Hu Bugui arrived on the scene with the three-person field personnel team, now including Su Qing. Personally Hu Bugui had the boldness of execution that stems from great skill. With him driving them, the RZ Unit’s members generally didn’t hesitate. They turned the energy detector up to its maximum sensitivity and drove a military jeep right in. 

Of course, this was all built on the premise of the tech department’s analysis confirming that it was safe for the time being. 

The whole way there, the energy detector showed no unusual alterations. This desolate patch of countryside had the leisurely quiet of wind moving through grass. There wasn’t a trace of human activity. When they reached the place, Hu Bugui stopped the car and jumped out first. Qin Luo followed closely after him, staying far away from Su Qing—these last couple of days, even when this young lady had been forced by circumstances to speak to him, she had kept her head down and spoken in a voice as thin as gossamer, her speech as fast as though it had boarded a high-speed railway. When she had finished speaking quickly, she would rapidly withdraw. During the whole process, she would be as nervous as though in the middle of a street fight. 

Su Qing watched her retreating figure in puzzlement and quietly asked Fang Xiu, “Have I offended her somehow?” 

Fang Xiu said, “Ah, that’s normal. She even blushes talking to a ten-year-old child. When she first came to the unit, we were all busy, and there was no one to greet her, so she stood at the door all day with her head down, holding onto her transfer order. Xiaolu only came to lead her in when it was already dark. When she saw anyone, she couldn’t get a full sentence out. She’s much better now—the two of you can complement each other.” 

Perhaps it was his mistake, but Su Qing felt like Fang Xiu was accusing him of being a chatterbox. 

By this time, Hu Bugui had already squatted down and put on gloves. He looked back and beckoned to them, so the three of them came over together and found that Su Qing’s binocular-like eyes really hadn’t let him down. There was indeed a hand sticking up out of the ground—a dead person’s hand. 

When they managed to get the corpse out, they found that the deceased was a man, but they couldn’t see his appearance anymore. All they could see was how he looked from the neck down; the head was all floating clouds. Looking at this gentleman’s venerable countenance, Su Qing remembered an old game he had played when he had been very little, called Theme Hospital. It had a type of patient with Bloaty Head disease. These patients needed to go to the hospital and have the doctor puncture their head like a balloon, nip off a part, then reinflate it. 

Sadly, after this citizen’s had been punctured and nipped, the quack had forgotten to reinflate it for him. 

Even Fang Xiu and Qin Luo hissed. Fang Xiu, pale-faced, dodged aside. “What’s going on here?” 

Su Qing squatted down and opened the deceased’s shirt. The area under his collarbones was clean. There was nothing there. He was a little perplexed. “Are we sure this person is connected to Utopia? I remember that normally within Utopia, apart from blue seals and grey seals, there were only working personnel.” 

He picked up the deceased’s hand. The deceased had very coarse hands, covered in calluses. Su Qing examined it and judged: “I believe this man did manual labor when he was alive.” 

Fang Xiu was rather curious about him, so he asked, “You can tell that just by looking at his hand?” 

Su Qing curved his eyes in a smile and half-jokingly said, “Not only that—give me any hand, and I can tell you whether he’s married, whether he has kids, what he does and what he used to do, and I’ll know whether he was a Baigujing or a Zhu Bajie in his past life¹, whether he’s had ease or misfortune in this life, and whether he’s in danger of meeting a bloody fate soon. For this man, I not only know his approximate labor intensity, I can also see that he was a construction worker for a long period before his death.” 

Listening to this for its meaning, the others heard that Su Qing was spouting nonsense. But Hu Bugui gave him a profound look, becoming increasingly convinced of the truth of Tu Tutu’s lies about how difficult their lives had been and how hard Su Qing had worked. In his eyes, Su Qing was simply like a wilting cabbage, surrounded by hardships, disabled in body but firm in spirit, every pore letting out a smoke called “deep bitterness.” 

Captain Hu’s heart with its restless desire to aid the poor swayed once more and sank for a while. His expression when he looked at Su Qing was grieved. 

Fortunately, his first time out on this kind of mission, Su Qing was extremely excited and didn’t notice him. 

Su Qing lowered himself and cautiously crawled over to carefully examine the head that someone had forgotten to inflate. He reached out to squeeze the earpiece on his ear and asked, “Dr. Lu, can you tell what happened to this man’s head? Reasonably speaking, neither sharp weapons nor blunt instruments would be able to create this result. Did he really get pumped full of air and explode?” 

Lu Qingbai’s voice came from the communicator: “Back when we caught some Utopia members who self-destructed, it had basically this result. Do you see if there’s a Utopia insignia on his clothing?” 

“There isn’t,” Hu Bugui put in. “I checked. And if he had blown up from an implanted chip, there should be traces of the remnants of the chip. For the moment we haven’t found any.” 

“And also, what’s going on with the unusual frequency of emotional waves that you were talking about?” Su Qing asked. “Could he be giving them off?” 

Lu Qingbai paused. After a long time, he somewhat hesitantly said, “No…that’s not possible. Xu Ruchong says that under ordinary circumstances, energy waves of that frequency can’t form inside the human brain. If it really is forty times the frequency of ordinary emotions…”

“Then can it still count as emotion?” Su Qing asked as he rolled up the dead man’s sleeve to inspect. “Emotion ought to be something that humans can feel, right? Actually, there’s a question I’ve been thinking about all these years. If the function of the energy crystal is to convert emotion into energy, then what is its mechanism? Could it be that if emotional waves rise to an abnormal waveband, they’ll be power in themselves?” 

Lu Qingbai gave a “hey!”, paused for a moment, then all of a sudden loudly said, “That makes sense! Lao Xu, get a look at this, our field group finally has a gorilla with an IQ that’s evolved to the human level!” 

Su Qing: “…” 

He really felt like he was getting shot lying down. 

But before Xu Ruchong could respond, Su Qing and the others heard an explosion over the comms. Then, headquarters’ alarm, which had been unusually put-upon over the last few days, once again poured its soul into howling. Mixed in was a scream in an altered pitch from Xu Ruchong.

Hu Bugui pressed down on the communicator on his ear. “What happened?” 

There was an uproar over the comms, and then Xu Ruchong yelled hysterically: “It’s on fire, it’s on fire, stamp it out! Ow! It’s about to light me on fire, it’s all burnt!” 

Fang Xiu took out a little screen from the bag hanging at his waist and connected to headquarters, and they all saw Xu Ruchong’s appearance, which very much belonged to the Picasso school—a small part of his bangs had been scorched, his glasses hung askew on his ears, and his face was covered in soot. He was hopping in front of the screen, reaching out his hands to try to block the projection’s filming device. “Don’t broadcast, don’t broadcast! Get rid of this roll!” 

Amid the chaos of war, Lu Qingbai calmly explained: “It’s all right. Master Xu has laid down his life for scientific research. He just blew up the lab.” 

Xu Ruchong seemed to have taken rat poison. He jumped up with unusual excitement. Not minding his appearance, he put his hands on the recording image. “Which one of you just said that high frequency emotions are energy? Who said that? Hahaha, great minds really fucking do think alike! I just performed a simple experiment. I found a neutral liquid with a similar density to the brain, then manually imitated emotional waves and slowly raised their frequency. Sadly, the technology here isn’t up to snuff. I could only raise it to five times the frequency at most. And guess what happened?” 

“…” From the deserted countryside, the four of them speechlessly watched Xu Ruchong jumping around with his head like a plucked chicken’s. 

“Hahahaha, it blew up!” 

“…” Hu Bugui and the others absolutely couldn’t understand what the hell he was so worked up about. 

“Yes,” Lu Qingbai said coolly, “Master Xu was only concerned about the density but forgot to consider the flammability of the liquid and nearly got himself turned into a roast pig.” 

Xu Ruchong waved a hand, so stirred up that he was becoming incoherent. “That’s a minor detail, the crucial thing is that I may have discovered the mechanism by which the energy crystal functions off emotions! My heavens, this is tremendous, why didn’t I think of it before?! Su Qing, next time we’re on vacation, you have to come buy a lottery ticket for me, you really are a good luck charm, hahaha! I’ll rely on you to get myself a wife!” 

The corners of Su Qing’s lips twitched. He thought that his mission was truly glorious but arduous. 

But Hu Bugui’s brow furrowed. “You said you could only raise the frequency five times as high, and there was an explosion? But they produced a frequency forty times higher.” 

Xu Ruchong’s smile instantly froze on his face, like an eggplant withered by the frost. Hu Bugui’s frown deepened. “In other words, they’re more than a few steps ahead of our tech department in this respect.” 

Xu Ruchong went from a frosted eggplant to a drooping cucumber, seeming even more malnourished. Hu Bugui’s expression began to turn grim. Dark clouds fell across his face and lowered. 

Just then, Fang Xiu found a semi-transparent bracelet on the dead man’s elbow and touched it tentatively. There was no reaction. “What’s this?” 

Wearing gloves, Su Qing reached out to take the bracelet off. The moment his hand touched the bracelet, the indicator needle on the energy detector in Hu Bugui’s hand suddenly turned a 180 degree angle. 

“Don’t touch that!” 

Sadly, it was already too late. In view of the fact that Fang Xiu had already pawed at it and that he was wearing gloves, Su Qing underestimated this thing’s danger. The moment he touched it, he felt as though an electric current ran right up from his fingertips. It was as if something slammed heavily into his chest. His vision went dark. He subconsciously went backwards, breaking the connection between his fingers and the bracelet. It took him a long time to come around. 

He heard someone loudly asking something near his ear. Su Qing’s ears were ringing a little. It was all a drone. He couldn’t hear clearly, but he could still guess what the person was saying. He waved a hand and quietly said, “I’m fine, I’m fine, no big deal.” 

His voice was a little indistinct. He only then found that even his tongue was numb. 

When Su Qing finished his sentence, Fang Xiu and Qin Luo stood there watching as their Captain Hu took absolutely no regard for the wishes of the interested party. He picked him up without so much as a by-your-leave and strode away in the direction of the car. 

The two groups, Fang Xiu and Qin Luo here and Lu Qingbai and Xu Ruchong there, each began to look at each other helplessly. 

After a long time, Xu Ruchong finally gave an “ah.” “What happened?” 

“I was going to ask you.” Fang Xiu recovered and looked seriously at the bracelet he had touched. He slowly reached out a hand again. 

Qin Luo watched from beside him, not daring to breathe too loudly. “Be careful.” 

But nothing happened, and there was no reaction from the energy detector. Fang Xiu hesitantly took the mysterious bracelet off the dead man’s arm and held it in his hands. Just then, there was a faint pop, and this bracelet made out of some unknown material suddenly broke down the middle, turning grey at a speed visible to the naked eye.