Chapter 48

Xiao Shengyun returned home full of questions, but when he got to his door, he remembered that he had run out of drinks, so he turned and headed towards the supermarket.

He absentmindedly took the items to pay, but there were many people and the line was very long.

The people next to him seemed anxious, shouting and pushing forward, which caused him to slip and drop what he was holding.

It was caught quickly by one hand.

"Thank you." Xiao Shengyun hurriedly apologized, but fell silent when he saw who it was.

"What a coincidence." It was Zhou Zhi. He was wearing a black cashmere coat today, with half his face buried in his scarf. Xiao Shengyun could only recognize him by his deep, still eyes.

It's not really a coincidence. The large supermarket at the entrance of the community has a wide variety of products, and the prices are reasonable. It has almost monopolized the business in the area, and the residents of the community usually come here to shop.

"I didn't have much work today, why are you going home so early?" Xiao Shengyun asked, looking at the sunset outside.

“Many.” Zhou Zhi’s voice was muffled by the scarf.

"So you actually abandoned your job?"

:

"Sleepy."

However, Dean Zhou seemed a bit off today. He's usually very serious and methodical, but today the payment code took forever to load.

"I'll pay, let's pay together." Seeing that the cashier was in a hurry, Xiao Shengyun simply paid the bill together.

It wasn't until he sensed the concentration of the source essence within Zhou Zhi's body that he realized what had happened.

The source nucleus is a storage and regulator of source matter, but once the balance of this regulation is broken, the source matter in the body will rise rapidly.

Dean Zhou is only human and deals with pollutants every day. Even if he ate antagonists every day, he couldn't suppress so much pollution.

"You motherfucker..." Xiao Shengyun was both anxious and angry, and he couldn't care less about the fact that the person in front of him looked very sweet and delicious.

When the pollution concentration reaches a certain level, a person's consciousness will become blurred, and Dean Zhou has clearly reached the early stage of the complication.

He held the person's hand with his left hand and carried groceries with his right, staggering to Zhou Zhi's door. Fortunately, the door had fingerprint recognition.

Zhou Zhi felt as if his head was being pricked with needles, just like when he was drunk. He could see and hear everything happening around him, but his body was completely out of his control.

His last conscious thought was of Xiao Shengyun carrying him into the house.

His chin rested on Xiao Shengyun's shoulder, and he could see the other's earlobe and profile, as well as the scent of lemon shampoo.

It seems like every time I run into him, I end up looking rather disheveled.

Zhou Zhi thought vaguely, and the sense of security that arose from the bottom of his heart made him involuntarily close his eyes.

"Hey." Xiao Shengyun tossed the person onto the sofa and waved in front of the person's tightly closed eyes.

The black pollution kept overflowing, but it was absorbed by the working source core. The rest flowed into the limbs and bones, gradually precipitating on the skin.

Some black, thorn-like patterns gradually appeared on Zhou Zhi's skin, a symptom of the overflow of source essence.

Isn't this the opportunity you've been waiting for?

A voice appeared in Xiao Shengyun's mind.

But those patterns were extremely glaring.

With the food right in front of him, Xiao Shengyun took off his scarf, revealing faint blue veins on his neck.

But he just squatted down, staring blankly at the patch of skin with its patterned welts.

Is it worth it?

Humans cannot even accommodate different types of blood, so how could they accommodate a completely different form of energy?

He recalled the patients he saw when he worked in the hospital: their intense pain, drug rejection, and physical deformities—any one of these could be excruciating.

However, most of the time, Zhou Zhi behaved just like an ordinary person.

It even makes people forget that he is also a polluter.

Xiao Shengyun felt like he understood, but also like he didn't.

He gently scratched that patch of skin, his movements very light, as if he were handling a piece of porcelain.

The blood containing the impure source substance flowed out and was completely sucked away.

He had finally tasted the food he had been longing for, but why did he feel so sad? He stared blankly at the pale face and, as if possessed, bent down.

When Zhou Zhi woke up, all he saw was a pitch-black night sky outside the window. The room was quiet, and the sofa, table, and television were all bathed in warm yellow light.

There were still the things he bought by the door, and next to them was a small box of carbonated drinks.

Perhaps someone forgot when they left in a hurry.

He sat there blankly for a while, his fingertips tracing the slightly itchy side of his neck, where there was a small wound that had already scabbed over.

Xiao Shengyun stayed in the temporary dormitory of the Operations Department for the next few days, but he wasn't quite sure what he was hiding from.

It seemed as if some monstrous beast lurked in that neighborhood, making him afraid to even take a step closer.

There were still no clues about Shen Yao's disappearance. After Huang Yu was discharged from the hospital, they went to investigate Shen's neighbors, hoping to find some clues.

“It’s normal, I can’t think of anything special about it.” Their first question was to the neighbor who had filed the report.

“Mr. Shen is very busy with work, leaving early and returning late every day. People like us, who earn half the income, are on call 24 hours a day, and so is my husband. Mrs. Shen stays at home to pick up and drop off the children. To be honest, when I first saw her, I thought she was a professor or a scientist. She has a very special temperament.” The neighbor is also a full-time housewife, dressed elegantly. When the action department found her, she was at home playing mahjong with a group of girlfriends.

Perhaps because the group of young ladies and wives were unaware of their identities, they left laughing and joking. One of them even pinched Xiao Shengyun's arm with her hand painted with red nail polish, and was then pulled by the sleeve and seen out the door by him.

"You two should be quite familiar with each other, right? Your children are all in the same school and you have a lot of free time. Madam Shen hasn't participated in any of your... uh, gatherings?" Xiao Shengyun asked.

“She never does; she always goes alone. I’ve asked her several times, and she always refuses,” the neighbor said helplessly.

“However,” she suddenly remembered something, “a month ago I heard arguing across the street. This neighborhood is expensive, but the soundproofing isn’t very good, or maybe they were just being too loud.”

That is indeed a point of suspicion.

"The next day I saw that Madam Shen had injuries on her face. She said she had accidentally bumped into something, but who could believe that? It must have been her hypocritical husband who abused her!"

The neighbor seemed very angry.

"And then what?"

"That's all. I told you I wasn't familiar with her. How could outsiders like us interfere in this kind of thing? But she's really pitiful. She left us so young. What will Yao Yao do all by herself now?"

Everything seemed shrouded in mystery.

"We still have no clues. We can only use the backtracking again in a few days to see if we can find anything."

The group of people sighed in unison.

bite-

It's news from Ye Ting.

Back at the operations center, a new clue was found on the paper.

...

"Hey, did you hear? Chen Ming is dead."

"Did he die because of... or was it an accident?"

"I've disliked that kid for a long time."

When Lin Mo arrived at the laboratory, the researchers were discussing something. When he heard a familiar name, his heart skipped a beat.

Chen Ming was the one who asked him to clean the lab that day.

Although he didn't have a good impression of Chen Ming, how could a perfectly healthy person suddenly die after just a few days?

Could it be related to the clump of fungus I was cultivating? The blood-red mycelium flashed through my mind.

Lin Mo's heart pounded, but he quickly dismissed the idea. As a biology major, he knew that most pathogenic fungi cause death through infection, and there were very few large fungi with abundant hyphae among pathogenic bacteria.

However, when he arrived at the door of the A18 laboratory as usual, he found that the door was locked.

"Xiao Lin, you don't need to work today. We're conducting an experiment on sample number 45. We forgot to let you know," a senior student in the lab replied when Lin Mo asked.

Sample number 45 contains that clump of fungus.

"Experiment? What are you going to do to it?" Lin Mo blurted out.

Realizing he had been a bit too excited, he added, "Then, senior brother, when can I continue recording?"

"About a week later. If you're busy at school these days, you don't need to come here."

Lin Mo nodded and packed his things.

He heard the sound again just as he reached the top of the stairs.

"Chen Ming went to Laboratory A18 despite the big boss's orders."

"You mean the one that released...?"

"Yes, it seems that thing has been moved to the sixth floor now."

Sixth floor...

Lin Mo stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the sixth floor.

There are about thirty laboratories on each floor. He walked along the corridor one by one, but many of them were locked and he couldn't get in.

There was another staircase ahead, and Lin Mo was somewhat disappointed.

I can't quite put my finger on where this feeling comes from; maybe it's just that I'm not used to not having a safe space to confide in.

A familiar scent.

In the pitch-black room, Number 45, curled up, smelled a familiar scent—it was that human.

Its body is now as big as half a room.

The mycelium flowed towards the door crack like a stream.

The surveillance camera in the corner of the corridor flickered slightly, and everyone could see everything.

"Teacher, is it really appropriate for us to use this ordinary human as the vessel for Number 45?" The man frowned as he looked at Lin Mo's thin and frail back in the monitor.

"If you can be its carrier, No. 45 can also be used by you."

The screen's light flickered, illuminating the old man's graying temples.

"The outcome of this project is not to test how strong No. 45 is, but to test the extent to which pollutants can achieve intelligence and results."