CH 121

Bai Chunian sat on the stiff and hard mattress frame, observing the water dripping off the mossy wall with his right eye, which was not covered by a bandage. 

The weather on this island was special; all-year round it would be hot and humid. Some bugs that you would usually not be able to find were crawling around quietly in the corner.

Eris was locked up just next door. He would often make some noises and movement, drawing the correctional officers over to berate him, then would hunch over from laughter. He would think of every possible way to get the people outside to come over to him and then touch them—one correctional officer whose wrist was grabbed by him was choked by a fish bone when eating lunch and had to go to the hospital to remove it.

Eris was never tired of this, and thus his confinement time was extended time and time again, but still he showed no signs of changing his behavior.

When one was awake in the darkness, every minute felt like it had been stretched and magnified infinitely. Eris was someone who could not bear to be lonely; being alone would drive him crazy.

Bai Chunian sat silently. A centipede as thick as a finger crawled slowly between his fingers, and he swapped his two hands to let the centipede crawl forward endlessly.

In the half month of solitary confinement without a single glimpse of the sky or the sun, Bai Chunian, other than reviewing the details of his actions in his head over and over, spent the rest of his time thinking of some unimportant things.

For example, if an experimental subject with a lifespan longer than humans was locked up in here, one year, two years, ten years, fifty years, no one knew of their existence, no one came to visit, no one looked forward to their release, they would really seem like a gun shelved after a war, leading a life in the darkness without purpose. This was really a scary thing.

Bai Chunian rarely felt the emotion of ‘fear.’ Perhaps the researchers, in designing them, did not consider this aspect, but in this period of time, he truly felt a sense of anxiety spreading from the bottom of his heart. 

From the day that Yan Yi asked him why he didn’t leave, Bai Chunian had also been thinking about the reason. He could leave charismatically and go around the world playing crazily with Rimbaud and even join Crawler’s organization to research how to take revenge against the world.

Maybe it was the rebellious mindset of adolescence, but he did not want to do what others told him to, or what others considered the norm, but only Rimbaud knew about this.

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Du Mo stood in front of him wearing a prison guard’s uniform. “Your time’s up, come out.”

He saw Bai Chunian sitting cross-legged on the mattress frame loosely, and his hands were playing with some bugs out of boredom. After wearing the suppressor for so long, his skin took on a sort of sickly pale color, making his eyes and lips seem redder than normal.

It was precisely this sickly-looking young alpha, after getting used to the light rays, who scanned him from his leather shoes, up over his uniform pants and tie, to make eye contact with him, then gently smiled and asked, “Good morning sir. It appears that the prison warden didn’t get up on time today, is he planning to go to the police station later?”

The seemingly normal question sent a chill down Du Mo’s spine. 

This morning, he had indeed picked up the prison warden in his car because the prison warden said he had not slept well the night before and could not get up in the morning. On top of this, later he was indeed also going to pick up some officers sent over by the International Police Station.

Du Mo tried his best to maintain his composure in front of this criminal, even if he knew how difficult it was to deal with Bai Chunian. However, he did not notice that once he began to think like this, he had already allowed the other party to take the upper hand psychologically.

Bai Chunian threw the centipede on his hand into the drain and stood up, walking out behind Du Mo with his hands in his pockets. Another prison guard was opening up Eris’ cell door. Eris was slumped against the iron bars of the small window and shaking them, creating a large ruckus.

“Cough, let’s go.” Du Mo supported Bai Chunian’s cuffed wrists and took him out. No matter what, they had worked together once. Back then, they had been cordial so there was no need for the atmosphere now to be very stiff, despite the fear that he held in his heart of this dangerous person. 

He was an omega, and his height of 1.75m was shorter than Bai Chunian by a full head. Even if the white lion next to him was wearing a suppressor, the faint pheromones that leaked out would still be able to suppress his crow glands due to his species.

Perhaps Bai Chunian left too deep an impression on him during the ATWL exam, causing Du Mo to have PTSD towards this person, constantly thinking that Bai Chunian wanted to harm him.

“Sir, I won’t escape, you don’t need to be so nervous. I promise you, you can be assured of this year’s annual bonus.” Bai Chunian looked down towards him and said happily, “When you come close to me there’s no need to carry a gun, it’s useless, in fact it makes it easier for me to counterattack.”

Du Mo silently clamped down on the gun hidden under the armpit of his uniform jacket, gritting his teeth. This feeling of knowing that he was going to do something, yet not knowing what he was going to do, would make anyone irritated and uneasy. 

Under such circumstances, it would be impossible not to send additional personnel to strictly guard him. Du Mo quickly thought of a plan to roster the guards: as long as Bai Chunian made even the smallest movement, the barrel of a sniper’s gun would immediately take aim at his head.

However, Bai Chunian did not give him any more cause for concern. The sun shone on his body and he relaxed after a long time, and he returned to the prison to have lunch with the inmates for the first time.

Today, the convicts were exceptionally harmonious, even the few that were famed for being especially prickly were quietly enjoying their lunch. As it turned out, today was Christmas Eve, every convict received a small slice of strawberry mousse cake from the canteen serving window. In the boring prison, this was like a Christmas present for the convicts.

Bai Chunian also received a slice. Even though he rarely ate sweet foods, after only having clear soup and little water for half a month, this sort of thing was like a worldly delicacy. 

After trying the cake, he could smell the faint scent of pheromones in the cake, possibly stained when the cake was being frosted with flowers. Bai Chunian had to take a closer sniff to distinguish the pheromone—it was a strawberry pheromone, and when mixed together with the smell of strawberry mousse it was difficult to detect. The dessert chef was likely a little omega with sweet-smelling pheromones. Their craftsmanship must be quite well-liked!

He looked around and surveyed his surroundings, it seemed that the black bear he had beaten up had yet to return. The rest of his jail mates would periodically sneak a glance at him. They all looked cowardly, and there was no way he could expect them to do anything.

After eating, there was a 20-minute long afternoon rest break. When the piercing old-fashioned bronze bell rang, everybody in the prison got out of bed to see what activities the correctional officers would arrange for them.

In the prison, convicts didn’t just sit around; everyday they had a set amount of work to complete. Bai Chunian’s cell was responsible for cutting fabric for clothes today. 

The correctional officers led them out of the cell block area to the garment factory, getting them to line up in an orderly row and walk forward. Four guards wearing bulletproof vests and carrying shotguns escorted the end of the line.

Along the way, Bai Chunian glanced at the snipers up above from time to time out of the corner of his eye. The whole way, there was an unusually large number of snipers. One did not need to think very hard to figure out they were considered dangerous subjects to be closely supervised. He confirmed that should he make even one random step outside of the line, there would instantly be countless snipers who would take aim at him and turn him into a sieve.

However, these people did not seem like additional personnel because the International Prison had a strict duty system, causing adjusting scheduling to be more convenient than adding personnel. It was also extremely obvious that, since this was the area for minimum security offenders, the other convicts would not require intense supervision at all, and a large majority of the police power was focused on Bai Chunian. His every move was being watched by hundreds of pairs of eyes.

Bai Chunian raised the corners of his lips, following the line of inmates into the garment factory. 

The factory was a little old; many of the facilities were rusted and discolored, with a few pieces of electronic equipment making loud, unpleasant noises. This was an assembly-line style operation. Bai Chunian was in charge of cutting hundreds of sheets of cotton into a T-shirt pattern with a machine, then he would sew the front and back pieces together.

The cutting machine was rather large. It had a sharp blade positioned vertically for cutting the fabric. One would only need to push the cloth in their hands onto the machine according to a line drawn by the person before them. The work was very easy, but it was just a bit tiring, and the blade was even stained with the blood of the unlucky guy assigned to it before him.

Next to him, his prison mate told him that these clothes, once completed, would be donated to disaster areas for children to wear.

This activity was new and interesting, and it was the first time Bai Chunian had ever done something like this, so he felt it was pretty fun. Cutting was not a problem for him, owing to his stable hands that were accustomed to holding guns. He quickly got a hold of it after several tries, but he didn’t really know how to use the sewing machine. 

The sewing machine in the factory was an old-fashioned pedal sewing machine that required the user to continuously step down with their foot in order to drive the gears to start sewing with the thread. The difficulty lay in that, one would have to continuously move their legs back and forth and control the speed of the pedal, while controlling the direction of movement of the cloth.

In the laboratory, researchers had implanted in him detailed knowledge on the structure and usage of cutting-edge weapons. Despite having not been taught how to use production tools from 10 years ago, Bai Chunian was good at doing his own research, and after fiddling with the machine for a while, he managed to set up the clothes. The layout of the clothes was simple and they were done quickly, one-by-one.

Before leaving, Du Mo discreetly instructed the correctional officers to keep an eye on Bai Chunian. He originally intended for this to prevent Bai Chunian from pulling any small tricks, but the correctional officers misunderstood and thought that Bai Chunian had offended some powerful figures and was therefore jailed and singled out for special “care.” As a result, he instructed Bai Chunian to work overtime. When others only needed to complete 30 pieces to take a break, he had to complete 60 pieces.

When it was almost time to get off work, the correctional officers specially went to check on Bai Chunian’s workload. If he could not finish, points would be deducted, and he would be punished with sweeping the toilet and solitary confinement. It was yet another way to torment him. 

Upon walking over, the correctional officers saw that Bai Chunian’s workstation was almost completely buried in clothes. They stuck their heads in and were wowed by how seriously the little rascal was taking his job. Not only had he completed making 60 pieces of clothing, he had even sewn some cute fish-shaped patterns onto the clothes. With the remaining unused cloth, he had sewed a set of Disney Cinderella-style gowns and a yellowed, dog-eared copy of <Learn How To Make Clothes in Three Minutes> lay next to him. It was clear that Bai Chunian was learning on the spot.

Bai Chunian was still having a lot of fun and even started to estimate the measurements of Rimbaud.

The correctional officers had originally wanted to find some excuse to deduct his points and punish him with cleaning the toilet, but boy, this made the correctional officers feel too sorry for him to not reduce his sentence by a few days.

At the end of the evening, another group of prisoners came to change shifts with them. An omega brushed shoulders with Bai Chunian as they passed. Bai Chunian turned back and saw his face clearly. 

“Turns out he’s also in the minimum security area.”

The number 324 hung in front of his chest. He was a little short, with a curled up chameleon’s tail dragging behind his baggy overalls. His head was dipped silently, almost as if he had locked himself in his own small world and other people outside would be unable to interrupt him from his daze.

Invisible Stalker’s two eyes were wrapped up with black electrostatic tape. Bai Chunian raised his hands and waved them in front of his eyes, confirming that he indeed could not see a thing. After thinking for a while, he understood the reason why.

Invisible Stalker’s ability was inherently related with imitation. Even with a suppressor, this sort of natural ability would not disappear. As a precautionary measure, he was prevented from seeing anything. 

However, with both eyes covered, it would be difficult to do any work, and if the work was not completed he would be punished. There would be no exception to this rule just because of his blindfolded eyes.

When Invisible Stalker passed Bai Chunian’s side, he slightly paused for a moment. It was obvious that he had noticed the faint and familiar scent of Bai Chunian’s pheromones on his body. His fingertips froze.

Bai Chunian slightly turned his body, swiftly and covertly whispering into Invisible Stalker’s ear:

“I met Major Xia of the Storm Special Forces at M Harbor some days ago, you haven’t seen him in a while right? Do you want to know about what’s been going on recently?” 

Invisible Stalker slowly raised his head and reacted to his words. His eyes, covered by the black tape, became moist.