When Hu Bugui finished all the formalities and was planning to take Su Qing around headquarters, he found that he was already rather familiar with it—even more familiar than the captain of the RZ Unit. After all, Captain Hu had only operated aboveground; he hadn’t spent time in the sewers. 

In his gloom, Captain Hu couldn’t resist asking, “What do you think of our headquarters’ defense system?” 

Su Qing casually answered, “It’s pretty good.” 

Then he remembered how he had gotten in. The two of them paused awkwardly at the same time. After a while, Su Qing said, “…I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just being polite.” 

Hu Bugui made no sound. Su Qing carefully glanced at his future superior’s expression and found that there was once again a not very conspicuous smile on Hu Bugui’s face. There were fine laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. So Su Qing smiled along with him, shaking his head, thinking that suddenly there was a feeling of all debts of gratitude and vengeance dying out between him and Hu Bugui with a chance smile. 

He raised his head and looked at the RZ Unit headquarters’ main building and the guards posted at the gate, feeling that worldly affairs were a little fickle. 

Hu Bugui began to slowly explain the internal structure and working rules and regulations of the RZ Unit. He was much more at ease when talking about proper business. His speech was neither slow nor fast, like long ago, when he had told stories late at night. It was very orderly. Su Qing didn’t respond anymore, listening with single-hearted devotion. 

General Xiong left that same afternoon. After another day, he dispatched someone to bring Tu Tutu back. Though this little thing had been born under the red flag, he had grown up alongside two professional swindlers. He had been somewhat influenced by what he had seen and heard. 

A new recruit drove the car that brought him back. Whatever tricks Tu Tutu had been playing on this soldier, when Su Qing came out to pick him up, he was just in time to see the soldier’s eyes all red and glistening with tears as he got money out of his pocket, firmly set on giving it to Tu Tutu. 

And Tu Tutu was brazenly holding out his little paw, planning to take the money. Sadly, before his fingers could touch the Chairman’s bright red head, he was lifted by the scruff of the neck. Tu Tutu gave an “ow!” and turned his head to look. When he saw a grim-faced Su Qing in front of him, he immediately put on a fawning smile and reached out to pat his crooked cap. “Hello, chief. You’ve been working hard, chief.” 

Su Qing rudely smacked him on the head. 

The soldier who had brought Tu Tutu back already knew Su Qing. He brought his heels together and gave him a salute. Su Qing wasn’t very used to this. The upshot was that the next moment, this soldier sniffed forcefully, his dark face flushing red at once under the darkness, like a mulberry. 

Su Qing was amused. “What has the little thing been saying to you?” 

Tu Tutu quickly said, “Chief, I didn’t say anything, just talked some clean, sanitary, exhaust-free bullshit. Really, Grandpa Ji’s guarantee!” 

He had grown considerably taller in three years, and his skill at glib talk had improved at a tremendous pace. With two guardians like Su Qing and Ji Pengcheng, he seemed ready to complete his apprenticeship any day. 

Su Qing smiled at “Brother Mulberry” and told him to go report back. When he had gone, he coolly said, “Your Grandpa Ji is guaranteed not to speak the truth—where is the old fart?” 

Tu Tutu took a step back, affectedly scrunched up his shoulders, rolled his eyes upwards, and stroked a nonexistent goatee. Imitating Ji Pengcheng, he said with the self-importance of the elderly, “Oh, well, good, you have made something of yourself. From now on you’ll be like a person!”  

Su Qing heard the little whelp’s speech become less and less sensible and wanted to roll up his sleeves. Tu Tutu quickly rolled his eyes back down. “That’s not me talking, that’s Grandpa Ji! Uncle Su, my butt knows where to go. I’ll always sit on the same bench as you!” 

Su Qing asked, “What else did he say?” 

Tu Tutu stuck his hand in his pocket, felt around for ages, then came up with something as crumpled as a used piece of toilet paper and gave it to Su Qing. “He also told me to pass this on to you. The verbal message is ‘you’ll understand.’” 

Su Qing opened it and read. The writing on the paper was Ji Pengcheng’s. The old swindler’s moral character was very bad, but his handwriting was excellent. Many people had been duped by his skill in writing both simplified and traditional characters with a soft brush or a hard pen, which really did give him some of the air of transcendent being. Ji Pengcheng had very briefly written him three lines: 

“From the standpoint of physiological structure, I can be called human, and the rest is not to be considered.  

“My name is Ji Pengcheng. 

“Wherever I am is my home.” 

There was nothing else. Tu Tutu stood on tiptoe and craned his neck over. “Uncle Su, what does it say? I can’t understand it at all.” 

Su Qing smiled, put the paper away, and stroked Tu Tutu’s head, affectionately saying, “You don’t understand? That’s normal. Your IQ is too low.” 

Tu Tutu’s face turned green. 

Just then, Xue Xiaolu came over. “Hey, the tech department’s people seem to have something urgent. They’ve called an emergency muster.” Then she saw Tu Tutu rolling his big eyes and staring at her furtively. She bent down and beckoned, saying to Su Qing, “I’ll get the child settled for you, don’t worry.” 

Su Qing nodded, then turned and went towards the conference room. 

Beaming, Xue Xiaolu said to Tu Tutu, “Last time I saw you, you were tiny, and now you’ve grown up so tall. Do you still remember me?” 

Tu Tutu, looking cute, opened his bright and innocent big eyes and said, “I remember. Jiejie is the most beautiful. I would forget anyone before I forgot jiejie.” 

This flattery was perfectly placed. Xue Xiaolu was instantly overcome with delight. “What a sweet talker. Who did you learn it from?” 

Tu Tutu continued adorably flashing his gleaming eyes in blink after blink. “Huh? I’m telling the truth! Da-jiejie really is the most beautiful, even better looking than my English teacher, even better looking than the celebrities in the posters my classmate buys!” 

Xue Xiaolu was about to die of fondness for this little thing—of course, she didn’t know that Tu Tutu’s English teacher was a balding middle-aged man, and the celebrities in the posters his classmate bought were named Zeng-ge, Chun-ge¹…

Tu Tutu jabbered on, flattering. Suddenly, his words came to a halt. Xue Xiaolu looked up and saw Hu Bugui with a cigarette in his mouth walking towards them. Xue Xiaolu knew that their captain’s aura was too strong and thought that the kid was scared. So she quietly said into Tu Tutu’s ear, “Don’t be scared, this uncle has a very good temper. He just looks stern, but really he isn’t scary at all.” 

Sadly, she was completely mistaken. Tu Tutu still remembered Hu Bugui. He had faintly known back then that this uncle was the most important, so he was just hatching little plans, considering how to get on good terms with this boss and find himself a solid backer. 

Hu Bugui had also seen Tu Tutu. He stopped in his tracks. Tu Tutu obediently raised his head and crisply called out, “Hello, uncle.” 

Hu Bugui patted him on the head, took a brightly colored handful of candy from his pocket, and shoved it into Tu Tutu’s pocket. Xue Xiaolu’s eyes nearly fell out of her head. Even thinking with your toe, you would know that their Captain Hu never ate this stuff himself. Had he timed it on purpose so he could give the candy to the child, or was it to give to a certain person…?

Hu Bugui was in a hurry to get to the conference room. He gave Xue Xiaolu an order and was about to leave, but, as if he had remembered something, his steps stopped again after shifting a bit. He lowered his eyes, thoughtfully looked at Tu Tutu for a while, then all of a sudden quietly asked, “How have you been living these last few years? Have you been doing well?” 

There were no traces to be seen from Su Qing. No matter what you asked him, he would answer that it was fine. Hu Bugui saw Tu Tutu, remembered this, and decided to ask the child for the truth—sadly, he had figured wrong. He didn’t know that Tu Tutu was a miniature edition little swindler. 

Tu Tutu’s eyes spun and his little mouth pursed in a tearful way, looking just like the real thing. Pitifully, he said, “It’s been very hard. Uncle Su is always changing jobs. He only comes home in the middle of the night and leaves in the morning before daylight. Sometimes I don’t see him for weeks at a time…” 

Not seeing Su Qing for weeks at a time, not being criticized for not finishing his homework or failing a test, was one of Tu Tutu’s beautiful dreams. 

“Sometimes he moves very heavy bricks and pieces of metal. In summer he sometimes has to wear long sleeves or else all the scraped places would show…” 

The heavy objects he moved were all the ones Ji Pengcheng tied onto him, and the injuries came from internal strife with Ji Pengcheng. 

“And we’re always moving. Whenever I’ve just gotten familiar with my classmates at school, we have to switch to another place. The teachers always cry when I leave…” 

Of course the teachers were crying with joy at finally getting rid of this chaotic little fiend—Tu Tutu wiped his eyes, actually forcing out a few teardrops. 

Xue Xiaolu was devastated. Hu Bugui pursed his lips and didn’t say a word. So Tu Tutu looked up at him with his tear-misted eyes. “Uncle, will we have to move again after this?” 

Hu Bugui sighed and softened his voice. “No, not this time. You won’t move again. You’ll stay here forever. If you’re unhappy about anything in the future, come see me and tell me about it, do you hear?” 

Tu Tutu buried his face against Xue Xiaolu’s fragrant bosom. Very pleased with himself, he thought, Heh-heh, that’s what I was waiting for you to say. 

With this delay, Hu Bugui became the final person to arrive in the conference room. As soon as he walked through the door, he saw Xu Ruchong standing to one side. There was a huge instrument on the table. Su Qing had naturally been included in the field personnel group and had spontaneously sat down next to Qin Luo. So Qin Luo was having another attack. She simply didn’t even dare to raise her head, didn’t dare to take a single glance at him. 

Hu Bugui patted her on the shoulder and rescued this social anxiety sufferer, sitting between the two of them. He asked Xu Ruchong, “What’s the matter? What is this thing?” 

Xu Ruchong was in high spirits. “This is actually a byproduct of the emotional blocker we made before. It’s an emotional detector. Before, we’ve always concentrated our attention on power but ignored the source of the blue seal energy system—emotion. Do you know what the fundamental nature of emotion is?” 

Awkward silence. 

But Xu Ruchong’s enthusiasm didn’t decrease in the least. Gesticulating joyfully, he said, “The current theory believes that emotion is fundamentally a wave. Physics argues that the origin of power is waves. Emotion, meanwhile, is like light, both a wave and a particle. Its transmission medium is very particular. There was a physicist named Stephen Lord who proved the existence of this medium. We normally call it the MTC medium. It’s a very particular medium, like…” 

Hu Bugui knocked on the table. “Xu Ruchong, that’s about enough.” 

Xu Ruchong resentfully shut his mouth, showing himself very disdainful towards this lack of interest in a deeper understanding. 

Fang Xiu looked at the instrument on the table and said with a look: “So?” 

Xu Ruchong clapped his hands together. “So, human emotions have certain frequencies. Over a long period of analysis, I’ve found that the frequency of happiness is a little higher, and the frequency of fear is a little lower. As for why opposing emotions counteract each other, I haven’t yet looked into it. For now I can only explain it using the fact that emotional waves possess a wave-particle duality. There may be some characteristic of the particle…” 

Hu Bugui knocked on the table again, indicating for him to speak Chinese. 

Xu Ruchong stiffly came to a halt and sighed, his expression aggrieved. “Yes, sir. The important point is, the frequencies of human emotions fall within a certain range, like the frequencies that our ears can hear. Normally, they can’t exceed this waveband.” 

Fang Xiu, finding this a little hard to understand, frowned. “You mean that…humans can’t be especially pleased or especially angry? Huh? That can’t be right.” 

Xu Ruchong looked disdainfully at him with his four eyes. “Was your high school physics class taught by your PE coach? Can’t you tell the difference between frequency and amplitude?” 

Fang Xiu quickly said, “Yes, yes, yes, Master Xu, please proceed.” 

Only then did Xu Ruchong continue: “What I mean is that anything that exceeds this waveband doesn’t come from a human—however, this instrument of ours just caught a very special waveband. Come take a look!” 

Fang Xiu and Lu Qingbai responded to Master Xu’s call, drawing close to have a look. Then they met each other’s eyes and simultaneously indicated that they didn’t understand. 

Xu Ruchong pulled up the instrument’s screen and pointed to a little segment of waveband on it that looked like an earthworm. “Damn, how can there be such a huge disparity in human IQ? Is there any lower limit? Look here! It’s this segment. It’s obviously forty times higher than the highest waveband for human emotions. Because it’s so high, I actually didn’t notice it at first!” 

Su Qing asked, “If it isn’t human, then what is it?” 

Smiling foolishly, Xu Ruchong. “That…remains to be analyzed.” 

Hu Bugui glared him. “Bullshit! Turn on the projection ASAP, see what the circumstances are.” 

Only then did Xu Ruchong remember that this was an option. He hurriedly flipped over the surface of the conference table. Inside was a neatly laid out keyboard. Master Xu’s fingers flew over it. Ten minutes later, an image from the outskirts lit up before everyone’s eyes—it looked like a very remote place. There were no roads or villages around it, and no sign of people. They were looking at a big patch of wilderness. 

The camera slowly revolved in place. Xu Ruchong whispered, “Strange, the source ought to be this place…” 

All of a sudden, Su Qing, who had been indolently leaning back in his chair, sat up straight. “Wait, stop there, move the camera down a little.” 

The camera slowly went down. Everyone’s gazes collected on the screen. Su Qing frowned. “What’s that thing buried underground with a tip sticking out? Why does it look like a hand to me?”