Hui Tian Ch53

Chapter 53

He has not been as wise as his mother in this life.

__

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Shen Zhuo sat in silence for a long time, his pale side profile submerged in shadow.

This question was, in fact, very easy to answer.

An ambiguous relationship, a romantic relationship, a special connection built on the trust of having faced life and death together. Shen Zhuo had always been adept at handling the adoration of others, for he possessed a precise and unshakable rationality; he was long accustomed to the fervent, fanatical, and twisted affections directed his way.

Even though this man named Bai Sheng was different, the current situation was, in truth, even easier for Shen Zhuo to handle. A hug, a kiss, some semblance of comfort, and just the right amount of intimacy—any of these would suffice to maintain the intoxicatingly pleasant status quo.

But at this moment, amidst the faint sound of the rising tide in the distance and facing the clear, scorching gaze from above, he opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again.

“…I don’t want to lie to you,” Shen Zhuo said flatly after a long silence.

“From many years ago, I became accustomed to the necessity of constantly facing the worst-case scenario. I had to be prepared for betrayal from anyone by my side—including you.”

“I don’t know what kind of relationship you hope to achieve with me, but there is a distinct possibility that I may never be able to attain such a relationship with anyone for the rest of my life.”

Bai Sheng stared at him, as if even his breathing had come to a standstill.

“If you must seek some kind of public commitment in this life, there is still time to walk away now.” Shen Zhuo looked up and met his gaze, saying calmly, “I’m sorry.”

Bai Sheng’s eyes were deep and cold, revealing no joy or anger; he simply stood there, unmoving, staring into Shen Zhuo’s pupils.

Time slowly settled. Every confrontation from their meeting to this day, every gaze exchanged in the face of life and death, every lingering touch of warmth—all of it turned into fine sand in the void, slipping silently through their fingers.

No one knew how much time had passed before Bai Sheng’s low, hoarse voice finally sounded, unexpectedly calm: “It’s very late. Perhaps we both need to be apart and think things over.”

“…”

“Get some rest.”

Bai Sheng turned and walked toward the door. His spine was straight, calm and dignified, his movements as fluid and decisive as ever, as if he had whisked away all the familiar, burning warmth in an instant. He reached out, opened the door, and walked out.

Shen Zhuo withdrew his gaze the moment Bai Sheng turned to close the door. His fingertips dug deep into the muscle of his thigh inside his pocket, his eyelashes lowered to hide all traces of emotion.

But the sound of the door closing did not follow as expected.

“…Shen Zhuo.” Bai Sheng stood in the hallway outside, one hand gripping the doorknob. He seemed to hesitate for several seconds before speaking slowly: “There is something I have never said to you directly: I love you.”

Shen Zhuo did not move, like a cold stone statue amidst the interplay of light and shadow.

“Perhaps you find it difficult to view me as a lover, but you have always been my lover, and from now on, you always will be.”

The door closed softly.

The distant tide seemed to surge in from all directions, squeezing every last drop of oxygen from his lungs and blood. A sharp, suffocating pain spread from his fingertips to his throat.

Shen Zhuo squeezed his eyes shut and bent over deeply. Countless scenes rose up like turbulent submarine sand, crashing down upon him—

“Come make a deal with me, Supervisor of Shenhai City.”

“You come over and help me fasten these buttons, and I’ll hand these three hijackers over to your Supervision Office, how about that?”

“Your Supervisor Shen, he has me in his heart!”

“I said I can’t watch you die! I can’t do it!!”

“When the wind and waves sweep over the dam and the crowds surge back, only he holds his sword and swims against the current; I am willing to be the shield before him.”

“You are no longer in the isolated situation you were in back then, Shen Zhuo. You have me now.”

…

Shen Zhuo bit his teeth together so hard he didn’t make a sound.

He curled inward with such force that the muscles in his neck and back tightened to the limit, as if he could relieve the sharp, piercing pain in his chest through this action. It was a long time before he took a deep breath, stood up straight, and forcibly swallowed the hot lump of bitterness in his throat.

It felt as if some unknown force had split him in two: one half, cowardly and terrified, curled up tightly, exposing its ugly state as it futilely tried to grasp the sand between its fingers; the other half supported by powerful habits, calm, composed, and without a flaw, like steel armor forcibly holding up his spine and knees.

Whoosh—

The bathroom faucet was turned to its maximum. Shen Zhuo splashed his face; the mirror reflected a dripping wet face, the base of his eyes filled with fine, dense bloodshot veins.

The little boy who would secretly hide away to cry no longer existed. The leader of HRG, now an adult, possessed a body of steel wrapped in flesh and blood. He lowered his head, looking at his palms covered in calluses from firearms under the rushing water, the crisscrossing water trails seemingly turning into blood once again.

It won’t wash off. It will never wash off.

Just like the first time he killed someone.

No matter how cold the water, no matter how many times he scrubbed repeatedly like someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder, the sticky smell of blood clung like an incurable disease. It was at that moment he realized this path had no return and no end. Amidst the roar of the water, he heard the old Dean’s sickly yet firm voice, repeating again and again: “It doesn’t matter. That researcher deserved to die. He betrayed HRG and wanted to smuggle that secret overseas. If you hadn’t killed him, more people would have died in the future. You had no other choice…”

No other choice at all.

“—Sinners! You are all sinners!!” Before the smuggling ship at the dock, the researcher’s face was extremely twisted under the muzzle of a gun, his hysterical roar tearing at his eardrums: “All of you know that secret! The future belongs only to the Evolutionists! Humanity is destined to be phased out! History will record the names of you clowns! You surname Shen, you are destined to die without a burial place!!”

Bang. A single gunshot. The head exploded into a sky of blood, reflected in the depths of Shen Zhuo’s pupils.

The rain poured down. The headless corpse collapsed, blood flowing all the way from the pier into the sea.

Shen Zhuo slowly lowered the gun. Dozens of researchers stood silently behind him. They were like a group of pale ghosts drifting in chaotic times. After a long while, in the storm, Shen Zhuo’s weary voice sounded: “…All of you are the backbone of the ‘Humanity Regeneration Project.’ From the day you joined, your families have been in my hands. Only human nature cannot stand the test in this world. If anyone wishes to betray that secret again in the future, think first of your innocent families…”

No one spoke. Only the raindrops, trickling down everyone’s cheeks and fingertips, dripped into the pool of blood beneath their feet.

“You and I, none of us have a way back. Only death in the future can bring release.”

“A hundred years from now, history will judge our right and wrong.”

The angry sea swallowed the headless corpse. No one ever knew what happened on that dock late that night.

Half a year later, the first phase of the “Humanity Regeneration Project”’s theoretical simulation was announced as a success.

The HRG laboratory had obtained the “Evolutionist Gene Interferon,” and humanity had hope of gaining superpowers through serum in the near future. Although this news was not announced to the public, the high-ranking officials of various countries, the International Supervision Office, and radical organizations—all locked in a standoff—had received the intelligence unexpectedly at the very first moment.

The spark of war was forcibly extinguished; the various forces, eager to try their hand, were forced to dive back beneath the surface.

The nuclear deterrence of the new era was thus formally established.

But only very few people knew that this was not the dawn of a new light, but that a long, point-of-no-return journey had just begun.

…

That late night, the rescue machines were withdrawn. In the ICU, the old Dean lay quietly on the snow-white hospital bed. Several senior HRG researchers kept a solemn vigil by his side. Shen Zhuo sat by the bedside, clutching the old Dean’s cold hand tightly, until the old man smiled slightly at everyone with his last bit of strength:

“Gentlemen… may history… endure…”

“We will meet again…”

“We will meet again someday,” Shen Zhuo whispered in response.

The old Dean looked at him joyfully and passed away.

Outside the ICU, hurried footsteps could be heard—the funeral office staff coming to record the time of death and prepare the funeral procedures.

The old Dean had helped establish two generations of HRG, dedicating his whole life to the Central District Research Institute, with students everywhere and countless scientific achievements. The funeral office had long ago agreed to treat it as a “Joyful Funeral.” There would be a live television broadcast, celebrities would gather, and the ceremony would be magnificent.

But inside this late-night ICU, it was so cold and desolate. Everyone felt as if they were submerged in an endless, icy sea, unable to make a sound.

“…Perhaps they were the ones who were right, and we are the ones who are wrong,” Shen Zhuo whispered, looking into the deep void after an unknown amount of time. “The Earth will eventually belong to the Evolutionists. A hundred years from now, when history is written, we will all be the villains who went against the tide, the clowns playing the mantis trying to stop a chariot…”

“Survival is not a mistake, Director Shen,” a senior researcher behind him said with difficulty. “No matter which race writes the history of the future, we simply chose the only path available at the time. We… we were just forcibly pushed onto the branching path of evolution…”

“We had no choice.”

The doctor pushed the door open, bowed his head politely in mourning, covered the old Dean’s peaceful face with a white cloth, and the body was wheeled away with the clatter of iron wheels echoing down the corridor.

The last witness to the first generation of HRG 30 years ago, the last family member who had taken a young Shen Zhuo from the hospital and raised him, had left this world forever in the blinding white light of the hospital that night.

Perhaps there truly is some kind of destiny in the dark. The first generation of HRG ended with Shen Ruzhuo and his wife dying with all the researchers; the second generation of HRG was stranded right as the old Dean passed away. Every node in Shen Zhuo’s fate was accompanied by parting and death, foreshadowing the inevitable end at the end of the long road.

That journey, counter to evolution, was destined to be a sin for ages. Anyone who stepped onto it could never turn back.

He was destined to walk the path alone.

·

At the first light of dawn, gray-blue light filtered through the gaps in the curtains, revealing the messy hotel room.

Buzz—

The phone rang suddenly.

On the large bed in the room, Shen Zhuo opened his eyes, frowned, and rolled over to sit up, not knowing when he had fallen asleep.

The white shirt he hadn’t taken off all night was wrinkled, his black tie carelessly loosened, and the ashtray by the bed was piled high with cigarette butts. Shen Zhuo coughed twice, choked by the thick smell of smoke that had lingered all night. He picked up his phone and saw the caller: Nielsen.

He answered the call, his voice still hoarse with fatigue: “Hello?”

“Just woke up?” Nielsen’s voice came from the other side of the line.

Shen Zhuo gave a soft grunt, his temples throbbing with pain. He casually picked up the half-glass of leftover wine from the bedside table.

The ice had completely melted into the whiskey, but he didn’t care. He tilted his head and drank it down in one gulp; the spicy liquid finally soothed the burning, searing pain in his throat.

“Regarding the transport of the Evolution-Source meteorite, there is a problem that might need you to take a look at.” Nielsen paused, but didn’t immediately say what the matter was, nor did he mention work again; instead, he changed his tone:

“I heard that you and Antonio had some disagreements in the hotel where you were staying last night?”

With Nielsen’s shrewdness, he must have already investigated the ins and outs. After all, this also involved Antonio losing his right to veto any proposals in Shenhai from now on, and the details of Antonio bringing roses to the appointment last night must have already been on his desk.

A trace of annoyance flashed in Shen Zhuo’s eyes, but his voice revealed nothing unusual:

“It’s nothing. Just a misunderstanding. Thankfully, it’s already in the past.”

“Antonio’s behavior was indeed very rude to you.” Nielsen paused, his tone carrying intimate comfort: “Don’t worry, Shen Zhuo. I will teach him a lesson.”

Teaching someone a lesson like this actually carried the implied meaning of a male asserting sovereignty; it didn’t need to be pointed out to be understood.

Shen Zhuo knew how to respond perfectly to Nielsen at this moment. He didn’t even need to answer directly; a smile and a vague, non-committal nod would suffice, and all remaining political trouble could be left unspoken.

But for some reason, at this moment in this hotel room, in this lonely and disheveled morning, he suddenly felt a deep, heartfelt self-loathing.

“No need,” he said, almost indulging himself with a sense of retaliation, smiling and saying clearly, word for word:

“Mr. Bai has already taught him a lesson, quite a harsh one.”

The line fell into sudden silence.

Shen Zhuo waited with malice for Nielsen’s reaction. He even hoped that Nielsen would lose control and blurt out—”So what is your relationship with that Mr. Bai now?”

But it was a full half-minute before Nielsen’s clearly restrained, calm voice came through the phone:

“Is that so? That’s good. I appreciate Mr. Bai’s correct course of action.”

The repression of the entire night finally found a tiny, insignificant outlet, but it also left him feeling somewhat listless.

Shen Zhuo changed the subject as if nothing had happened: “Do you have other matters?”

“The newly built high-pressure containment vault, prepared for storing the Evolution-Source meteorite, requires a final inspection. I would like to complete it while you are here.” Nielsen was indeed a veteran at playing politics; even if his emotions were a tsunami, he could force them down, and nothing much could be heard on the surface: “The location is at St. Carter’s Fort, sixty nautical miles away. If possible, I will send a speedboat to the hotel pier to pick you up in a while. After the inspection, there will still be time to make it back for the banquet at nine tonight.”

“I understand,” Shen Zhuo said coldly, and hung up.

He washed up and tidied himself slightly, changing into a neat suit. The face in the mirror was as calm as deep water, and apart from being slightly pale, there was not a single telltale sign.

Shen Zhuo stood in front of the full-length mirror, gazing at himself.

He had looked very much like Shen Ruzhuo since he was a child.

As for his mother, Shen Zhuo actually had no memories of her, but occasionally he could feel a trace of her existence from the snippets of other people’s words. They spoke of her with distant nostalgia, recalling her demeanor: how she taught at a university abroad, sharp and acerbic, showing no mercy, humiliating twenty-something-year-old boys to the point they sobbed loudly in class, yet her lecture hall was still packed every time. They spoke of how, when she was forty and pregnant, she would walk briskly past the school with several kilograms of academic materials in one hand, while half the people in the building hid behind the windows to steal a glimpse of her back. They spoke of how she got drunk at a celebration and, on a whim, promised a doctoral student that if he could publish in SCI, she would allow him to touch her finger. That man had fought like a man possessed to get into the first district, but Shen Ruzhuo died in an accident, and that doctoral student had wept uncontrollably at her funeral, wishing he were dead himself.

She had never once looked back at the mundane world.

She had never bestowed a single glance upon the world beneath her for her entire life.

Shen Zhuo rarely went to visit his parents’ graves; after all, it was just a piece of marble and two urns. Their spirits had long since vanished along with their matter. Only that year, when HRG was stuck in a bottleneck, Shen Zhuo was so annoyed that he drove to the grave alone to sit for a while, only to run into that foreign man who was rumored to appear at the grave every year.

After the two stood quietly for a while without interfering with each other, the man suddenly took the initiative to speak in English:

“This is the last time I will come here. I won’t be able to come again in the future.”

Shen Zhuo asked politely: “Have you remarried?”

The man seemed to smile briefly, saying: “I have cancer. I’m dying.”

“…”

“I have missed her very much. Do you know what the greatest wisdom of her life was?” The man’s grayish-green eyes looked at the tombstone, saying slowly: “She never bestowed affection on anyone in this mortal world, and thus she was able to be recklessly happy, never knowing a shred of pain.”

Shen Zhuo didn’t speak, standing quietly in the wind of the cemetery.

“You look a lot like her, child.” The man turned around, staggering slightly due to age and illness, and patted Shen Zhuo’s shoulder. “Bless you. I hope you, too, can possess such wisdom.”

Under the pale blue sky, a cool breeze blew from the sea, and the room’s curtains fluttered slightly.

Shen Zhuo let out a silent breath and turned away from the floor-length mirror.

He straightened his tie, put on his coat, and walked out the door.

Every door in the hallway was tightly shut, and the entire hotel was shrouded in silence. The speedboat sent to pick him up had not yet arrived. The faint, thin light was like a layer of light gray gauze, cutting the wooden floor into ambiguous shadows. Shen Zhuo stopped silently as he passed the door next door.

That door was tightly shut, without a single crack.

In the distance, a muffled tide echoed. All the sounds in the world turned into a distant background, leaving only the sound of his heart thumping against his chest, growing louder and louder.

He turned around under a strange impulse, his knuckles clad in black leather gloves hanging in mid-air, inches from the door panel.

Just a light knock.

Dust floated quietly in the air; time seemed to turn into a thick, viscous fluid, condensing into solid ice at his fingertips. The suffocating, dull pain crawled up his throat again, inch by inch.

No one knew how much time had passed before Shen Zhuo slowly lowered his hand.

In this foreign land, in an ordinary hotel, on this morning that was as calm and unremarkable as any other in his life, he finally realized this thing with piercing clarity. It was like a sudden enlightenment, like a divine decree; even his soul trembled in the shock—

So, I did not possess the same wisdom as my mother in this life.

Footsteps came from the stairs nearby, quickly arriving behind him. They were the inspectors from the General Headquarters sent to pick him up. Two Evolutionists bowed respectfully:

“Supervisor Shen, the speedboat is waiting for you at the pier.”

“…”

That legendary, beautiful, and cold, silent Grand Supervisor stood in the light and shadow, as if he had been frozen there for a long time, before turning to walk toward the hotel stairs.

The two inspectors couldn’t help but peek at his expression, only to see a face that was cold and pale, saying flatly: “Let’s go.”

Inside the room behind him, separated by only a door, Bai Sheng stood facing the door panel, his right hand gripping the doorknob tightly.

Every nerve, and indeed his entire will, was screaming at him to rush out. He could only use every ounce of his strength to suppress the impulse, to the point that his knuckles turned white from the pressure.

Until the familiar footsteps outside gradually faded away, disappearing into the distance of the corridor.

“…”

Bai Sheng slowly, bit by bit, loosened his grip, as if all his strength had been drained away. He sank into a vast, empty void, and it was a long time before he retreated a few steps and sat on the edge of the bed.

He buried his face deep in his palms, his ten fingers digging hard into his hair, letting out a hoarse, burning breath.

·

—BOOM!

A loud crash came from inside the room, as if something had been smashed to pieces.

In the hotel corridor, the secretary paused, asking the guard on duty with his eyes, who helplessly made the shape of “Supervisor Shen” with his mouth.

“…” The secretary understood, his heart jumping with fear as he retreated two steps, not wanting to touch the “Wolf of Odin’s” bad mood at this time.

In the presidential suite, the phone was smashed into pieces on the floor. Nielsen stood behind the desk, his veins bulging as he gripped the edge of the desk with both hands.

He buried his head deep and breathed hard; in the shadows, no one could see his expression. After a full ten minutes, the violent rage was finally forcibly suppressed. Nielsen raised his head, bloodshot veins still lingering in his eyes.

Knock, knock.

The secretary knocked on the door cautiously and said softly: “Director General, you are meeting with Professor Bliss Thorne of the ‘Bishop’s’ Roundtable at noon. The car is already waiting outside the hotel.”

“I know,” Nielsen said hoarsely.

The scenery on both sides sped past outside the bulletproof car window. The staff in the car dared not make a sound. Nielsen leaned back in the passenger seat, his face as gloomy as water, the sentence echoing in his mind over and over again—

“Mr. Bai has already taught him a lesson, quite a harsh one.”

He shouldn’t have been meeting that so-called Roundtable Bishop, and even the so-called awards ceremony tonight wasn’t important. The only thing he should be doing right now was to accompany Shen Zhuo to St. Carter’s Fort immediately. By any means—soft or hard—he should have grasped that beauty tightly in his palm, never allowing any S-rank to try to snatch him away.

But that little wolf surnamed Bai was on the island.

Global media were gathered together, and Cameron would also be representing the Security Council at the ceremony. Both the time and the place were wrong.

Nielsen closed his eyes, clearly knowing in his heart that he had already missed the best opportunity to gain Shen Zhuo during the last “Daydream” incident. And in the time since that incident, his own state had been too off; he hadn’t had the time to spare for Shenhai, thousands of miles away, which had given that Bai Sheng a chance to take advantage of the situation.

His internal organs seemed to contract slightly with the slight jolting of the vehicle; it was from his fight with Rong Qi last time, which hadn’t fully healed.

After that battle, Nielsen would often fall into a state of mental confusion and self-doubt. People thought he hadn’t recovered from his severe injuries, but no one knew that at the end of the battle in the valley, that Evolutionist named Rong Qi, covered in blood and gasping for breath, had laughed:

“—You wasted five whole years just to keep your position as Director General. Did you know that the existence of Evolutionists on this Earth actually has a time limit?”

At that time, Nielsen could barely stand, his entire body bleeding profusely, and thought he was having auditory hallucinations: “…What did you say?”

“A dignified Director General of the International Supervision Office, the No. 1 ranked Evolutionist, who knows less about his own species than a human does.” Rong Qi shook his head slowly, his eyes flashing with condescending pity: “You fools, you haven’t even discovered that the offspring of Evolutionists will be replaced by different alleles as they propagate, to the point where, after a few generations, they will develop reproductive isolation with humans?”

Initially, Nielsen didn’t realize what he meant, but immediately, the four words “reproductive isolation” struck his mind like a terrifying electric current:

“What… what do you mean?!”

“Five years ago, when the Evolution-Source first arrived on Earth, Shen Zhuo immediately notified various governments to collect meteorites comprehensively and quickly proposed a series of lead-canister high-pressure storage measures, effectively curbing the increase in the number of Evolutionists. Over the past five years, the Evolution-Source has almost disappeared among the civilian population. The total number of our kind worldwide is difficult to grow. Even if the number of newborn Evolutionist babies is greater than the number of deaths, it barely exceeds 110,000.”

“Those scientists at HRG have been waiting painstakingly for reproductive isolation to occur.”

Rong Qi looked down at Nielsen in the pool of blood, as if looking at an ignorant creature on a primitive planet: “Our entire species, S-rank and A-rank combined, only totals a little over 2,000. Once reproductive isolation begins, high-level Evolutionists will easily head toward extinction due to a lack of offspring, and the remaining low-level Evolutionists will enter a bottleneck. The gene pool is meager, genetic drift intensifies, diseases run rampant, making reproduction difficult. We will enter a negative growth rate in population without any buffer.”

“The core idea of the HRG project is to use superpower serum as a nuclear deterrent for the new era, maintaining the status quo as much as possible and stalling for time until the Evolutionists on this Earth are peacefully exterminated.”

“…Impossible. Even the elites under the Security Council haven’t discovered the issue of reproductive isolation.” Nielsen asked with a trembling voice: “How do those people at HRG know?! And what kind of person are you?!”

The mountain wind, carrying the cold scent of blood, flashed through Rong Qi’s eyes.

“In my distant hometown, I am more or less you.” He said calmly.

“I am in the exact same position as you, but I made a very wrong choice. If you don’t want to repeat the tragedy, stand on my side.”

“Within a hundred years, humanity and Evolutionists will be completely divided into two species, and two intelligent species are absolutely impossible to coexist on the same planet.”

The special car stopped silently in front of the awards ceremony venue.

“…Director General.” The secretary reminded him in a whisper.

Nielsen opened his eyes suddenly, forcing himself to organize his chaotic thoughts.

Outside the car window was the golden, resplendent front gate of the venue. Some media who had arrived early were already in position, staff were nervously making the final arrangements, and guards were standing respectfully by the car door, waiting for him.

Nielsen spat out a mouthful of turbid air, forcing himself to regain his composure. He lowered his head, stepped out of the car, straightened his silver-gray suit, and strode up the red-carpeted steps.

·

According to the awards ceremony schedule, he had to meet Professor Bliss Thorne, a bishop of the Roundtable, here before the ceremony began, have lunch with him, and discuss the progress and details of the “Proposal for Peaceful Coexistence Between Evolutionists and Humans.”

This proposal had actually been stuck in Nielsen’s hands for two years, because its most important, core purpose was to claw back the benefits Nielsen had dug away from human hands and given to the Evolutionists. Once this proposal passed, the various preferential policies Nielsen had formulated for Evolutionists during his tenure would all be revoked, which was quite detrimental to his upcoming re-election.

This was an open secret among the high-ranking officials of the General Headquarters, but no one dared to point it out to his face. Almost everyone could feel the low pressure surrounding Nielsen.

“—Mr. Director General!” A familiar, smiling voice came from behind.

Nielsen stopped, cold sarcasm rising in his eyes: “Cameron.”

Cameron, in a sapphire-blue suit with a turquoise pocket square matching his grayish-green eyes, wore his usual hypocritical smile as he strode over from the Security Council’s motorcade. The two political rivals shook hands on the red-carpeted steps.

“I heard you are going to discuss the proposal for peaceful coexistence between Evolutionists and humans with that bishop. I really am looking forward to it.” Cameron’s diplomat-like smile was perfect under the media’s lenses; only up close could one see the sarcasm in his eyes: “Isn’t this the very peace you have always touted?”

Nielsen sneered without concealing his feelings: “A war-monger like you, who is so eager to exterminate Evolutionists, shouldn’t be able to understand our hope and longing for peace.”

“Oh—no, no, I especially hope that this proposal can pass during your tenure.” Cameron gripped Nielsen’s hand, his smile intimate: “I can’t wait to see the results of the upcoming re-election vote. I believe your Evolutionist voters will fervently support this proposal, won’t they?”

“…”

The two shook hands and stared at each other. In the distance were the click-click of media flashes, but they couldn’t capture the needles of confrontation in their gazes.

“I am very confident in my votes, just as I am very confident in Supervisor Shen’s stance.” After a long while, Nielsen leaned in slightly and said in a low voice: “Thank you for your concern, my old friend.”

Cameron raised his eyebrows and chuckled: “You mean Shen Zhuo?”

He tilted his head slightly, an angle that avoided the media’s lenses; even a lip-reading expert would have found it difficult to capture the sarcasm in his expression at this moment: “Shen Zhuo has been a lamb lacking love since he was a child, bleating equally at everyone. Are you sure you are the only player on the field?”

“…”

“Are you so confident that his stance will remain firm?”

Nielsen narrowed his eyes, his pupils having turned into a dangerous gray-blue.

Cameron acted as if he didn’t see it and finally stood up straight, full of smiles.

The two were still shaking hands in a pretentious display. Cameron patted Nielsen’s shoulder with his other hand, and no matter how high-definition the lenses were, they couldn’t capture the treacherous and dangerous undercurrents at this moment:

“Bless you, my old friend.” He smiled. “I’m looking forward to it.”

Nielsen narrowed his eyes, said nothing, turned around, and went straight up the steps, not looking back as he entered the main gate.

The terrifying low pressure of the Director General was enough to make anyone tremble. The secretary and his entourage quickly followed with their heads bowed, but Cameron didn’t mind. While standing on the red-carpeted steps to acknowledge the media, he waved over his confidant and whispered:

“Nielsen has been provoked. Keep a close eye on him.”

“Should we send extra people to protect Supervisor Shen?” the confidant asked softly.

“He’s stuck to that S-rank surnamed Bai all day long; even launching a nuclear missile to pierce the island might not knock a single hair off his head.” Cameron mocked. “I never worry about his ability in this regard. Go.”

The confidant nodded in understanding and retreated quickly.

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