CH 57

The cumbersome monitor equipment in the ICU hummed in the quiet room.

When it came to the permitted visiting time, Lu Shangjin’s assistant quietly walked in, but there were already visitors inside.

A butterfly omega was sitting in a soft chair beside the bed, wiping Yan Yi’s palm with a wet towel. 

Tan Meng’s two slender antennas extended out from his hair, the tip of which touched Yan Yi’s brows. 

“Hm.” Tan Meng seemed to read something in Yan Yi’s mind. He had his head down in his notebook to write down notes.

The assistant was stunned for a long time. He then immediately opened Weibo, opened the photos from it and made a comparison. 

“Are you… Mr. Tan Meng?” The assistant could not believe his eyes. His bookcase at home was filled with several sets of novels by him, who was an emerging writer of contemporary military novels. He had squatted in front of a store in order to grab the first signed edition of his new book. A second before he could make payment, Lu Shangjin called him and crushed his dreams.

Tan Meng raised a finger and hushed him. 

“I’m listening to him tell me a story.” Tan Meng lifted his antennae, hiding them back in his hair. “I came here to listen to a sorrowful story, but there are some lovely people who can only remember the good and beautiful things of the past.”

He was very surprised.

Yan Yi’s memories in his sleep were not those that were bloody and full of pain, but only consisted of a cycle of the memories he had from when he was a teenager.

Through Yan Yi’s eyes, he saw the twenty-year old Lu Shangjin, who had nothing in common with the cool-faced president in his impression, instead he smiled gently more often. 

“If you’re here in place of Lu Shangjin to visit him, then I won’t bother you.”

Tan Meng tidied up his notebook, and under the assistant’s eager eyes, he signed his name and tore off the page, handing it to him. His eyes brightened, “Thanks for liking it.”

The material gathered today was somewhat unexpected. Perhaps a story about a sweet pair of war lovers could be written out of it.

He heard the assistant whispering the first note left by Lu Shangjin, so he slowly closed the door.

“Yan Yan, if you can see or hear this note, then I should have managed to infiltrate inside. If you’ve woken up, you need to know that even if you give up on yourself, I won’t. So wait for me to come back.”

The words were written frantically but not carelessly.

The assistant read the note word by word, neither quickly nor slowly. These days his only job was to visit Yan Yi’s care unit, which was equivalent to a rare vacation.

Ever since the boss had taken over the group, he gave everyone the impression that he was vigorous, indifferent, and strict. He could not see the boss being crazy to such an extent for an omega.

The boss knelt in the rescue room crying to the point where others would have felt sad for him. He had witnessed the days where his boss’s past indulgences had all converged into a pool of tenderness. His boss had no childhood. His heart, which was once disguised as a calm and steady bad boy’s, had now belatedly matured.

Some relationships were simply predestined, perfectly matched, or a heartfelt love. 

The last of which always had more twists and turns.

The assistant folded the note neatly and pressed it under Yan Yi’s hand.

“Fu-ren, I was actually the one who helped the boss to buy that carrot brooch from before, but I saw him stare at that style for a long time, and then he scolded me after he took the liberty of buying it.”

“The boss probably knows what you like. Hey, I’m going to put in a good word for the boss, although it’s even a little against my will.” The assistant rubbed his hands together and murmured humbly, “You must, must make it through, otherwise those of us who follow president Lu will never have a good day.”

The assistant tucked Yan Yi in and walked out softly.

Yan Yi’s breathing was weak but gentle. His fingertips moved slightly, touching the piece of paper on the corner of his pillow.

The paper was covered with light narcissus pheromones, the subtle soothing fragrance gathered in the palm of his hand. In his dream, he was seventeen years old, and he was lifted by the waist to catch a firefly.

Thousands of miles away in the basement of the ocean, Lu Shangjin felt a tug at his heart.

He held the little grey bunny in his left hand, all the while shuttling between the endless test tubes, one by one.

Xia Jingtian went along the inner wall to find the exit. When the door had locked from the outside, the inner wall and the wall became smooth as one, and there was no assembled line for Lu Shangjin to unlock.

Such a large laboratory required pipes or refrigeration, fresh air, and return air. Calm down and think carefully about where these systems would have been arranged in the design of this laboratory.

The ceiling had evenly distributed diffusers to keep the air in the laboratory clean. Xia Jingtian looked up for a while. From this place they should be able to climb up to the control room.

When he turned back to look towards Lu Shangjin, he was gone.

“Hello?” Xia Jingtian’s body jolted. He picked up the M16 again and retreated warily to the corner, moving silently against the wall.

He pressed his earpiece, “Where are you? We must get away now.”

Only a hissing noise came back from the earpiece; Lu Shangjin did not reply. 

“…”

Without a doubt, Xia Jingtian thought that the guy would throw himself out here.

He felt his way against the wall into the depths of the laboratory, alert to all the subtle sounds around him.

Hearing a noise up ahead, Xia Jingtian immediately squatted, raised his gun slanted to the front.

A tube of samples on the test table suddenly toppled over and rolled across the table.

Xia Jingtian’s chest was heaving. He tried his best to breathe lightly as cold sweat soaked the palm of his glove.

To be fair, he couldn’t handle a dozen more mechanical dogs on his own.

At the thought of Lu Shangjin’s skilled fighting and observation ability developed through years of sharing life and death together with Yan Yi, his heart turned sour. 

He only hated that he was born a few years late, missing his bright bloom.

Xia Jingtian held his breath, listening carefully to the change of movements around him. He vaguely heard heavy breathing sounds coming in and out of earshot. It seemed that there was another person in this room. 

He flicked the recording from his watch and whispered a last message.

“I’m in the basement of PBB right now. Lu Shangjin isn’t here, maybe he’s even dead. There’s something gasping in here, I can hear it but don’t know where it’s coming from.” 

There was no lighting in the deep part of the laboratory. Xia Jingtian laid himself flat on the ground and flicked on the flashlight from his cuff. The light went down the deep area and swept among several test stands.

Pop. 

The crisp sound of exploding glass seemed extremely clear in the silent laboratory. Xia Jingtian immediately turned back and pulled the trigger with a backhanded  shot toward the sound.

In exchange for the bullet came a roar of terror, which was definitely not the bellowing of pain that a man or a dog could make. 

Instantly drenched in cold sweat, Xia Jingtian stood up. His flashlight flashed across to meet the roar. A huge lizard covered with scales raised its head with Lu Shangjin stuck in its mouth, blood flowing to the ground like water. 

“What are you doing just standing there? Get out!” Lu Shangjin turned his head and hollered, both his hands forcibly breaking the lizard’s mouth. Its teeth had sunk deep into Lu Shangjin’s abdomen and back, and the area near the wound began to appear faintly black.

As soon as he was done shouting, Xia Jingtian ran out. Right where he had just been standing, a deep pit was hollowed out by the iron whip-like tail. 

He took a few steps back, aimed for the lizard’s jaw, and fired two consecutive gravity rounds.

The lizard bit Lu Shangjin in pain, flinging him into the air, and its jaw was slammed to the ground hard by the gravity bullet.

The little grey bunny crawled under the table, not daring to make a sound even as he cried. Xia Jingtian swiftly picked up the child into his arms and brought up his hand to block his eyes.

Lu Shangjin took this opportunity to turn over and get away, immediately launching the accompanying ability “seize”. Like a black shadow swooping in the air, he grabbed Xia Jingtian, stepped on the testing table, and leaped ten meters away. 

Xia Jingtian fell onto the testing table and the test tubes came crashing all over his body, but he subconsciously protected the little bunny’s head in his arms.

Lu Shangjin used the support of the ground to get up. The bite from the sharp teeth left him with dozens of wounds, and black blood trickled down, forming a pool of red by his feet.

He caught his breath and staggered to the wall, flipping on the switch of the big lights.

It was now that they saw the whole monster.

It was a six-meter-long komodo dragon with a tempered glass culture shield mounted at the back of its neck, where a gland pulsated vigorously, providing the giant lizard with endless energy.

Xia Jingtian brushed off the dozens of test tubes from his body, “And you let him bite you, you should have hit the gland!”

Lu Shangjing supported himself with his AWM as he watched the pulsing glands on the back of the giant lizard’s neck. His fingertips shook as he clenched his knuckles until they turned white.

It was a combination of a komodo dragon and a chameleon A3 glands. It could rely on these glands to trigger the chameleon M2 ability for its stealth, and could disappear, taking Lu Shangjing with it.

Lu Shangjing held his breath and lifted up his AWM, his words coming out very lightly. It was so hard to speak it almost tore his vocal cords:

“That’s my dad.”

As a long, scaly tail swept over, Xia Jingtian picked up the little bunny and ran towards the back. Lu Shangjing stepped onto the testing table and jumped back. His sniper rifle was aimed at the giant lizard’s nape, his index finger laid on the trigger for a long, long time.

In the end, he still pulled it.

The high-speed impact of the magnum bullet combined with the precise positioning of the peregrine M2 ability, only managed to cause a single crack in the shield.

The gunshot enraged the lizard like an ancient dragon lunging out in a frenzy. Its venomous mouth opened and broke half the testing table with one bite. 

“Hsss…” Xia Jingtian received a gash on his forearm, the wound stung as the venom seeped through and it hurt like hell. 

He continued his message in the recording:

“Ge, it wasn’t me that put that gecko in your first love’s dress… I only put it in the bathroom. I found him annoying. At the time, I just didn’t want to spoil it for you guys.”

Lu Shangjing retreated to observe, his eyes suddenly fixing on the giant lizard’s feet.

The test tubes were scattered all over the ground and one of them was labelled, “Lop-eared Rabbit A3, Name: Yan Yi.”

“Hold this,” Lu Shangjing took off the heavy sniper rifle and threw it to Xia Jingtian. He pulled out two stainless steel tactical daggers from his waistband. They scratched the thick scaled tail that swept over as they rolled towards the giant lizard’s feet, and with a sharp and sudden stab, he nailed one of its toes to the ground.

He collected Yan Yi’s stem cell sample into the insulated safe and held it tightly in his arms.

The giant lizard also had the chameleon’s J1 ability for “360 degree observation

“, its sharp claws swiping across Lu Shangjin’s shoulder and gripping the ground.

A deep claw mark was cut out of Lu Shangjin’s shoulder, and the silver incubator in his arm was smeared with blood and handprints, but he never let go.

Like a miser who had diamond, he clenched his jaw and kept a death grip on the treasure in his arm.

Xia Jingtian crawled on the floor and aimed right at the giant lizard’s eyes. A sniper rifle without a scope was useless to any race other than the peregrine falcon, but at such a distance, he was too far away for a gravity shot to puncture. 

The phone on his belt began to vibrate silently.

Xia Jingtian fired a few random rounds to get the giant lizard’s attention in order to cover Lu Shangjing’s back for him to retreat. He picked up the little grey bunny and ran towards the other side to escape.

The phone wouldn’t stop vibrating. Xia Jingtian took the chance while the giant lizard was completely focused on Lu Shangjin to feel for his phone and took a glance. A video call was displayed on the screen.

“Boss Gu?” Xia Jingtian was stunned for a moment. He occasionally glanced back at the screen while dodging shrapnel and the lizard’s attacks, “How is there signal at the bottom of the ocean?”

Gu Wei’s big nostril was stuck to the screen. After finally adjusting the angle, he held up his chin on the table top, “I’m using PBB’s highest clearance to contact you guys. The freezer vent access is now open. Leave the freezer in three minutes and evacuate according to my instructions.”

“Where the fuck did you get the highest clearance?” Xia Jingtian picked up his phone, putting the little grey bunny under the testing table and jumped onto the vertical cabinet, both hands pressed onto the ceiling diffuser trying hard to break it.

As soon as the diffuser broke open, Lu Shangjin flipped over to land and pick up the little grey bunny, throwing him into Xia Jingtian’s arms along with the incubator in his hand.

“Take them and go.” He was holding onto his bloody shoulder, his face a sickly pale colour.

Xia Jingtian glanced back at him, bit his lip, and climbed up the vent.

As soon as his back feet rose up into the vent, the giant lizard’s teeth tore through half the steel ceiling.

After ten seconds, a hand was extended out from the vent.

Lu Shangjing swiftly kicked off the cabinet to catch Xia Jingtian’s wrist and rapidly went up the vent. 

Xia Jingtian held onto the little grey bunny and kicked the incubator. He looked regretfully at his right hand, which had just stretched out to pull him up.

“I can’t believe I just did something that I’ll regret for the rest of my life.”

Lu Shangjing lifted the incubator and crawled away towards the outside. Xia Jingtian hugged the child and followed suit. 

Wherever Lu Shangjin went, a thick bloody trail followed. Xia Jingtian visually estimated the amount of blood loss and frowned, his eyebrows knitting closer and tighter together.

“Hey, are you okay?”

Lu Shangjing gave an indifferent sound but did not reply.