“I am Gu Mingzhe.” Gu Mingzhe adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses, his tone terrifyingly calm.
“A man who died and came back to life. Or rather, a perfect regenerated body. After all, the original host is already dead.”
He unbuttoned his suit jacket and pulled open his shirt.
Right in the center of his chest, the skin was flawless—not a single scar.
But where the heart should be, a strange black sunflower-eye tattoo pulsed faintly with every beat.
“Eden Project’s latest technology: memory backup and gene remodeling,” Gu Mingzhe stated.
“As long as the core data remains intact, theoretically I can resurrect infinitely.”
Qin Hongyi’s pupils contracted violently.
This kind of technology had already surpassed human comprehension.
“What’s your mission?”
Gu Chen cut straight to the point.
“To deliver a message.”
Gu Mingzhe’s gaze, through the rearview mirror, landed on the nearly invisible Su Rou in the driver’s seat.
“The Main Brain—the supreme will of the Eden Project—is about to awaken.”
“For its awakening, it needs a perfect vessel to carry its descent into this world.”
Gu Mingzhe’s mouth curved into a pitying smile.
“Su Rou is the chosen Holy Grail.”
In an instant, the temperature inside the car dropped to freezing.
In the driver’s seat, Su Rou—who had been quiet the whole time—suddenly trembled.
A flash of confusion crossed her eyes.
“Her devouring 002 wasn’t a coincidence.”
Gu Mingzhe pointed at the tattoo on his own chest.
“It was the Main Brain remotely guiding her through the spiritual imprint in my heart. It was an appetizer prepared for her, to help her adapt to higher-grade energy in advance.”
Qin Hongyi’s gun muzzle instantly aimed at the back of Su Rou’s head.
Her voice carried no emotion.
“A time bomb and a thief coveting what’s mine. Killing her is the cleanest option.”
“Don’t touch her!”
Gu Chen’s voice rang out at the same time as Qin Hongyi’s.
Qin Hongyi whipped her head around to stare at Gu Chen, her eyes filled with undisguised violence. “You want to protect her?”
“She’s our only lead right now,” Gu Chen analyzed calmly.
“Kill her and we go blind. We’ll have no choice but to wait passively for that Main Brain to come find us.”
“I don’t care about any Main Brain.”
Qin Hongyi’s gun stayed locked on Su Rou. “I only know one thing: anyone who touches what’s mine has to die. She touched you.”
This was the first time the two of them had clashed so sharply over a position.
“Qin Hongyi!” Gu Chen’s tone grew heavier. “This isn’t the time for you to throw a tantrum!”
“Throw a tantrum?”
Qin Hongyi laughed, the sound ice-cold.
“Gu Chen, have you forgotten whose life this is? Without me, you’d be nothing but a pile of rotten flesh right now! What right do you have to order me around for another woman?”
With that, she prepared to pull the trigger.
In a flash, Gu Chen moved.
He grabbed Qin Hongyi’s wrist holding the gun, fingers tightening with terrifying strength.
The moment their skin touched, a faint bio-electric current surged between them.
Qin Hongyi felt her wrist go numb and suddenly lose strength.
She realized Gu Chen’s power had increased several times over from before.
“I’ll say it one more time.”
Gu Chen leaned in until their faces were almost touching. A golden vertical slit flashed through his pupils.
“She cannot die.”
The atmosphere inside the car had turned razor-sharp.
“Heh.”
Gu Mingzhe in the passenger seat let out a soft chuckle, breaking the deadlock.
“President Qin, you misunderstand. I didn’t come here to stir up internal conflict.”
He spoke unhurriedly. “The Main Brain’s descent ritual is still missing the most critical piece.”
His gaze turned to Qin Hongyi, burning.
“It needs the Key’s genes to unlock the final lock on the Holy Grail. In other words, it needs the energy produced when you and 001 achieve perfect synchronization—as the key to open the gate.”
“My mission is to lure the two of you to a location to purify the spiritual imprint inside Miss Su Rou.”
Gu Mingzhe smiled.
“Of course, that location itself is part of the ritual. It’s at the No. 7 Biological Research Institute in the western suburbs.”
Both Qin Hongyi and Gu Chen froze.
A certain-death trap had been laid out openly in front of them.
Going meant walking straight into the net.
Not going meant the Su Rou vessel could explode at any moment, and they would lose all initiative forever.
Gu Chen slowly released Qin Hongyi’s hand and leaned back in his seat.
He looked out the window at the endless rain, at the blurred tombstones, feeling for the first time the powerless sensation called fate.
The storm outside hammered like it wanted to nail the Phantom straight into the ground.
Qin Hongyi’s finger slowly pressed down on the trigger.
Right now she not only wanted Su Rou gone—she wanted to put a ventilation hole right through the center of Gu Mingzhe’s gold-rimmed glasses.
Gu Mingzhe’s arrogant certainty that he held the script made her sick to her stomach.
“Three… two…” Qin Hongyi’s voice was so cold it sent chills.
“Enough. Stop messing around.”
Gu Chen grabbed Qin Hongyi’s wrist again.
His grip was precise—enough to restrain without hurting her, yet leaving several scratch marks on that fair wrist bone.
At 200% synchronization, Gu Chen could clearly feel the frantic pounding of Qin Hongyi’s heart.
The mixture of sour jealousy and sick possessiveness poured over Gu Chen’s recently stabilized gene chain like a bucket of hot oil.
He started to burn.
“You’re squaring off with me over these two ghosts?”
Qin Hongyi turned her head. The violence in her eyes was about to overflow.
Gu Chen didn’t answer that. Instead, he looked playfully at Gu Mingzhe in the passenger seat.
“Snowball really did die, and I really did cry for it.”
Gu Chen toyed with the button absentmindedly.
“But before the old man passed, he had the dog cremated. The ashes were put in a cloisonné jar and personally buried under the wintersweet tree in the old mansion.”
Gu Chen leaned close to Gu Mingzhe’s ear, his eyes as cold as knives in the dead of winter.
“Gu Mingzhe was a coward his whole life, terrified of ghosts and gods. On the old man’s seventh day after death, he secretly pissed under the tree. I pinned him in the mud and stuffed half a pound of dirt into his mouth.”
Gu Chen curled his lips.
“The old man never knew about that. So in the Main Brain’s database, there should only be Snowball dying—no taste of that mouthful of dirt, right?”
The smile on Gu Mingzhe’s face in the passenger seat froze instantly.
“So-called memory backup is just scraping up some leftover brainwave scraps.”
Gu Chen released Qin Hongyi and leaned forward.
“You call yourself a perfect regenerated body? Then I’ll have to take a look at how many parts are stuffed inside that shell of yours.”
Gu Chen acted directly.
His five fingers curved like eagle talons. At 200% synchronization, his speed left only a blurred afterimage.
Squelch!
The sound of blades slicing through leather.
Gu Chen’s fingers avoided the throat and, at a vicious angle, violently ripped open the ribs on Gu Mingzhe’s left chest.
No blood sprayed.
Only a transparent slime with a faint mint scent dripped through Gu Chen’s fingers.
Qin Hongyi’s eyelid twitched. She held her breath.
Su Rou in the driver’s seat seemed to sense something and let out a low growl.
“…”
Gu Mingzhe looked down at Gu Chen’s arm buried halfway into his own chest cavity.
He was still smiling, but the smile had turned stiff, his mouth twitching.
“It’s useless, 001. This body is just a…”
“Just a remote receiver, right?”
Gu Chen’s cold laugh cut him off.
His fingertips rummaged inside the chest cavity, snapping several synthetic tissues, and finally clamped onto a faintly glowing object.
It was the signal core hidden in the heart position.
“Want to play infinite resurrection with me? Cut the signal first.” Gu Chen yanked hard.
Crunch!
The sound of metal twisting echoed through the car.
Gu Chen pulled out a bloody object directly from the body.
An electronic heart covered in silver wires, still faintly glowing.
As the core was forcibly ripped out, Gu Mingzhe’s face collapsed instantly.
Like a deflating plastic doll, his skin rapidly grayed and softened, finally turning into a semi-transparent jelly-like substance.
“President Qin, eyes opened yet?”
Gu Chen lifted the metal heart in front of Qin Hongyi and crushed it in his palm.
Boom!
A small burst of electric sparks exploded in Gu Chen’s hand.
The so-called Gu Mingzhe completely melted into a puddle of foul-smelling burnt-plastic sludge on the passenger seat within seconds.
Gu Chen shook the slime off his hand in disgust.
“Resurrection armor? This thing was just a low-latency signal amplifier a few years ago.”
He casually fished a pack of cigarettes from Qin Hongyi’s chest, bit one out, and lit it with practiced ease.
The sharp nicotine suppressed the stench in the car.
He narrowed his eyes and exhaled a plume of blue smoke.