The ice crystal dagger reflected a cold light at the opening of the ventilation duct. The mycelium suddenly burst out from the fingertips of Mou Xuan that were twisting the sausage logo, and a dense white network instantly covered the entire negotiation table.
The veins on the back of Chief Qi's hand bulged, and the micro-communicator hidden in the flesh of his jaw emitted a slight electric sound.
"Mr. Qi likes to use nitroglycerin from Factory 201 as an appetizer?" Mou Xuan flicked the label with his finger, and the mycelium wrapped in the debris spelled out the molecular formula of the preservative on the other party's holographic projector. "Twenty years ago, the Hongze Lake dam collapsed, and your ship carrying frozen meat..."
Zheng Moushi suddenly clapped his hands to keep the rhythm, and a nursery rhyme mixed with the noise of electricity filled the conference room: "Barbed wire, sunlight leaking in, little girl is waiting for her parents--" A mechanical spider emerged from his sleeve, and its eight legs were dancing like a puppet.
Chen Yao suddenly inserted an ice arrow into the crack of the conference table, and the cold air froze the mechanical spider along the mycelium veins.
The supply list on the LCD screen suddenly flickered, and the thirty-seventh item, "Compressed Biscuits," oozed light pink icing.
"Lychee essence with nitroglycerin. Mr. Qi still has the skills of a technician in the canning factory." Representative Tao suddenly opened his suit jacket, and the can labels sewn on the lining were oozing ice beads. "Guess how many tons of 201 factory inventory codes we found in the ventilation duct?"
The biochip behind Chief Qi's neck suddenly felt hot. He stared at the floor plan of the cannery from twenty years ago that was gradually taking shape on the mycelium web. The age spots on his Adam's apple twitched and gathered into the shape of the Big Dipper.
The thirty red dots on the holographic sand table suddenly began to rotate counterclockwise, but blue fluorescent mycelium mucus was oozing out from the cracks in the ice at the sewage outlet.
"Mr. Xiaomou, do you know why we chose "Mockingbird" as the surveillance code name?" Zheng Moushi's mechanical eye suddenly popped up an old-fashioned slide. In a battlefield photo from 1943, a frozen soldier was holding half a German can in his hand. "Back then, your grandfather..."
Mou Xuan suddenly stabbed the mycelium into his temple, and blood dripped onto the ice crystal dagger along the white veins.
Chen Yao's pupils were instantly covered with ice. She saw the scene of Mr. Mou's death emerging in the mycelium network - the old man's trembling hands were pointing at the Morse code on the back of the can label.
"The seven-second surveillance video is a gift from Teacher Zheng, right?" Mou Xuan's mycelium suddenly wrapped around the holographic projector, and the surveillance video of the food factory from 20 years ago began to play in reverse. "You deliberately let us discover the thirty bodies in the cold storage..."
Representative Tao suddenly overturned the negotiation table, revealing a material transportation route map drawn with icing sugar on the steel plate underneath.
Chen Yao's ice arrow poked a hole in the route map, and the tobacco components of Chief Qi's special cigar were precipitating from the edge of the hole.
"Twenty-three percent!" Chief Qi suddenly roared and tore off his Mao suit. The LCD screen implanted in his chest displayed his blood pressure value. "Give up this much at most!" The holographic map behind him suddenly flashed, and the area marked "abandoned subway station" was oozing with mycelium mucus.
Zheng Moushi's mechanical spiders suddenly spontaneously combusted, and a nursery rhyme with a twist came out from the dancing flames: "...give me half a piece of candy, and play hide-and-seek under the wire..." The e-cigarette that slipped out of his sleeve was releasing a sedative mist.
Mou Xuan's mycelium suddenly pierced through the sedative mist beads, and the ice crystal dagger drew a resource allocation formula in the mist.
The white breath exhaled by Chen Yao froze out the correction parameters in the formula, and Representative Tao took the opportunity to slap the revised terms on the other party's blood pressure monitoring screen.
"Before sunrise tomorrow," Mou Xuan's mycelium crushed the last sedative crystal, "I want to see the rainbow candy wrapper in the third aisle of the cold storage." He deliberately bit the word "rainbow" to make it sound like the sound of opening a can, and watched with satisfaction as the old scar behind Chief Qi's earlobe oozing blood.
When the alarm suddenly played the "Mockingbird" variations, Zheng Moushi's mechanical prosthetic eye was still recording the action of Mou Xuan wiping the ice arrow.
The mycelium network weaves a new star map on the remains of the negotiation table, and a star representing a subway station is emitting a lychee-flavored fluorescence.
The cold light reflected by the ice crystal dagger had not yet dissipated, but the neon tubes of the celebration party had already turned an alluring purple-red on the roof of the warehouse.
Mou Xuan wrapped the blood-stained mycelium around the foot of the champagne glass and watched the bubbles explode into tiny stars along the white veins.
Chen Yao's fingertips were still condensed with ice from the negotiations, and she was now pressing the cold storage key into the cream cake - the strawberry jam in the shape of the keyhole was oozing with the scent of preservatives that had appeared on the negotiation table.
"Old Tao should wear a tuxedo and tap dance." Chen Yao used an ice pick to pry open the seal of the shipping box. The aluminum film packaging of the compressed biscuits reflected the image of Representative Tao twisting his waist on the dance floor.
The recovered supply boxes were piled up into a steel mountain range in the corner of the warehouse, with blue fluorescent mycelium mucus in every rivet seam.
Mou Xuan suddenly crushed the champagne glass.
The mycelium climbed up the ceiling vents along the amber liquor, where the scorched marks of the mechanical spiders left behind were oozing the scent of lychee essence.
The biochip on the back of his neck felt slightly hot, and the nursery rhyme that Zheng Moushi had hummed during the negotiations had changed its tune and was now intermittently visible in the celebration music.
"The rainbow candy wrappers for the third aisle have arrived." Representative Tao suddenly carried a bottle of champagne and slipped into the gap between the shelves. The candy wrappers that leaked out of his suit pocket glowed like the antifreeze paint of the subway station under the illumination of the mycelium.
He drunkenly pointed at the faint tooth marks on the candy wrapper: "The old man surnamed Qi chewed it and spat it out. The result of the tooth mark comparison is..."
There was a sudden electrical noise from the warehouse ceiling light.
Mou Xuan's mycelium instantly formed a protective net to catch the fallen debris of the lamp tube.
The shards of glass were reflected in Chen Yao's icy pupils - in the refracted fragments of light and shadow, a figure wearing a gas mask flashed past from the direction of the cold storage.
When the music at the celebration party switched to slow jazz, Mou Xuan's mycelium had already entangled the 17th empty wine bottle.
He seemed to be leaning lazily against the supply box, but in fact he was using his mycelium veins to sense the temperature changes in the entire warehouse.
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