. There was a crackle inside it, and this inferior product of the Xu clan turned to scrap. 

Hu Bugui cursed Xu Ruchong under his breath, but there was a babble of voices coming over the comms; Fang Xiu and the others must have started their fight with the blue seals. At his wit’s end, he looked into the intersection, then stepped on the gas and charged in. 

At first nothing happened when he drove in. After he turned a corner, a sharp alarm suddenly sounded in Hu Bugui’s car. The wheels rubbed against the ground, sending up little sparks. The car’s complicated instrument dials began to go wild. The most sensitive energy indicator lay unattended on the passenger’s seat. It began to spit out springs on its own, twitching. 

So Hu Bugui kept driving this dazzling vehicle, occasionally dodging a flying part. He took a machine gun out from under the passenger’s seat and put it on his shoulder, then pressed a green button. After the alarm sound rose another octave, he once again broke the car into parts. 

The majestic military vehicle turned into a mini-sightseeing bus. 

Ferociously driving this mini-sightseeing bus, Hu Bugui picked up the half-dead Su Qing. 

Over a month ago, this person had been loitering aimlessly in the bar, looking like a devotee of sensual pleasures. But in so short a time, he had lost weight; his cheeks were slightly sunken in, giving him a bit of a skeletal look. His clothes were ragged, and his fingers looked like they had been squeezed between bamboo skewers. He was covered in grime and blood. The whole effect was extremely horrifying. 

Hu Bugui quickly leaned down to pick him up. He took off his coat and wrapped it around him. But just then, Su Qing opened his eyes. His gaze was a little unfocused. Hu Bugui didn’t know whether he could see him. But his pupils were like obsidian. Peering closely, there was a lingering fierce expression. Whoever he took him for, he began to struggle fiercely. 

Hu Bugui didn’t know where he was injured. Flustered, he held his limbs in place. There was nothing else Su Qing could do—with an indistinct yowl, he bit his arm. Hu Bugui paid it no mind. His clothing was made of sturdy material, anyway; he wouldn’t bite through it. And Su Qing probably wasn’t a rabies vector. So he let him bite and stepped forward, holding Su Qing. 

He had no idea of the house’s control over Su Qing and didn’t see anything wrong with walking away from it. The person who had just been glaring and resolutely maintaining a death grip with his teeth suddenly shuddered violently in his arms, irresistibly loosened his teeth, and spat up a big mouthful of blood, dyeing the whole front of Hu Bugui’s clothes red. 

Hu Bugui was instantly too scared to keep walking. He carefully propped up the back of Su Qing’s head and gently patted him. There was no reaction. Hu Bugui didn’t dare to move carelessly anymore. He gently put him back down on the ground at once, trying to make him lie flat, but as soon as Su Qing reached the ground, he instinctively curled up. 

Hu Bugui frowned and ran back to his little streamlined car. He grabbed his comms, blocked the others, and went directly to the team doctor Lu Qingbai. 

Under Chen Lin’s malicious arrangements, Fang Xiu and the others had charged right into an abandoned factory on the outskirts. 

The other blue seals’ “hunt” wasn’t nearly as open as Chen Lin’s—flagrantly going to an obvious place and being noticed by the RZ Unit from the start. They had to be far more cautious. 

That blue seal Luo Xiaofeng, while he had hair so greasy that a fly that landed on it would do the splits and was really nothing to look at, had a particular ability—he could confuse people’s minds within a certain area. A large part of the “prey” were taken down by him, as though he was a child abductor. In this deserted factory, a crowd of trembling people were tied up together. 

Going to an open area and indiscriminately attacking the passing crowds like Chen Lin, the people involved wouldn’t be seriously affected. Each person only had a portion of their “happiness” and “sadness” absorbed by Chen Lin and Su Qing, remaining in equilibrium. There wouldn’t be a problem then and there. 

Of course, later there would still be a bad reaction, but for the most part it would only be a week or two of dizziness and lowered immunity resulting in a bout of sickness, and then it would be over. 

But this group of people assembled together had the truly rotten luck. Caught and drained dry by some blue seal, they could basically be sent straight to a crematorium afterwards, and the crematorium wouldn’t be able to tell whether they were living or dead. 

Because Chen Lin didn’t always have a grey seal he could use, he couldn’t come along to each “feast.” He didn’t take much part in their hotpot-style mixed “communal meal,” but he knew where they operated—because of Jiang Lan. 

Jiang Lan was a rather treacherous person. She was probably a little antisocial, displeased with everyone. She would only speak a few words to Chen Lin, that water lily sticking out of the mud like a sore thumb. 

So Shi Huizhang and the others had quietly changed hands twice and were ultimately sold to the RZ Unit. 

Fang Xiu and the others were at a loss when they arrived. The energy indicators nearly went crazy, and Chen Lin, whom they had been following, had vanished. They ran right into the blue seals’ “feast.” Both sides were taken by surprise, causing utter chaos. A messy and violent fight began. 

Xu Ruchong faced the screen at headquarters, having nearly forgotten his own job. Watching got his blood up. He only wished he could jump into the screen and personally deliver the old one-two. The team doctor Lu Qingbai, holding a little notebook, stood behind him, occasionally noting down some data with a peculiar expression. 

Just then, Hu Bugui forcefully switched over the communication frequency. “Dr. Lu? Where is Lu Qingbai?” 

Lu Qingbai narrowed his eyes and raised his head just in time to see Hu Bugui holding a camera and adjusting the angle to fix on Su Qing. “Hurry up and take a look at him for me. I don’t dare to move him now. I just moved him and he spat up blood all over me.” 

Lu Qingbai and Xu Ruchong drew close to the screen and listened to Hu Bugui’s description of what had just happened. 

“This is the Type 2 Grey Seal?” Lu Qingbai said. 

“His name is Su Qing.” Hearing this designation, Hu Bugui suddenly felt uncomfortable and automatically corrected Dr. Lu. He looked at Su Qing, curled into a ball, ashen pale and barely breathing, and his heart suddenly filled with shame and remorse—if he had been more alert that day, if he hadn’t insisted on meddling and seeing him home…

Lu Qingbai ignored him. “Let me inspect his mental state. Type 2 is the ‘sadness type.’ One of the reasons they’re fairly rare is that these grey seals have comparatively weak minds and bodies. Without the strengthened energy use system of a blue seal, it’s easy for them to break down during activation due to an influx of too much external emotion. Never mind that he’s been dragged out and ravaged by that blue seal. If he’s lost his mind, there’s no need for you to waste effort on him…” 

Hu Bugui interrupted him: “What do I do?” 

Lu Qingbai instructed: “Your backup communicator—that watch, there’s a button on the very top. Pull it out. It’s a probe needle. Open his collar a little and find his grey seal… What are you being shy about, be assertive, just tear his collar open! That’s right, no need to stick it in, just press the needle to the skin for a while.” 

Xu Ruchong quickly helped Lu Qingbai connect the equipment. The data from the probe needle on Hu Bugui’s watch was soon in Lu Qingbai’s hands. 

Hu Bugui was as anxious as though his eyebrows were on fire, but Dr. Lu, like a charlatan, unhurriedly poured himself a cup of hot tea, then took a seat and had a look, chin in his hand. After a while, he gave a strange “oh!” and beckoned to Xu Ruchong. “Xiao Xu, Xiao Xu, come over and look at this.” 

Xu Ruchong went over to observe. “Unusual energy readings…very unusual, it can’t just be the energy crystal, can it? Captain Hu, don’t move him. See if there’s anything on him.” 

“What?” 

“Sweep the probe needle over him from head to toe. Stop when I tell you to,” Lu Qingbai ordered. He put his teacup aside and rubbed his hands together. “How rare, only the energy readings are unusual, all the mental indexes are in normal bounds, even a bit of excitement—are there such callous Type 2 Grey Seals…? Ah…Captain Hu, stop, stop, stop!” 

The probe needle was pointing at Su Qing’s neck. Lu Qingbai gave Xu Ruchong a push. “Hurry, analyze that thing on his neck.” 

Without waiting to be told, Xu Ruchong was already doing it. “It must be some kind of magnetic force, maybe with an area restriction installed… Captain Hu, I’ve finally understood why the instruments seized up when you went in just now.” 

Hu Bugui touched Su Qing’s neck and instantly received a static shock. He drew back his hand and frowned. “No nonsense, Xu Ruchong, tell me how to get this thing off.” 

Xu Ruchong hesitated. “Well…” 

Lu Qingbai cut in, “No need for you, I’ll do it—Captain Hu, stretch out the probe needle…a little longer, now bend it. It connects over there, do you see it? There, put it on his neck.” 

Lu Qingbai began to flex his arms and roll up his sleeves. Xu Ruchong falteringly said, “D-doctor Lu, what, what are you going to do?” 

Lu Qingbai raised one foot and planted it on the chair, pulling out a row of manipulators from above the desk. He held a wire in his mouth and indistinctly said, “No problem, just a magnetic neckband, I’ve seen it before, you just have to break its magnetic field. Relax, I can do it remotely.” 

Xu Ruchong stared at him, dumbstruck. “Doctor…take it easy, that’s a human being.” 

Lu Qingbai said, “It’s all right, he’s young and healthy, he can take a bit of rough handling. I don’t think it’ll kill him.” 

Hearing this, Hu Bugui’s hands shook. He thought, This quack has a death wish…

There was a mess of crackling around Su Qing’s neck. As Hu Bugui and Xu Ruchong looked on fearfully, a thin thread of smoke came from the probe needle. Su Qing’s breathing was so faint it was almost inaudible. Hu Bugui stared blankly for a long moment, then hesitantly reached out to feel his breath. 

Just then, Su Qing abruptly sucked in a breath and began to cough violently.