That night, there was a strong influence from a cold wave. In rained over vast areas of the country—where Hu Bugui was, it was strictly speaking a mix of rain and snow. Winter had already begun, and the nights were very cold. For people caught outdoors, this rain was adding insult to injury. 

Hu Bugui was wrapped up in a raincoat, his face icy, struggling forward through the bleak wind and bitter rain. With the glasses on his nose, he felt even worse. While he was wearing gloves, his hands were still frozen numb. He was alone in this area and had already been traveling for three hours. Despite his raincoat, he was soaked through. 

This place that they had designated “area 1” was particularly remote, very far from the cities, and it was a flat plain. The reserve personnel were concerned about exposing themselves and didn’t dare to come too close. They could only send him alone to make the arduous trek on a lousy mud-splattered bike. 

When he heard a faint sound and received a communication request signal from headquarters, Hu Bugui stopped, took off his gloves, breathed on his hands, and rubbed them together. Then he took the glasses off, roughly wiped them with his fingers, and vigilantly stood in place for a while. There was nothing out of the ordinary. He looked down at the energy indicator on his wrist, confirmed that there were no unusual energy reactions, then finally got off the bicycle and pressed on his glasses, switching to headquarters. Out of caution, he still didn’t speak, only pushed aside the messy hair in front of his forehead, tapping three times on the other arm of the glasses with his nail—this was the signal they had arranged beforehand. 

Xu Ruchong reported at once: “Captain Hu, your current position is basically at the heart of the suspected area. There’s no need to go any further. There currently appear to be no suspicious phenomena. Use your detector to test the place at your three o’clock, five hundred meters away. There’s an energy coordinate device there. Return the way you came immediately. Take care not to disturb it, there’s likely to be an alarm system on the energy coordinate device—I can basically confirm now that that thing is disturbing the signal that friend of yours is sending.” 

Hu Bugui nodded and turned the bicycle around. Xu Ruchong continued to report: “During your investigation, area 7 can also basically be eliminated using technological means—though I still think that you’re all running too great a risk…” 

Hu Bugui turned and got onto the bike. Shivering but no less imposing, he said, “Shut up.” 

Xu Ruchong paused and suddenly said a little solemnly, “Captain Hu, this isn’t right. Do you know what this energy coordinate device is?” 

Hu Bugui didn’t make a sound, waiting for him to continue. Xu Ruchong pushed up his ridiculously large glasses and frowned. “This is a new model anti-tracking-signal disruption device. When your friend’s signal is emitted, because of these disrupters, at my end I receive at least forty or fifty possible locations scattered all over the globe. After three whole days of wrestling with it, I was able to eliminate a part of them. The remaining seven are the hardest nuts to crack. To make a comparison, they’re like online proxies, but much more complicated. It’s a mighty thing.” 

Hu Bugui paused for a moment—Xu Ruchong was regularly out of line and always thought highly of himself; his thoughts were bold and unconstrained in style. It was very rare to hear the word “mighty” come out of his mouth. “What’s the matter?” 

“This is used by the army. It hasn’t been released to the public yet. In fact, the RZ Unit also has one. Chief Xiong just signed off on it half a month ago—I know about it because I took part in its development.” 

There was no need to say the rest. Having heard this much, Hu Bugui already understood better than he did—whether it was the blue seals or the insubstantial Utopia, plainly speaking, they were a group of anti-government militia with unclear goals and identities. How could they have technological power like this? 

Who was behind them? 

“Captain Hu…” 

Hu Bugui interrupted him. Keeping his voice low amid the wind and snow, he said, “Don’t disclose this to others for now. Send General Xiong a special report. If this really is trouble above, he’ll take care of it. Don’t think about it anymore. Do your own work.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

Hu Bugui changed the channel over to the special police unit, explained that the sweep was over, and ordered them to stand by. Then, riding the bike, he wiped the left lens again and returned the channel to Su Qing. He found that the person who had just been lying there sleeping had at some point sat up. His elderly roommate was sleeping very soundly. The clock showed 2:30 AM. 

Hu Bugui stared, thinking there was something off about Su Qing’s condition. This wasn’t the first time. Since Su Qing had returned to the blue seals’ base, however vigorous he was during the day, however much he seemed like he could eat and sleep his fill, he would wake up each night at precisely this time. Hu Bugui had been observing him for several days. It had been understandable at Chen Lin’s place; he might have been having insomnia from fear or anxiety or something. But hadn’t he already been at the grey house for a long time? Why would this still happen? 

In the pitch-dark room, Su Qing sat bolt upright in bed, not moving, staring at his own hands. 

Hu Bugui wanted to say something but was worried that suddenly speaking would scare him again, so he slowly increased the volume on his end, letting the sounds of wind and rain slowly increase so he would hear them clearly. 

As expected, after a moment, Su Qing moved. 

Hu Bugui turned the volume back down and asked him, “What’s wrong?” 

Su Qing’s reactions seemed a little slow, whether because he had just woken up or for some other reason. He heard the question and only reacted after four or five seconds. He slowly glanced at Cheng Weizhi, then quietly got up and went to the bathroom. He closed the door and sat down with his back to the wall, then quietly said, “Can’t sleep.” 

Hu Bugui frowned and softened his voice as much as possible—though it still sounded deep and gruff. “Could you not sleep the whole time, or did you suddenly wake up? Were you having a nightmare?” 

Again, Su Qing didn’t answer for a long time. He seemed to zone out sitting there. The communicator could generally detect his mental state. Though Hu Bugui wasn’t specialized medical personnel, he could tell that all his index values were particularly low. He couldn’t resist calling out to him: “Su Qing?” 

Su Qing responded blankly, then reached out to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Oh, it’s late, I’m not very awake, what did you just say?” 

Hu Bugui heard that the tempo of his speech was considerably slower than during the day. His voice was a touch nasal. He repeated the questions he had just asked. Su Qing unconsciously reached a finger out to draw on the slightly fogged-up mirror. The young man in the mirror seemed to have had half his soul yanked out. His eyes wandered and his cheeks were pale. The shaggy hair in front of his forehead was long enough to touch his eyebrows, making him look even more downcast. 

“It’s…all of that, I guess,” he said. “I think of things, and I don’t know what I’m thinking about. I’ve been dreaming, too. It’s a little blurred.” 

“What have you been thinking about?” Hu Bugui asked. Then he thought that was a little harsh and rigidly added, “Is it something you can tell me about?” 

First Su Qing nodded. Then he seemed to think with some effort for a while. He laughed bitterly. “When you asked, I forgot about it. I must have been sleeping just now?” 

Hu Bugui inspected Su Qing in the mirror and suddenly felt that the person in front off him seemed to have become someone else. From that energetic, aggravatingly brave, cheeky, brainless child he was during the day, he had turned into a porcelain doll who took ages to respond when you spoke to him. 

Su Qing’s eyes were listless, with traces of unspeakable blankness and weariness in them. If you didn’t speak to him, he could stare at the same spot for ages, not moving a muscle, thinking of something. He wouldn’t go to sleep. 

Hu Bugui’s heart sank—he knew something had gone wrong. Lu Qingbai had warned him that even though Su Qing appeared to have passed through one “feast” unharmed and seemed uncommonly resilient, they all knew that for grey seals, especially Type 2 Grey Seals, this was fundamentally impossible. His psyche must have been harmed, he only didn’t show it as obviously as others. 

Hu Bugui stopped the bike, wiped the water off the glasses, rubbed his numb, frozen hands again, took a deep breath, and said as though humoring a child, “You go lie down in bed, I’ll tell you a story, and soon you’ll fall asleep, all right?” 

Su Qing gave an “oh,” but he didn’t move at all, only kept sitting, looking straight back at himself in the mirror as though he had been possessed by the foolish unlucky god. 

Hu Bugui patiently repeated, “You go back to bed.” 

Su Qing yawned. All his movements were slow now. He even seemed to blink in slow motion. “…Go ahead, I don’t feel like moving.” 

After some thought, Hu Bugui cut his connection to the others to keep his teammates from having nightmares. Then he slowed down his speech and delivered a very countrified rendition of “The Tortoise and the Hare.” This was an extremely dull story, both the original version and later expanded version. So according to Hu Bugui’s experience, if you told this story while trying to lull a child to sleep, halfway through the first telling of the expanded version, the child would have fallen asleep from boredom. 

But Su Qing didn’t say he wouldn’t listen, and he didn’t fall asleep. After hearing two sentences, from his expression it looked like his mind had wandered away to parts unknown. He wasn’t an attentive audience at all. 

Hu Bugui stopped and called to him twice more: “Su Qing? Su Qing?” 

Su Qing was like a computer with a malfunctioning system where the hourglass icon ran for ages after you touched it. You could poke him a few times without being sure of getting a response. After a long time, he finally came around and blankly asked, “What did you say?” 

Hu Bugui saw that this wouldn’t do. He spoke in a slightly heavier voice: “Stand up and go back to bed at once. Close your eyes, and don’t talk. If that’s no good, I’ll get Dr. Lu to contact you. You need treatment.” 

He didn’t know whether Su Qing understood him. He didn’t answer. When Hu Bugui was about to repeat himself, Su Qing’s eyes suddenly moved swiftly, and he asked, “Is it raining outside?” 

Hu Bugui stared, not knowing why he had changed the subject. He could only follow along. “Yes.” 

“Are you still out?” 

“The blue seals’ base uses some shielding measures. We’re manually eliminating the disruption devices.” 

Su Qing gave an “oh” and slowly stood up. He had just put his hand on the bathroom’s doorknob when he suddenly stopped moving. His back was to the mirror, his head down, and his shoulders a little slouched. Without warning, he jumped back to the previous subject: “…I remember what I just dreamed about.” 

Hu Bugui’s attention wandered for a moment, and his front wheel stuck in the mud. He braked at once and put one foot on the ground, but this night in the wild was really against him. His foot sank into the mud, and icy, muddy water quickly rose over his rain boot, leaking inside. 

Hu Bugui shook his head. Pulling himself and his bicycle tire out of the mud, he ignored his waterlogged right foot. Afraid Su Qing would forget again, he quickly asked, “What did you dream?” 

Su Qing gave an extremely brief laugh, there and gone. “I dreamed…of when I was little, and my dad took me to his old home to pay respects to our ancestral tomb. He stuck an incense stick in front of the tomb and lit it, and there was smoke on the tomb—though it was man-made, he still pointed to that thread of smoke and boasted to my mom that there was smoke on the ancestral tomb, so in the future I would definitely bring honor to my ancestors.” 

Hu Bugui didn’t make a sound, strenuously pushing the bike through the heavier and heavier cold rain. Hearing Su Qing’s voice coming through intermittently, his heart suddenly began to ache. 

“And what happened? He definitely never thought that twenty years later I’d bring home a man to make him mad—so this shows that smoke on an ancestral tomb is something that can only be found by chance, not by seeking. Lighting it yourself won’t do any good. It’s a counterfeit product, all the major deities and minor immortals aren’t so easy to fool, not like…” 

“Su Qing.” 

“…hm?” 

“When you come back from the base, have Lu Qingbai give you a good looking-over, stay with the unit for a time, then…come stay with me?” Hu Bugui paused, then added, “Don’t misunderstand, I don’t mean anything by it. These people may have serious connections behind them. We have to protect you. You would be comparatively safe with me, and anyway…this is my fault.” 

Su Qing may have heard this, or he may not have heard it. He zoned out again. 

Hu Bugui sighed. “Go back to bed and lie down.” 

Like a marionette, Su Qing obediently walked back to the bedroom and lay down. Hu Bugui said, “Close your eyes.”—this was simply like guiding a feeble-minded child. In action he was vigorous and resolute, as strong as wind and swift rain, but his patience was unusually good…except towards chatterboxes like Xu Ruchong. 

Su Qing closed his eyes. Against the backdrop of mixed wind and rain, Hu Bugui finished telling “The Three Little Pigs,” then told “Where Is Mama?” He found that Su Qing still wasn’t asleep, so he told classic children’s bedtime stories the whole way, until he could already see from afar the place where the special police unit was concealed, and dawn was about to break. Only then was there no more sound from Su Qing. 

The rain had stopped. Hu Bugui was still wet. Dripping, he found the organization and hurriedly wiped the mud off himself, changed clothes, downed a big bottle of water, and drew a breath. “Notify headquarters and muster the helicopters. We’re going to the next target area.”