Chapter 51
Chapter 51
The temperature hadn’t dropped much during the night, as if the sudden torrential rain from a few days ago had been nothing more than an anomaly.
The entirety of Yunlan City was soaked in a thick, viscous heat.
Inside the car heading toward the Sewage Treatment Plant, the air conditioning was cranked to the lowest setting. Qin Ying tilted her head back and downed a bottle of ice water.
Noticing her pale, sickly complexion in the rearview mirror, Qin Zhiguo said, “You should be resting in the hospital!”
Qin Ying shook her head. “This is a matter of life and death. How could I lie there in peace?”
Qin Zhiguo fell silent at her words, but he pressed down on the accelerator, increasing their speed once more.
This time, returning to the Sewage Treatment Plant felt much safer, as they were accompanied by two vehicles full of professionals.
Seeing them return, the security guards at the Sewage Treatment Plant were baffled.
Old Miao’s Rat Scout was exceptionally plump-too large for an adult to encircle with one hand. Its fur was sleek and shiny as its whiskers twitched, sniffing at various items.
In addition to the Ghost-Shadow Vine powder found in front of the scavenger woman’s shack, there were several pieces of evidence that Qin Zhiguo had brought over.
Qin Ying gave them a quick scan. She saw many things: ID card fragments cut as small as grains of rice and some rotted scraps of clothing.
She didn’t know how they identified these as useful evidence, but the process must have been incredibly tedious and professional.
The Rat Scout was timid, but it could sniff out unusual scents on these items. Old Miao had to feed it several peanuts in a row to coax it into working.
It sniffed the evidence one by one, and suddenly, its ears perked up.
Old Miao was overjoyed. He placed it on the ground, and Tantan immediately scurried off in a specific direction.
“Follow it!” Despite his age, Old Miao’s legs were quite nimble after a long night of activity.
Qin Ying was still being supported by Yin Minmin and Wen Hao as they walked. However, considering the combat capabilities of those two, Qin Zhiguo had assigned one of his subordinates to follow them.
The Rat Scout’s route was very winding. It seemed that too many clues were confusing its little brain, as it frequently stopped at intersections or ran in small circles.
Qin Zhiguo’s heart hammered in his chest as he watched, hoping that the checkpoints he had set up at various intersections would be of some use.
The group was covered in wet mud, looking like wild men from the mountains as they chased after the Rat Scout.
Just then, Tantan stopped.
It tucked its small paws in, sniffing the air, and then let out a sharp, piercing squeak.
It was the first time Qin Ying had heard a rat make such a sound. Qin Zhiguo scanned the surrounding terrain and quickly issued deployment orders.
The team members drew their weapons and closed in on the building Tantan had indicated.
As Qin Ying’s body temperature dropped, her punishment mechanism was triggered. The Dream-Embracing Grass and Ghost-Shadow Vine inside her began to stir, leaving her without a single moment of comfort.
Arriving slightly later than Qin Zhiguo and the others, Qin Ying saw the sign hanging in front of the building under the flickering streetlights: Solid Waste Treatment Research Institute.
Looking at the dusty grey concrete walls, Qin Ying hadn’t expected someone to be conducting such foul business within a research institution.
Before coming, Qin Ying had used a dream omen as an excuse, informing them that smearing wet mud on their bodies might interfere with the Ghost-Shadow Vine.
Since no one could say for sure what she had actually dreamed, and based on the principle that believing it cost them nothing, Qin Zhiguo and the others had dug up mud from a hospital flowerbed.
Looking like a group of mud-men, they walked through the deathly silent research institute with guns drawn. For the moment, nothing unexpected had happened.
Just as they approached the closed half-glass door, Old Dao suddenly shouted, “Stop! Don’t move!”
The officer leading the charge, who had been about to push the door open, instantly broke out in a cold sweat. He froze with his hand suspended in mid-air.
Behind the half-glass door, a light clicked on for a split second before dying out.
That brief flash of light allowed everyone to see a figure wandering through the lobby through the glass.
It was a woman with long hair covering her face. She was skin and bones, wearing a filthy long dress.
The way she paced through the lobby, pausing with every step, perfectly matched the stereotypical image of a female ghost.
The officer reaching to push the door open was drenched in sweat. A man who had never flinched when facing vicious, armed criminals, he now felt his legs beginning to give way.
He cast a desperate, sidelong glance at Old Dao for help.
Old Dao was not authorized to carry a firearm, so he held a cold-light flashlight to lead the way. He cautiously swept the beam over the wandering figure.
A chorus of faint, sharp gasps filled the air. The officer standing at the door nearly collapsed onto his haunches. If he weren’t terrified of moving right now, he would have unleashed a torrent of abuse at Old Dao, regardless of the man’s status.
Under the gaze of several pairs of eyes, the figure in the hall showed no reaction, continuing to drift slowly with hair disheveled.
Seeing that she wasn’t making any sudden moves, everyone’s racing hearts settled slightly. The officer frozen at the door was about to ask a question when Old Dao suddenly crouched low and crept forward.
His movements were light, producing almost no sound.
Squatting down, he seemed to be inspecting something. Then he asked, “Does anyone have nail clippers or scissors?”
The officer at the door looked at him with a face that screamed ‘Are you kidding me?’, thinking to himself, *Who the hell carries nail clippers while out catching criminals?*
Just as the thought surfaced, he saw Old Dao use his pinky finger to gently lift something about twenty centimeters off the ground.
Under the beam of the cold-light flashlight, a strand of extremely thin fishing line appeared against the pad of his finger. The line was connected to both sides of the doorway; pushing the door would have pulled whatever the line was tethered to.
Now, anyone could realize what was happening.
Qin Zhiguo’s heart hammered harder than it ever had before. “Explosives?”
Old Dao held the line for only a moment before carefully lowering his hand. He took a breath to reply, “Yes. It’s a booby-trap technique used on the battlefield.”
If Old Dao hadn’t been a combat veteran who noticed the door’s odd positioning and exercised caution, the men standing at the entrance would have met a gruesome end the moment they pushed it open.
Cold sweat soaked Qin Zhiguo’s clothes. He felt a surge of gratitude for Old Dao’s presence, followed immediately by a wave of disappointment-if they had set traps to ambush them, the people inside had likely already fled.
At that moment, Old Miao quietly stepped forward and handed over a Swiss Army knife, which included a pair of miniature scissors.
With a steady hand, Old Dao dealt with the fishing line. With a faint creak, the door slowly swung open.
Behind the door, two bundles of homemade dynamite were revealed, along with the woman wandering in the hall.
Without needing a word, they split up to act.
Old Miao and Old Dao, the two veterans, handled the dynamite taped to the back of the door, while Qin Zhiguo led the others to cautiously surround the figure.
As they drew closer, Qin Zhiguo’s expression suddenly shifted. “Don’t shoot! It’s a living person.”
In the silent hall, the sound of heavy, ragged breathing was unmistakable. A Ghost-Shadow Vine would not breathe like a human.
Qin Zhiguo suddenly lunged, pinning the wandering woman to the floor. A filthy wig slid off, revealing a bald head covered in a network of crisscrossing scars.
Even with her arms pinned behind her by Qin Zhiguo, she didn’t struggle. Her lips merely twitched in a silent, nonsensical murmur.
When they flipped her over, they saw that her face had been surgically peeled away; her entire visage was a mass of purple-red scar tissue. It was impossible to identify her by her features.
They checked her palms, only to find that the fingerprints on all ten fingers had been destroyed in the same manner.
Qin Zhiguo cursed violently under his breath.
After that brush with death, they proceeded with even greater caution. After clearing two more sets of homemade dynamite at the stairwell and the corridor, they found a laboratory on the second floor.
The laboratory door was wide open, and the lights were brilliantly lit.
Directly ahead, a whiteboard stood like a screen. On the whiteboard, a clown had been drawn in dark red blood. The clown’s lips were stretched into an exaggerated, wide grin. On the floor sat a red, square cardboard box with a label stuck to it that read: *A gift. Do you like it?*