Hu Bugui’s expression turned grave. His gloomy-looking face was a little oppressive. He said, “Don’t be foolish. Get in the car and leave here with me.” 

Su Qing patiently attempted to explain: “That friend of mine is old, and I can tell you aren’t going to find the place anytime soon. Even if you do find it, they can fight it out and go to another place. I…” 

Hu Bugui wasn’t interested in listening to his nonsense. He pulled him by the arm, ready to lift him back into the car. Su Qing shut his mouth, thinking that he had not only come to a clash with this person, their views were simply irreconcilable. So he bent his head, ready to bite. The instant Hu Bugui let go, he slipped out from under his arm and ran. 

While Su Qing was tall and long-legged, his strength was average. He hadn’t gone far before Hu Bugui caught him. Captain Hu very much wanted to knock him out to avoid him pulling any more stunts, but when he saw the wounds on his neck, he felt there was nowhere he could strike—furthermore, he believed that Su Qing saying these things at this time was because his psyche had been harmed, leading to an irregularity. So he very mightily caught Su Qing around the waist with his arm, “picking” him from the ground like a radish. Then he held his shoulders, tucked him under his arm, and strode towards the car. 

Su Qing’s arms weren’t free, so he began unconsciously to kick and flail with his legs, like a turtle removed from the water. But not for nothing had Hu Bugui “trained.” Holding a man weighing over a hundred pounds, it was as though he was holding an inflatable doll. He was very much at ease, taking no notice of his struggles. 

Then, face red with frustration, Su Qing began to curse: “Some fucking RZ Unit, you’re all a bunch of miserable fucks! More like the lazy unit! A lazy bunch of turtles, squatting in a hole without shitting! You won’t do your job, and you keep others from doing it, too. Hu, let me tell you, stand by and watch others suffer long enough and you’ll be a turtle with its head stuck in its shell. Don’t think you can…” 

As he grumbled, he took aim at Hu Bugui’s hand holding his shoulder. He slid down a little, stretched out his neck, and bit down, then let go in pain—villains had thick hides, but people’s heroes snapped teeth. 

Hu Bugui looked down at Su Qing and thought, Was this guy born in the Year of the Dog? In so short a time, he had already bitten him twice, as well as making another abortive attempt. He hesitated, then explained, “We can’t let an ordinary citizen do such a dangerous thing.” 

Then he tossed Su Qing into the car. Before Su Qing could bare his fangs and get ready to pounce, he also quickly got in and closed the door, sealing off the little dog Su’s path of escape with his body. 

Su Qing was utterly exasperated. Seeing he was about to start the car back up, he reached out to grab Hu Bugui’s wrist as he reached for the steering wheel. With his other hand, he quickly tore open his already ragged collar. His fair collarbones and the flowing grey seal flashed in Hu Bugui’s eyes. He subconsciously averted his gaze and heard Su Qing say, “I’m an ordinary citizen? What fucking kind of ordinary citizen am I supposed to be? That’s easy for you to say! With this thing, where can I run to? Am I supposed to have you people protect me my whole life? Have nightmares every night about what goes on in that grey house? Can I still go back to how it was before?” 

This final sentence was truly too bitter. The rims of Su Qing’s eyes reddened—he was aggrieved. He had been having a perfectly fine life when he had suddenly run up against these miserable things. Even if he normally acted like he didn’t feel it, he was at any rate still human.

Hu Bugui was silent for a while, then quietly said, “I am truly sorry.” 

Su Qing forced back his bitter tears and sneered. He gave him a shove. “All you can say for yourself is ‘sorry.’ Anyone can say that. Get the hell out of my way, let me out.” 

Hu Bugui sat as motionless as a mountain, not speaking, not resisting, and definitely not cooperating. 

“He’s right.” Into this deadlock came Lu Qingbai’s voice from the long-silent communicator. Hu Bugui’s eyelid twitched. He looked up. At some point, because of the fracture in space, the monitor projection had unfocused entirely. Lu Qingbai simply took over the video and appeared before Su Qing’s eyes in the form of an overeducated beast in human clothes. 

His fingers were laced together, propping up his chin. He looked down loftily on Su Qing and Hu Bugui from the screen above their heads. “He’s right. A grey seal’s energy cycle is an incomplete circuit. As tools, when the blue seals go ‘hunting,’ their minds are sometimes more damaged than the victims’, and for the most part it’s irreversible. Even if you bring him back now, he’ll still never escape being a grey seal.” 

Hu Bugui’s hand tightened on the steering wheel, bones and tendons coming to the surface of his skin, making him seem a little savage. 

Lu Qingbai continued stirring up trouble: “Though his mental indexes are basically within normal range now, it doesn’t mean that he’ll really be all right. We all know that psychological trauma doesn’t always produce an immediate reaction. It may be hidden very deep, or his reactions may be too slow, and the signs of various mental illnesses will only appear after a while. Ultimately, because of the torment of those mental illnesses, he’ll reach the same end as those who lost their minds on the spot.” 

In order to demonstrate the truthfulness of his words, Dr. Lu added, “While there haven’t been many, I have seen some cases like this.” 

In Su Qing’s eyes, Lu Qingbai in his white coat suddenly turned into a criminal, turned into an enormous crow in human shape. 

Hu Bugui forced out words from between his teeth: “Lu Qingbai, what do you mean?” 

Lu Qingbai wasn’t afraid of him in the least. At any rate, he knew he couldn’t crawl out of the screen. So he cut right to the chase: “I’m saying that if you bring him back, you still might not be able to save him. Since it’s his own request, it would be better to let him return…” 

“Impossible,” said Hu Bugui. 

Lu Qingbai suddenly cut him off, changing his face faster than in a Sichuan opera. One moment it had been the face of the mild and gentle guide; the next moment he turned into a yaksha’s cousin. He hit the table with a bang and fumed: “It’s impossible just because you say it’s impossible? Hu, are you the doctor, or am I the doctor? What are you doing butting in when you don’t understand shit? Do you think healing psychological trauma is a question of bringing him back and sticking a couple of band-aids to his forehead? Even those blue seal animals know the law of balancing opposing emotions, you damned…” 

“Gorilla,” Xu Ruchong put in. 

“You damned gorilla!” 

Hu Bugui frowned. In matters where the final decision was his, he had always stood by his word. But in matters he didn’t understand, he had always been able to listen to others talking reason—though Lu Qingbai looked more like he was collecting on a debt or looking for a fight, anything other than being reasonable. So he asked, “You mean that letting him return to the grey house may be beneficial towards his psychological recovery?” 

Lu Qingbai waved a hand and turned to Su Qing. “If you come in for treatment now, it will be difficult. If you remember your friend, it will aggravate your sense of guilt. For a Type 2 Grey Seal like you, that will be particularly hard to handle. Returning will be fighting fire with fire. The outcome may be better. But if you decide to return to save him, you must think it through. You may not be able to save him and be broken there yourself. A person can’t come back from the dead.” 

Su Qing had used up pretty much all his courage yelling at Hu Bugui. At these words, he froze. A little at a loss, he looked up at Lu Qingbai.

Lu Qingbai didn’t make a sound, only looked at him with an incisive gaze. After a long time, Su Qing at last slowly and hesitantly nodded. He felt bitterness in his stomach, and his guts shook. Amid the voices of every cell in his body screaming “nod and you’re dead meat,” dry-throated, he said, “I, I’m going back.” 

Hu Bugui looked at him, then silently opened the car door and let him out. He reached under the driver’s seat, rummaged around, and got out a small box. “Then I’ll prepare you.” 

He opened the box and took out a syringe. He looked into Su Qing’s eyes as though soliciting his opinion. Su Qing hesitated, then rolled up his sleeve in silence and extended his arm. 

As he gave him the shot, Hu Bugui explained, “This is a simple blocker, newly developed. It hasn’t been tested yet, but you don’t need to worry. It doesn’t have side-effects. Though I can’t say whether it has an effect…” 

Xu Ruchong hurried to blow his own trumpet: “The effect is that up to a certain point it can block the influence of external emotions on you when you’re passively absorbing emotions. I made it, you can relax about the quality.” 

Su Qing looked at the miserable minicar next to him. Not only did he not relax, he tensed up further. 

Hu Bugui then took out a silver earring. He gently raised the hair at Su Qing’s temple and held the earring to Su Qing’s original one. There was a faint noise, and the next moment the silver rose-shaped earring had become the same as his original black stud. Hu Bugui drew slightly closer and clumsily put it on for him. He quietly said, “This is a communicator. It can remain in contact with me twenty-four hours a day, and it has a positioning function. It will help us find the blue seals’ base.” 

This gesture was too intimate. It made Su Qing abruptly remember the circumstances of their first meeting. He felt the atmosphere turn suggestive. His breath caught unnaturally, and he lowered his eyes. 

After putting on the earring for him, Hu Bugui released Su Qing. He added, “I can’t give you an obvious weapon. You haven’t had specialized training, it would be easily discovered and put you in danger. I can only give you this. You’re right-handed?” 

As he spoke, he took a ring from the box. Su Qing’s eyes opened wide. He thought, Holy shit, what is these people’s problem? Why are all their “tools” like this? Right hand or not, could he just…just casually put a ring on him like this? 

His face like a blue screen of death, he stood there like a mummy letting Hu Bugui take his stiff paw and put the ring on his right middle finger. The moment he put it on, the ring vanished. Su Qing felt around curiously. The ring was still there, it was only invisible. 

Hu Bugui lifted his finger and instructed, “There’s a switch here. You can use your thumb to control it.” 

Then he pressed something, and a thread of electric sparks burst from Su Qing’s middle finger. Hu Bugui dodged very promptly, but the wall in front of them was burned, startling Su Qing. 

“You can use it to protect yourself,” Hu Bugui said. 

Su Qing looked at the traces of what seemed like a lightning strike on the wall and swallowed. He thought, That has to be excessive force in self-defense. 

Finally, Hu Bugui pointed at his neck. “Your magnetic neckband is broken. If you’re really going to go back…be careful. Don’t let it be discovered.” 

After this sentence, Hu Bugui had absolutely no idea what to say. Su Qing looked at him, then turned and walked back. He was covered in dirt, his collar was torn, and there was still blood on his sleeves. His hair hadn’t been cut in too long and was looking a little overgrown. He was dragging one foot a little. He looked like a vagrant fleeing a famine. 

Hu Bugui stood by the car door, put a cigarette in his mouth, and watched his retreating figure without moving. 

Su Qing walked for a stretch, and then, as though he felt something, he turned back to look at Hu Bugui. He heard him say, “You’re gambling with your life. You have to think it through…and be careful.” 

It was as though his voice was speaking into his ear. Su Qing touched the earring on his ear and knew it was coming from the communicator. His steps paused. Then he turned and walked on without looking back. 

Lu Qingbai commented: “Like a knife to the heart.” 

Xu Ruchong said: “An eternal parting.” 

Lu Qingbai added: “A heart-breaking farewell.” 

Xu Ruchong continued the relay of idioms: “The shrike flies east and the sparrow flies west.” 

Su Qing made a turn, and his figure vanished. Hu Bugui finally got into the car and flipped the screen above his head up, putting the two of them out of sight and out of mind. 

Su Qing returned alone to the little house where Chen Lin had confined him. His steps hesitated at the door. He hardened his heart and finally raised his foot and walked in. He collapsed onto the couch and fell fast asleep. 

When he woke up, it was already completely dark. There was no light on inside. His scrapes had been taken care of. Su Qing sluggishly sat up, raised his head, and saw Chen Lin standing at the window, looking outside, like a lonely and dismal silhouette. 

Hearing movement, Chen Lin slowly turned his head. Su Qing smelled a heavy blood scent and noticed that there was a bullet wound on Chen Lin’s shoulder, still bleeding. His face was pale, his glasses were broken on one side, and his breathing was little rapid. But he smiled slightly at Su Qing. “You’re awake.”