Grim-faced, Hu Bugui slammed the gas pedal down to the floor. He hadn’t said it over the comms, but he was actually two blocks away from Su Qing and Qin Luo. 

Letting these two go out, Captain Hu absolutely couldn’t feel easy—Qin Luo didn’t know how to talk; you could send her to direct a battle or go into combat herself, but you couldn’t send her to collect information. Su Qing, on the other hand, was really too good at talking; from a few direct and indirect confrontations, Hu Bugui had a deep awareness of this fellow’s unrestrained style. No one knew what he was going to get up to. 

But there was nothing for it. Even if he was worried, he couldn’t let it show on his face. There had to come a day when Su Qing assumed responsibility for a task within the RZ Unit. He could only quietly follow so he could come quickly in case of incident. And indeed, there was an incident. 

Qin Luo knew that the only way she could catch up to Su Qing would be with her bullets, but it wasn’t like she could shoot at her own teammate. When she was at wit’s end, a car horn came from the end of the little alley. Qin Luo saw Hu Bugui, and it was as though she was seeing a dear friend. She quickly ran over. 

Hu Bugui asked, “What happened?” 

“When we came out of Dong Jianguo’s house, I realized we were being watched. I shot three times and believe I hit the target, but for some reason, the person still ran off…” 

“Where’s Su Qing?” 

Qin Luo pointed. 

“Get in,” Hu Bugui said briefly. Qin Luo quickly jumped in. Before she had closed the door, Hu Bugui turned on a little screen on the steering wheel with a smack. A map of the whole residential neighborhood immediately appeared in front of them. Driving a car, Hu Bugui couldn’t squeeze in anywhere like Su Qing. He took a glance, determined a route, and fiercely slammed on the gas pedal, charging out, black rage bubbling from his head. Qin Luo sat in the back, not even daring to breathe loudly. 

Hu Bugui drove quick as lightning. There was a brown lens clamped to his nose bridge with all kinds of data quickly pulsing over it according to the map, the nearby energy readings, and the direction of the vehicle. Looking closely, the pulsing numbers seemed to float over Hu Bugui’s eye, giving his already dark eye a certain deep coldness.—He didn’t have any new energy crystal system. He couldn’t gain extra energy from eating lots of candy and nutritional capsules like Su Qing, and he couldn’t build his blessings on others’ sufferings like the blue seals, becoming strong as the result of plunder—he came by his reaction speed and iron-like nature through at least a decade of genuine tempering under enemy fire. 

Fierce, prudent, steady—he would stand his ground if Mount Tai collapsed in front of him. 

Su Qing smelled a strong scent of blood and knew that Qin Luo’s feel for a gun was truly good. She had definitely hit her target. He only needed to follow this smell. 

He knew this person wasn’t a blue seal. The gun in Qin Luo’s pant leg was only an ordinary handgun. Even Su Qing himself, if he concentrated, could have dodged it, let alone the blue seals, who despite their imperfect systems had much stronger explosive force and constitutions than he did with his double core grey seal. They wouldn’t have been hit so easily. 

So, if this was an ordinary person, how could they still move so quickly after getting shot? 

Su Qing thought that this person had to be using some sort of external technological means. He suddenly turned down another alley, raising his speed to the utmost, looking like an afterimage flashing by. 

He wasn’t like Qin Luo. Su Qing had spent quite some time in anthills like this, and he was accustomed to getting a firm grasp on his surroundings. The two of them had walked the same path, and while Qin Luo had been dizzy and turned around, he had a map in his mind that was no less detailed than Hu Bugui’s. 

Three sides raced through this extremely cramped and narrow space. Hu Bugui was calculating where Su Qing would go, while Su Qing was calculating what tactics the fleeing person using mechanical support would adopt. 

Just then, a bullet ripped through the air and brushed Su Qing’s shoulder to hit the foot of a wall. Su Qing raised his head at once. A red light flashed on him. He immediately grabbed the eaves and flipped down to the ground. The second bullet hit hard on his heels. 

Su Qing felt a chill at heart. He knew that this sniper couldn’t be an ordinary person. 

Hu Bugui had no time to fly into a rage. He reminded him: “The multifunction communicator can produce an ultra thin telescopic lens. Take note of the sniper’s position!” 

Su Qing ignored him. With his current vision, even without a telescope, as long as he knew the direction, he could still clearly see anyone in range. The problem was that he hadn’t undergone strict training. He couldn’t determine the bullet’s path or the sniper’s possible position. 

He could only divide his attention, chasing the smell of blood while he hopped around dodging bullets the thickness of tarsal bones. In under half a minute, the hem of his somewhat wide trench coat had been shot through. Su Qing simply took the trench coat off and tossed it aside. He gripped a few double-edged knives between his fingers. These knives were twice the length of an adult’s middle finger. At a glance, it looked like he had suddenly grown a monster’s claws. 

The red dot following him like a shadow flashed over the center of his brow; the next instant it flashed into his eye. Su Qing knew the situation was bad. 

He was more than slippery enough—he had very rarely run into such a scene of life and death speed. Hu Bugui seemed to be saying something, but he didn’t pay attention. All his mental force was concentrated in his eyes and ears. He broke through his highest speed once more, changing course, but no matter what, he couldn’t throw off the red dot that seemed to be growing on him. 

He didn’t know where this mysterious sniper had come from. Su Qing felt like a panic-stricken rat scrambling around under the gaze of a nearby malicious cat. Before, the cat had been teasing him, and now it had run out of patience and gone straight to the main event. 

When the bullet came, Su Qing felt as though he couldn’t see anything. Only that fatal object remained. The sniper had control of the whole situation. Only in the instant after they squeezed the trigger and everything was approaching an end did they no longer have control. 

Su Qing’s final foothold was on a dump for old bricks. He went to his knees in the extremely narrow place, raised a hand, and aimed the faces of the knives at the bullet. Then an impact force even stronger than he had imagined hit the raised faces of the knives, immediately tearing cuts between Su Qing’s fingers. Two of the three knives between his fingers broke at once, and the last one slipped out of his hand. 

Just then, Su Qing glimpsed a human figure out of the corner of his eye—this person wore a backpack. The backpack looked like a chrysalis, with faint arteries on it. At a glance, Su Qing noticed that the thing even seemed to have a pulse, beat after beat. This person was half-drenched in blood but still pushing through the little alley at high speed. 

He’d caught up! 

Keeping his knees bent, he landed along with a pile of toppling bricks. Just before landing, he grabbed the dropped blade with his uninjured hand and flung the blade away with an opportune gesture. 

He couldn’t use a gun, but he had some skill in fooling around with these knives. Just as the person was about to turn a corner, he hit the largest “artery” on the backpack. 

Pop! A string of sparks burst from the “backpack.” The person staggered and fell forward, but before they could answer the call of gravity and fall flat on the ground, before Su Qing could celebrate, the head of the backpack-wearing person was pierced by a bullet right before Su Qing’s eyes. 

The bullet touched something. Right after being hit, the head exploded, like the dead Dong Jianguo. 

Su Qing expressed his viewpoint: “Shit!” This time he finally saw the source of the bullet. The next instant, he shrank into a blind spot. His lips were turning white. He wiped his blood-covered hand on his pants and took several rapid breaths. Only then did he notice that he was soaked in cold sweat. 

He was now less than three meters from the body of the person with the backpack. Su Qing, clinging tightly to the wall, turned his head to look and found that the “backpack” on that corpse with its face to the dirt and its back to the sky was completely destroyed. From his point of view, he could clearly see the mechanical structure inside. One glance made Su Qing feel a little sick—the thing really did look like a silkworm chrysalis, with unidentified yellow liquid inside, wrapped around something that looked like a worm, though at a closer look it was made of metal. The “worm” was curled up at the point where several arteries met. Something set off a short-circuit, and half the thing’s “body” exploded, revealing a belly full of circuitry. 

On the corpse’s wrist was another semi-transparent “bracelet.” 

Su Qing remembered his earlier lesson. This time he didn’t dare to touch it with his hand. He took a silver-grey chain from his pocket with a little hook like a scorpion’s tail at the end of it—a product of the RZ Unit’s tech department, which was supposed to block unusual energy waves within a certain range. 

Su Qing deftly flicked his wrist, and the little hook caught precisely on the corpse’s wrist. He used just the right amount of force, pulled back, and hooked the bracelet. This time he wasn’t “shocked,” but the moment the hook touched the bracelet, earth-shattering screams exploded from inside it, and the emotion of “fear” coming from fellow feeling once again rushed into his brain. 

Su Qing’s hand shook. He felt his ears ache from the thundering. Then, like the one before, the semi-transparent bracelet quickly turned grey and broke in half. 

There was a sudden gunshot. Su Qing turned his attention from a pile of ruins just in time to see a military vehicle brake sharply at the narrow intersection. The car roof was open, and a W03 sniper rifle was sticking out. Su Qing cried inwardly, thinking, At least this sniper knows to put on a silencer and keep quiet, while you’ve probably forgotten that there are people living here. 

Luckily, the sniper wasn’t in the mood to have a shoot-out with Captain Hu, and they had probably accomplished their mission. They quickly withdrew. 

At once, someone stuck their head out a window and looked down. As soon as they saw this battle, their first reaction was to rub their eyes, feeling that they hadn’t woken up yet. 

Qin Luo got out of the car at once under their captain’s instructions to save the show. Carrying a camera that may have been real or fake over her shoulder, she jumped out. Her face as red as a pig’s butt and her eyes lowered, she stammered out her lines: “Cut! The-the male main character’s expression is too rigor… No, no, it’s too rigid…” 

Su Qing noticed that the expression of the person looking down became even more wondering. He only wanted to cover his face. 

He evened out his breathing, then shakily stood up. Putting on a displeased expression, he raised his bloody hand towards Qin Luo and yelled, “Director Qin, can’t we ask the screenwriter to change the script? I’ve gotten my hand covered in tomato paste three times. The stuff doesn’t wash off, I’ve written off shirt after shirt. It’s not like the production team is reimbursing me. My shirts are custom-made, very expensive, you know?” 

He walked over with a cold and haughty expression, as though he was wearing a tux and walking down the red carpet, not covered in dirt and walking through a little street full of garbage. When he passed the person peering around, he looked up at them impatiently and snorted, whispering, “What’re you looking at, bumpkin?” 

He was altogether an unsuccessful third-rate minor celebrity just there for show, putting on the airs of an A-lister. 

Hu Bugui watched, grim-faced, as he got into the car, then finally withdrew into the driver’s seat along with the gun. He closed the car roof. Qin Luo, deeply relieved, followed him into the car, carrying the camera.  

Hu Bugui turned the car into an F1, returning to headquarters as fast as lightning. As soon as he got out of the car, he said, “Qin Luo, go on ahead, connect with Fang Xiu and the others’ work for today.” 

Qin Luo felt that the atmospheric pressure was as low as in the Mariana Trench. Without a word, she ran off at once. 

Su Qing finally realized that he had angered Captain Hu, who never seemed to react to anything. Following the principle that a wise man knows when to retreat, he immediately owned up to his mistake. “Reporting to Captain Hu—I spent the whole trip reflecting deeply upon my error. My guts are turning black from remorse! Really, it’s too bad I can’t get them out and let you have a look…” 

Hu Bugui’s anger had already burned up to his chest. When he saw this little swindler’s conduct, the flames of his anger leapt up, boiling his whole head. When it boiled, he raised his fist and punched Su Qing fiercely on the chin. Su Qing was caught off guard. The back of his head knocked against the car door. He was a little dazed from the punch. His chin bruised at once at a speed visible to the naked eye. 

He raised his hand to touch it. It may or may not have been on purpose, but the hand he raised was the one covered in blood that still hadn’t dried. The visual effect of this was even more deeply tragic.

Hu Bugui’s clenched fist relaxed at once. There was a brief and awkward silence between the two of them. 

Finally, Hu Bugui said, “A thirty-thousand character self-reflection, and if you don’t hand it in, you don’t take a step out of headquarters starting now.” 

Then he turned and left. Only when he had gone far away did he contact Lu Qingbai. “Come out and see to Su Qing’s injuries.” He paused, then added, “Come in person.” 

Su Qing stood where he was, touching the split corner of his lip. He hissed, pulled a funny face, then indifferently thought that he was the most experienced in writing self-reflections. As a kid, his record had been fifty thousand characters. He hadn’t expected to take up his old trade now. 

Then he pressed down on the communicator. It had an automatic recording function. Su Qing rewound to before the sound of the gunshot, when he had heard the heartrending scream. 

But he played forward a full five minutes, up to Hu Bugui’s gunshot. In between, there were no sounds but his own breathing and the wind.