Desperate people, accept the seed of my soul!

He stood in front of the dissection table, neither crying nor shouting, but simply etched that word into his mind.

Then came the pursuit in Whitestone Town.

He was conducting experiments in the basement of the bungalow. Xiongbei Company provided the address and installed a tracking device on the car. Zhou Ting and Wang Zhaoping from Chiji threw him compressed biscuits and car keys. They knew in their hearts, even though they didn't say it, that there was a tracker in the car.

The Five Mountains Society's extermination team kicked open the door and rushed into the cellar. He crawled out through the sewage pipe, and while riding a motorcycle on the farm road with his and his senior sister's USB drives in his mouth, he was chased three times.

He managed to shake them off three times, but was caught up each time. Finally, he squatted by the roadside, pried open the mudguard, and found the magnetic locator.

Then came the conversation I overheard in the second-floor corridor.

Agnes Chow said the debt of gratitude has been repaid.

Wang Zhaoping said that each serves their own master.

Fang Li said that this kid was quick-witted, then grinned, raised his gun, and said, "Found you."

Then came the whole truth that Wang Zhaoping revealed after his breakdown.

The three parties joined forces.

Xiongbei Company provides the address, vehicles, and GPS trackers; Chiji provides the personnel and logistics lines; and Wuyue Company transfers the rights to share intelligence and conduct joint operations. The three companies sit at the same table and use him as a bargaining chip to share the spoils.

Jiang Yi said that exchanging himself for Chiji's intelligence control over the entire province was a very good deal.

Zheng Daoyuan said that if he survived to reach the cement factory, he would continue the transaction as usual, and if he died on the way, Xiong Bei would not suffer any loss.

Yan Tingyao personally signed the document, using the basic data of the batch of drugs that his senior sister had participated in developing as leverage, to drag his competitors onto the bandwagon to hunt down the superhumans.

Every single entry is recorded here.

My senior sister's grudge.

The account of being hunted down.

The debt of being stabbed in the back by someone you've known for three years.

The account was used as a bargaining chip to be divided among three parties.

Now it's time for reckoning.

He lowered his head and said to Fang Li, "When you were pursuing me, did you ever imagine you'd end up like this?"

The words fell.

Ability activated.

All the pent-up hatred poured into the cement floor beneath Fang Li through [Molecular Reconstruction].

This time it wasn't the kind of complete collapse that happened before.

Previously, he activated his ability in the second-floor corridor, causing the cement floor to shatter from a solid state into molecular-level powder. Cracks spread forward like living things, and most of the corridor floor collapsed simultaneously, crashing from the second floor into the first floor.

That was an emergency response when fleeing for one's life, aiming to suppress the area and create chaos as quickly as possible to gain a chance of survival.

Now we don't need to run away anymore.

Now he is the hunter, and Fang Li is the prey.

With the prey lying at his feet, the hunter has plenty of time.

The concrete floor began to be dismantled—precisely, slowly, inch by inch.

Fang Li's legs sank into the powdery cement, starting from the soles of his feet.

He tried desperately to climb out, bracing himself on his elbows and pulling himself up, but every piece of cement his fingers gripped crumbled into dust the moment he touched it.

He grabbed a piece of broken brick with his right hand, and before the brick even left the ground, it turned into powder in his palm.

He stuck his left hand into the cement crack, trying to find a foothold. The crack spread out from his fingertip, and the whole piece of cement crumbled like a biscuit.

There was simply no point of leverage to be found.

The powder spread upwards along his calf.

Ankles gone, knees gone, thighs disappearing inch by inch into the gray quicksand.

The powder wasn't inanimate—driven by Shen Hanzhou's will, it wriggled like a living thing, climbing up Fang Li's trouser leg, squeezing into the gaps in his clothes, and seeping into his shoes.

Fang Li watched as his knees disappeared into the gray powder.

His expression finally changed from stubbornness to despair.

He roared and frantically pounded the ground.

His palm shattered the cement surface, sending debris flying, but his body sank even faster.

With each pat, his arm sank deeper into the powder; with each struggle, he swallowed an inch more of the powder.

The bigger his movements, the faster he sank, as if he were sinking into a swamp.

"No—no—pull me out—pull me out—"

His voice had turned into a muffled sob when the powder reached his waist.

The bones in his groin cracked under the pressure of cement debris, his hip dislocated, and the pressure on his pelvis caused him to lose control of his bladder.

Urine mixed with cement powder, turning the gray dust into a muddy mess. The stench of urine and the alkaline smell of cement dust mingled together and filled his nostrils.

Fang Li's eyes widened so much they almost burst out of their sockets.

The blood vessels in the whites of his eyes burst open one by one, his pupils shrank to the size of pinpoints, and he spat out bloody foam from his mouth.

With his last ounce of strength, he roared, "Yan Tingyao will find you—you can't run away—!"

Cement powder was poured into his mouth.

The words that followed were stuck in his throat, leaving only a series of muffled bubbles.

The powder was poured into his nostrils, into his ear canals, and into every opening that could enter his body.

One minute later, Fang Li completely disappeared into the cement powder.

All that remained on the ground was a sunken, human-shaped crater.

Shen Hanzhou looked at the pit and thought to himself: This is the first one.

Senior sister, when he begged you to pull him out, he was just as desperate as when you carved the word "escape" on the dissection table before you died.

Then he withdrew his right hand.

The power was activated again, and the cement powder was recompressed and solidified under its drive.

Molecular bonds recombine, the calcium carbonate skeleton is rebuilt, and silicate fillers are re-embedded in the crystal lattice.

The pit was filled in.

Fang Li was forever sealed in the foundation of the factory.

Shen Hanzhou turned around and looked at the two people on the stone platform.

Zhou Ting and Wang Zhaoping saw the whole scene clearly from three meters away, from beginning to end.

Zhou Ting lay on his side on the stone platform, his face as white as paper from excessive blood loss, and the excruciating pain from his broken left arm caused his body to twitch every few seconds.

But he watched the whole thing with his eyes open, without crying or shouting. He bit his lower lip so hard that blood dripped down his chin onto the stone platform.

Wang Zhaoping completely broke down.

He lay on the stone platform and wailed, his tears, snot, and the dust on his face mingling together and covering his entire face.

He struggled desperately to flip off the stone platform, but his thigh, which was cut by the steel bars, was too weak to support him. He rolled off the platform and fell to the ground, leaving a long, dark red trail of blood on the ground.

He lay on the ground, his forehead pressed against chunks of cement, his voice indistinguishable between a sob and a shout: "Hanzhou! Hanzhou, I was wrong! I was fucking wrong! Don't do this—let me die a quick death—"

Shen Hanzhou looked down at him.

Zhou Ting closed her eyes, her voice so soft it was almost inaudible.

Blood loss was making his consciousness blurry, and every word was forced out from his chapped lips: "When you helped me three years ago... I never thought it would turn out like this..."

Shen Hanzhou turned to them and walked over step by step.

Their steps were slow, and the soles of their shoes crunched on the broken cement blocks, a sound that was particularly clear in the empty factory.

Wang Zhaoping lay on the ground, taking an inch back with each footstep, the wound on his leg dragging a longer trail of blood on the ground.

Shen Hanzhou stopped in front of the two of them.

His tone was cold, but his voice carried a tremor that he had suppressed for a long time.

"I have a question for you two."