Six mercenaries stepped in through a door that had appeared out of nowhere beside the bed. The muzzles of their submachine guns were all trained on Bai Chunian and Lan Bo.
Enke gave a cold laugh and ordered, “Put the gun on the ground. Kick it over.”
Bai Chunian complied. He tossed the HK417 at his feet and kicked it toward Enke. The hardest part of the maneuver was having to spare one hand to hold Lan Bo down and keep him from springing up and attacking.
Lan Bo retracted the blood-red spikes from his body, the color fading back to blue. The tip of his tail curled around a nearby crystal chandelier as he quietly watched the men.
Enke slung the submachine gun over his shoulder and waved a hand. Two mercenaries stepped forward, took out metal handcuffs, and cuffed Bai Chunian’s wrists in front of him.
Another two were about to move in on Lan Bo when Bai Chunian, leaning against the wall, let out a whistle. “I suggest you don’t.”
The last mercenary who had tried that had been reduced to a patch of charred earth by ultra-high-voltage current—there had not even been ashes left.
Enke cast a sidelong glance at the merman coiled around the chandelier. He looked like a delicate, pliant omega. Although he wore a police uniform, his shoulder insignia marked him as the lowest-ranking investigative officer. In this line of work, rookies were often pushed around. Being assigned to investigate first was nothing unusual.
So Enke did not hold much vigilance toward Lan Bo. Instead, he found the white lion alpha leaning casually against the wall and looking around to be the more likely undercover officer sent by the precinct to carry out a rescue.
All the mercenaries focused their attention on Bai Chunian, who appeared more threatening. Enke did not even spare Lan Bo a thought and stood with his back to him.
A living, breathing body paced back and forth within arm’s reach. Lan Bo stared at it without blinking. His blue pupils narrowed into vertical slits. Unknowingly, he opened his mouth—at first revealing only the sharp points of his canines with restraint, then exposing the serrated back molars behind them.
An experimental subject in the cultivation stage could evolve simply by ingesting inorganic matter, but consuming organic matter significantly increased evolutionary efficiency. Lan Bo was one of the few cultivation-stage subjects capable of controlling his appetite. Even so, he had not fully matured, and his control was far from perfect.
Before Lan Bo could bite Enke’s head clean off, Bai Chunian coughed in time and shot him a warning look: do not eat people. That was the bottom line for an experimental subject who wished to live in human society.
Lan Bo closed his mouth, resentfully shrinking back onto the base of the chandelier. He yanked down several crystal pendants and crunched them as snacks.
Enke glanced back at him without noticing anything unusual, though he did spot the Alliance Police badge on Lan Bo’s chest. He hooked the badge up with the muzzle of his gun and examined it. “You are omega Alliance Police officers, not officers from the International Maximum Security Prison?”
Bai Chunian caught the nuance in his words. “Our Alliance Police are only responsible for rescuing hostages. This time, we are not cooperating with the International Prison at all.”
The International Maximum Security Prison did not belong to any single country. It had been jointly established by multiple nations. Its staff came from different nationalities, and it maintained absolute neutrality. The International Prison detained only those who had already caused severe damage to human society or who possessed enormous potential for social destruction.
Enke paced in front of Bai Chunian, weighing the gun in his hand. Half serious, half probing, he proposed, “Since you are only here to rescue hostages, and we are not here to kill anyone, why do we not exchange some information and get out of this hellhole sooner? What do you think, Officer?”
Bai Chunian was more than willing. Their side had far too little information. Being toyed with by an experimental subject inside this game house was infuriating.
“You seem like a smart man. We can show some sincerity first.” Enke crouched down, resting as he spoke with Bai Chunian. “We have some information about Experimental Subject 324. You can pick something substantial from what you know and trade it with me. As for whether your information is worth the exchange, that will be for me to decide.”
When he mentioned experimental subject data, Bai Chunian suddenly recalled certain details from the ATWL examination.
They had encountered the team called No Survivors in the library. By the time they arrived, that team had already wiped out the other two squads there.
They had chosen the library not only to seize the fixed ammunition crate at the large resource point, but also because Bi Lanxing, Lu Yan, and Lan Bo all had missions in the library archives involving numerous documents.
Document A recorded the hurricane virus from the early seventeenth century—the origin of human glands.
Document B recorded the reproductive process of Experimental Subject 1513, the Snake Woman Mu.
Document C, which Du Mo’s team had read in the library, detailed Snake Woman Mu’s differentiation abilities and characteristics.
Finally, Document D, found in a safe on the tenth floor of the research institute by the Sougui group, provided a comprehensive explanation of Snake Woman Mu’s abilities.
Following this line of reasoning, the No Survivors team could not have appeared in the library without purpose. It was highly likely they had also been completing a mission in the archives. Enke had just confidently claimed they possessed information on Experimental Subject 324. That meant the document they had obtained during the examination was probably the one detailing the characteristics and full ability description of Experimental Subject 324, the Formless Infiltrator.
That was precisely what Bai Chunian needed most right now. Subject 324 was completely unfamiliar to him, and his abilities were very likely closely connected to this bizarre little house.
Recalling the red-throated bird tattoo he had seen on Enke’s chest when inspecting the No Survivors team’s bodies during the examination, Bai Chunian could roughly guess what these mercenaries would be interested in.
“Officers from the International Prison visited our Alliance Police yesterday,” Bai Chunian said, counting off on his cuffed fingers. “They came to transfer files and took away six dossiers on members of the Red-Throated Bird.”
“When were those files from?”
“Five years ago.”
That certainly counted as confidential—but it was the International Prison’s secret, not theirs. Bai Chunian had no obligation to keep another power’s secrets, so he felt no pressure at all in leaking it.
Fortunately, he had followed Lan Bo to the Alliance Police and loafed around there for a day. Otherwise, that fish definitely would not have remembered such details. Compared with ordinary fish, Lan Bo did not seem to have much advantage in memory anyway—except when it came to holding grudges. He either remembered nothing or simply disdained remembering at all.
When Enke heard the words “Red-Throated Bird,” his body instinctively leaned forward, his gaze sharpening from bored distraction to focused interest—a small, unconscious reaction people make when a topic catches their attention.
Bai Chunian, skilled at reading such micro-expressions, subtly pressed the advantage. “You probably know those meddlesome International Prison officers too, right? They’re always poking their noses everywhere.”
“Heh, of course.” Enke looked irritated at the mention of the International Prison. “I ran into those pesky fellows a few days ago, right near this little house. They were after Experimental Subject 324 too.”
Bai Chunian casually sat on the floor, narrowing the distance between them. “Did they send a young omega officer?”
“More than that—two of them,” Enke sneered. “The worst is the Sea Spider. Even our top M2-level fighters were dragged down to the same level as those dumb officers when they encountered its disgusting ability. And there were so many of them, we couldn’t make a dent.”
The Sea Spider’s J1 differentiation ability could suppress and equalize opponents’ levels, a seemingly trivial but frighteningly effective support power.
“I know quite a bit more,” Bai Chunian said. “But talking now is useless. We’ve been trapped in this little house for over an hour. If we can’t get out, we’re dead. The precinct always bullies rookies, using us as unlucky landmines—sent in to die. We know nothing, and have zero chance.”
Enke could see that Bai Chunian was very adept at negotiation. Though he appeared to be at a disadvantage and resorted to framing his words this way, there was a hidden stubbornness of equivalent exchange in every sentence.
Still, Enke wanted to pry more useful information out of him. To do that, he would have to offer a taste of his own intel as bait.
“I learned from my employer that this triangular prism house is the work of Experimental Subject 324,” Enke said, cradling his gun while reloading a magazine midair. “324, the Formless Infiltrator, prototype chameleon omega. The name should make sense—formless, invisible. It’s a stealthy experimental subject, but that’s not all.”
“The researcher’s observation log notes that 324 exhibits exceptional talent in music and art. We played a piece of music once, and 324 could hum the entire melody perfectly. Show him a painting and then give him a blank sheet of paper, he could reproduce it exactly. More astonishingly, we showed him a silent video of a pianist’s hands, and 324 played the piece on the piano perfectly. We even reversed the video—he still played the melody backward flawlessly. Truly a genius.”
Bai Chunian was absorbed in thought as he listened.
Enke raised his gun, pressing it against Bai Chunian’s head. “Hey, you listening?”
“Yeah, I’m listening,” Bai Chunian snapped out of it, scratching his hair with the handcuffed hand.
“I was just thinking—the last room had a piano in the corner. I tried really hard to lift the piano bench to look for clues.”
“So 324 had been sitting on the bench the whole time, and I just tossed him off?”