Chapter 78 – Experimental material, acquired

Su Lifeng ran outside the Zelong Trading building and looked left and right. Sure enough, Qin Moyun was nowhere to be seen.

Still, he had not come away completely empty-handed…

Su Lifeng glanced at the military dagger in his hand. It was smeared with blood, and a segment of Black Thread clung to it. He picked the Black Thread off and slipped it into his pocket. Seeing that no one was paying attention, he suddenly ducked into a nearby strip of landscaping.

“Something about her combat ability feels wrong. She doesn’t seem like a normal Xenospecies above F-class.”

Although Qin Moyun had given him an intense sense of danger when she transformed, her stamina had drained far too quickly. But Su Lifeng also knew that even if Qin Zelong had not blocked that blow just now, he might still not have been able to kill Qin Moyun on the spot.

That mismatch between her class and her actual strength might be the reason she had tricked so many humans into coming here, preparing to absorb them…

Su Lifeng had a feeling that if he could figure this out, he might be able to understand what Ren Xiaoying was planning now.

He did not have the strength to fight every Xenospecies out there. But the threats hiding in Ningnan, hiding right beside him, were not something Su Lifeng could pretend not to see.

“Ah! Run! Get out of this damned place!”

“Call the police! Hurry, call the police!”

“What were those things…? The world is ending, waaah…”

Over a hundred people fled madly out of the building. Most of them did not feel their bodies go weak until they had rushed more than a hundred meters from the entrance. Then they collapsed to their knees, crying and screaming. But even after falling, terror drove them to prop themselves up and keep crawling to their feet, some even scrambling on all fours, desperate to put as much distance as possible between themselves and that place.

They had survived a catastrophe. A true catastrophe.

If not for that monster with blood-colored wings, everyone there would probably have been sucked into dried corpses.

Fang Li also ran out behind the crowd, her gaze constantly searching among the people ahead.

She did not dare look closely at the bodies. She hoped to spot that young man among the survivors.

“If only I could say thank you to him…” Fang Li thought, worried at the same time. “I don’t see him… He couldn’t have gotten into trouble, could he?”

Just as she was anxiously looking around, she suddenly caught sight of a figure in the distance.

The figure seemed to have just emerged from the landscaping. His clothes and appearance had changed, but the side of his face she glimpsed looked somewhat similar to that young man’s.

After he appeared, he walked straight ahead along the path without looking back. Fang Li had only chased after him for a couple of steps and called out, “Hey,” when another figure patted her on the shoulder.

Fang Li jumped in fright. Only after turning around did she let out a breath.

Standing before her was a young man in a suit. His face was very pale, and there was fear in his expression.

“You just escaped too, right?” Fang Li asked.

The young man glanced at her, nodded, then looked in the direction she had been staring a moment ago. “Yeah. What were you looking at just now?”

“I thought that person looked kind of familiar… It’s nothing. Maybe I was just too nervous and too scared, and I imagined it.” Fang Li stopped halfway and shook her head. At the same time, she felt a little puzzled. This man did look frightened, but why was he asking such a strange question? Was he so scared that he could no longer speak coherently?

“You seem a little calmer than the others, so I wanted to ask you this. Do you remember roughly what the people who came for the interview looked like?” the young man suddenly changed the subject and asked.

Fang Li froze for a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t remember all of them. I only have some impression of part of it.”

The young man stared at her for a couple of seconds, then suddenly smiled. “Good. I only wanted you to help me identify something.”

“Identify what…” Fang Li instinctively felt a chill of dread, but the young man had already reached out and grabbed her by the arm.

“What are you doing? No… no!” Fang Li immediately struggled, but the moment she cried out, the young man whipped out a wet wipe and clamped it over her mouth and nose. Her eyes went wide with shock and terror. Her body was still fighting desperately to break free, but her strength was draining away…

“Don’t be scared. I just want you to do me a favor. I’m not going to do anything to you.” As the young man spoke in a low voice, a trace of contempt surfaced in his eyes. “Why would I be interested in some village girl like you? If I wanted to have fun, it would have to be with a great beauty like Jiang Yushi. No, no… what are women worth, anyway? Once I have power, what can’t I have?”

The young man was none other than Zhu Hao. He shook his head hard, his expression turning somewhat deranged, and his tone abruptly became savage.

The phone Fang Li had been clutching the whole time finally slipped from her hand and fell to the ground. As Zhu Hao dragged her away, he stepped right on it.

The phone lit up at once, and the call that had never had time to go through was finally dialed.

Beep, beep, beep…

“Hello? Lili, how did your interview go?” In the laboratory, Qiu Yuming answered the phone. After asking twice, however, she frowned.

Why could she only hear cries from the other end?

“Hello? Say something. Lili?”

Qiu Yuming called out several more times. Just then, Shen Fei’s excited voice came from behind her. “Junior Qiu! Hurry and call the team leader. Using the information he gave me, I finally found something! Tell him, hurry! Nannan will definitely be happy about this too… If she finds out that all the ‘weird’ research I’ve been doing actually has epoch-making significance, I wonder what she’ll think…”

Listening to Shen Fei’s loud, agitated rambling, Qiu Yuming hung up helplessly. As she dialed Su Lifeng, she asked offhandedly, “What’s this about Nannan now? Isn’t she just a little girl? Why are you discussing experiments with her?”

“She’s very smart, and curious too. Don’t worry, I didn’t tell her anything core. Besides, she isn’t interested in the experiments. She’s more interested in Team Leader Su. Maybe she wants to marry him when she grows up. Sigh…” As Shen Fei spoke, he started brooding again.

Qiu Yuming glared at him. “What kind of thoughts are you having about a little girl behind her back? Shameless!”

After being inexplicably called “shameless,” Shen Fei froze on the spot. Only after a long while did he mutter, “I was just saying what I thought…”

Qiu Yuming listened to the phone for a while, and just as she was about to hang up, Su Lifeng finally answered.

“Hm? Shen Fei found something? All right. I was just about to head over.” Su Lifeng put down his phone, slung over his shoulder the backpack he had previously hidden in the green belt, now filled with bloody clothes, the murder weapon, and experimental material, then waved toward the busy street. “Taxi…”