Chapter 154 Painted Body Swallowing Charcoal (3)
Seeing that the elevator had arrived, she quickly slipped into Weston's office.
The large office was cluttered with miscellaneous items, and papers were piled crookedly on the floor, filling the room to the brim. There was hardly any room to walk. The man leaned against the sofa, propping up his glasses, which were chained to his ears. His face also had an unhealthy tinge.
Weston turned his head, his deep green eyes looking at her, the lenses gleaming in the sunlight. He looked more tired than she had imagined. His expression naturally gave off a slightly unpleasant feeling, but it had no effect on Shu Ningmiao.
She skipped over the man on the sofa, omitting the formalities, and sat down directly at the desk.
Seeing that she didn't intend to greet him, Weston walked over. Only when the shadow fell behind her could one tell that he was quite large. The man's pale hand rested on the table, and he tapped lightly to unlock the desktop terminal.
"It's just like your own office, Miss Shu Ningmiao."
"What's yours is mine." Shu Ningmiao stretched out her arm and pressed it on the table, leaned back, and rested her head on the pillow, silencing him with a single sentence: "I paid for it."
The clear sunlight shone on her face, and her voice was hoarser and more tired than usual.
“In that case, why not make the most of it?” Weston took off his glasses, leaned closer to her and bowed slightly: “Coming to the Union Building for an internship at this time, it seems I forgot to fix your brain when I treated you.”
Shu Ningmiao automatically filtered out his cold words, pretending not to hear them at all.
"You don't believe me..." He paused, as if he had just scrutinized her behind his glasses: "You insist on getting yourself involved in this mess?"
Shu Ningmiao controlled the terminal, listening intently to him speak, and didn't reply for a long time.
Weston pressed his temples: "Speak."
Shu Ning gracefully bent her arm and calmly replied, "First, to make it easier for me to meet you; second, I need to find a way to get close to Lucico and learn about the latest news from Intori."
She had already given him the information, so what reason did she have not to trust him? She was not a professional researcher and was not familiar with Lanxi's research. To continue following this clue, she needed Weston's assistance.
In any case, Weston is her best ally at the moment.
"It's mainly for Shu Changyan, right?" He didn't move, and after a long while, he moved his lips and said in a voice that even she couldn't hear.
"What?" Shu Ningmiao frowned.
Weston straightened up, looked down at her, and mocked her as usual. Shu Ningmiao looked up at him, but he quickly turned his gaze back to the terminal: "Nothing."
She wasn't so easily fooled; she was still keeping an eye on him.
“Don’t look at me… I made a digital copy of what you gave me—encrypted and saved. Move your hand down; it’s in that physical chip.”
Shu Ningmiao finally let him go and turned her gaze back. As the chip was inserted, the terminal displayed the message "Reading in progress".
Weston clicked his tongue very softly and changed the subject: "The entire document is written in Old Pinhian, but it's stamped with the National Research Center's seal at the end. Did you bring this out from that research center underwater in Gabor?"
Shu Ningmiao was not surprised. There was no reason why Weston would not know what she could find out. When she handed the information to him, she had already tacitly approved of Weston's interference.
She moved the mouse: "What's inside? Have you finished translating it?"
"The first fourteen pages have been translated so far."
Once the progress bar is complete, the terminal displays the scanned data page.
He leaned over and tapped the terminal with his fingertip: "But I've also looked at the rest of the content. All the data in this folder you brought out comes from the same experiment, and the person in charge of the experiment is Lan Xi."
Weston repeated the name Lanxi, his Gupigne was standard, and the syllables of Lanxi sounded very elegant in his mouth.
“I checked all the main researchers at the research center, and there’s no trace of this name.” Weston’s lips curled up with interest as he said this: “But how could someone who has led such a complex experiment be an ordinary person who can’t even leave a name behind—it can only have been deliberately erased.”
Shu Ningmiao rested her chin on her hand and nodded slightly, supporting his point of view. According to the timeline she deduced, after Wei Shengqianheng's death, Lanxi continued to research Pandora and Manra disease until he disappeared at the experimental base in Pingyi.
Before Lanxi disappeared, he was in normal contact with Edwina, and neither of them mentioned the council purge. It is likely that what he did with Weisheng Qianheng was unrelated.
If there is any other reason for Pigne to erase Ransich, it can only be the experiments Ransich conducted.
A memory suddenly flashed through Shu Ningmiao's mind.
"Is it because of human experimentation?"
Weston raised an eyebrow: "I suspect so."
Shu Changyan had told her that six years ago, former minister Sun Yucheng had rebelled and restarted an abandoned base. Later, he was noticed by Pinheit for human experimentation and was eventually purged.
She captured the taboo keyword "human experimentation".
Sun Yucheng was controlled by Wei Shengqianheng, but Wei Shengqianheng was illiterate and had no scientific research spirit before his death—so it makes sense that he controlled Sun Yucheng in an attempt to continue Lanxi's research.
"So, is his experiment aimed at curing Manra disease?" She glanced at the data; the changes were too subtle for her to discern anything particularly significant at the moment. However, Edwina's letters mentioned that Lanxi had been working tirelessly on Manra disease, so the experiment's purpose was unlikely to be anything else.
“It’s possible, but it’s only a small part of the data, and I can’t say for sure,” Weston pointed out to her. “Without the first part of the data, I can’t see the subjects’ original physical data, and I don’t know if they had Manla disease.”
Shu Ningmiao tried to deduce: "Apart from Manla disease, I can't think of any other reason why humans must be used as test subjects."
"These twenty-five pages contain physical data of seven organisms, not just humans."
Shu Ningmiao's eyes widened slightly.
"To be precise, there were only two humans among them; the rest were marine creatures. The first fourteen pages that I translated are the reports of the two human subjects."
Weston’s serious voice came from above her head: “One of the experimental variables is a substance with an irregular code that I can’t find—it may have been named by himself—that coexists in the subjects’ bodies through injection.”
Injection... Could the inspiration for Weisheng Qianheng's control over Shi Yu have come from him?
Shu Ningmiao's brows furrowed more and more tightly.
"So... what changes occurred in these organisms after the injection?"
“Based on the data from the subjects,” Weston said, “their physical indicators are trending towards the normal range, hemoglobin levels have rebounded, and even C-reactive protein levels are decreasing.”
Is this a good thing?
“Look.” Weston quickly flipped to the last page, his fingertip tracing the date: “On October 7th, he maintained near-standard physical indicators, but on October 8th, his diastolic blood pressure had completely disappeared. In other words, both human subjects died suddenly and without warning on the last day. This experiment was actually a failure.”
Shu Ningmiao stared silently at the terminal screen, lost in thought.
“Whatever his purpose, this operation violates research norms.” Weston narrowed his eyes. “...So I roughly believe this is the reason why Pinnechs banned it?”
"Something's not right," Shu Ningmiao suddenly said as she approached the terminal screen.
“Something’s not right?” Weston followed her gaze: “The other creatures didn’t die? But the special protection clause only applies to humans.”
“No,” she said. “It’s the date.”
Shu Ningmiao stretched out her fingertips and gently stroked the date recorded on the last page. For experiments, time is the most unalterable and indispensable element.
"The last subject...the date of death."
Weston stared at the date on the report and read it aloud: "October 8, 381".
Before 347 years had passed, an accident occurred at the Pingyi base.
The letters left by Edwina all indicate that Lanxi disappeared in Pingyi in the same year and has never been seen since.
"Lanxi disappeared in 347." Shu Ningmiao's heart pounded violently.
Memories, like dust stirred up by these numbers, float one by one from my mind.
"How do you know when he disappeared?" Weston immediately grasped the key point: "It's not surprising. His disappearance might be faked, perhaps to evade ethical scrutiny."
"Are you an idiot?" Shu Ningmiao moved closer to him, raised her hands and pressed his cheeks together, "He and Edwina were contemporaries, and he's over a hundred years old by the time he's lived for 381 years!"
Weston’s pale face quickly regained color. He pried her hands apart and grabbed her wrists tightly: “Then someone is impersonating him. It’s impossible that he managed to bypass all the coastal defenses and infiltrate the base with a catheter inserted.”
“No,” Shu Ningmiao said firmly.
When she saw the data, her first reaction was that Wei Shengqianheng had tampered with it, but the signature of the person in charge after the date was exactly the same as the one she had seen in the photos and portraits, and it was in Lanxi's handwriting: "I have seen his signature, this is his signature."
Weston's expression calmed down a bit, and he said calmly, "You'd rather believe that a superhuman old man who's over a hundred years old flew through the air and recorded this data than believe that there's another person in the world as bored as you to sneak into this abandoned base."
Shu Ningmiao did not reply to him.
Wei Shengqianheng, by using Sun Yucheng's body, merely organized researchers to continue Lanxi's experiments, indicating that Wei Shengqianheng may not have understood these studies at all, let alone personally participated in them. The only one who was persistent in observing the experimental subjects and signing their names was likely Lanxi himself.
Lanxi is very likely still alive, at least until 381 years later.
Why did he return to Gab to observe former subjects and record this data? Why did he leave no trace after so many years?
If Lanxi were still alive, would Weisheng Qianheng know?
Wei Shengqianheng arrived at Gab's base before her. If he saw these documents, there's no reason he wouldn't have noticed something amiss.
Have they been in contact?
She didn't know.
Lanxi's position.
She was completely unaware.
Shu Ningmiao's lips were tightly closed. Weston, seeing her mind in such a state of confusion, gently pushed her head.
Weston glanced out the window: "Afternoon tea time is over."
Shu Ningmiao subconsciously took a step.
Weston called out to her.
“If you insist that this ‘Lanxi’ is still alive,” Weston said, arms crossed. He didn’t know why she was worried, but he knew what she was worried about. “There’s no need to worry too much. He has lived peacefully and quietly for hundreds of years. Why would you want to break it now?”
His words instantly awakened her, and those chaotic thoughts temporarily disappeared.
Shu Ningmiao suddenly turned around after pressing the elevator button.
"Thanks."
Weston looked at her, his thoughts drifting away. Shu Ningmiao had thanked him many times, sometimes jokingly, sometimes perfunctorily.
He watched her grow from the academy to higher places, and she was no longer the same person he had met when they first met. Her arrogance and ego had been honed into a more refined and hidden character. He actually thought it was not bad that she was always bossy and out of touch with reality.
He knew earlier than she did that the end of growing up is exhaustion and numbness.
Inside the elevator.
Shu Ningmiao stared blankly at the elevator screen, her fingers clenched. The elevator, which was supposed to go down, suddenly changed direction and went straight up to the top floor.
She didn't know that the elevators in the Union Building had priority, and that other floors had special privileges that prevented people from leaving midway—she didn't want to run into anyone, no matter who it was.
The elevator stopped at the floor where the passengers' lounge was located, and the door opened with a ding.
No wonder...it has such a high priority.
She stood in the corner with her head down and arms crossed, glancing at the tall shadow cast on the floor.
The other person's gaze lingered on her for a long time before they asked in surprise, "What are you doing here?"
Shu Ningmiao looked up and was greeted by a head of dazzling blonde hair, styled with hair gel, like a proud lion standing tall.
She looked at Lux, then at the floor.
This is definitely the floor.
She heard her own voice, almost devoid of emotion: "Have you become an agent?"
Lux's handsome, masculine face now seemed somewhat guilty, and he tried to lighten the mood with a joke: "Why did you stop calling me teacher so soon?"
Shu Ningmiao didn't say anything.
"Which floor did you originally want to go to?" Lux looked at the elevator screen, glanced back at Shu Ningmiao, and explained, "I'm not an operator yet, I'm a reserve, a reserve, but it should be soon."
It will be soon. Once those executors in Intoli die, a position will be available for him to be promoted.
Shu Ningmiao remained silent, and the elevator was deathly quiet.
Lux kept his head down, his hand clenched tightly on the elevator door, slowly sliding down: "Are you blaming me?"
His voice echoed in the empty elevator, intertwining with his boastful words to Lin Shengyi back then.
He said that Lin Shengyi and his father were cowards who sold war and slick, opportunistic businessmen.
He said he was born in a heroic era and was willing to give his life to become a hero and join the Enforcers.
After a moment of frozen silence, Shu Ningmiao's voice was incredibly gentle: "No, I just feel that you and your father are no different."
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
