“From now on, you only have two choices: Obey me like a dog, or be wiped out like an ant.”
________________________
BOOM—
The explosion roared through the television news broadcast. A heartbeat later came the panicked screams of pedestrians fleeing the scene and crying for help. Sirens shrieked from far away, drawing closer and closer, while thick black smoke swallowed the sky.
“According to our reporter at the scene, a robbery occurred at Shenhai City Bank at 10:30 this morning. An explosion at the scene caused multiple injuries. Of the four robbers, one has already been arrested, while the remaining three are still on the run…”
The television image froze.
The female anchor’s report cut off abruptly.
The interrogation room sank back into an unsettling dead silence.
Then, with a sharp slap, a thick file was slammed onto the table.
“Zhang Zhao. Male. Thirty-two years old. Class B evolutionist, registered two years ago.”
The interrogator read the basic information from the first page of the file, then looked up at the man cuffed to the electric chair across from him.
“Five days ago, you and your accomplices robbed a bank and triggered an explosion. Seventeen pedestrians were injured at the scene. Fortunately, no one was killed.”
Blast-proof steel panels lined all four walls. Pinhole cameras were hidden everywhere. Set into the solid steel door was an inconspicuous metal plaque:
Shenhai City Radiation Evolution Supervision Office — Third Interrogation Room.
At the center of the room stood an enormous iron chair wired to deliver one million volts of high-voltage electricity at any moment.
Zhang Zhao sat there with both hands cuffed. He raised an eyebrow at the interrogator, his contempt undisguised.
“So this is how an ordinary person speaks to an evolutionist like me, Mr. Interrogator?”
The interrogator took a deep breath and forced his emotions down.
“Answer the question, Zhang Zhao. Your listed occupation is partner at a consulting firm. Your income was high. Why would you risk arrest by the Supervision Office to rob a bank?”
Zhang Zhao seemed to have heard something funny.
“Why? Because I was bored, of course.”
The interrogator thought he had misheard.
“Bored?”
“Watching ordinary people scream in terror and crawl all over the ground like ants—isn’t that interesting?”
Zhang Zhao shifted into a more comfortable position and looked straight at the interrogator’s ashen face, smiling.
“The Supervision Office was supposedly established to manage evolutionists like us. But in reality, most of the people inside the Shenhai City Supervision Office are useless ordinary humans. The only evolutionists you have are a handful of low-grade Class D and Class C trash. So tell me—what can you do to a precious Class B like me?”
“…”
“Execute me?” Zhang Zhao’s eyebrow rose even higher, the end of his words thick with exaggerated mockery.
Silence filled the interrogation room.
Only after a long while did the interrogator snap the file shut.
“What exactly do you want, Zhang Zhao?” he asked coldly.
A look of victory spread across Zhang Zhao’s face. He leaned back against the chair.
“You want to know where my three accomplices are, don’t you?” he said lazily. “Come on, then. Let’s make a deal.”
Every wary gaze inside the interrogation room and behind the surveillance feed fell on the arrogant robber.
“The day of the bank explosion, I saw a young man in black sitting in a car, talking on the phone. When I was arrested, he didn’t even spare a glance outside the window. I know who he is. He’s your boss—the Chief Supervisor who rules over every evolutionist in Shenhai City.”
Zhang Zhao raised his head and looked toward the surveillance camera mounted above him.
“My condition is simple. Have him come see me in person.”
For an instant, even the air seemed to stop.
The interrogator’s expression shifted slightly.
“Why?”
The arrogant smile on Zhang Zhao’s face deepened.
“Because I want to see him beg…”
“I want to see that cold, indifferent face of his make a pleading expression.”
At the same time, downstairs.
A black sedan glided soundlessly to a stop before the front steps. Four fully armed evolutionists saluted at once, then stepped forward and opened the door.
“Supervisor. Welcome back.”
A lean figure wrapped in a black suit stepped out of the car.
He looked very young. His face was smooth and pale. Sunlight flashed off the gray glass windows of the Supervision Office building, catching the hard, clean line of his jaw.
“Supervisor Shen.”
“Supervisor!”
…
From the first-floor lobby to the elevator doors, every staff member along the way seemed to have had pause pressed on them. They immediately stood still, greeted him, stepped aside, and lowered their heads with careful respect, watching the young man’s polished leather shoes pass across the floor in front of them.
Then the elevator gave a soft ding.
Shen Zhuo, the highest-ranking officer of the Shenhai City Supervision Office, came to a stop.
His black leather-gloved hands were folded in front of him. There was not the slightest emotion on his face as he disappeared behind the closing elevator doors.
“Is he insane?”
In front of the surveillance monitors outside the interrogation room, everyone stared at Zhang Zhao in the electric chair. The whole room was in an uproar.
“What did he just say?”
“What is he trying to do?”
“If he wants to die, he shouldn’t drag us down with him!”
…
“No. According to the intel, those four evolutionists involved in the case may take extreme action and pose a major threat to public safety. We have to dig the other three’s whereabouts out of Zhang Zhao as soon as possible.”
One staff member frowned tightly and stood up.
“I’ll go ask the higher-ups for instructions. If the situation is urgent, we may need Supervisor Shen to step in and find a way—”
He opened the office door.
His words stopped dead.
Four evolutionists stood outside, all in white uniforms and carrying weapons.
Every evolutionist in the Supervision Office wore a metal collar around their neck. Each collar was engraved with a different serial number. Of the four before him, two numbers began with B, and the other two with C—that represented their respective evolutionary ability grades.
And standing surrounded by those four guards was that familiar, lean, straight-backed figure.
Black suit. White shirt. Gloves he never removed. A pair of eyes as deep as a frozen pool.
Shen Zhuo.
Everyone in the office rose to their feet with a rustle. The staff member at the door instinctively took half a step back.
“Su-Supervisor!”
Shen Zhuo’s gaze passed through the crowd and landed directly on the surveillance screen.
“—unless that boss of yours named Shen comes to beg me in person, I won’t say another word.”
Zhang Zhao sat comfortably in the electric chair with one leg crossed, smiling at the grim-faced interrogator.
“You can leave now. You’re not qualified to speak to me.”
The area before the surveillance screen fell deathly silent.
Everyone held their breath.
In that suffocating atmosphere, Shen Zhuo turned his head and looked toward the interrogation room on the other side of the corridor.
Calmly, he gave two words.
“Open it.”
No one dared look up at his face.
A guard immediately stepped forward and swiped his access card with a beep.
The half-ton blast-proof steel door thundered open.
Zhang Zhao looked up from the electric chair and saw the interrogator rise reflexively.
“Supervisor! You—”
Shen Zhuo walked into the interrogation room.
One hand remained in his trouser pocket. The other pressed down on the iron table in front of Zhang Zhao. His two long, slender fingers tapped the tabletop.
He wasted no words.
“Where are the three accomplices?”
Zhang Zhao had to tilt his head back to meet the Chief Supervisor of Shenhai City’s downward gaze.
At first glance, Shen Zhuo’s face was startling.
Because it was too beautiful. Too sharp.
His complexion was cold and pale, his brows and eyes deep black. His features and jawline were cleanly cut, almost without a single softening curve.
That near-perfect bone structure carried a striking visual force. Combined with the power and status that placed him above everyone else, it sharpened that edge to the extreme—so much so that it became almost frightening.
“…”
Zhang Zhao slowly smiled. He drew out the name with obvious interest.
“Shen… Zhuo.”
No one answered him.
“I’ve heard people say Supervisor Shen is especially famous for two things. First, as one of the world’s top ten supervisors, he rules Shenhai City’s twenty thousand evolutionists with thunderous methods—while he himself is a complete and utter ordinary person, incapable of evolution.”
“Second…”
Zhang Zhao paused, malice thick in his voice.
“He was also born with a face that makes people very tempted.”
“…”
The interrogation room was so quiet that a dropped needle would have been audible.
Zhang Zhao lifted his upper body from the electric chair and stared straight into Shen Zhuo’s eyes.
“Beautiful, let’s make a deal. Let me enjoy myself a little, and I’ll tell you where those three evolutionists went. How about it?”
Shen Zhuo looked at him without saying a word.
The wall clock ticked softly.
Zhang Zhao lifted his cuffed hands and pointed upward with a smile.
“You don’t have much time left. Three dangerous evolutionists are still at large. Can you guess what they might do?”
If the people watching had merely been afraid to breathe before, now it was as though an invisible hand had reached into the room and squeezed the air from everyone’s lungs.
It felt as if a century passed.
It also felt like only an instant.
At last, Shen Zhuo spoke.
“Unlock his handcuffs.”
The interrogator’s knees trembled beneath his uniform trousers. Forcing himself to stay calm, he walked forward and used the key to unlock the cuffs on both sides of the electric chair.
Under everyone’s eyes, with no one daring to utter a word, Zhang Zhao sat up in satisfaction and flexed both hands.
“Now that’s more like it.”
Then he reached toward the immaculate collar of Shen Zhuo’s white shirt and smiled.
“Supervisor Shen, you really are—”
Snap.
Zhang Zhao felt his hand caught in an iron clamp.
But in reality, it was only Shen Zhuo’s long, slender fingers in black gloves.
The next second, an unimaginable force came crashing down over his head.
He did not even have time to believe his own eyes before Shen Zhuo hauled him bodily out of the electric chair and smashed him headfirst into the wall with a thunderous crash.
The outer layer of the wall cracked instantly.
Zhang Zhao had no strength to fight back at all.
He was a young, powerful evolutionist, yet Shen Zhuo had him by the back of the collar with one hand and was driving him mercilessly into the wall.
Again.
And again.
The force seemed bent on shattering his skull alive. Each impact came faster than the last, heavier than the last, until cracked brick and stone scattered across the floor.
BOOM!
The interrogation room wall caved in, exposing the riot-proof steel panel beneath.
Zhang Zhao’s face was covered in blood. He was forced headfirst into the steel plate, and blood splattered across the wall.
“You son of a—”
Zhang Zhao could not believe that an ordinary human could possess such overwhelming strength. On the edge of death, he went mad. A fireball suddenly flashed to life in his palm.
Evolutionists of Class B and above possessed abilities capable of manipulating water and fire.
The interrogator cried out, “Supervisor, watch out!”
In that split second, Shen Zhuo kicked Zhang Zhao hard to the ground.
Then, from somewhere, he drew out a special collar and snapped it around Zhang Zhao’s neck with lightning speed.
With a sharp click, the metal locked automatically.
A serial number appeared.
B002465.
Immediately after, Shen Zhuo took a controller from his trouser pocket and pressed down.
“Aaaargh—!”
A scream tore through the interrogation room.
Two hundred thousand volts of high-voltage electricity made Zhang Zhao’s entire body crackle and explode with sparks. More than ten seconds passed before he finally collapsed completely, convulsing violently as scorched smoke rose from him.
The four evolutionist guards wearing identical collars stood outside the door, watching with indifferent eyes.
Shen Zhuo lifted the hem of his trouser leg and crouched halfway down.
He held the small silver controller in front of Zhang Zhao’s unfocused eyes and gave it a slight shake.
“Designed specifically for evolutionists. It can release one million volts of high-voltage electricity in an instant. One strike is fatal to anyone below Class A.”
Zhang Zhao panted violently.
The arrogance that had once made him look down on everything had vanished completely. Only instinctive fear reflected in his pupils.
“You committed armed robbery and arson, posing a serious threat to society. You will serve a life sentence in the Shenhai City Supervision Office.”
“From now on, you have only two roads left.”
“Obey me like a dog, or be erased like an ant.”
“Now.”
Shen Zhuo grabbed Zhang Zhao by his blood-soaked hair, forcing him to lift his head and meet his eyes.
For the last time, he asked with perfect calm:
“Where are your three accomplices?”