Ch 123: TGCIR

As soon as Shen Cheng came online, she immediately heard Li Weilan’s nervous question, “Shen Cheng, can you contact Fu Yanzhou now?”

Shen Cheng was taken aback. Li Weilan’s tone was extremely serious and nervous, indicating that this question was very important.

In the game, the perspective mostly followed the main characters. Now that Fu Yanzhou was not with Li Weilan nor at the Noah Base, unless a special item appeared in the game, she currently had no way to contact Fu Yanzhou.

Shen Cheng’s silence lasted only a few seconds, but Li Weilan already knew her answer. He frowned slightly. “I see.” Waiting for her to come online was just hoping against hope.

“Has something happened to Fu Yanzhou?” Shen Cheng asked anxiously. She recalled the socially awkward man who always stayed in the research room at the base, speaking very little. Li Weilan’s urgent desire to contact him made her wonder if something had happened to Fu Yanzhou.

Li Weilan remained silent for a moment. Eventually, he chose not to gloss over the situation lightly. His voice carried a deep and hoarse tone. “We don’t know for sure at the moment. It’s just my speculation.”

He placed the USB drive he held on the table, and Shen Cheng opened it to take a look at the description.

The USB drive secretly stored by Fu Yanzhou contained research progress from the Institute over the past year.

Research progress.

Could it be the kind of research that nobody was supposed to know about?

Li Weilan nodded, his voice hoarse as he said, “Fu Yanzhou is in great danger now. I suspect the reason he was able to easily obtain this material is because the Dean is deliberately allowing him to do so.”

“Allowing?” Shen Cheng’s face also turned pale. Just at that moment, she suddenly saw a group of people approaching from afar outside the Storm Team’s small building. Although they seemed only slightly suspicious at the moment, she immediately reminded Li Weilan, “Lan Lan, let’s go.”

Li Weilan had just left the dilapidated building of the Storm Team when he saw from a distance that the building where he lived was surrounded and impassable.

None of the people surrounding the area were Xia Jinshi or Fu Yanzhou.

But Li Weilan was sure that something must have happened to Fu Yanzhou.

He glanced from afar at the smoke rising from the small building and quietly concealed his figure, blending into the crowd of people in the J City Base.

Inside the small building, after the ability users who surrounded it searched around and found no suspicious individuals or evidence, and tested everyone without any abilities, they were about to leave in disappointment. Suddenly, they heard a faint voice coming from the group of ordinary people used as bait. “We just had someone who seemed to have disappeared.”

As soon as he spoke, he was pulled by the sleeve by another person next to him.

This small action caught the eye of the leader.

His eyes turned cold, and he directly slapped the person who tried to stop him to the ground. The person who spoke looked at the one on the ground, unable to get up, his face pale. He had already blurted out the words, and now he couldn’t help but tremble like a sieve.

“Speak.” Suddenly disappearing, upon hearing this description, the people from the Institute immediately realized.

“He just arrived here a few days ago, and he’s not familiar with anyone. We don’t even know his name,” the person recounted honestly. But he found that the face of the disappeared person was getting blurrier and blurrier in his memory. He could hardly remember his appearance and height.

“Useless.” The person asking the questions looked at him, and the more he spoke, the more he stuttered, until he became absent-minded and confused. He angrily muttered a curse and kicked him hard.

He then went to ask one by one, but strangely, no one in the entire base could remember clearly the appearance and features of Li Weilan.

Shen Cheng watched this scene and breathed out softly. The memory on her hands gradually disappeared after using the memory blur card.

After Xia Jinshi’s subordinates reported all these strange occurrences to him, he did not show too much surprise.

Translated on ho lo lo novels dot com.

He stood up, looking at the screen where Fu Yanzhou, with tired eyes, was staring blankly. A faint smile appeared at the corner of his lips. “Alright, I understand. I should go tell my junior brother about this good news.”

Xia Jinshi entered the room, which was pure white on all sides.

He looked at Fu Yanzhou’s bewildered eyes and sat down by the bed where he was bound.

“Junior brother. Junior brother,” he called out several times. Fu Yanzhou gasped for breath, struggling to regain consciousness like a drowning fish.

It took Fu Yanzhou a while to finally recognize who Xia Jinshi was when his gaze fell on Xia Jinshi’s face. He looked around and moved his fingers slightly. Even such a subtle movement triggered severe tremors in his muscles.

Xia Jinshi’s smile gained a subtle curvature.

Quite interesting.

His junior brother used to be someone without any life goals.

Someone like him was actually easy to guide and easy to overwhelm. So when they competed for the position of Dean, he only used a little bit of means, and indeed forced him to give up voluntarily.

But now, why could he hold on for so long?

In his life, had someone important appeared? Had he found someone he couldn’t give up on?

That would be a bit troublesome. Just a bit troublesome.

Xia Jinshi leaned down, lightly pressing his trembling shoulder with his index finger. “Let me tell you some good news. We didn’t find your USB drive. We also didn’t find the person you entrusted it to.”

A glimmer of light flashed in Fu Yanzhou’s eyes.

Xia Jinshi smiled, pointing to the camera mounted in the corner of the wall and then to the tubes inserted all over Fu Yanzhou’s body. The hope in Fu Yanzhou’s eyes gradually dimmed as he emphasized this. “But Xiao Zhou, have you ever thought that if the person you entrusted saw your current situation, would they risk everything to save you?”

Fu Yanzhou’s eyes lowered blankly.

From his standpoint, he didn’t want Li Weilan and the others to come.

If they didn’t come, there would be no direct conflict with his senior brother, and no casualties would occur.

“You want to say you hope they won’t come,” Xia Jinshi’s voice hissed into his mind like a snake, stirring up his annoyance. “Xiao Zhou, if they don’t come, are they really worthy of your trust? Not worth it. Xiao Zhou, you’ve always been like this, foolish, weak, naive.”

Just as he said this, he saw Fu Yanzhou’s eyes, originally bloodshot from confusion, suddenly clear up. The darkness on his face was suppressed, and his lips moved laboriously. His words were faint, but still clear. “I owe him.” Before the words fell, Fu Yanzhou immediately closed his mouth tightly. He said this to refute Xia Jinshi’s assessment of not being worth it. In his confused and numb mind, he needed some evidence to tell himself that his persistence was worth it.

But before the words fell, Fu Yanzhou realized that he had revealed something. He frowned in pain and closed his mouth tightly, refusing to speak anymore.

Xia Jinshi’s eyebrows raised slightly. “Owe him.”

He quickly realized what had happened. Xia Jinshi straightened his back and walked out of the room. As the door closed slowly, Xia Jinshi instructed the people outside, “Go check to see if there are any doubts about the test subjects in the lab.”

Fu Yanzhou’s character was weak. He originally thought that brainwashing, conversion, and control processes would proceed quickly. But who knew that Fu Yanzhou would hold on for so long this time? This greatly exceeded his expectations.

Now he understood.

What supported Fu Yanzhou was not admiration or trust. On the contrary, it was guilt, self-blame, and courage.

The first two were easy to provoke and easy to destroy, but the latter seemed to be a bit troublesome.

Fu Yanzhou’s personality would make him feel guilty. Xia Jinshi immediately thought of the previous experiments. It seemed that Fu Yanzhou’s current resilience was based on his past regrets and a mentality of compensation.

Li Weilan went to discuss countermeasures with Tang Lu.

Holding her phone, Shen Cheng recalled her conversation with Li Weilan, sighed softly, and looked at the map showing the location of the research institute in City J, rubbing her temples with a headache.

Actually, when cub asked if she could contact Fu Yanzhou, although she didn’t say it, of course, there was a way, but this method couldn’t be revealed.

Using her avatar and then using a transformation mask to disguise as an internal figure of the institute, after all, the avatar was not a living person. As long as she could get in, even if it triggered an alarm or raised the institute’s guard, if she could successfully retrieve Fu Yanzhou or send in the information from the inside, it wouldn’t be a loss.

But if she did that, she would be risking her avatar without a guarantee of return. She couldn’t tell cub about this, as cub would definitely go berserk if she did.

She remembered Li Weilan once saying that he hoped that one day, the apocalypse would end, and they could live happily in a world, and he also hoped that her avatar would be the vessel for her future.

Shen Cheng, of course, also fantasized about living with him in the same world one day.

But compared to preserving her avatar, after learning about what Fu Yanzhou had done recently, Shen Cheng felt that, perhaps, Fu Yanzhou would be a bit more important than her avatar.

But she absolutely couldn’t tell cub about this.

If she did, it would be over.

Shen Cheng prepared to go solo in the research institute. The first preparation she needed to make was to buy a transformation mask, and then she directly teleported her avatar to the institute in City J.

She casually put on a civilian face and squatted at the entrance of the institute to observe. After squatting for several days, Shen Cheng found that besides Xia Jinshi, the highest authority in the institute was an old man who looked to be at least fifty years old. Xia Jinshi referred to him as Dr. Wei and treated him quite politely.

Shen Cheng followed him for two full days and found that his whereabouts were always stable, either at the institute or at home.

She was ready to disguise herself as him.

On the other hand, Li Weilan also realized that in the past few days, their conversations and interactions had been surprisingly scarce.

When he asked her, Shen Cheng quickly found an excuse. “The company has been working overtime lately, I have a lot of things to do. I’m sorry, Lanlan.”

She sounded particularly guilty, because lying made her feel guilty.

She said it was overtime, and Li Weilan didn’t expect her to lie to him.

They had been together for so long, and Shen Cheng had never lied to him.

She wasn’t busy in the three-dimensional world for the first time. Li Weilan knew that it wasn’t easy for her to live alone. Hearing her say it was overtime, the only thing he cared about was her health. He only reminded her to eat well and if she was too busy, it was better not to rush to log in. These days, he and Tang Lu were busy discussing the rescue of Fu Yanzhou and Bai Su. For a while, he didn’t notice Shen Cheng lying to his face with her eyes wide open.

Shen Cheng breathed a sigh of relief, but her heart felt heavy. If something really happened to her avatar, would cub go berserk?

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