Violent electric current should have torn every body of flesh and blood to pieces—but at that split second, a deep black hole suddenly opened in midair behind Liu Sanji.
Chen Miao cried out, “Spatial ability?”
A woman with short green-dyed hair flashed into view. She was probably a plant-type ability user; both her hands transformed into vines and shot forward, grabbing Liu Sanji and yanking him back. Bai Sheng had just started to pursue when another man leapt out of the spatial tunnel, a gleaming katana in hand, and slashed down like lightning.
Clang!
A deafening ring exploded through the air. Bai Sheng held Shen Zhuo over one shoulder and caught that hurricane-wrapped blade barehanded with the other.
A thread of blood slid slowly down his palm. Reflected on the icy back of the blade were the spatial ability user’s eyes—a young man in his early twenties, his build terrifyingly lean and fierce, his features and expression born vicious. His gaze swept over Shen Zhuo’s face, then flicked toward Bai Sheng. He grinned and said in Japanese:
“When we meet next time...”
Before Bai Sheng could answer, he had already withdrawn his blade and retreated, dragging the green-haired woman and Liu Sanji with one hand as he returned into the spatial tunnel.
Bai Sheng’s hand lashed out.
Savage lightning speared through the night sky—but it was still half a second too late.
The spatial rift vanished in an instant. The waterfall of current hit nothing and crashed down, blasting half the elevated bridge to pieces.
Beep—beep—
The earth shook violently. Black smoke billowed. The shrill alarms of dozens of cars pierced across the wilderness in every direction. By the time the smoke slowly cleared, all three enemies had disappeared without a trace. Only scorched chunks of concrete and twisted rebar remained scattered across the ground.
“Where—where did they go?”
“Was that spatial transfer just now?”
“That’s my first time seeing a spatial ability...”
...
The Supervisors looked around frantically. Bai Sheng stood where he was, exhaled a scorching breath, then looked down at Shen Zhuo in his arms and narrowed his sharp eyes slightly.
Dizzy. Shaking. Noisy.
The lights in the hospital corridor were deathly white. Shen Zhuo felt as if he had been placed on an emergency gurney and was being pushed forward at breakneck speed. Voices surged all around him, loud and indistinct, as if he were hearing them through water.
“...Internal organ rupture isn’t the problem, but residual ability virus has been detected in his blood...”
“Shenhai doesn’t have the conditions for detoxification. He has to be sent to the central district immediately. We need the analysis results to produce serum!”
“The helicopter Chief Yue requisitioned won’t arrive for another fifteen minutes. What do we do?”
“Blood oxygen has dropped to the limit! Doctor, doctor!!”
...
The whole world seemed covered in a wash of white light. The voices gradually receded, leaving only a vast, empty quiet.
After an unknown length of time, Shen Zhuo opened his eyes. His unfocused gaze could not settle on anything. In a daze, he saw a tall figure standing beside the operating table, wearing a white coat. Above his mask were deep, handsome eyes.
He held a blood collection needle in his right hand. His left sleeve was rolled up, and he was drawing blood from his own strong arm.
“See, Supervisor Shen?” Bai Sheng watched his own crimson blood flow into the blood bag, then glanced over with a smile. “No matter how many times they call for Brother Yue, in the end, I’m still the only one who can save you, aren’t I?”
Shen Zhuo’s consciousness seemed sunk in the deep sea, hazy and unclear, drifting up and down. In his stupor, he could not recognize the figure before him, but he sensed that unique aura belonging to an S-Class evolutionist.
He stared at Bai Sheng without blinking, yet his gaze seemed to pass straight through empty space. Every murmured syllable carried the taste of blood.
“Was it... really you... who did it...”
“Fu... Chen...”
Bai Sheng’s movement paused.
The operating room was very quiet. Only the instruments gave off soft, mechanical beeps in a regular rhythm.
After a long while, Bai Sheng gave a faint laugh. “You still remember to call his name at a time like this? What exactly was the undying relationship between you two?”
The blood storage bag gradually swelled full. Bai Sheng finally pulled out the collection needle, casually flexed his arm, then bent down and turned Shen Zhuo’s chin, forcing him to face him at close range.
“It’s a little too much to lie in bed and call another man’s name at me. Remember to call my name next time, all right?”
Shen Zhuo closed his eyes. Under the surgical light, the side of his face looked so cold it was almost translucent, yet his brows and eyes were black as ink. His collar, always buttoned to his throat, had been opened, revealing a slender neck and sharply sunken collarbones. His thin white shirt had been stained almost entirely red with blood.
He was clearly in a wretched state.
Yet there was a shocking, soul-seizing tension to him.
Bai Sheng’s gaze fell on the black gloves Shen Zhuo never took off, and something stirred suddenly in his mind.
So many news outlets had never once photographed Shen Zhuo’s hands. This Chief Supervisor, renowned for both beauty and authority, never seemed willing to let the public glimpse so much as an inch of skin below his throat.
Compulsion, or a germaphobe?
It could not be that he was hiding some kind of deformity.
Bai Sheng glanced around the empty operating room, reached out, and removed the gloves. He cast a seemingly casual look at them and was somewhat surprised.
His right hand was normal and intact.
But on the back of his left hand were two savage old scars, crossed into a horrifying X.
Someone had carved them there with a knife.
Bai Sheng knew what it meant. It was a kind of humiliation that had once been fashionable. Because an evolutionist’s left hand and the left side of the chest were usually where rank marks appeared, certain extreme Darwinists would capture ordinary humans and forcibly carve crosses onto their hands, signifying that the person’s genes were inferior and incapable of evolution—implying that humanity would eventually be eliminated by evolutionists.
A beautiful, high-ranking, untouchable man.
A globally renowned Chief Supervisor with ruthless, iron-fisted power.
Who had dared take a blade to Shen Zhuo’s hand and leave this kind of insult behind?
“...Looks like you’ve suffered your share too,” Bai Sheng murmured thoughtfully, standing over Shen Zhuo.
...
“He’s awake!”
“He’s awake, he’s finally awake...”
The monitoring instruments beeped steadily. The hospital room was full of footsteps and voices. Shen Zhuo opened his eyes slightly.
After half a month in a coma, his consciousness was blurred. He saw only countless figures moving frantically beside his bed. It seemed many people had broken past the nurses’ attempts to stop them and lunged forward to scream at him. Someone even tried to drag him up from the bed, only to be pulled back by the guards rushing in.
After an unknown length of time, those roaring voices finally seeped slowly into his eardrums.
“...Why did it explode? Why did the Qinghai test site explode?!”
“Brother Fu is dead! Brother Fu is dead! He died protecting you!”
“Why weren’t you the one who died!!”
...
Ah.
Fu Chen was dead.
Shen Zhuo’s chaotic mind registered that sentence.
Fu Chen had died in that explosion.
“Half a month ago, an operation team composed of you, S-Class evolutionist Fu Chen, and Class A evolutionist Su Jiqiao suffered an accidental explosion at the Qinghai test site while carrying out an evolution-source recovery mission. Do you have anything to explain about this, Director Shen?”
The hospital room was lit by pale white light. Two rows of investigators from the Central Supervision Office sat across from him, every figure upright and solemn. The only sound in the air was the soft scratch of pens recording on paper.
No one knew how many surveillance cameras were pointed at Shen Zhuo on the hospital bed. They did not miss his calm, pale face, the lowered curve of his lashes, or even the faintest change in his expression.
“I don’t know,” Shen Zhuo answered hoarsely.
There was a faint stir across from him. Everyone whispered to one another. Then one investigator raised his voice. “How could you not know?”
“In a three-person team, Fu Chen was blown up on the spot, Su Jiqiao remains unconscious to this day, and only you, an ordinary human, miraculously survived. And you’re telling us you don’t know what happened?”
“Fu Chen died protecting you!” someone in the back row abruptly stood up. “He used absolute defense to take all the damage for you. Otherwise, there is no way he would have died!”
“For a mission this simple, Fu Chen and Su Jiqiao had performed it together over a hundred times and never had a single problem!”
“Who made the operational mistake that caused the explosion? Do you really think we can’t guess?!”
...
Amid the furious outcry, a faint oddity finally passed over Shen Zhuo’s expression.
Su Jiqiao was not dead?
Why?
“...What happened to Su Jiqiao?”
Shen Zhuo’s hoarse voice was too weak amid the clamor. Only the grave-faced old man seated at the very center of the front row answered him.
“He is in a deep coma due to severe brain trauma. The chance of him waking in the future does not exceed five percent.”
Still five percent.
“I see,” Shen Zhuo murmured.
He closed his eyes. A long while later, he opened them again, drew a deep breath, and looked steadily at the two rows of investigators and countless surveillance cameras opposite him.
Afterward, this scene would be studied countless times at the hearing. Even the most insignificant detail would be magnified under a microscope again and again, including his deep, calm eyes, his pale and handsome jaw, and the cold, steady tone in which he spoke.
“When the accident occurred, the person responsible for operating the evolution source was Fu Chen.”
“He caused that explosion.”
The air froze.
Immediately after, as if a bomb had detonated, everyone leapt to their feet at the same time. Their furious roars nearly tore the roof off.
“Impossible!”
“Slander. Blatant slander!”
“Shen Zhuo, do you even have a conscience?!”
“Do you have even the last scrap of humanity left?!”
...
Condemnation surged like boiling water.
Yet Shen Zhuo’s pale face did not show a trace of emotion. With something almost like condescension, he coldly watched the rioting crowd, as if he had already seen past them and into the far more treacherous, unpredictable future ahead.
...
One month after the May 11 Qinghai test site explosion, Shen Zhuo, chief director of the Central Research Institute, was removed from office and held accountable. He was demoted to the very bottom, and the secret research project he had personally led was forced to come to a halt.
Just as Shen Zhuo was about to be brought to court, another explosive piece of news arrived.
The International Supervision General Administration, acting against the tide despite massive opposition from evolutionists all over the world, forcibly appointed the ordinary human Shen Zhuo as a United Nations permanent Chief Supervisor, granting him a transcendent status equal to Fu Chen’s.
No one knew what the International Supervision General Administration was thinking, but that appointment letter ignited everyone’s fury.
On the day the news arrived, the brothers closest to Fu Chen in life stormed into the hospital and forcibly took Shen Zhuo from his room. After that came the private-torture scandal never made known to the public that year—
“Why was Brother Fu the one who died, not you?!”
The air was thick with the smell of blood and iron rust. The light overhead was dim. Figures crowded on every side. The interrogation quickly turned into a wave of collective fury.
“You made an operational mistake because you deluded yourself into wanting to evolve! You caused the explosion!”
“You survived only because Brother Fu protected you, and you still dared push the blame onto him!”
...
Shen Zhuo was tied to a chair, his throat full of blood. From between clenched teeth, he forced out hoarse words.
“The one who made the operational mistake was Fu Chen. He only reaped what he sowed.”
With a heavy bang, someone punched his face aside. A stronger taste of blood spread through his mouth.
“Kill him and make him pay for Brother Fu!”
“Kill him!”
...
The roars around him grew louder and louder, but they were no longer clear, because his ears were already clogged with blood. Shen Zhuo gasped harshly. Bloody foam shook out of his chest in a choking cough. And just like that, coughing, he began to laugh.
“Come on. Kill me.”
He lifted his head, his face covered in blood, weak and battered, but with no attempt to hide his provocation.
“Fu Chen is dead. Su Jiqiao is in a vegetative state. Even if you kill me today, you still won’t find evidence to convict me.”
It was like a drop of cold water falling into hot oil. The surroundings exploded with a roar.
Every person there was livid. Every person was shouting. Those faces were filled with grief and righteous fury. If someone had not forcibly held them back, they would probably already have rushed up and torn him to pieces.
“Did you really think evolution came without a price? So-called superior evolutionists are nothing but beasts whose humanity has degenerated.” Shen Zhuo laughed intermittently, his voice hoarse and contemptuous. “Stupid. Violent. Raging, useless denunciations. Worthless righteous anger...”
Every organ in his body was in agony. Blood dripped steadily into his collar.
The noise gathered into bizarre, splintered shards in his vision, flashing violently, forming an absurd and inverted scene.
He could not see those hate-filled faces clearly. Only his own heavy breathing remained in his ears, until the cold touch of a blade jolted his mind awake.
His left hand had been pinned down.
Bone-deep pain shot through it.
“We won’t kill you, but today, you don’t get to walk out of here untouched.” The executioner’s low voice came from above him. “Remember this, Shen Zhuo. This scar is proof of the blood debt you owe us evolutionists.”
The surroundings were chaotic and grotesque. Blood had soaked from his temple down to his jaw, yet blatant mockery surfaced in Shen Zhuo’s eyes. He raised his head and looked at the executioner’s outline beneath the pale light.
“I don’t care, Yue Yang.”
“You evolutionists only disgust me.”
...
The chaotic background, the strange roars, and those vicious faces twisted rapidly like absurd blotches of color soaked in water, then vanished into the dream.
On the wide bed, Shen Zhuo opened his eyes.
Sunlight pierced through the floor-to-ceiling curtains.
This was an elegant, bright bedroom, decorated in a modern-art style. The high ceiling made the space unbelievably open. Beside him came the sound of slow, relaxed breathing.
“...”
Shen Zhuo turned his head.
Bai Sheng’s strong upper body was bare. Half-asleep, he rolled over, reached out to wrap an arm around Shen Zhuo’s waist, and patted him soothingly by habit. His voice was thick with drowsiness.
“Let me sleep a little longer, baby. You’ve really worn me out these past few days.”
Shen Zhuo’s pupils shrank. He abruptly got up to leave the bed, but chains rattled sharply by his ear.
Only then did he see that his left wrist had been cuffed to the headboard with a pair of stainless-steel handcuffs.
“...”
Shen Zhuo held that position for a long moment before slowly turning back.
“Care to explain, Mr. Bai?”
Bai Sheng finally opened his eyes lazily. “That wasn’t your attitude last night when you were clinging to my neck and wouldn’t let go, Supervisor. Now that it’s morning, you’re pretending it never happened?”
The car accident. The impact. Liu Sanji. The monster covered in eyes.
Scene after scene from the highway suddenly flashed through Shen Zhuo’s mind. He lowered his head and looked.
His white shirt was open, and the wound where his abdomen had been pierced clean through had actually healed. Only a savage, gruesome scar remained on the surface of his skin.
“When you need me, you lie in my arms and call me handsome. Once you don’t need me, you wipe your mouth and call me Mr. Bai. What, planning to use me and not pay?”
Bai Sheng sat up lazily. The blanket slid from his chest. Without the slightest restraint, he displayed his long, powerful body in the morning light. From shoulders and arms to waist, back, and abs, every inch of him had an indescribable impact. His face was handsome, his hair messy, and that tuft of silver stuck up arrogantly on top of his head.
“Once you fall into my hands, you’re mine. You still expect that bunch from Shenhai City Supervision Office to come take you away?” Bai Sheng hooked his mouth in a cold smile. “Using me and refusing to acknowledge the bill? It’s not that easy.”
Bai Sheng slowly leaned closer. Shen Zhuo was forced to tilt backward until their breaths crossed.
Clatter!
The chain suddenly crashed.
Without warning, Shen Zhuo broke free of the handcuffs, flipped over, and pinned Bai Sheng to the bed. Kneeling over his lower back, he twisted both Bai Sheng’s hands behind him in one clean arrest hold and cuffed them with a lightning-fast click.
In the space of an instant, the situation reversed. Shen Zhuo pressed one elbow firmly against the back of Bai Sheng’s neck, bent down beside his ear, and said softly:
“Handsome, I am very grateful that you saved me. But aside from that, please forget anything else I said. We are both adults, after all. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Bai Sheng’s face was pressed into the pillow. He was unusually quiet and obedient, without the slightest struggle.
Before Shen Zhuo had time to sense anything wrong, the bedroom door swung open with a whoosh. Chen Miao entered holding a bowl of soup.
“Brother Bai, didn’t you say this soup only needed two minutes in the microwave? I—”
Chen Miao’s voice stopped dead.
On the messy bed, Shen Zhuo’s shirt was open over his upper body, the hem barely covering the tops of his thighs. His legs were spread as he knelt on either side of Bai Sheng’s lower back, and he was lowering his head toward Bai Sheng’s ear.
Bai Sheng’s pajama pants hung at his waist. His upper body was completely bare, and his hands were shockingly cuffed behind his back, making him look like a pitiful little white rabbit that had been thoroughly ravaged.
The distance between their bodies was probably thin enough to slide a single sheet of paper through.
The entire scene froze. Supervisor Shen’s expression went blank as he stared at Chen Miao in the doorway—and the equally blank-faced subordinates behind Chen Miao.
“..................”
After a long while, Chen Miao forced out a smile. Flattery showed through extreme terror.
“S-Senior, please take your time. We—we’ll go stand guard for you.”
Then, with a bang, he shut the door as fast as he possibly could.
The bedroom fell so quiet that a falling pin would have been audible. Only the two of them remained on the wide bed.
“...”
Bai Sheng’s body trembled strangely. Finally, he could no longer hold it in. With a snort, he broke completely.
“Ha ha ha ha ha—”
Author’s Note:
Bai Sheng: It was just you and me in the room. You were unconscious. Your men weren’t there. No cameras in the room.
Supervisor Shen: So?
Bai Sheng: That means the final right to explain whether you called me handsome while you were out of it belongs to me, xixi.