The smile under the clown mask froze.
He had thought the two of them would need time to sync up, but the compatibility between the key and the subject was terrifyingly perfect.
“Interesting.” The clown’s fingers secretly reached toward the remote in his pocket.
But Gu Chen didn’t give him the chance.
“This bastard wants to run.”
The thought had barely formed when Qin Hongyi’s military dagger was already flying out of her hand.
Whoosh!
Cold light tore through the air, shooting straight at the clown’s face.
The clown dodged awkwardly, and the dagger grazed his mask before embedding deeply into the control console behind him, sending sparks flying everywhere.
“Looks like today’s ball is over.”
The clown shrugged and retreated at high speed into the dark passage. “Young Master Gu, Miss Qin, I wanted to watch the whole show too, but that big guy is about to wake up. Good luck to you both. Bye-bye.”
Rumble!
With the clown’s disappearance, the entire underground laboratory suddenly shook violently.
The remaining Gluttons seemed to sense some terror from the top of the food chain. They actually abandoned their attack and wailed as they shrank back into the shadows.
The hall fell silent once more.
The floor covered in corpses and black blood proved that everything had not been an illusion.
“Huff… Huff…”
Gu Chen knelt on one knee, breathing heavily.
The god’s-eye-view synesthesia was receding like a tide.
What followed was a massive emptiness.
Activating the genetic lock came at a price.
The law of conservation of energy applied to everyone.
That high-intensity burst just now had instantly drained every bit of glycogen from his cells.
Hungry.
Starving to the point of panic.
It felt like a hand had grown in his stomach and was frantically clawing at his organs.
His vision kept blacking out.
A hand reached out in front of him.
Slender and strong, fingertips dripping with the monsters’ black blood, yet the palm was clean.
Gu Chen looked up and met Qin Hongyi’s bottomless eyes.
Qin Hongyi wasn’t doing much better at the moment.
Her suit was torn, exposing skin flushed with an abnormal red—the sign of overload.
Her breathing was equally rapid. Residual killing intent lingered in her eyes, along with a more primal hunger.
The synesthesia was bidirectional.
Gu Chen was hungry, and Qin Hongyi naturally felt it too.
Combined with the inducing enzymes in her body, this hunger transformed in her into an unspeakable restlessness.
She wanted to touch.
She wanted to possess.
She wanted to vent all this scorching heat onto this damnably attractive mortal enemy, even after he had been turned into a woman.
“Can you stand?” Qin Hongyi’s voice sounded like it was full of sand.
Gu Chen didn’t speak.
He stared at the pulsing blue vein on Qin Hongyi’s neck. His Adam’s apple bobbed uncontrollably.
What flowed there wasn’t just blood.
To him, it was the highest-grade fuel in the world.
“…Looks like you don’t want to stand up.”
Qin Hongyi understood the aggression in his eyes.
If anyone else dared to look at her with eyes that wanted to devour her whole, she would have already gouged their eyeballs out and stomped on them.
But at this moment.
She actually felt her legs go a little weak.
“Fuck.”
Qin Hongyi cursed under her breath. Ignoring whether the floor was dirty or not, she grabbed Gu Chen by the collar and yanked him toward her.
“If you’re hungry, just say it. Stop pretending to be reserved.”
She didn’t bother with the childish act of biting her finger.
Her fingers threaded into Gu Chen’s hair, gripping the back of his head. Then she leaned down, sealing off all his breathing space.
Their breaths intertwined, mixed with a strong scent of blood and sweat. It was the trembling relief of surviving a disaster, and at the same time, a kind of madness that wanted to twist their souls together even if the world collapsed in the next second.
Gu Chen felt a surge of scorching source energy flow into his body through their seamless contact. His cells, which had been on the verge of withering, greedily absorbed the vitality and instantly revived.
He took the initiative, his arms tightening fiercely as he locked Qin Hongyi firmly in his embrace.
Just as the two of them became inseparable and things were about to escalate into R-rated territory—
Beep.
The main computer in the center of the hall suddenly lit up with a red light.
From the control console pierced by the military dagger came a crackling recorded message.
It was Old Master Gu’s voice.
“Cough cough… If anyone can hear this recording, it means this old man has already kicked the bucket.”
“Subject 001, my child, if you’ve obtained the agent, whatever you do… don’t drink it right now.”
Gu Chen’s eyes snapped open as he pushed Qin Hongyi away.
Their four eyes met, with only two streams of scorching breath between them.
But at this moment, all the ambiguity was shattered by this damned recording.
“That agent is a semi-finished product… It’s missing one key catalyst…”
“If you inject it directly without the catalyst, the genetic lock will completely melt. You will turn into… a true… monster…”
Crackle—
The recording cut off abruptly.
Gu Chen pulled out the pale golden test tube from his pocket and stared at the liquid flowing inside like a galaxy. His expression shifted uncertainly.
“Catalyst?”
Qin Hongyi wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth, her brows tightly furrowed. “This old man really knows how to mess with his grandson. Playing a riddle game at a time like this?”
“It’s not a riddle.”
Gu Chen gripped the test tube tightly.
The inexplicable palpitation he felt earlier told him that the old man wasn’t lying.
This was both the antidote and the poison.
“What’s missing?” Qin Hongyi asked.
Gu Chen was silent for two seconds before slowly uttering three words. His face looked even worse than when he had faced a room full of monsters.
“Gu family blood.”
Qin Hongyi was stunned. “Aren’t you Gu family blood yourself?”
“No.”
Gu Chen raised his head. A self-mocking cold light flashed in his vertical pupils—the greatest irony toward his own origins.
“I am the created Subject 001. My blood is impure.”
“To perfect this agent, I need the heart blood of a living person who possesses pure direct-line Gu family blood and hasn’t been contaminated.”
Qin Hongyi’s expression changed instantly.
Direct-line Gu family member.
Living person.
In the entire Beijing right now, besides Gu Chen—who was already “dead”—who else carried direct-line Gu family blood?
Almost simultaneously, the same name appeared in both their minds.
The person Gu Chen had just stylishly shot in the head at the auction, who couldn’t possibly be any deader—
Gu Mingzhe.
“We’re fucked.”
“I think I just personally blew up my own catalyst.”
Gu Chen’s eyelid twitched.
What kind of bullshit was this?
He had just sent off his cousin who wanted to seize power, only to discover that the guy was his only life-saving catalyst.
He should have left him with one last breath.
“Where is Gu Mingzhe’s body?” Gu Chen didn’t waste words. He turned and walked toward the bullet-riddled armored vehicle.
“Su Rou took it.”
Qin Hongyi put away her phone after receiving the message and followed. With a flick of her toe, she caught a still-intact spare magazine. “That naïve little fool thinks Gu Mingzhe’s death is suspicious. She’s rushing the body to the Su family’s private hospital, probably to do an autopsy.”
“Autopsy?” Gu Chen sneered. “Once it’s frozen solid in the morgue like a popsicle, it’ll really become a specimen. Even dogs won’t eat it.”
Boom!
The armored vehicle roared as it shot out of Eden Project’s underground passage.
…
The heavy rain had turned the Beijing-West Expressway into a black river.
A convoy of three black Maybachs was speeding through the downpour.
Inside the middle armored business vehicle, Su Rou’s face was deathly pale. She clutched a blood-stained handkerchief tightly in her hand.
In the rear compartment lay Gu Mingzhe. The man who had once harbored ill intentions toward her now had his head blown open, his death quite the spectacle.
“Miss, something’s wrong behind us.” The driver’s voice trembled.
Su Rou instinctively turned around.
In the rearview mirror, two glaring white headlights were getting closer and brighter.
A heavily damaged armored vehicle, covered in scrapes, was charging madly toward them against the wind and rain.
“Who the hell? A madman?” Su Rou’s pupils contracted.
“Hold on tight!”
No deceleration. No warning. They didn’t even honk.
Thud!
The sound of metal collision exploded.
The armored vehicle’s reinforced heavy ram smashed mercilessly into the rear of the trailing Maybach.
The two-ton luxury car was sent flying like a kicked soda can. It drifted sideways on the wet road and slammed hard into the guardrail, sending sparks flying three meters high.
“Is it the Black Kui Mercenary Group coming to silence us?” the bodyguard shouted in terror.
“No.”
Lightning flashed, and Su Rou saw clearly.
In the driver’s seat of the armored vehicle was a woman wearing a black high-slit dress. Her long hair was disheveled, yet she looked stunningly beautiful. She was steering with one hand, and her eyes, glowing with a faint eerie light, were more ferocious than an evil ghost.
It was Gu Qingcheng.
Screech!
The armored vehicle executed an extremely violent drift, forcefully shoving the middle hearse-carrying vehicle onto the emergency lane. It pinned the car against the cliffside guardrail, with half the wheels hanging over the edge, teetering dangerously.
The car door was kicked open.
Gu Chen jumped barefoot into the puddles, toying with a stolen scalpel in his hand.
“Get out.”
Gu Chen knocked on the business vehicle’s window, his tone polite as if he were conducting a drunk driving check. “Or I’ll smash the window and your skulls along with it.”