Chapter 108
Chapter 108
The file in Qin Ying’s hands had come from the Cuiping Mountain Area.
Qin Ying frowned, pretending to be troubled. “Why were the documents burned this badly?”
So far, her performance fit perfectly with the image of someone from the Cultural Preservation Bureau whose curiosity was about to burst.
The man moved around the laboratory as if he knew the place by heart.
He dug a packet of instant coffee out of a cabinet and used a beaker to make himself a cup.
After taking a sip, he said, “These were found many years ago, when the Cultural Preservation Bureau destroyed the illegal laboratory on Cuiping Mountain. They came from the documents that hadn’t been burned in time.”
After a pause, he looked surprised. “You don’t even know that?”
Qin Ying gave him an open, unapologetic eye roll. “I told you. I’m just a temp who started recently.”
Still…
“Why would this place have documents obtained by the Cultural Preservation Bureau?”
They were practically one-to-one copies.
And judging by how much this man knew about Zhang Lang, was the Cultural Preservation Bureau really some kind of giant sieve?
Qin Ying’s silent grumbling was quickly confirmed.
Holding his coffee, the man said mockingly, “The Cultural Preservation Bureau was already the last of its kind to be established among all the nations. It has the least seniority and the shallowest foundation.”
“In that operation at Cuiping Mountain back then, all of its top combat forces were wiped out.”
“Half of the survivors defected too.”
“The current Cultural Preservation Bureau exists in name only. It’s a joke.”
After a pause, he suddenly pointed at Qin Ying. “Especially your Third Cultural Heritage Preservation Institute.”
“The trash among trash organizations. Otherwise, the laboratory wouldn’t have been deliberately set up in Yunlan City.”
The corner of Qin Ying’s mouth twitched. She had only been on the job for a day, but being called trash was still… kind of infuriating.
She flipped through the documents one page at a time.
She looked over the ancient characters that had been ink-rubbed from stone tablets.
None of the writing recorded any useful information. It merely introduced some details about Monstrous Beast creatures.
In truth, it did not mean much.
Just then, a sheet of paper slipped out.
She picked it up and saw that it was a photocopy.
Large portions of the original had been charred black. Amid the burn marks, she could make out scattered words like experiment and young child.
Qin Ying’s hand abruptly stilled.
At the scorched edge, she saw two words.
Eyes. Key.
Her face remained expressionless, but her fingers slowly tightened.
At the top of the Divine Shrine on Golden Saddle Mountain, a pair of eyes overlooking the mortal world had been enshrined.
Key. Was it the key that opened the door?
Had the experiment recorded on this page ever succeeded?
The heart in the left side of her chest began to beat out of rhythm beyond her control.
Qin Ying tried to recall her childhood.
But even after racking her brains, all she could remember was that the honeydew served for lunch in kindergarten had been very sweet.
If there had not been an enemy sitting across from her, she really would have wanted to slap herself.
“What’s wrong?”
This time, her abnormal reaction failed to escape the man’s notice.
With no manners whatsoever, the man snatched the document from Qin Ying’s hand. “What did you find?”
He practically pressed his eyes to the document he had flipped through countless times before.
Qin Ying was honestly not in a very good mood. The hand that had been holding the document remained raised in the air, but she said nothing.
Instead, she reached for the ice-blue vial on the lab bench.
Toying with the vial in her hand as if twirling a pen, she smiled and said, “You still haven’t answered my first question. Who are you? What were you trying to gain by killing so many people? What are you looking for?”
The man was clearly very unhappy with Qin Ying’s attitude.
Although he was always saying that people from the Cultural Preservation Bureau were too curious for their own good, he himself was no better.
When he failed to get the answer he wanted, the frustration gnawed at him.
Sensing his emotions, the black dog crouched beside him rose to its feet.
It bared its teeth and let out a low growl at Qin Ying.
Qin Ying leaned back. “The deal was that I inject the drug, and you answer my questions.”
“Anything else costs extra.”
Information was just that precious.
The One-Horned Black Dog beside the man took a step forward, its dagger-sharp horn nearly touching Qin Ying’s body.
Was Qin Ying afraid?
With the thick stench of blood rolling off the dog, of course she was.
But she had been born contrary and refused to back down. Instead of retreating, she leaned in a little farther and tilted her head, exposing her vulnerable neck.
“Come on. Right here!”
She had seen plenty of shameless toughs in the Old City District, and the way she played the rogue was so brazen even the dog froze for a second.
After a long moment, the man holding the page of documents he had snatched from her drained his instant coffee in irritation.
“My name is Hyena.”
Before Qin Ying could question it, he said solemnly, “That really is my name.”
“On your ID too?” Qin Ying asked, as if she actually believed him.
Unexpectedly, the man said, “I don’t have an ID.”
“I grew up in a laboratory. I don’t have that kind of thing. Even if I did, it’d be fake.”
Qin Ying fell silent for a moment.
He wasn’t lying.
He really had grown up in a laboratory, and he really had been given the name of a beast.
“As for what I want?” The man named Hyena rinsed the beaker he had used for coffee under the faucet. “If you had grown up here since you were little, and one day someone told you they could help you…”
“Wouldn’t you want to kill every last one of them?”
“That person gets the serum, and I get my freedom.”
“Who told you they could help you?” Qin Ying immediately caught the key point.
The five armed men upstairs all clearly had military training.
They didn’t seem like discharged soldiers or anything of the sort. They were more like mercenaries with Asian faces.
None of them looked like the leader.
Then who exactly had contacted Hyena and organized tonight’s massacre?
And from the look of it, they seemed quite confident they could get away unscathed.
Qin Ying lowered her lashes, then thought of something else.
Lin Yicheng.
The young master of a pharmaceutical company. Of all days, he had traveled all this way to come here today, neither earlier nor later.
If he hadn’t run into Qin Ying and the others by chance, that kid would have been dead too.
Seeing Qin Ying thinking, Hyena suddenly leaned his head close. “You want to know?”
His eyes were wide as he looked at Qin Ying, anticipation hidden in them.
He was just waiting for Qin Ying to nod so he could throw her earlier line-“that’s a separate price”-right back at her.
But Qin Ying was stubborn to the bone. The more he acted like this, the less she would give him what he wanted.
Crossing her arms, Qin Ying said, “I don’t want to know anymore.”
In any case, she could start investigating from Lin Yicheng’s side.
Having failed to get his wish, Hyena’s face immediately darkened.
He pushed the serum on the lab bench toward Qin Ying. “Your turn.”
Before the serum could nearly slide off, Qin Ying caught it in her hand.
The liquid sloshed twice inside the glass vial.
She closed her palm around it and unhurriedly rolled up the hem of her racerback tank top.
She used to work out regularly, and she even had defined abs.
After injuring her eyes, she had slackened off a little, but the strip of waist she exposed was still pale and slender.
She could feel Hyena’s gaze sweeping across her skin.
Qin Ying ran her fingers over the skin near her navel and suddenly asked, “What exactly is this serum?”
Hyena answered without thinking, “Zheng gene serum.”
He made an inviting gesture.
The one-horned Fierce Hound crouched beside them.
Qin Ying pinched the vial of serum in her right hand and took a deep breath.
She looked at Hyena, calculating the possibility of suddenly attacking and taking him hostage.
Just then, the walkie-talkie hanging at Hyena’s lower back suddenly crackled to life.
An urgent voice on the other end, not quite fluent, came through. “Hyena, stop playing. It’s midnight.”
Hyena instinctively looked toward a corner of the lab, where a cabinet held a row of blue serums just like the one he had given Qin Ying.
At that moment, the half-charred puppy Qin Ying had carried in stirred.
It opened eyes still covered in a bluish film and lifted its head to look at Qin Ying.
The next second, a wisp of scorching smoke puffed from its nose.
It coughed nonstop like a person choking on water, gray, ash-laced smoke pouring from its mouth and nose.
A moment later, the smoke wrapped around the puppy’s body, and a strand of flame coiled around its paws.