The sudden stop flung Lan Bo forward. Instinctively curling into a fish-ball to protect himself, his semi-transparent body squeezed between the driver and passenger seats, landing in Bai Chunian’s arms.
Bai Chunian controlled the steering with one hand, gradually slowing the car, while holding the fish-ball to prevent it from rolling.
Once the vehicle stabilized, Lan Bo stretched, arms draped around Bai Chunian’s neck.
Bai Chunian’s mind fixated on the semi-transparent pink aperture of Lan Bo’s cloacal area. Stammering, he muttered, “Don’t… show this to anyone. And that one… neither of them, ever.”
Lan Bo grasped his shoulders, puzzled, inspecting him. “This is… connected to the sea, for communication, sacred. So, I take care of it. You… you dislike it?”
Bai Chunian drew a deep breath and exhaled. “I can’t explain it to you.”
“Randi is cute,” Lan Bo said with an innocent smile.
Bai Chunian parked the car beside an abandoned factory about two hundred meters from the port’s seafood processing plant. He let Lan Bo step out first, then sat in the driver’s seat with his eyes closed for a moment.
Clutching the real AC promoter he had swapped, Bai Chunian felt an urge to inject it into Lan Bo immediately. But the thought flickered and died as quickly as it came. Instead, he pulled a vial of suppressant from the drawer, bit open the syringe cap, and injected it into his arm. A sharp sting raced through his veins, heightening his alertness. Leaning against the headrest, he rested briefly until the agitation in his bloodstream subsided, then got out of the car.
Near estrus, his body was unusually sensitive, his mind unusually fragile. Bai Chunian hated the feeling of losing complete control over his own body, yet there was nothing he could do.
He opened the car door. Lan Bo sat bored on the hood, tail coiled like a human sitting cross-legged. Night had fully fallen; there were no streetlights. Lan Bo hunched forward, flicking a lighter from his pocket. The lighter was shaped like a skull with a closed jaw; pressing the thumb lever opened the jaw, and a green, windproof flame shot from the skull’s eye sockets, illuminating Lan Bo’s profile.
Bai Chunian leaned on the door, watching him. Suddenly he stepped forward, took the lighter from Lan Bo, lifted one leg onto the hood, and knelt down to kiss him.
The alpha’s breath carried his pheromones—naturally laced with irritability and aggression. Even when intended to soothe, his chemical signals were forceful. No matter how much he tried to act like a clingy little cat, his genetic instincts could not be overridden.
“Don’t… do this,” Bai Chunian murmured, holding Lan Bo’s face, forcing the kiss. “I don’t want to end up in jail.”
From Lan Bo’s view, the black strands of Bai Chunian’s hair swept across his cheek, making his facial features appear more sculpted in the dark, his eyelashes thick and long. He had grown; far more handsome than in childhood.
Lan Bo vaguely felt a melancholy swell in his chest. He reached out, gripping Bai Chunian’s forearms tightly, his sharp claws digging into the alpha’s skin.
“You’re always so rough with me,” Bai Chunian said, breaking the kiss, lips parted as he licked away the faintly floral saliva from the tips of Lan Bo’s teeth. He didn’t move away, didn’t scold, and didn’t flinch from the scratches. Three deep cuts ran along his left arm, exposing flesh, but they healed almost instantly.
“If it’s only this bad, you can punish me as you like,” Bai Chunian said, lifting Lan Bo from the hood and cradling him in one arm as they walked slowly. “Just don’t go too far, or I’ll catch something.”
Lan Bo draped his arms around Bai Chunian’s neck, dazed. His comprehension was still too limited to analyze his own emotions fully.
As they neared the seafood factory, Bai Chunian whispered to the tech division: “Target has entered the port seafood plant. Mission complete. Should we extract?”
The tech division forwarded the footage from Bai Chunian’s glasses to senior leadership, including Han Xingqian.
After reviewing part of the recording, the leadership solicited Han Xingqian’s opinion. Since he initiated the mission request, he held decision-making authority. Sitting in his office chair, still in his white lab coat, twirling a pen between his fingers, Han Xingqian paused, then said, “My advice: enter the factory directly, check the cold storage, determine which experimental subjects they plan to inject with the AC promoter, and estimate their next steps.”
Bai Chunian: “By my count, the Red Throat members inside are numerous. We could be exposed.”
Han Xingqian: “That’s fine. Now that the promoter has been swapped, extreme secrecy isn’t necessary. They’ll assume any interference is normal.”
The alliance leadership accepted his recommendation, sending Bai Chunian the second-phase mission: “Inspect the factory cold storage.”
“Received.” Bai Chunian ended the comms and climbed the catwalk with Lan Bo to enter the seafood plant through a ventilation shaft.
The plant had long handled export business, maintaining good quality and reputation. From the catwalk, Bai Chunian surveyed the docked cargo ships. Employees moved through the cold storage, preparing shipments—checking the stock now would almost certainly get them caught in the act.
Red Throat took this operation very seriously. Besides the factory staff, armed mercenaries patrolled every level.
The factory had three floors. The first and second were open-plan, divided into functional areas: catching/receiving, washing, processing/pickling, canning/packaging, and the loading assembly line. Iron ladders and scaffolds ran along the edges, three meters above the ground, for quality inspection and patrol.
On the scaffolds, mercenaries were stationed in intervals, armed and alert.
Lan Bo lay quietly in a vent slot, observing the factory and counting roughly: “Only… seventy-some mercenaries.”
“But there are only two of us,” Bai Chunian muttered, glancing at Lan Bo’s tail. “Well… 1.5.”
“And no guns,” Lan Bo added. They hadn’t requested weapons for the initial mission; returning for them would take too long.
Bai Chunian scanned the layout, mapping several routes in his mind. “Do as I say.”
Following Bai Chunian’s lead, Lan Bo climbed down from the catwalk and dropped into a waiting seafood truck, diving into a large plastic bin filled with fish.
Bai Chunian scaled to the top of the catwalk, hands gripping the ventilation window ten meters above the ground, and began directing Lan Bo’s movements via comms.
Lan Bo buried himself under live fish.
Bai Chunian: “Situation?”
“The fish isn’t very fresh.”
“I’m asking about your situation…”
“I’m full.”
“…”
Lan Bo hid inside the fish in the cleaning area, letting the water flow rinse the seafood repeatedly before sending the washed items into the processing and marinating section.
As the seafood spilled onto the conveyor belt from the tipping chute, Lan Bo lay in wait. He heard Bai Chunian say, “Ten seconds until entry into the cutting and processing zone. Get ready.”
Lan Bo silently counted down. When the moment came, he flicked his tailtip, sending a brief surge of electricity into the cutting machine’s motherboard. The circuit shorted, the cutter abruptly stopped, and the alarm went off. Lan Bo seized the opportunity to slip through the gap on the other side of the blades, climb off the conveyor, and restore the machine’s circuitry.
Several factory workers rushed over at the alarm but only relaxed after confirming the equipment was running normally again.
Lan Bo successfully navigated through the processing and marinating area, crawling under the conveyor belt into the canned packaging section.
Bai Chunian observed the movement patterns of the packing staff, noting their routines. He then instructed Lan Bo, “Go to the fourth row, second container from the left. The worker packing this container is changing shifts. The incoming worker probably doesn’t know how many cans are in there. Take out the extra cans and use them to shield yourself inside the container.”
Lan Bo complied, slipping into the container. The lid was closed, and the container was pushed onto the docked cargo ship.
Once inside the ship’s cold storage, Lan Bo used his claws to tear open the container and climb out, sniffing around each suspicious freezer.
He stopped at a water bin filled with ice, where fresh octopus were stored. Lan Bo pawed through the bin, but it was nothing but octopus. The sticky suckers latched onto his arm, and he impatiently pulled the thick tentacles off.
Meanwhile, Bai Chunian avoided the patrolling mercenaries and quietly slipped through a window into the factory. He saw several invoices in the control room and planned to check them.
“Any findings?” Bai Chunian asked, putting on his glasses, photographing the invoices to send to the tech team while keeping an eye on Lan Bo.
“There’s a scent. But it’s just octopus.”
“I understand,” Bai Chunian thought, carefully returning the invoices to their original position. “Come out and meet me. We’ll retreat.”
He quietly climbed back through the ventilation window. His footsteps were silent, and his obstacle navigation and climbing abilities were extremely refined. Even a drop from a high point wouldn’t injure him—he had all the instincts and reflexes of a feline predator.
Landing softly, he approached the dock to meet Lan Bo. Suddenly, his heightened sense of danger made him stop and quickly turn around.
A mercenary, silenced pistol in hand, aimed at his head with a cold sneer. “Brother, hands up. Let’s talk.”
Bai Chunian narrowed his eyes and noticed the name tag: “Libixi.”
That name seemed familiar. Bai Chunian recalled it from the list found in the Tricone Hut, from Enke’s team of mercenaries—a “Zombie Sparrow Alpha.”
“Damn, I got caught… I failed.” Bai Chunian had no gun, so he obeyed, slowly walking toward the mercenary’s instructions.
Libixi pressed the silenced pistol to Bai Chunian’s back, his left hand frisking him.
“You alpha guys frisk me, and I get goosebumps all over.”
“Shut up…”
Bai Chunian tilted slightly and suddenly flipped, dodging a bullet that almost blew a hole in his skull. He planted his palms, launching a powerful horizontal kick with his long legs, knocking the gun from Libixi’s hands.
The silenced pistol spun through the air. Libixi leapt to catch it, but Bai Chunian flipped and kicked again, sending him three to four meters away, easily reclaiming the weapon.
Without hesitation, Bai Chunian reloaded and aimed, firing in a fluid motion—so fast that even his mind hadn’t fully registered the sequence.
The list noted the skills of Red-throated Bird members. He vaguely remembered Libixi’s entry: “Zombie Sparrow Alpha, J1 Ability: Corruption.”
Corruption?
Before he could think further, his shot had already been fired, aiming for Libixi’s forehead with a loud bang.
It wasn’t a silencer-equipped gun.
It was a barrel explosion.
The Zombie Sparrow’s J1 ability, “Corruption,” rapidly degrades any equipment it touches to its lifespan limit.
Bai Chunian saw the cruel smile on Libixi’s face as pain spread from his left hand through his entire body.
Libixi staggered, barely maintaining balance, blood and debris littering the ground.
Bai Chunian’s left arm hung, the portion below his wrist obliterated, charred flesh dangling from the shattered bones.
Hearing the gunfire, dozens of mercenaries rushed out, surrounding Bai Chunian with weapons trained on his head.
“…It hurts,” Bai Chunian said, clutching his mangled arm. He slowly straightened, chest heaving rapidly, a trembling smile forming.
An ordinary person would have fainted from losing a hand this way. Seeing Bai Chunian grin despite the injury, Libixi didn’t dare try to capture him alive. He signaled to shoot him on the spot.
Bullets flew toward Bai Chunian, which would have pulverized his skull.
Suddenly, waves rose from the dock. A swirling bolt of electricity surged from the water, arriving before him as a semi-transparent blue orb. The bullets hit the orb, sparks flying, but the sphere held firm.
Lan Bo’s bonded ability, Rupert’s Tear, in self-protection mode, forms a spherical shield impenetrable to external forces.
All bullets were deflected. The electrified sphere expanded as Lan Bo landed beside Bai Chunian, tailtip coiling around an iron frame for support, eyes cold and focused on the surrounding mercenaries. His fin glowed blood-red in fury.
“Mermaid!” Libixi froze. “Where did you two come from?”
Bai Chunian moved his neck slightly. His dark eyes slowly revealed a gray-blue undertone, pupils constricting, sharp lion-like eyes locking on the scene ahead.
“Do you think telling you would help? You can’t handle me anyway,” he said with a playful smile, showing his sharp teeth. He lifted his left arm in front of him; under everyone’s shocked gaze, the bones quickly grew, muscles and veins crawling along the skeleton, skin stretching and healing seamlessly.
In the stunned horror of the onlookers, Bai Chunian clenched his fully restored left hand and patted the Zombie Sparrow’s shoulder.
“The unluckiest thing for you was letting me know your name,” Bai Chunian said warmly, resting a hand on Libixi’s shoulder. “Libixi.”
With that, the Zombie Sparrow Alpha suddenly vanished.
Bai Chunian’s palm held a glass orb.