Today's patrol was over.
After returning to the car, Lansi learned from Carl that Wen Yu had been watching him from inside the vehicle the entire time. It was only after the man in the suit appeared that Wen Yu got out to look for him.
"Well done, Lansi."
Carl spoke while driving.
"You even managed to earn something extra for me."
He was referring to the set of cosmetics Lansi had brought back.
Apparently, the stuff was extremely valuable. Even secondhand, it could supposedly sell for more than ten thousand.
Lansi was speechless. At the same time, he asked curiously,
"The person who gave me those things, I think his name was Li Si… he…"
As he spoke, Lansi carefully glanced at Wen Yu before continuing,
"His boyfriend is called Michael."
"Oh, that's not just a boyfriend anymore."
Carl replied,
"The two of them are married. Back then, their relationship caused quite a stir in the wealthy district."
Lansi's eyes widened in shock. After a moment, he raised his voice and asked,
"Married?"
"Yeah, married. They were both considered exceptional people."
Carl enthusiastically launched into the gossip.
Li Si was a doctor, and his parents were doctors as well. He had grown up in the wealthy district since childhood, a true native of the upper class.
Michael's background, on the other hand, was almost legendary.
He came from the slums.
Because of his outstanding abilities, he was eventually assigned to work for a life technology company that specialized in cultivation research. From there, he steadily climbed the ranks with his intelligence until he finally became an executive.
After becoming an executive, Michael publicly announced his marriage to Li Si, revealing that the two of them had already been together for five years.
At the time, the Survivors League had always maintained a tolerant but indifferent attitude toward homosexuality. Most people still supported heterosexual relationships. After all, reproduction was necessary for increasing the population.
As a result, many people pressured Li Si and Michael back then, but the two persevered and eventually got married anyway.
What was even more enviable was that their relationship remained extremely good. Rumor had it they were even preparing to adopt a child from the slums.
The whole story sounded beautiful, almost like a fairy tale.
Like Cinderella—
No, more like the story of a Cinderella prince.
Lansi frowned thoughtfully before saying,
"I think there's something wrong with that Michael guy."
Wen Yu, who had remained silent beside him the entire time, suddenly spoke.
"There is."
"What?"
Lansi looked at Wen Yu curiously.
"What did you notice?"
"He talked to you too much."
Wen Yu replied coldly.
Lansi: "..."
Was this jealousy?
Meanwhile, the Michael they had been discussing was driving home.
As an executive at a life technology company, Michael already owned property of his own.
He drove straight into the garage. After parking the car, he walked toward a cabinet in the corner. After pressing something hidden on its surface, the cabinet slowly slid aside, revealing a dark room concealed behind it.
Michael stepped inside and turned on the computer within.
"Lansi…"
He murmured the name softly as his fingers moved rapidly across the controls.
Just as everyone said, those who managed to claw their way out of the slums were exceptionally intelligent.
Michael was a genius.
Everyone—including the person closest to him—believed he specialized in biology. In reality, however, Michael possessed an extraordinarily high IQ, and computers were his true field of expertise. Biology had merely been another subject he learned in order to survive.
For so many years, Michael had carefully maintained everything he had built. Now that he had finally changed his fate, he would never allow any accident to destroy his current life.
He began tracing Lansi's movements through the system.
But he found nothing.
Identity chips had many uses. In the wealthy district, they were typically linked directly to personal accounts, allowing people to make payments simply by scanning their chips.
However, Lansi's identity chip showed no spending records whatsoever.
That left only two possibilities—
First, Lansi had been born in the slums and had never used chip-based payments, perhaps never even visiting a doctor.
Second, the chip was fake.
Lansi had bought it somewhere and only recently reactivated it.
Michael recalled Lansi's face.
Leaning weakly against the back of his chair, he felt his heart grow numb.
That orderly soldier—whether judging from his innocent tone or the delicate skin on his face—didn't look like someone who had come from the slums.
Which meant only the second possibility remained—
The identity chip had been bought on the black market.
The thought made Michael deeply uneasy.
Yes, uneasy.
He was afraid that someone would eventually discover that Lansi's identity chip had been illegally purchased, then trace the clues backward and uncover everything that was wrong.
"Lansi…"
Michael let out a bitter laugh as he raised a hand to cover his eyes.
"That was originally my name."
Recently, his competitors had been pressuring him relentlessly. He feared that one of them would uncover this enormous loophole.
If people discovered that Michael had entered the company by stealing someone else's innocent identity, then everything he had worked for would disappear overnight.
Michael dared to use a fake identity chip because he was a computer genius. Long ago, he had hacked into the League's database and created an almost flawless personal file for himself.
But Lansi—
That was Wen Yu's orderly soldier.
Was he also a hacker?
Had he forged his own records too?
Although the black market claimed that its chips could perfectly replace a person's past, the truth was far simpler. If the Alliance ever bothered to investigate the "birthplace" listed in the chip records, every lie would collapse immediately.
Michael began considering his options.
Should he approach Lansi and reveal the truth, making it clear that the two of them were now tied together like grasshoppers on the same rope?
Or—
Should he quietly kill Lansi, just like before?
If Lansi died, then the chip would "die" with him.
And everything would finally be buried.
"Dear?"
Li Si's figure suddenly appeared on the surveillance screen. He had just returned home and was walking into the living room.
Michael snapped back to reality.
His gaze lingered on Li Si through the monitor for a moment before he slowly stood up, straightened his clothes, and walked out of the dark room.
The instant he stepped outside, Michael suddenly felt that no matter how elegant his tailored suit looked—
He was still just a rat hiding in the gutter.
Cowardly.
Fearful of the outside world.
As he walked out of the garage, Michael calmly put his gentle mask back on and entered the house.
Li Si had searched the house once already and was wondering where Michael had gone when he was suddenly hugged from behind, startling him.
"Michael?"
For a brief moment, Michael's eyes turned dazed where Li Si couldn't see.
Then he smiled, turned Li Si around, and said,
"Yes. It's me."
Li Si didn't think too much about it. He merely assumed Michael was in a bad mood. After muttering a few complaints, he let the matter go.
"Oh, right."
Michael wrapped his arms around Li Si again before he could pull away and asked casually,
"I remember you mentioning before that Dr. Murin from the Doomsday Laboratory visited your clinic one day?"
If Michael remembered correctly, the incident was connected to Wen Yu.
Echo was one of the largest medical institutions in the wealthy district, with numerous branches, and Li Si was merely an employee at one of them.
"Yes. He came from Colonel Wen Yu's villa."
At the mention of it, Li Si lowered his voice and whispered to Michael,
"The person who brought Dr. Murin over said he'd been struck on the head. Pretty badly too—he even got a concussion."
"And did they mention what happened to Colonel Wen Yu?"
Michael didn't care about Dr. Murin at all.
What he truly cared about was everything related to Wen Yu—
Especially the orderly soldier, Lansi, who had suddenly appeared beside him.
Where exactly had he come from?
"No."
Li Si shook his head before asking suspiciously,
"Why are you investigating this so much?"
Michael paused briefly before shaking his head.
"Just curious."
"That's unlike you."
Li Si frowned slightly.
"You seem uneasy."
Michael fell silent.
After a while, he gently rubbed Li Si's head and casually changed the subject.
"Loma went back today. What should we eat later?"
…
Inside the Doomsday Laboratory.
Dr. Murin lay on the bed clutching his forehead, unable to stop himself from cursing Wen Yu—and the person Wen Yu had hidden in his bed.
That sudden blow a few days ago had directly given Dr. Murin a concussion.
The injury forced him to rest in bed for several days. When he woke up, he learned that the guards had immediately sent him to a nearby hospital, which only made him even angrier.
He could already imagine how he had become the laughingstock of the entire wealthy district.
Just thinking about it made him want to curse again.
Because of the concussion, Dr. Murin had been confined to bed these past few days and had been unable to participate in the research on the murloc corpse, something that deeply frustrated him.
"Dr. Murin?"
At that moment, someone suddenly burst into Dr. Murin's ward. Stammering nervously, the man said,
"Th-The murloc body…"
Dr. Murin looked at him impatiently.
"What happened?"
"It has embryos in its stomach… and it's still alive."
Before the sentence was even finished, Dr. Murin had already thrown aside the blanket and rushed out of the room.
Since the two murloc corpses were considered the most precious experimental materials, the laboratory researchers did not dissect them immediately after they were delivered.
Instead, the entire laboratory fell into arguments over who should be given the right to conduct the dissections. On top of that, Dr. Murin had suffered a concussion at the time, leaving the laboratory without anyone capable of making a final decision. The entire place descended into chaos.
It was not until yesterday that the researchers reluctantly reached an agreement and finally began the autopsies on the two corpses.
But the results left everyone stunned.
When the mermen had first been captured, the researchers already knew the two had separated due to territorial issues.
The murloc that had gone to the slums was stronger and far more cunning. It had transformed itself into the appearance of a woman in a white dress and used its fragile, beautiful appearance to lure and devour many men.
The other one was much weaker and had been forced into the wealthy district instead.
Because of the strict security measures there, it had been unable to establish a nest. In the end, it was discovered inside Wen Yu's swimming pool.
At first, everyone had been confused by the latter murloc's deformed upper body. They could not even determine whether it was truly a murloc or some type of mermaid. It was only after consulting Old Tang from the auction house that the corpse's identity was finally confirmed.
According to the theories of all the researchers, the incomplete gene chains of the two mermen meant that although they would instinctively attempt to build nests once they entered their reproductive period, neither of them should have been capable of successfully reproducing.
Yet, to everyone's shock, the murloc discovered in the slums actually contained a living mass of flesh inside its abdomen.
This discovery seemed to explain why the murloc disguised as a woman in white had repeatedly chosen to visit love hotels with men.
It had been imitating human lovers in an attempt to mate.
The mother's body had already been destroyed beyond recognition by Wen Yu's nine gunshots. There was no possibility of revival.
And yet, within the corpse's abdomen, there remained a lump of flesh with a detectable pulse.
The discovery both excited and terrified everyone.
The good news was that something had survived.
The terrifying part was realizing just how monstrously resilient the mermen truly were.
No one could imagine what humanity's fate would have been if the reproductive abilities of these two mermen had been fully developed and functional.
By the time Dr. Murin arrived, the flesh mass had already been carefully removed from the corpse and placed inside a nutrient solution.
Ordinarily, that should have stabilized the situation.
But the expressions on the researchers' faces only grew uglier.
The flesh mass floated inside a glass container filled with nutrient fluid. The researchers' original plan had been simple: allow it to survive temporarily inside the solution while another team prepared an artificial womb.
However, something entirely unexpected happened.
The moment the flesh mass was placed into the nutrient solution, it awakened immediately.
It began greedily absorbing the nutrients at a frantic rate and started growing at a speed visible to the naked eye.
By the time Dr. Murin saw it, the flesh mass had already evolved an upper body that resembled a human embryo. Its lower body remained fused together, making it impossible to tell whether it would eventually develop into a fishtail or a pair of legs.
Yet after reaching that stage, its growth suddenly stopped again.
Dr. Murin stared at the pink flesh mass inside the glass container, suppressing his excitement as he began reviewing the experimental data recorded earlier.
Five minutes later, he made a decision.
"Inject it with serum."
Then he abruptly shook his head and denied his own order.
"No. No, serum probably won't work. Inject the special cells directly instead."
The assistant standing nearby froze in surprise.
"We only have a tiny amount of those special cells left," he said hesitantly. "And this flesh mass is so small… directly injecting the cells into it might not be appropriate. What if the body rejects them—"
"Do as I said. Inject the cells."
Dr. Murin raised his head and let out a long breath.
"If it can divide and grow this quickly, then it should be capable of fusing with Nate's cells."
The assistant frowned, but ultimately obeyed the order.
Truthfully, he didn't understand why Dr. Murin was so excited.
Even if the flesh mass survived, at most it would simply become another "Wen Yu."
Which wasn't really special.