Qiu Shi turned his head to look at Xing Bi, not quite understanding what Xing Bi was trying to do.
A live dog—for what?
Qiu Shi had never seen a dog before. He didn’t know what they were actually like. He’d only seen pictures, and he’d seen mutated dog relatives: the symbiotic wolves in Camp 249.
And just thinking about those wolves still gave him chills down his spine.
“That won’t do,” the boss said, his face stiff with unwillingness. “We only managed to get a few yesterday, and that’s it for the whole winter.”
“But your sample pictures use dog legs,” Qiu Shi replied. “Now you’re saying they’re too rare and want to raise the price?”
“None of your damn business,” the boss leaned across the table, eyes narrowing. “You’re an outsider. If you want to leave this place alive, you better watch your mouth and guard your head. Or you might lose it.”
“Local,” Qiu Shi leaned in as well, staring into his eyes. “Don’t try scaring me with this kiddie shit. If I want to leave, I’ll leave. Even the King of Hell would have to clear the road for me. Try me.”
The boss didn’t speak, simply staring him down.
Now was when Xing Bi should have stepped in and de-escalated, but he didn’t say a word—just silently watched.
He had to admit, having grown up among corpses and refugees, surviving countless battles, Qiu Shi was perfectly suited to these kinds of tense showdowns where neither side knew what the other was really capable of.
He genuinely wasn’t afraid to die.
Even though he’d promised Xing Bi that he’d be more careful from now on, at heart, Qiu Shi was still the fearless corpse collector.
People hardened in the crucible of high-stakes life-and-death scenarios had a kind of wildness in their bones that couldn’t be suppressed by the average shady shop owner.
Sure enough, two seconds later, the boss slowly straightened up and folded his arms, watching them both.
“Let’s see the dog first,” Xing Bi said. “If it’s suitable, we can add more.”
The boss thought for a couple of seconds, then reached out to take the small box on the table.
But Qiu Shi was faster. He stood and snatched the box away: “This isn’t your ‘dog inspection’ fee.”
The muscles on the boss’s face twitched violently, and his eyes turned vicious.
“Kid,” Xing Bi called toward the back door before the boss could draw his gun, “come here.”
Both Qiu Shi and the boss turned to look. Qiu Shi had already sensed someone behind the door, but the light spot on the map hadn’t moved. He’d thought it was just another of the shop’s thugs lying in wait.
But the door slowly creaked open, and a dirty child’s face appeared in the crack.
“What the hell are you doing here?” the boss barked, voice low and sharp.
The child didn’t speak or move. Her eyes were fixed, unblinking, on the box in Qiu Shi’s hand.
“This,” Xing Bi rummaged through his bag.
What he pulled out made Qiu Shi want to contact Li Feng immediately and ask why the hell he’d packed such random junk for Xing Bi to bring.
Xing Bi held up a yellow, fuzzy little ball and shook it at the kid. “For you.”
The child’s eyes clearly lit up. Her body, which had been squeezed behind the door, immediately slid into the room.
The boss turned to glare at Xing Bi.
“Your daughter?” Xing Bi asked.
The child instantly froze in place.
The boss’s expression changed immediately. “What are you trying to do?” he asked in a low voice.
To be honest, Qiu Shi hadn’t realized it was a little girl. Her hair was short, her face dirty and yellowish—just another refugee kid, rare but not unheard of.
“This is for your son,” Xing Bi corrected himself and squeezed the fuzzy ball, which made a squeaky sound.
The boss hesitated a couple of seconds, then walked toward the door. “Come on.”
Qiu Shi didn’t ask further, just got up and followed behind the boss.
As they passed the child, Xing Bi handed over the fuzzy ball: “Hide it well.”
The child squeezed it a couple of times quickly and then stuffed it into her clothes.
As soon as they entered the backyard, the stench of blood and decay intensified. Qiu Shi frowned.
The backyard was like a maze, full of one-person-high sheds and narrow alleys lined with iron hooks. Some had meat hanging from them, and the floor was slick and sticky. On the map, he could see a lot of glowing dots, but there were no people in sight.
Now he was absolutely certain—this was a black market shop, and the “fresh meat” here definitely had problems.
What he still didn’t understand was why Xing Bi wanted dogs. If it was just to scout out the backyard, someone with Xing Bi’s abilities could’ve figured it out from the front room.
The boss led them to one of the small sheds and pointed inside.
Qiu Shi didn’t go in. He just looked. It was dark inside, but small enough that the light from the door still reached.
Two puppies—one yellow, one black—were curled up in the corner, trembling hard like they were freezing or terrified.
Qiu Shi stared at the dogs—his first real ones—for a few seconds and commented, “Damn, these things are ugly.”
They really were. The yellow one’s eyes were so small they were nearly invisible. The black one’s teeth were so crooked it looked like its jaw was inside out.
But since they were so tiny, the ugliness was kind of cute.
“Haven’t been weaned yet, huh? Where’s the mother?” Xing Bi asked.
“Who knows about weaning? We just killed the big one,” the boss replied. “You want them or not?”
“Yes,” Xing Bi said.
A music box and a squeaky plush toy for two tiny, ugly, filthy dogs.
As they walked out of the black market with the dogs, Qiu Shi held his arms out straight to avoid the dirty creatures touching his pants.
The boss hadn’t even wanted to trade one dog for the box earlier, but now with just the addition of the plush toy, they got two. Qiu Shi couldn’t help but wonder what made him change his mind.
“He probably thinks I’ve got more valuable stuff in my bag,” Xing Bi said. “And he also figures we won’t make it off this street alive. Even if he doesn’t want what’s in the car, this bag alone would be enough.”
“Why wouldn’t we make it off the street?” Qiu Shi asked.
“Instinct,” Xing Bi replied.
“Your badass bioroid instincts are that pessimistic now?” Qiu Shi said.
“My badass bioroid instincts say the people on this street don’t think we’ll make it out,” Xing Bi replied. “Level up your thinking, human.”
“Then help me out,” Qiu Shi said. “I still haven’t figured out why you want these dogs.”
“For Li Feng,” Xing Bi answered.
“…To eat?” Qiu Shi asked.
Xing Bi glanced at him. “To keep. Li Feng wants a pet.”
“A pet?” Qiu Shi was even more confused. “Yun City wants to raise dogs now? Don’t they already have plenty of chickens and pigs? Why dogs?”
“For fun. Pet dogs,” Xing Bi said. “The old ancestors liked keeping dogs. And cats. And birds. And fish. Anything, really.”
“They had way too much free time.” Qiu Shi sighed, then glanced at the dogs. “When did he tell you that?”
“He didn’t,” Xing Bi said. “Chen Dang asked me to find a dog. So probably Li Feng mentioned it to him.”
“Shit,” Qiu Shi was surprised. “Chen Dang handles this kind of thing too?”
Xing Bi said nothing.
“Chen Dang handles this kind of thing?” Qiu Shi repeated.
Xing Bi couldn’t help glancing at him. “Why are you so slow?”
“Huh?” Qiu Shi blinked, and after two seconds, it clicked. “Shit.”
Two more seconds later, he added, “Shit.”
Xing Bi chuckled. “What’s up with you?”
“You think Li Feng’s brain still has room for this stuff?” Qiu Shi asked. “Besides trying to keep everyone alive long enough to die in peace, he probably spends the rest of his time just trying to get a full night’s sleep.”
“Well, that’s not our problem.” Xing Bi smiled.
Qiu Shi looked down at the black dog in his hand. If its eyes hadn’t been reflecting light, he wouldn’t even have noticed it was staring back at him.
“Shit,” he muttered.
“Still not done sighing?” Xing Bi asked.
“These dogs are ugly as hell,” Qiu Shi said. “Chen Dang’s giving these to Li Feng? You sure he won’t get kicked out of Yun City?”
Back at the inn, there weren’t many people left in the front room. But during their walk down the street, Qiu Shi had already picked up on the same sense that Xing Bi did.
Everyone was watching them. Wherever they went, they felt eyes on them. But not the curious or wary kind strangers usually got.
The people on this street might not all be on the same side, but regardless of which faction, their goal seemed to be the same—kill them.
Sure, this place saw plenty of drifters, merchants, and refugees, and they couldn’t just kill every stranger who came by. But the way these two looked—both the people and the car—was so out of place that they practically begged to be targeted.
No one had entered the room they were staying in. Everything was as they left it.
“No one came for us,” Qiu Shi put the two dogs in a crate beside the bed—probably for storing junk—then went to the window to look across the street.
The people across the way were still there but hadn’t come close to the window.
“There are a lot of bioroids around here,” Qiu Shi said, spotting one standing inside a shop with a “Repairs” sign. The map showed he was a bioroid.
Xing Bi stepped up beside him to look.
The bioroid moved suddenly, raised a hand, then turned and went back inside.
“He’s telling us to get out now,” Xing Bi said quietly.
Qiu Shi said nothing. In the next second, he was already pulling his gun from his thigh.
But it was probably too late to leave.
On his map, Qiu Shi saw the people inside the building suddenly start moving—fast—heading straight for their room.
Xing Bi didn’t say anything. He turned, ran to the door, and shoved the cabinet beside it into place behind the door.
“Across the street—kill as many as you can,” he said as he rushed back toward the window.
After working together for so long, Qiu Shi already understood what Xing Bi meant—he wanted to jump from the window to the second floor of the building across the street.
Even though he didn’t understand why they couldn’t just jump down to the street and get in the car, and had no idea how Xing Bi thought he could make such a wide leap, he didn’t ask a single question. He simply turned and leapt onto the windowsill, then, using the map’s positioning, fired two shots into the window across from them.
At the same time, more gunfire erupted.
From outside the door behind them.
Bullets whizzed through the wooden door and the cabinets, embedding into the nearby walls.
Xing Bi jumped onto the windowsill, grabbed Qiu Shi’s arm, and, as he leapt out the window, hurled Qiu Shi forward with all his strength.
The force was considerable—Qiu Shi’s arm even hurt a little—but it still wasn’t enough to throw him directly through the window across the way.
It was, however, just enough to hook onto the electrical wires strung between the buildings.
Qiu Shi hooked his elbow around one of the wires, while Xing Bi grabbed another bundle beside him. He didn’t know if they might get electrocuted, but he did know this outfit he was wearing was a new product from the Yun City military—it was cut-resistant…
And they didn’t get shocked.
Using the momentum from swinging in the air, they fired several shots through the already shattered second-floor window and jumped into the room.
The moment they landed, Qiu Shi saw four people inside—three men and one woman. Then he felt a sharp pain in his ankle. Before he could react, he lost consciousness.
It felt like only an instant had passed, but when he opened his eyes again and looked around the room, Qiu Shi discovered that he and Xing Bi were tied to two chairs.
The same three men and one woman stood in front of them—one man was sitting, the other three standing.
“You guys are nuts!” Qiu Shi cursed and struggled a bit, checking himself for injuries in the process.
There weren’t any wounds, but he had no strength in his body. Ropes bound his legs, waist, neck, and arms.
He glanced at Xing Bi. He seemed fine.
“Reinforced ones really are different,” one man remarked. “They woke up almost as fast as a level-1 hidden guard.”
“Or maybe your dosage control just sucks,” Qiu Shi replied.
“Funny guy,” said the woman.
Qiu Shi’s map had been turned off, but he could still tell with the naked eye that the woman and the man speaking were humans. The one sitting and the one beside him were bioroids.
“What do you want?” Qiu Shi asked impatiently. “Isn’t this kind of attitude embarrassing if you’re trying to do business?”
“Nothing we can do,” the woman said, walking up to him. “This is the kind of deal you can only make by force.”
“Oh yeah?” Qiu Shi looked at her. “Let’s hear it. I’m curious.”
The woman walked over to Xing Bi and drew a horizontal line across his waist with her finger. “From here down.”
“What the hell?” Qiu Shi couldn’t even control his voice anymore.
“We need a high-quality bioroid,” said the standing bioroid, “from the waist down, for transplant.”
“Excuse me?!” Qiu Shi stared at him in disbelief.
Then he looked at the sitting bioroid. “Don’t tell me you’re… half a person?”
“Yes,” the bioroid replied.
“I…” Qiu Shi was speechless. It was ridiculous. “You’ve got a whole bunch of bioroids here!”
“High-quality ones,” the woman said. “Standard models don’t have enhanced physiology—they can’t meet transplant requirements.”
“He’s not qualified either. He’s disabled,” Qiu Shi said, looking at Xing Bi. “His lower half is a prosthetic.”
Xing Bi turned to glance at him.
“He’s Xing Bi,” the woman said. “A member of the strongest hidden guard team.”
Qiu Shi didn’t respond. He could only say that, back in the day, there probably wasn’t a single bioroid who hadn’t heard of that elite squad.
“You’ve been injected with a drug. Don’t try to struggle—accelerated blood flow under its effects will cause discomfort,” the bioroid said. He likely held a role similar to one of Yun City’s top doctors.
“This is our medic,” the woman added. “The surgery will begin soon. It won’t take long, and there’ll be minimal pain.”
“I have a question,” Xing Bi finally spoke. “Where exactly?”
“Here.” The woman pointed to his abdomen and drew a line from left to right. “We’ll make the incision here…”
As her finger reached Xing Bi’s left side, he suddenly sprang up, chair and all, and grabbed her wrist.
She let out a startled scream and tried to shake him off—but couldn’t.
The medic and the other man both raised their guns, aiming at Xing Bi.
“Try me,” Xing Bi said coldly. A black streak shot up from his neck to his left cheek.
Everyone froze. Even the woman stopped struggling and stared at his face.
The black lines rapidly spread over Xing Bi’s face until it was completely covered. Then, to their shock, the black patterns extended from his arm to the woman’s hand.
“Let her go!” the half-bodied bioroid shouted.
Xing Bi didn’t respond. The medic and the other man rushed forward to pull the woman away, but the moment they touched her, the black lines spread to them as well—like they were alive.
“He’s a symbiote,” the medic said, releasing his grip and pulling the other man back.
“No,” Qiu Shi corrected. “He’s a super symbiote.”
The medic stared at him, confused.
Qiu Shi thought for a second, then used the terminology Song Heng and the others used: “He’s a coal heap.”
Still no reaction.
“Black heap,” Qiu Shi corrected again.
“That’s impossible,” the medic finally understood. “Black heaps don’t have self-control.”
“Super black heap,” Qiu Shi said.
“Let her go,” the half-bodied bioroid said again, this time with desperation. “Please, let her go.”
“Please? Then how about you let me go first?” Qiu Shi retorted.
The man behind him pressed a gun to his neck. “Let her go or I’ll shoot.”
“If I die,” Qiu Shi said, “the only person who can control him will be gone.”
“You’re…” the half-body looked at him. “The kite-flyer.”
“Yeah,” Qiu Shi said. “Now listen. Neutralize the drug. We’ll leave in one minute. If you want her alive, don’t get in our way. Otherwise, we all die together.”
The woman stopped struggling. The black lines had covered her face, neck, and arms. She stood frozen, like a statue.
“Antidote,” the half-body said to the medic.
“We won’t get another chance like this,” the medic replied.
“I don’t care. As long as she lives,” the half-body said. “I never really wanted it.”
Qiu Shi suddenly understood why Xing Bi had chosen to control the woman…
How slow—this human.
“Forty seconds,” Qiu Shi began counting down.
The medic pulled out two syringes. He injected one into Qiu Shi’s arm, then walked over to Xing Bi and looked at the half-body.
“Thirty seconds,” Qiu Shi said.
He had no idea what kind of damage Xing Bi’s control method might cause a human, nor how long it could last. He was just trying to speed things up and get Xing Bi out of that state as quickly as possible.
The medic injected Xing Bi, then began untying Qiu Shi.
“Let her go!” the half-body repeated anxiously.
Qiu Shi tossed off the ropes and stood up. He walked over to Xing Bi and untied him. Just as he was about to form a fist with his left hand to gain brief control, the black lines on the woman began to recede.
Qiu Shi unclenched his hand, grabbed the woman by the shoulder, and pressed a gun to her head.
“If anyone tries to stop us before we get to the car, I’ll shoot.”
The man standing by the door stepped aside.
Xing Bi slowly stood, the black marks on his body fading, leaving only faint traces.
Qiu Shi glanced at him.
“I’m fine,” Xing Bi said.
“Let’s go, sister,” Qiu Shi nudged the woman.
She followed them toward the door.
“Tell the people across the street to bring our dogs to the car,” Qiu Shi said, hearing barking. “Both of them.”
The street was quiet. People either stood or sat, watching. No one ran, no one came closer. It was as if everyone knew what had happened, but none had expected this outcome.
These people were clearly capable—setting up a trap that even Xing Bi couldn’t escape, using a drug that rendered him helpless. This clearly wasn’t their first time. Who knows how many bioroids had been cut in half here before.
Huzi walked out of a shop across the street, holding the two ugly dogs.
Xing Bi opened the car door. Huzi tossed the dogs inside.
Qiu Shi got in too, never lowering his gun from the woman’s head.
Only when Xing Bi started the car did Qiu Shi pull out a suppressant and toss it out the window. “A high-strength inhibitor. Works better than the oral kind.”
The woman looked at the suppressant on the ground but didn’t move.
Xing Bi stepped on the gas, and the car sped away.
As long as the doors were closed and windows locked, the car was a safe house. Still, Qiu Shi kept his eyes on the map until they reached the center of Longtan City. Only then did he finally relax and look at Xing Bi.
“I’m fine,” Xing Bi said.
“There are still marks,” Qiu Shi stared at his face.
“It was short,” Xing Bi said, looking at him. “It won’t cause any harm.”
“I know,” Qiu Shi frowned. “If Curator Wu hasn’t found a solution by the time we get back, I’m killing those two ugly dogs.”
Xing Bi chuckled and pinched his cheek.
“We can’t leave that place as it is,” Qiu Shi said. “We have to clean it up.”
“Let Li Feng and Lin Sheng handle it,” Xing Bi said. “They see the whole picture. They’ll know what to do.”
“I was originally planning to send them to Yun City,” Qiu Shi frowned. “That guy’s body… Yun City can fix it, right?”
“With a backup secondary bioroid body, probably.” Xing Bi said. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Well, you didn’t either,” Qiu Shi replied. “Whether it’s a human or a bioroid, doing something like this is terrifying… not everyone is worth saving.”
“Yeah.” Xing Bi agreed.
Qiu Shi was silent for a moment before adding, “Seems like no matter what, there’s never a perfect solution.”
“Not everything needs a perfect solution,” Xing Bi said.
“Just like how we could only find one dog, and couldn’t guarantee a good-looking one,” Qiu Shi said. “So ending up with two ugly ones—that’s an imperfect but best-case solution.”
Xing Bi laughed.
