Desperate people, accept the seed of my soul!

"Headquarters will be unhappy."

Zheng Daoyuan said in a cold tone, "But the Lieyang Division has run out of troops, that's an objective fact. Dissatisfaction aside, the analysis team must be sent. It's not a matter of saving face now—if Shen Hanzhou produces that batch of drugs, he'll have killed more than twenty-seven people."

The communications officer left the office.

Zheng Daoyuan sat alone at his desk.

He took out the tripartite cooperation agreement from the drawer—the one signed by Chiji, Xiongbei, and Wuyue.

Jiang Yi's signature was still on it, the ink had dried, and the edges of the paper were slightly curled.

"Jiang Yi, you're dead. Yan Tingyao is hiding in the headquarters building, too afraid to come out. Now it's my turn."

Zheng Daoyuan spoke to the agreement, his voice echoing in the empty office, "When we signed this agreement, we all thought Shen Hanzhou was just an ordinary defector technician. The three parties joined forces, shared intelligence, and split the spoils equally—but you died, Yan Tingyao lost thirty-two, and I lost twenty-seven. Shen Hanzhou alone wiped out three companies."

He stuffed the agreement back into the drawer.

He stood up and walked to the map of Lieyang Province hanging on the wall.

Guangyang City, Chenxi City, Baishi Town, and the abandoned industrial zone—these four locations are circled in red.

The circles are connected by arrows to form a winding escape line.

The route starts in Baishi Town, passes through an abandoned industrial area, goes through Guangyang City, and stops at Cuitingyuan.

The next stop is the eastern suburbs.

Zheng Daoyuan pointed to the eastern suburbs with his finger.

"Shen Hanzhou, you said I'd be next. When I was installing the tracking device on the motorcycle, you were squatting by the roadside prying open the mudguard. Back then, you didn't know you could dismantle cement, you didn't know you could dismantle metal, you didn't know you could kill twenty-seven people. Now you know.

His finger moved from the eastern suburbs to the city center, pointing to his office.

"I upgraded the quick reaction team's equipment to its strongest level, and you still wiped them all out. I don't know what I'll have to hold off you next time we meet."

"bring it on."

Shen Hanzhou and Jiang Yubai walked along the alleyways of the old city to the eastern suburbs.

Arrive at the abandoned biological agent plant before dawn.

This is Chiji's secret storage location, unearthed from Jiang Yi's database—the factory's exterior walls are covered in ivy, the iron gate is badly rusted, and the lock cylinder is rusted shut.

Shen Hanzhou placed his right hand on the iron gate, activated his ability, and the rusty molecular bonds in the lock core broke, causing the iron gate to open silently.

The factory interior was covered with a thick layer of dust.

On the old lab bench, there are still chemical reagent bottles that Chiji didn't take with him when he moved away. The labels are faded and hard lumps have formed on the bottom of the bottles.

However, the ventilation equipment and explosion-proof measures are still in place—the joints of the ventilation ducts have only slight corrosion, the explosion-proof walls are intact, and the underground storage area has basic water and electricity supply.

Jiang Yubai looked around and swept his flashlight over the lab bench, the ventilation duct interface, and the water and electricity panel in the corner.

"Ventilation and explosion protection are sufficient. Water and electricity are still available. That's enough."

"Back then, Chiji used this place as a transit point for chemical raw materials."

Shen Hanzhou said, "Jiang Yi is dead, Chiji has scattered, and nobody knows about this place."

Jiang Yubai took out a sealed file folder and portable equipment from his bag and placed them on the old laboratory table.

She rubbed a patch of dust off the lab bench with her sleeve, revealing the mottled, corrosion-resistant surface underneath.

Give me a USB drive.

She said, "With the correct parameters from Yan Hui and my backup data, we can start making the medicine after docking."

Shen Hanzhou took out a USB drive from his inner pocket and handed it to her.

When Jiang Yubai took the USB drive, her fingers touched the cement powder remaining on his palm. She looked down at the fine gray powder embedded in the lines of his palm and said nothing.

She plugged the USB drive into the port of the portable workstation, and the screen lit up, displaying Shen Yanhui's experimental record files line by line.

Jiang Yubai began debugging the equipment.

Shen Hanzhou walked to a corner of the factory, leaned against the moss-covered brick wall, and took out a photo of his senior sister.

In the photo, Shen Yanhui is wearing a white lab coat, looking back and smiling in front of a fume hood.

The edges of the photo were curled and stained with dark red marks—not Shen Yanhui's blood, but his own.

It was from the wound on my finger that I got there after fighting my way from Whitestone Town.

He spoke softly to the photograph, his voice mostly drowned out by the low-frequency hum of the ventilation ducts, so that only he could hear it clearly.

"Senior sister, twenty-seven. Fang Li has six, Lao Yan has one, Jiang Yi has dozens, Cui Tingyuan has fourteen, the Commercial Complex has four, and the Rapid Response Team has nine. I can't count them all. But the accounts aren't finished—Zheng Daoyuan is still alive, Yan Tingyao is still alive. When you were lying on the dissection table, the character 'escape' you dug out under your fingernails wasn't finished. I'll finish writing that character for you."

He paused for a second.

My thumb rubbed back and forth on the dark red stains along the edge of the photo.

"Teacher Jiang is by my side. She's more cautious and calmer than you. You said she's smarter than you. She remembered the words you left her for three years. I've walked the path you left me on to this day. Next is the potion. After the potion is finished, we'll go kill Zheng Daoyuan. After Zheng Daoyuan is dead, we'll go kill Yan Tingyao. Only when Yan Tingyao is dead will your debt be settled."

He put the photo back into the inner pocket.

He turned and walked back to the lab bench.

Jiang Yubai didn't even look up, his fingers rapidly swiping across the screen of the portable workstation, checking the footnotes on the third page for Shen Yanhui's correct parameters.

"Have you finished talking to Yan Hui?"

"That's all."

"Then let's get to work."

Jiang Yubai turned the screen around to show him, "In the correct parameters for Yan Hui, there's a footnote about a correction formula for the rate of molecular bond breaking under extremely low temperatures—when you were fighting the rapid reaction team before, were you slow in disassembling the liquid nitrogen tank?"

"Half a second too slow."

Shen Hanzhou said.

"Didn't Yan Hui tell you that extremely low temperatures slow down the breaking of molecular bonds?"

"She didn't have time to tell me. The week before she died, I was organizing chromatograms, and she was turning off the light in the fume hood. She said, 'Serving the Five Mountains Association is not a long-term solution,' and I casually replied, 'I know.' Later I found out that was the last time she spoke to me."

Jiang Yubai paused for a moment in silence.

She lowered her eyes to look at the footnote on the screen—the formula that Shen Yanhui had marked in red, with a line of smaller text below: "Hanzhou, in extremely low temperature environments, the molecular kinetic energy decreases, and the energy required for bond breaking increases. Remember to correct it."

That line of small characters was written three years ago, before Shen Yanhui knew she was going to die.

"What she didn't have time to tell you, I'll tell you."

Jiang Yubai said softly, "I can recite the corrected formula for the rate of molecular bond breaking at extremely low temperatures. She taught me."

Shen Hanzhou remained silent.

He sat down at the old experimental table and spread out Shen Yanhui's correct parameters and Jiang Yubai's backup data.

Two different handwriting styles are intertwined on the yellowed printing paper—Shen Yanhui's blue ballpoint pen handwriting is neat and tight, and each chemical formula is marked with reaction conditions and yield.

Jiang Yubai's black pen handwriting was more illegible, but the supplementary experimental conditions annotations were accurate to two decimal places.

"I owe Yan Hui this debt for three years."

Jiang Yubai said, pointing his finger to a line of reaction equations written by Shen Yanhui, "Now start paying back."