“Wait for me here.”
Except when visitors came, the sofa on this side of the lobby was almost never sat on. Waiting here was bound to be much more comfortable than sharing a room with two unfamiliar professors.
And it was safe.
Lu Que said, “Call me if anything happens.”
Pei Yun made an okay gesture at him.
After Lu Que went upstairs, he carefully looked over the lobby’s interior decoration.
Just as Du Jian had once described, it was indeed very grand.
However, perhaps due to the nature of the place, he felt that grand though it was, it wasn’t the least bit appealing to him.
The whim that made him follow along was very simple.
People always inevitably harbored the greatest fear toward the unknown; he thought it was necessary for him to come and see what the Special Research Institute actually looked like. Perhaps once he saw it, the fear constructed by his imagination would be dispelled, and he wouldn’t be so scared anymore.
Facts proved that his decision was right.
This place truly looked no different from a regular research building.
There were several lush green plants around the reception area, perfectly isolating this corner. Sitting here, people coming and going would hardly even notice him.
Pei Yun leaned back against the sofa and relaxed, planning to casually find a video to pass the time.
“Xiao Yun?”
Someone called to him with a surprised tone, “Old Lu actually brought you along?”
Pei Yun looked up to recognize the person and obediently greeted him, “Professor Zhang.”
“Ah.” Zhang Liang smiled warmly, “Did your little uncle just leave you all by yourself here? Why didn’t you go to the office?”
Pei Yun answered, “It’s pretty nice here spacious.”
Zhang Liang looked at him with an especially affectionate gaze. Pei Yun felt a bit uncomfortable under his look, but still managed a polite smile. “Does the professor need something?”
“Not really,” Zhang Liang said. “I was just passing by on inspection and came over to check on you. I’m off to get busy now.”
With that, he actually turned around to leave.
Pei Yun didn’t know what else to say and let out an awkward “Oh,” only to see the other person pause as if remembering something, suddenly retracting the foot he had stepped out and looking back at him. “Xiao Yun, do you want to come with me?”
Pei Yun was baffled. “Go where together?”
Zhang Liang慎 replied, “I’m going to inspect the renovation plant. Do you want to come along?”
The renovation plant?
That place… which locked up countless vampires?
Pei Yun involuntarily tightened his grip on his phone, his breathing speeding up a fraction.
He knew he shouldn’t go, but the words that slipped past his lips were entirely beyond his brain’s control: “Can I go?”
Zhang Liang慎 laughed. “Of course. You’re both family and a future member of the biological research community totally fine.”
Pei Yun followed Zhang Liang all the way toward the renovation plant. The closer they got, the faster his heart beat, and more than once he wanted to back out. Yet until they stepped through the front doors, he still failed to control his steps and stop.
The three words “renovation plant” held far too much temptation for him.
The long corridor was filled with a sense of modern technology. Under normal circumstances, Pei Yun guessed he would have marveled from start to finish, but today he had no mood to appreciate any of it.
All his attention was captured by the scene about to appear at the end of the corridor. He had never felt so conflicted before both longing to see and terrified to look.
He now stood before the unopened door, his heart beating so fast it felt as though it might leap right out of his throat.
And the resistance and fear finally arrived a beat late at their absolute peak.
“Professor Zhang, maybe we should forget it!”
He spoke at a rapid pace, hiding a tremble in his voice. “I promised my little uncle I wouldn’t run around. If he finishes the meeting downstairs and can’t find me—”
“Ah, it’s fine, if he can’t find you, he can just call!”
The two of them were of similar height, and Zhang Liang慎 casually hooked an arm around his shoulders with easy familiarity, laughing, “Besides, your little uncle dotes on you so much, how could he get mad at you over such a trivial matter?”
With that, he raised a hand and pressed the button switch.
The gears of the mechanical door turned smoothly, and the doors slid open to both sides.
Pei Yun didn’t even have a second to react before everything inside was abruptly, completely laid out before his eyes.
The interior was vast just a single floor was overwhelmingly, extraordinarily large.
The ceiling was covered in crisscrossing machinery and pipelines, and he could see the trapped vampires contained within each renovation pod.
They varied in age and gender; what they shared in common was that they all wore the simplest, thinnest white garments.
They all had the same pale complexions, the same tightly closed eyes, and the same bodies pierced all over with tubing.
It was dead silent inside, and the scene was completely still, making one unable to help guessing whether they were even still alive.
The air was bone-chillingly cold, and the overwhelming shock and oppressive weight rushing over him made it hard to breathe.
In an instant, Pei Yun’s entire mind went blank.
Frigid cold seeped in from the soles of his feet, freezing him firmly in place.
Yet Zhang Liang慎 remained entirely oblivious.
He tucked his hands back into his coat pockets, lowered his head to glance at the time, and muttered, “Strange, isn’t it time yet? Why hasn’t it started? Could the person in charge today have forgotten?”
Right as he spoke, the lights inside flared on all at once.
The machinery above also lit up with green indicator lights, and red liquid began to flow into the transparent tubes. They traced the pipelines all the way down, slowly reaching the renovation pods and gradually seeping into the vampires’ bodies.
And then, their originally shut eyes suddenly flew wide open, dilating in shock.
The immense agony assaulted them without giving them a single moment to prepare, spreading from the connection points of the tubes to every corner of their bodies.
Their once calm faces twisted in torment. The renovation pods isolated their sounds, yet the entire renovation plant was filled with silent, nearly despairing wails.
Faced with this spectacle, even Zhang Liang慎, who saw it every day, couldn’t bear to watch for long.
He let out a heavy sigh and turned to call out to Pei Yun, only to discover that the space beside him was completely empty.
When he returned to the ground floor, the meeting had already ended.
As he approached the entrance of the research building, he saw Lu Que coming out from inside, who asked him, “The front desk said they saw you taking Xiao Yun away. Where is he?”
Zhang Liang慎 answered, “He split up with me a while ago. I thought he went to find you—didn’t you call him?”
Lu Que said, “I called, but he didn’t answer.”
Zhang Liang pointed toward the lobby. “Isn’t anyone inside?”
Lu Que shook his head. “Checked. He’s not there.”
“That shouldn’t be,” Zhang Liang慎 said. “There’s only one path from the renovation plant back here. It’s impossible to take a wrong turn, right?”
“What did you say?”
Lu Que’s expression shifted, his voice plunging abruptly, “You took him to the renovation plant?”
Zhang Liang慎 said, “Yeah. You left him sitting in the lobby unattended, so I kindly helped take him along and gave him a bit of exposure while we were at it. Since he studies this, sooner or later he’s going to”
Lu Que impatiently cut him off: “What did he see?”
Zhang Liang慎 hadn’t yet realized the seriousness of the matter. “By the time we went in, the renovation process was just starting. He pretty much saw everything he needed to see.”
He originally wanted to say a few more words telling him not to treat the kid like a flower in a greenhouse, but seeing Lu Que’s expression darken as if coated in a layer of frost, realizing things might not be looking good, the words choked up in his throat.
Lu Que closed his eyes.
Unwilling to waste any more time with him, he coldly dropped the sentence, “I’ll settle accounts with you later!”, turned around, and strode away.