“You!” Only when Kou Tong and Zhong Shiliang were left alone in the office did Zhong…we should call him General Zhong now, smack the table and stand up, glaring with displeasure at Kou Tong, sitting across from him slowly drinking tea and smiling. “You really are…really are…fearless!” 

Kou Tong blinked and shamelessly said, “Don’t be so adoring. You’re embarrassing me.” 

Zhong Shiliang raised a hand and smacked him on the head with a document. Almost flustered, he said, “Look for yourself!” 

Kou Tong rubbed his forehead indifferently, took the document, and read through it quickly. He lowered his eyes and laughed. “Fine, army headquarters really does have some of their people. They’ve stretched their hand out a little too far, getting in everywhere they can.” 

Zhong Shiliang glanced at him irritably. 

Kou Tong met his eyes and very insincerely said, “Wow, I’m scared to death. Comrade Lao Zhong, as a frail and gentle mountebank, reading this really has me so scared my heart is fluttering.” 

Zhong Shiliang sighed and put his hands on the desk. “You tell me. I’ve received orders from above freezing all transfers between military regions in the near future. How am I supposed to get people?” 

“Implement a state of emergency,” Kou Tong said unblushingly. 

“Bullshit! You’re talking crap.” 

Kou Tong restrained his smile. His skinny body leaned slightly forward in his chair. He extended a finger and tapped on the document. “It’s not crap. Look at this. Isn’t this critical enough? Instructor, don’t play dumb with me. I know that sitting in your position, even though the inside story about Utopia isn’t very clear, you still know how things stand.” 

When he called out “instructor,” Zhong Shiliang stopped dead, but his eyes softened slightly. Kou Tong lowered his voice. “This world is already beyond cure. Haven’t you seen it? Even if it takes chemo, even if it’s a life-and-death struggle and we have to die taking them with us, we still have to get rid of these ‘cancer cells,’ or else in the future, a person won’t even be in control of their own emotions. Will there still be any need to live?” 

“I know some things, and even if I didn’t know them, Su Qing was clear enough just now.” Zhong Shiliang slowly shook his head after looking at him for a while. “You can call it a life-and-death struggle, and I can call it dying and taking them with us. Even if you ask for my life, make me come die with you, I still won’t say a word of protest. But while I can give my life, I can’t give you the authority in my hands. If I make an exception, if there’s some unforeseen incident, I couldn’t make up for it if I had a hundred lives or a thousand lives. I can’t undertake that responsibility.” 

“I know.” A long time later, Kou Tong finally nodded. As he looked over, his eyes seemed extremely clear. Dr. Kou seemed to let his mind wander for a moment. Then he very quickly came around and sighed. “Instructor, this is a bad position to be in.” 

Zhong Shiliang laughed bitterly. 

“And what if we could strike the snake at its critical point all at once?” Kou Tong suddenly said. “If we really could plan a Normandy landing?” 

“We? You and…?” 

Kou Tong laughed noiselessly. “This country, when it’s in danger, always needs homeless, jobless hoodlums to stand forth.” 

Zhong Shiliang looked at him without speaking. Kou Tong stood up and stretched, then yawned. “I’ve always thought that if a person is unhappy living, it’s better not to live. What do you think, instructor?—You’re busy, I’ll go talk over proper business with Su Qing and the others.” 

So the whole crowd of wanted individuals, with Zhong Shiliang’s tacit approval and sheltering, openly stayed on at the ST Base, eating all-natural organic vegetables every day. Though they were still tired as dogs, at any rate they had improved their dogs’ lives.

The field personnel didn’t dare to investigate out in the open. They could only make secret inquiries, immersing themselves in the voluminous but now seemingly insubstantial and uninformed materials General Xiong had left behind concerning Utopia, searching for the heart of Utopia’s secrets like fishing for a needle in the big sea. 

The happiest of them was Chang Dou. For him, the ST Base’s equipment was truly like replacing a shotgun with a cannon. Everything here was better than what they had had at the RZ Unit headquarters. 

Kou Tong meanwhile devoted himself to digging up Zheng Qinghua’s whole life. He didn’t leave his room for three days and two nights. Apart from receiving materials prepared by the RZ Unit, he didn’t let himself be interrupted for a moment. They didn’t know what he was fiddling with. Su Qing had been led off by Ji Pengcheng, who said he wanted to teach him something. It was hard for even Hu Bugui to see him. 

Right now, one old man and one young one were sitting inside a little room. Ji Pengcheng was sitting across from Su Qing with big headphones over his ears. The headphone cord was connected to a silver box next to him that looked rather incongruous. 

Su Qing had his eyes closed and wires attached to his temples, but the indicator needle wasn’t fluctuating at all. After a moment, he opened his eyes as though giving up. He rubbed the sides of his forehead. “Old man, it won’t work.” 

“Calm yourself. I told you, the essential thing is to be single-minded.” Ji Pengcheng was looking like a great immortal. 

Su Qing’s shoulders fell. “Old man, why don’t you have me go out to investigate Fei Zhe? Don’t keep trying to get blood from a stone, making me sit here all day like I’m meditating. It’s not like I’m planning to be a monk. Even the thought annoys me.” 

Ji Pengcheng opened his eyes and looked at him without speaking or smiling. 

Su Qing met his eyes, then sat back down. “Fine, I’ll treat it like resting my eyes.” 

“Do you still remember the first time I met you, that dead Utopia person?” 

“Oh…that…” Su Qing stared. In fact, he had already forgotten. “I think I vaguely recall…” 

“You had just left the RZ Unit and were running around outside with the little bastard, living in a worker’s house. You were still a clumsy newbie. Their man got his eye on you,” Ji Pengcheng said unhurriedly. “You had been shot in the leg and couldn’t get up off the ground. Do you remember what you were thinking then?” 

Su Qing thought for a while, then sincerely shook his head. After another moment, suddenly seeing the light, he said, “Oh…oh, that person! I remember, right, I’ve never been able to understand how he died. I thought that he was running and running, and then he suddenly fell forward, right? It felt like I’d killed him with a look.” 

“That’s about right,” Ji Pengcheng said. 

He leaned forward slightly and grabbed Su Qing’s wrist. “Try now to see whether you can feel my emotions, like that blue seal you knew before.” 

Su Qing frowned and carefully sensed. He shook his head. “I can only faintly feel intense emotions. I can’t feel ordinary ones. Other people’s emotions are like low-decibel everyday background noise for me. I’m so used to it that I don’t feel like I’m ‘hearing’ anything in particular.” 

Ji Pengcheng didn’t let go of his wrist. “When you saw that Utopia member shoot you and then run away, what did you feel?” 

Su Qing hesitated. A little uncertainly, he said, “I must have been…scared?” 

“Recall what you were feeling then.” 

Su Qing tried to recall, but all that came to mind was that abstract word “scared.” After a long moment, he finally shook his head—this was like forcing a grown-up person to recall the feeling of being a child scared of thunder, scared of the dark, scared of insects. They were things that had been sincerely frightening back then, but afterward you couldn’t remember what it was like to be afraid of them no matter what. 

Ji Pengcheng sighed. “That person back then was simply scared to death. If you want to understand the single-minded condition you need, then understand this. Do you remember the Law of Emotional Attraction? It’s a wave. If the emotions you release can make others fall into the same frequency as you, then you can control their emotions. He didn’t have as resilient a body as you. He couldn’t endure the attack of strong external emotions. So he died.” 

Su Qing looked at him with the expression of someone looking at a conman. 

Ji Pengcheng ignored it. He continued: “These last few years, I’ve wanted to explain to you how human emotions work, but your thoughts have been too complicated. And now you’ve made it big and your guts have grown big enough to crush someone. You rarely have such strong emotions as back then, and sometimes when others are thinking something, you can see it at a glance, so you think there’s no need to listen to the voice in their hearts.”

Just then, someone gently knocked on the door twice. Hu Bugui’s voice came: “Come out for a moment, you two. Dr. Kou seems to have made some progress.” 

Ji Pengcheng gave an affirmative and suddenly looked at Su Qing with a strange smile. He stroked his chin, his expression rather lewd. “Although…if you can’t feel Type 3 emotions, I suppose Type 1 will do?” 

“Huh?” 

“Just think of some nice things while looking at him. Try it.” The old swindler patted him on the shoulder, grinning. Then he turned, and his expression became foul. He whispered, “There’s no carving rotten wood.” 

I can still hear you…, Su Qing thought in exasperation. 

Hu Bugui waited less than a minute before he saw Su Qing walk out of the room behind Ji Pengcheng. He saw that the old man’s expression looked unhappy and waited for him to leave. Then he couldn’t resist reaching out to lightly touch Su Qing’s forehead. “Isn’t he your shifu? He’s getting on in years. Don’t keep making him angry on purpose.” 

Su Qing remembered what Ji Pengcheng had said. He didn’t speak, only looked fixedly at Hu Bugui with a trace of a smile. 

Hu Bugui was a little bewildered at his look. There was no one present, so he softened his voice a little and quietly asked, “What is it?” 

“Oh, do you feel…” Su Qing suddenly thought that he had definitely been taken in by believing what Ji Pengcheng had said. His words paused there. He rolled his eyes, not planning to say the rest. 

“Feel what?” 

“OK, do you feel a bit happy?” 

Hu Bugui stared. Su Qing sighed. “It seems that you don’t.” 

Hu Bugui laughed quietly and put his arms around Su Qing’s back. “I feel it.” 

Then he added, “Not just a bit.” 

Damn. This outwardly reserved, inwardly mushy man. 

Kou Tong looked like he had just been through an African famine and only had a single breath left. He was sitting there very feebly, practically without even the energy to entice Su Qing or tease Hu Bugui. He fell over onto the couch and said, “You can look for yourselves.” 

Then he buried his head and didn’t speak. 

“Zheng Qinghua never mentioned this kind of thing to me,” Cheng Weizhi said. Then he paused and frowned. As though suddenly remembering something, he added, “But…I remember when we were young, I think he said to me that he hoped to be able to attain freedom. If he could build a world that would let him be free—if there was such a thing that could open a space whose natural laws only he could control, he would call it Genesis 1.”  

Su Qing picked up a coat and put it over Kou Tong. Before Hu Bugui’s expression could turn unpleasant, he drew everyone’s attention to a thick stack of reports Kou Tong had taken out. He flipped them open. Inside, first came Zheng Qinghua’s life story, what he had done and at what age, an analysis of psychological factors, including the relevant personnel whom he had crossed paths with. After that was a pile of terminology, as well as a map that had so many annotations on it that you couldn’t see anything. 

Su Qing: “…” 

He awkwardly put it down. “Why can’t Dr. Kou use human speech when he’s writing his reports?” 

From this report, the majority of people could only extract two pieces of information—that Zheng Qinghua was a nasty piece of work, and that Dr. Kou had used his magic powers to calculate the location of this Genesis 1 that Professor Cheng had mentioned. 

Finally, Hu Bugui took the report and went once more to Zhong Shiliang’s office. Zhong Shiliang flipped from the beginning of Kou Tong’s report to the end, page by page. He spent over two hours reading. Then he raised his head and nodded to Hu Bugui, closed the report, then took a document out of a drawer next to him and put it into the shredder. 

“We’ve entered a state of emergency. The base can give you all the support you need.” 

Then came assembling equipment from the weapons factory and, at the base, with the cooperation of the technicians, scanning the location pointed out on Dr. Kou’s map. 

Chang Dou’s frequently addled-looking expression became serious. “Under ordinary circumstances…this would have been overlooked. This blocker is very special.” 

“What’s the situation?” Lu Qingbai asked. 

Chang Dou thought about it, then explained: “It’s like…it’s like some decades ago, someone proposed an original idea similar to a cloaking garment, using a material like a screen to make the clothing, and putting a camera system on the person’s back projecting the images onto the front, so that looking head on, it would be like the covered part of the person’s body didn’t exist. 

“This blocker is like that cloaking garment.” Chang Dou clutched his hair. “And, looking at the map, this area is under a lake. It’s really hard to find. If Dr. Kou hadn’t been certain that it had to be near this area, no one would have noticed a trace of it.” 

“That seamless?” Qin Luo asked. 

“Well…there is a bit of a seam.” Chang Dou typed a string of commands on the keyboard of the ST Base’s processor. An enormous map with contour lines appeared on the big screen in front of everyone. “It’s a location about three hundred meters under the water, around four hundred square meters large. The probe signal was disturbed by a powerful energy field when it went underwater. We couldn’t scan the precise circumstances.” 

“Don’t alert the enemy. First we need someone to have a look at the situation,” Hu Bugui finally said. 

Su Qing was already standing up. He also pulled Ji Pengcheng up. “Shifu and I will go over and have a look.”

Ji Pengcheng: “…” 

The little whelp only called him “shifu” when he was pressing him to get to work! 

Zhong Shiliang followed along in silence, looking at Chang Dou’s map. A bodyguard ran in and said something into his ear. Zhong Shiliang nodded. He was currently not accepting any military orders from the outside. No matter who called to question him, he ignored them without exception. Even when the higher authorities had sent two people over, without another word and without showing himself, he had simply had them held by force. 

The bodyguard left, and Kou Tong came over. Peering at his expression, he asked, “What is it?” 

“It seems that you’ve done the right thing this time,” Zhong Shiliang commented after thinking for a long moment. “But…how will we resolve what comes after?” 

“After?” 

“The centipede dies but doesn’t stiffen.” If they got rid of this base or killed Zheng Qinghua, would that resolve the matter of Utopia? 

“Well…” Kou Tong thought about it, then suddenly laughed in spite of himself. “When the revolution has yet to succeed, the comrades must continue to strive. Leading a vagrant’s life in the open for close to a year, gambling with our lives, was also for the sake of taking back the RZ Unit’s ‘right of legitimate resistance.’”