Ji Pengcheng held a cane in one hand and led Tu Tutu with the other. When he opened the door and went in, it was already dark. Su Qing had his back to them, holed up bonelessly on the couch. He hadn’t turned the lights on. He was playing with a lighter, turning it over and tossing it, lighting it, letting the flame go out. The tiny flame shone on his face, faintly showing his countenance. At a glance, he seemed to have become a different person. 

At some point, there had begun to be some inscrutable, indescribable thing about him, a faint smile at the corners of his eyes, that made you think he had reached enlightenment. There was a thick book of newspaper cuttings on the coffee table in front of him. It had evidently been thumbed through many times by its owner. There was wear and tear at the edges and corners. 

Tu Tutu didn’t notice anything unusual about him. He trotted over to turn on the light and went up to Su Qing, smiling brightly. He reached out his somewhat longer but still pudgy little arms, squeezed his hands into fists, and began to knead Su Qing’s legs for him. “Little Uncle, did you have a hard day today?” 

Most recently, relying on his tricks and his glib tongue, Su Qing had been working as a reception manager in a hotel. He did it very skillfully, which, when added to the employee benefits and the group of beautiful girls under his leadership, meant that his life was practically comfortable—Su Qing didn’t have much of a reaction to Tu Tutu’s obvious flattery. He looked up at him absent-mindedly. “What is it? Did you fail another test?” 

Tu Tutu: “Heh-heh…” 

The little devil shuffled around in his bag and turned up an English test paper as crumpled as used toilet paper. Drooping and lifeless, he put it under Su Qing’s nose. What met the eye was a bunch of unsightly scribbles, a group of big red Xs, and a frank 40%. 

Tu Tutu said, “Look, Little Uncle, our class’s great traitor to the nation foreign language teacher insists on having a parent or guardian sign…” 

Su Qing glared, and Tu Tutu stuck out his tongue. “I…I mean that our class’s dashing English teacher insists on having a parent or guardian sign. He keeps thinking that I’m not studying well. Actually, he doesn’t understand, I’m a patriot, I believe…” 

But before Tu Tutu could finish his nonsense, Su Qing left a flourishing signature in the place for the parent or guardian to sign, then waved a hand to send him away. “Go, go, go, do what you’re supposed to. Don’t stand there offending my eyes.” 

Tu Tutu rubbed his eyes, simply not daring to believe that his guardian had been so easily dealt with. He was empty inside, feeling that the quibbling arguments he had meticulously prepared had been squandered, his feelings wasted. Ji Pengcheng gave a dry cough, and Tu Tutu came around. He picked up his tragic test paper and dizzily walked away. 

Su Qing stared at the book of clippings. There was news of every variety in it. On the surface, there were some items concerning missing people, some concerning infectious diseases, and some about car accidents, train crashes, and so on. The locations were all different, too, spanning the whole world. Many of them were foreign language articles—his advancing foreign language level was connected to collecting these things. 

Ji Pengcheng got out his pipe and puffed away, polluting the air quality in the room. After a long time, Su Qing said, “Shifu, I need to go away for a while.” 

This was a complete non sequitur, but Ji Pengcheng took it as completely natural, as though he had been waiting for him to say this. He nodded indifferently. “Oh, then go ahead. Will you come back?” 

Su Qing nodded. “It should be ten to fifteen days. Please watch the child for me.” 

Ji Pengcheng blew two threads of smoke out of his nostrils, like a big, wizened teapot. His lips were pursed practically down to his chin. Agreeing to take on a difficult task, he said, “Fine. First hand over the boarding expenses. No installments, one-time payment only.” 

Perhaps it was Su Qing’s mistake, but every time he attempted to indirectly talk a bit about proper business with the old man, he would dodge him with twists and turns, putting on an “I understand everything but I don’t want to say anything to you” air that made you want to smack him. 

So Su Qing simply didn’t waste words on him. He pulled out a suitcase from under the couch, stuffed the clipping book on the table into it, looked at Ji Pengcheng, pulled out his wallet, counted out some money and pressed it down with the remote, then left dragging the rolling suitcase. 

But Ji Pengcheng, who at his age was still happy to play godson for the sake of cash, for once didn’t touch the money on the table. He only took drags on his pipe, gazing at the door where Su Qing had disappeared. Each wrinkle on his face looked as if it had been carved with a knife. He looked a little like he was keeping a secret. 

In three years, Su Qing had never given up pursuing Utopia’s tracks. All his free time every day was given over to newspapers—looking for clues in them, then repeatedly chewing over and pondering the clues. 

In the blue seal base with the grey house, apart from the blue seals and the captured grey seals, all the staff had been ordinary humans. And Chen Lin had confirmed that the blue seals were also externally stimulated. Su Qing had at first been unable to understand, since blue seals were such awesome and impressive beings, why didn’t the Utopia personnel turn themselves into blue seals, too? At least then they could have an advantage during their squabbles with the RZ Unit. 

Until he had been in the hospital and learned from Lu Qingbai what had become of Chen Lin. Lu Qingbai believed that this rebellious figure had most likely already gone to the Western Paradise to pay his respects to the Buddha. Utopia had treated them well, so why would Chen Lin turn traitor? 

Later Su Qing understood that there were probably two reasons. One was that Chen Lin himself was a nasty piece of work, an ingrate who couldn’t develop a sense of loyalty. The other reason was that Utopia probably didn’t see the blue seals as “people” at all. In their eyes, the blue seals could very well be the same as the grey seals, only experiments with a little more freedom. 

Starting three years ago, when the blue seal base where Su Qing had been located had been rooted out with his support, no one knew where the blue seals and Utopia elites who had been moved at the time had gone. Xu Ruchong’s guess had been that there was more than one blue seal base in the world, and they had probably been moved to another place. Su Qing meanwhile had secretly investigated the building where Chen Lin had taken him—it seemed that it had been Chen Lin’s private property before, but later it had fallen through for no apparent reason. Now it had turned into a household appliance market. 

They seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth overnight. 

But Su Qing had just seen a familiar face on the news—Zhao Yifei. 

As the only person dead in that incident of unknown cause, she had been accorded a frame. Su Qing of course knew that after that major battle, the RZ Unit had instituted special protections for all the surviving grey seals. At need they would even clear their personal records and identities and send people to guard them. Reasonably speaking, the whole process would be carried out by the government and ought to be very strict. 

But…why was Zhao Yifei dead? 

This was the first time the blue seals had appeared so openly in the eyes of the public. Su Qing couldn’t work out what change had taken place, but for this matter to be reported, even if to the majority of city residents it was only an immaterial bit of wind blowing past their ears, it still had to have been tacitly approved by the government. 

Su Qing decided to personally go take a look. He put on a pair of plain glass spectacles and a leisure suit and boarded a plane that very night, looking like a presentable young genius. Even if someone who knew him had been standing in front of him, they would still have had a hard time discovering who this young man with a completely altered manner was. 

Su Qing had developed skills like a chameleon’s—by studying under Ji Pengcheng. 

He found a hotel to stay at a block away from the site of the incident. He got up first thing the next morning and looked in the mirror. He didn’t feel easy, so he did a bit of tinkering—rubbed quite a bit of pomade into his hair and combed it back, making it shiny and glistening, like a spokesman for China National Petroleum. Then he altered the corners of his eyes a little, pasted himself a laugh line and bags under his eyes. He tried a smile and found that his lips were quite naturally crooked, and his eyes were quite naturally dull. Then he concentrated the extremely high density “burden stones” Ji Pengcheng had scared up around his waist and added a bit of cushioning, and his midsection became “middle-aged,” looking like a middle-aged man who had filled out with age. 

The young genius had turned “middle-aged”…and not so genius. 

He took out a small camera and put it on his back. Taking his phone in hand, he called his secretary. Under the fine-sounding name of arranging her work, he said that he had had the sudden idea of going out of town to a place where the hotel business was good and paying a visit to learn from their example. Then he added that it was “at my own expense,” using his own annual leave time. 

Probably even the boss wouldn’t have anything to say to that. 

In the afternoon, like an ordinary sightseer, Su Qing talked a lot of nonsense to the secretary about how to arrange the work while he was away while holding the camera in one hand and taking pictures of everything.  

He split his mind into countless parts. Though he only went around some hotels in the vicinity, he worked out the circumstances of the location where the incident had taken place. Su Qing knew that quite a few of the RZ Unit’s people were hiding here. For example, the girl “handing out flyers” on the corner wasn’t especially professional, very indifferent towards passing pedestrians. The majority of the people who passed before her eyes were not honored with one of her flyers. Only when she suddenly began nervously keeping an eye on a certain person would she shove a few flyers at passersby in an obvious attempt at a cover-up. Then, when the crisis had passed, she would go back to looking around vacantly, absent-minded. 

Su Qing was inwardly amused, but it didn’t show on his face. After hanging around for a while, he went into a restaurant. 

As soon as he walked in, he could determine that there were also quite a few people in this restaurant who hadn’t come to eat—both the RZ Unit and Utopia, when having dealings with blue seals, would carry special blocking equipment to prevent the blue seals from absorbing their emotions. 

Su Qing’s perception of this blocker was especially clear. For instance, as soon as he walked in, he felt a weird “quiet.” Not that there were few people or that none of the people eating were conversing—at a glance, they seemed like ordinary people, eating and drinking, dating and talking nonsense. But people’s mental activity gave Su Qing a sense of faint noise like mosquitoes and flies buzzing. When he was already used to this noise, if it was gone, it would seem particularly strange. 

Su Qing chose a place by the window and sat down, glancing all around the restaurant with feigned indifference, inwardly calculating how many of these brightly-dressed men and women were from the RZ Unit and whether any Utopia personnel would have wormed their way in. 

Based on Su Qing’s understanding of this mysterious organization, under ordinary circumstances, they wouldn’t allow the blue seals to conduct such a high-profile “hunt.” Had they been careless this time, or had they deliberately allowed this blue seal to go out to conduct some new experiment? 

Countless thoughts revolved through his mind, but at the same time he was idling. As he ate, he put a small netbook on the table and began to click-clack away, sending e-mails, like a businessman who was busy at work. 

Just then, a man with bright red eyes walked in through the door. Su Qing’s eyes hidden behind the plain glass spectacles flashed. Looking in something reflective, he carefully looked the man over—this man’s eyes were bloodshot, his eyeballs spinning extremely fast, his breathing heavy, all his emotions in a chaotic state, his mind extremely unstable. If you had taken off his shirt, you would have seen the blue seal on his shoulder turned dim. 

A typical example of the symptoms of needing a “cleaning.” 

But he didn’t recognize this person. Was he a blue seal who had been developed later, or did he come from another base? 

Su Qing sipped his coffee. When this man like a time bomb was still five steps away from him, he was typing on the keyboard as though nothing were the matter, sending an e-mail to a beverage supplier. Before a notice of receipt for the e-mail had come up, someone suddenly came hurtling over and pressed Su Qing down. This person said into his ear, “Don’t be afraid, sir, we’re the police, pursuing a wanted criminal.” 

Out of the corner of his eye, Su Qing glimpsed a few people sitting in different corners stand up. The restaurant became a mess. There were even gunshots. But these were the RZ Unit’s elites, after all. The dust settled after a moment. The suspected blue seal was quickly brought under control. In others’ eyes, he settled down when he was hit on the back of the head by a “plainclothesman,” but Su Qing saw a vague electric net floating through the air—even though the thing was five steps way, it still gave him a faint feeling of chest pain. Had the RZ Unit’s equipment gone up a grade? 

Then his attention rapidly shifted over to a man in a corner by the bathroom door. In the whole restaurant, Su Qing thought, he was the only one carrying a blocker who didn’t give him a sense of belonging to the RZ Unit. 

The man holding him down finally let go. In a “sincere” and apologetic tone, he said, “Sorry, a police ambush needs to be concealed. We had no go-between.” 

Just as though what he was saying was the truth. 

Su Qing put on a shaking, scared-silly look and raised his head. Then he really did go blank… This person passing himself off as a policeman, who didn’t even dare to meet his eyes when he lied, was Hu Bugui.