Chapter 115: The Sea of Wandering 8
At the same time the underground laboratory was raided, Wang Heng, the boss of Wenhengda, and Zhang Changgang, the elevator maintenance worker, were also captured by the police. Interrogations revealed that Wang Heng knew nothing about the whole affair; he had merely signed a ten-year maintenance contract with Yuanbao Building’s property management, and Zhang Changgang was specifically designated by the client.
In the interrogation room, Zhang Changgang trembled like a sieve, offering little resistance. According to his confession, the other party’s boss, Ouyang Lei, had personally sought him out. The two drank at a barbecue stall, and Ouyang Lei slipped him a red envelope containing two thousand yuan, vaguely revealing that his wife wanted to do some “small business” in a gray area and asked if he could do a “small favor.” Under the triple stimulation of alcohol, money, and being treated like a brother by a big boss, he impulsively agreed.
“I was only responsible for modifying and debugging the elevator for them,” Zhang Changgang said. “Every time I went down into the pit, someone was specifically watching me, not letting me go anywhere else. I really, really didn’t know anything.”
Perhaps he couldn’t say he knew absolutely nothing. After all, those muffled, miserable whimpers would occasionally drift into his ears through the underground air ducts—first seeping into his bones bit by bit, then slowly oozing out coldly at midnight. The feeling was truly eerie. Over time, he felt he had reached a breaking point. So when the police finally came knocking this time, besides panic, he actually felt a subtle lightness of relief.
Sunlight spilled into the bedroom. Zhuang Ningyu leaned against the bed wrapped in a duvet, holding a tablet to read documents. Summer arrived overnight in Jincheng; the weather was already somewhat hot. The window was half-open, and the steaming summer heat from outside was fiercely battling the coolness brought by indoor technology in a small area. Yi Ke walked in with a cup of fruit tea, leaned over, and kissed him on the cheek: “Wake up.”
Zhuang Ningyu tilted his head slightly to dodge. He was wearing earphones, listening to the interrogation of the Ouyang Lei couple in Shanghai. Even though the laboratory had been discovered, and even with the testimonies of the researchers and the elevator maintenance worker laid before them, the couple still stubbornly refused to say a word. Later, Ouyang Lei suddenly had an emotional breakdown, banging his head thud thud against the table, demanding the police execute him as soon as possible. In the next interrogation room, his wife, pale-faced, said, “We confess to the crimes. We admit everything. But we don’t know who the higher-up is. We don’t know.”
“Threatened, I suppose,” Yi Ke leaned beside Zhuang Ningyu. “Didn’t they say their children and parents are living abroad, whereabouts unknown?”
Sacrificing oneself to secure a prosperous and stable life for one’s children—this choice wasn’t hard to understand. But how could it succeed? When love and sin are bundled together for delivery, the transmission chain itself is fraught with unpredictable dangers. The laboratory’s operation required the collaboration of nearly a hundred people, and currently, most of them were detained in the Order Maintenance Department’s holding cells. The interrogator looked at Ouyang Lei and reminded him one last time: “This is your only chance for a reduced sentence. Among them, if any single person talks, in your higher-up’s eyes, it’s equivalent to you talking. By then, your parents and children will truly be beyond saving, and so will you.”
Ouyang Lei’s wife covered her face and wept bitterly.
“It’s, it’s Liu Han.”
The Fu Group’s building was surrounded by police again. However, Liu Han’s office was empty. According to staff, Vice President Liu hadn’t come to work today.
“That grandson ran away.” Colleagues’ voices filled with anger came through the earphones.
Coincidentally, Zhou Lishan, who had followed Wei Liying’s jumping incident by “committing suicide by jumping into the river,” was the assistant to this Vice President Liu of the Fu Group. With such incidents happening one after another in the company, Fu Dong, the group president, seemed completely unconcerned. In his luxurious office on the top floor, he personally brewed two cups of tea for the investigation team that came knocking, bent over, and placed them on the coffee table: “Liu Han’s assistant had problems, and Liu Han himself has problems. I feel both can be attributed to Liu Han’s problems. It cannot serve as evidence that our Fu Clan always likes to oppose the government. Elder Zhong, what do you think? Moreover, when Zhou Lishan ran away last time, you already chatted with Liu Han once. If you had arrested him then, wouldn’t all this trouble have been avoided? Not arresting him then, and now suddenly coming to ask me for the person—I really don’t know where to start looking.”
His features were very similar to Fu Han’s, and his temperament was somewhat alike in certain aspects, such as the identical gloominess. But the difference was that Fu Han’s gloominess always felt self-destructive, whereas Fu Dong looked more like he wanted to destroy others. Sitting back behind his large desk, he continued with a sincere attitude, “Whether you believe it or not, I personally indeed have no intention of becoming an Evolver.”
Zhong Pinghe laughed, nodding: “I believe that sentence.”
When evolutionary drugs were still in the exploratory phase, no person in power would actively choose to risk their own body. But having no intention now didn’t mean having no intention in the future. On the contrary, to safely turn “unintentional” into “intentional,” they would do everything possible to artificially accelerate the entire process.
Fu Dong glanced at his watch and politely stated, “Excuse me, I have a meeting at three-thirty.”
Zhong Pinghe shook his head: “Then President Fu’s meeting might have to be pushed back.”
Investigators handed over a stack of new documents. Fu Dong flipped through two pages, and one photo burned his pupils into a slight constriction. Zhong Pinghe continued, “As far as we know, due to health reasons, your younger brother Fu Han needs long-term injections of a nutritional drug named ‘NeuroX.’ Currently, the production technology for this drug is monopolized by a German pharmaceutical factory and hasn’t been imported domestically yet. However, in the laboratory under Yuanbao Building, we found a large number of empty ampoule bottles labeled with NeuroX.”
Fu Dong took off his gold-rimmed glasses: “Elder Zhong means that because of my brother’s illness, I discovered this business opportunity, so I arranged for the laboratory to mass-produce fake drugs to profit from it?”
“President Fu doesn’t need to change the subject like this,” Zhong Pinghe smiled. “We all know clearly what I mean. Are those NeuroX injections your brother took really still NeuroX?”
Zhuang Ningyu was also looking at the photo of the empty medicine bottles at that moment. In the height of summer, perhaps because the air conditioning was too strong, or perhaps because the neatly arranged syringes easily triggered trypophobia, a layer of cold sweat rose on his back. Unconsciously, he leaned closer to Yi Ke.
According to the relevant researchers, this batch of empty ampoule bottles began to be delivered to them the year before last. The liquid filled inside, besides the imitated original nutritional drug, also had a portion of evolutionary drug added. The amount of evolutionary drug needed to be increased gradually. Currently, twenty-three batches had been produced, and the content of the evolutionary drug had changed from 0.1ml to 5ml. Logically, this had far exceeded the tolerance threshold for a normal non-Evolver, yet Fu Han was surprisingly fine—at least he looked fine.
Yi Ke didn’t know if Fu Han’s not-so-sober brain, which surprisingly attempted to snatch his wife, was due to being injected with the wrong medicine, but it had to be said, Fu Dong really wasn’t human…
Zhuang Ningyu dialed Ye Jiaoyue’s number, wanting Yi Ke to remind her of this matter, but only a busy signal came from the receiver.
According to the plan, the Hua Country rescue team should have entered the Rule Zone by now.
The fierce wind was like a patient with explosive disorder, howling angrily as it whipped the seawater into circles of turbulent cracks. White giant waves rose from the ground like miracles, briefly becoming mountains on the sea before rapidly collapsing and perishing. The cold, fishy water slapped against the face. Qing Gang held onto the railing, choking as water flowed out of both his mouth and nose. Lightning constantly crashed into the mast. All around were extremely dense curtains of rain and black-gray haze. Visibility on the sea surface was very low, and there was no trace of Fu Han or the two rescue teams that had entered earlier.
Just like that, amidst the storm and squall, the Hua Country rescue team lost contact.
Zhuang Ningyu shook his head.
“Normal.” Yi Ke took the phone from his hand. “After all, the two rescue teams that went in before didn’t send any signal out either.”
Zhuang Ningyu had previously executed many missions completely cut off from the outside world. Logically speaking, he wasn’t unfamiliar with this situation. But those were all domestic. Being domestic gave a sense of security unique to being on one’s doorstep. This time, his colleagues were thousands of miles away in Europe, and the signal was lost on the sea surface, making him feel uncertain. So, until dinner that day, he was still concentrating on thinking about the Rule Zone matters, only picking at the stir-fried greens in front of him until a small pit formed, while the Thirteen-Spice boiled crayfish (handsome husband peeled version) placed slightly further away remained untouched.
Yi Ke: “Heh.”
Zhuang Ningyu didn’t know what he was “heh-ing” about. In fact, he didn’t hear it at all, just picked up another chopstick of stir-fried greens and buried his head to shovel the remaining rice grains into his mouth.
Although my wife looks really cute eating, Yi Ke thought, he was actually thinking about other men the whole time! This kind of thing cannot be easily forgiven. So he decided not to use the dishwasher tonight; he would wash the dishes by hand!
Zhuang Ningyu failed to correctly understand this protest. Seeing Yi Ke scrubbing the sink, he thought the dishwasher at home was broken. So he volunteered to find a set of wrenches from the utility room, opened the dishwasher door, pulled out the rack, turned on a flashlight, drilled his entire upper body inside, and started looking for screws everywhere. Yi Ke, wearing an apron printed with the “Good Husband Brand Detergent” logo, stood beside him and took a deep breath: “Get out!”
Zhuang Ningyu didn’t come out, maintaining the ORZ posture lying in the dishwasher, only extending a finger to wiggle it: Don’t worry, I can do this.
Yi Ke roared: “What are you unscrewing? You haven’t even unplugged the power cord!”
Master Zhuang’s home appliance repair career was cut short as he was driven out of the kitchen. But five minutes later, the dishwasher miraculously hummed to life buzz-buzz, proving that psychotherapy is also an effective treatment. Since the dishwashing problem was effectively solved, he should be able to work a bit longer. He slipped into the study and continued reading the unfinished documents. Based on experience, Yi Ke would probably finish tidying the kitchen in half an hour and then walk in with a bowl of fruit. But today was a bit abnormal. Half an hour, one hour, one and a half hours. Seeing the wall clock had already reached 9:30, the living room was surprisingly quiet, and there was no one in the gym next door.
Zhuang Ningyu was a bit puzzled. He pushed back his chair, stood up, and went out to look personally. After searching around, he finally found Yi Ke sitting on the ladder of the suspended bookshelf, holding Hegel’s “The Phenomenology of Spirit” with both hands in a pose of arduous study. That was something he bought during last year’s Double Eleven sale just to meet the discount threshold; it wasn’t within Yi Ke’s scope of interest.
Come down. He crooked his finger at him.
Yi Ke: They must engage in this life-and-death struggle, for they must raise their certainty of themselves, their being-for-self, to the status of objective truth. Heh, didn’t understand a word.
What is this about again? Zhuang Ningyu looked confused. Yi Ke briefly shifted his gaze from Hegel, locking eyes with him over the top of the book. Ten seconds later, he realized his wife wasn’t acting—he really didn’t know why he was angry!
How can this be?
Yi Ke stuffed Hegel back into place, stomped down the ladder thud-thud-thud, and then pointed at his wife with fingers wrinkled from dishwater and slightly trembling because the hardcover edition of “The Phenomenology of Spirit” was too heavy, accusing tearfully: “You didn’t eat the crayfish I peeled for you tonight!”
Zhuang Ningyu had an epiphany, turned around, and ran towards the kitchen. No problem, I can eat it now.
“Too late.” Yi Ke crossed his arms and said coldly, “I’ve already eaten them all.”
A bit stuffed, but it’s fine. This is the anger of the flesh.
Zhuang Ningyu braked to a halt. There was no bed in the suspended living room, but a cross-legged prostrate apology on the spot wasn’t out of the question. However, Yi Ke already had rich experience in this area and preemptively stated: “No!”
If no, then no.
Actually, during dinner, Zhuang Ningyu really wasn’t thinking about Fu Han. Or rather, he did think a little, but purely from a work perspective. After all, it was quite strange for a normal person to inject evolutionary drugs for so long and be completely fine. But explaining this clearly right now might take some effort, and someone was obviously being more unreasonable than thirsty for the truth. So, coaxing him would be enough.
Cough. He cleared his throat silently, reached out to pat Yi Ke’s shoulder, and held his phone in front of him—I have good news.
Yi Ke glanced over: “What?”
Zhuang Ningyu’s Adam’s apple rolled up and down. After building up emotion for a long time, he solemnly opened his mouth and let out a sound similar to a rubber chicken not quite screaming: “Ah!”
Yi Ke’s eyes widened: “?”
Zhuang Ningyu pursed his lips and looked at him innocently. Being able to make a sound was something he discovered while brushing his teeth this morning, but it just sounded very strange, so he didn’t share it with Yi Ke immediately, planning to tell him when it got better.
Yi Ke recovered from the shock: “Can, can, can I hear it again?”
Zhuang Ningyu leaned in to observe first and didn’t find any suppressed laughter in his eyes. So he naively thought the other party might indeed be coming from a medical perspective, and obediently opened his mouth again: “Ah!”
Yi Ke: “Pfft hahahahahahahahahaha.”
Zhuang Ningyu: “…”
Yi Ke leaned against the ladder, laughing so hard the whole bookshelf shook: “Wifey hahahaha… sorry I didn’t want to… can I record your voice… hahahahahaha… don’t go, don’t go, sorry I shouldn’t laugh at you… I won’t laugh, won’t laugh… hahahaha…”
Hugging him from behind, Yi Ke made Zhuang Ningyu stumble as he walked away, both angry and laughing. Eventually, he started laughing along with him but resolutely rejected Yi Ke’s proposal to “record it.” In your dreams.
