After the annoying voice of the supervisor beside him stopped, Xi Han returned his gaze to the tablet.
His eyes continued to dart across the monitor screen, seemingly clinging to a slim hope.
He imagined that 301 was just angry and hiding.
Instead of leaving him forever and never coming back.
But until he zoomed in on every spot on the screen, he couldn’t find 301.
Finally, he was convinced that No. 301 had really left.
Because he loathed him and because he fell in love with someone else.
Splat–
Xi Han heard the sound of water droplets dripping onto the flat surface.
He blinked in some confusion.
When a person’s emotional fluctuation reached its limit, they would instead appear unusually calm.
At this moment, Xi Han became very quiet.
The previously gentle and composed expression on his face had now even become somewhat dazed.
Because he suspected that he was now dreaming.
And it was an extremely absurd dream.
The water droplets dripping from the flat surface were proof of that.
He only shed tears in dreams, and now his eyes were burning uncontrollably.
Xi Han had never been one to cry, so perhaps it could only be explained as him dreaming.
But looking down, he looked at his fingers holding the tablet.
The pain spread from the tips of his fingers all the way to his palm, constantly reminding Xi Han that this wasn’t a dream but a reality.
For the first time, Xi Han wished that he was dreaming.
At this moment, the argument in the conference room was still continuing, and the crowd was so heated that no one noticed Xi Han’s abnormality.
The focus of the argument had risen from whether or not to protect monsters to the height of betrayal of humanity.
There was simply no time to pay attention to the rest.
“Recently, I have heard that the people from the Monster Protection Organization have already begun to launch an operation, talking nonsense and calling for the liberation of monsters.
Perhaps they have already infiltrated the base now, preparing to carry out destructive activities!”
“So what you’re doing now is supporting their group and betraying humanity!”
“It’s what will get people bothered!”
Supervisor Grumpy’s voice grew louder, his anger making his face red.
“Don’t be an alarmist! It’s really getting more and more exaggerated! Unbelievable!”
Jack, who had been so rebuked to his face, also gasped in anger.
Recently, the outside world’s public opinion was indeed very unfriendly to the experimental bases in the country.
In particular, the Monster Protection Organization’s ever-expanding numbers had caused the government a headache as well.
It had already talked to the base side several times as a result.
They wanted the base to come up with a plan to alleviate the increasingly tense public opinion situation.
Such as treating the shelters appropriately and so on.
This was one of the reasons why Dr. Jack had recently made these suggestions.
Times were changing, and he didn’t think that humans and monsters could really coexist peacefully.
But now one had to adapt to the times and choose a more appropriate way to move on.
What was more, some of the monsters that were extremely similar to the human form recently did make him suspicious, thinking that the higher-ups might be hiding something from them.
But in the eyes of outsiders, Jack’s approach was tantamount to betrayal, so the argument became even more intense.
The room was abuzz.
Almost everyone joined in the fight.
Only Xi Han seemed unusually quiet.
His dead, amber eyes looked at these people.
He only heard the phrase “infiltrate the base.”.
Yes, 301 probably didn’t leave on its own.
It was kid-napped by those people from the Monster Protection Organization who didn’t know what they were doing.
This possibility wasn’t impossible.
If that was the case, then he would have to hurry up and save 301.
Xi Han’s fingers trembled as he finally loosened the cracked tablet in his hand and entered the command to close the base entrance.
As the highest management of the base, although the supervisors still needed to obey the orders of the higher organizations, they enjoyed extremely high authority within this base.
Among them was the authority to close the base’s channels at any time and issue the base’s alarm.
This was in order to prevent the escape of extremely dangerous shelters, causing civilian casualties in the outside world.
Although very few people would use this function in normal times, once it was used, all the entrances and exits of the entire base would be closed, and the alarm would sound throughout the entire base.
At the same time, there would be guards constantly searching.
As long as the person remained at the base, they would definitely be found.
So 301 wouldn’t leave.
It would definitely come back.
— Drop
—- woo
Duan An covered his ears somewhat uncomfortably amidst the ear-piercing sirens.
He realized that he and his companion, Lu Wen, had probably been discovered.
“How could it be so fast?”
Duan An was a little flustered.
He and Lu Wen had just rescued 301.
They were now in the corridor heading to the exit of the base and had been carefully avoiding the other researchers, but they didn’t expect the alarm bell to ring all of a sudden.
In the lab next to them, the researchers who were still busy with their experiments had also raised their heads, seemingly on the verge of discovering them.
This made Duan An’s forehead break out in cold sweat from his shock.
The earliest time he expected to be discovered was half an hour later.
How could he expect that he would be discovered before the end of the base meeting?
“Aren’t those supervisors in a meeting?”
Duan An looked at the time on his mobile phone and was a little anxious.
It was clear that the surveillance had been blocked, so it couldn’t be that someone was still ignoring the meeting and kept looking at the surveillance, could it?
But if it was that crazy person, Xi Han, it was still a real possibility.
Maybe he was trying to take a look at the next shelter that was ready to be dissected, and then he found out about them taking 301.
And he didn’t hesitate to pull the alarm.
He was such a lunatic that he could close the entrance to an entire base for just a single A-class shelter.
Thinking like this, Duan An’s expression sank slightly, and his gaze went to his companion, Lu Wen, behind him.
There was also number 301 behind Lu Wen, who was wearing a researcher’s uniform.
In order to deceive people, they had changed No. 301 into a uniform that was generally the same as the researchers in the base.
No. 301’s appearance, which was no different from that of a human’s, made him very well disguised, and he could pass off as long as he covered his face.
They had gone unnoticed all the way from the shelter area to here just now.
They had wanted to send 301 out of the base like this.
But they didn’t expect to be stopped halfway.
Duan An now had a bit of a headache and didn’t know what to do to salvage his current near-unsolvable predicament.
The snow-white complexion of No. 301 was now looking at everything inside the base with interest, and he still had a calm expression amidst the ear-piercing alarms.
His dark eyes glanced over after noticing Duan An’s gaze.
The clear and beautiful pupils caused Duan An to lose his concentration for a moment.
Just as Lu Wen had constantly praised in his ears before, No. 301 had the same appearance as a human.
Yet he was even more beautiful than normal people.
Perhaps it was also because of his beauty that he was treated as a monster.
Locked up in this dark and sunless base, suffering torture worse than death.
Duan An withdrew his gaze, his expression gradually firming up.
For the sake of this innocent No. 301, he had to persevere.
Otherwise, if he let No. 301 be taken back now and fall back into the hands of Xi Han, what would greet No. 301 would only be an unspeakably miserable fate.
Duan An had had enough of being able to only watch the monsters being disemboweled, dismantled, and stripped of their skin and bones without being able to do anything.
This time, he decided to make an effort, even if he might expose his identity for it, to save 301.
The alarm bells in his ears were also getting louder and louder, and Duan An could already hear the footsteps of the guards hurrying in.
He had been at the Third Experimental Base longer than Lu Wen, and he knew that after the alarm sounded, the number of these guards would only increase.
If they continued to delay, they wouldn’t be able to run away from anyone.
“This won’t work; we’ll have to split up, or we’ll both be discovered by then!”
Duan An calmly analyzed and briefly described his plan.
One of the two of them was going to continue escaping with 301, while the other was responsible for covering.
Duan An knew that the identities of the two of them must have gone undetected, and the base side should have only discovered No. 301’s escape.
So they could now take advantage of the fact that the base didn’t know their identities yet to get a chance at survival for 301.
“I know that there’s a hidden exit at the other end of the base, the place where experimental waste is usually discharged, and they shouldn’t have had time to close there yet.”
“If we can get there by going through the holding area, we can escape!”
“And the one left behind is going to give false information to the people coming after them, misleading them into thinking that 301 escaped to another exit.”
Lu Wen nodded and gazed tenderly at No. 301 behind him.
Although, after being rescued, No. 301 still didn’t say a word and didn’t have any special feelings of gratitude towards him.
But as long as he could see the free No. 301, it was an extremely happy thing for Lu Wen.
He could give everything for No. 301.
“Then it’s up to me to take No. 301.”
The two men’s voices in unison overlapped.
Two pairs of somewhat stunned eyes faced each other, and there was a moment of silence in the corridor.
Not far away, Jiu Shu looked at them like he was watching a good show.
“Forget it; I’ll draw them away.”
After struggling for a bit, Duan An chose himself to be the one with a higher risk factor.
Perhaps he was too worried about No. 301’s safety, so Duan An felt that Lu Wen wouldn’t be able to take care of No. 301, but in fact, he really wasn’t the right person to send No. 301 away.
After all, he had to cross the dangerous containment area, and he had not been there to get familiar with it recently, nor had he communicated with those poor shelters.
It wouldn’t be good if something went wrong.
“Be sure to take care; I’ll buy you guys some time!”
Duan An said, taking one last look at 301 before leaving the place with some reluctance.
He was going to distract the guards nearby so that Lu Wen could proceed to the next step without any problems.
Jiu Shu watched the two men’s maneuvers and looked in the direction of the end of the corridor without comment.
There was another holding area where the shelters were kept.
It was also the place where experimental waste was disposed of, as Duan An had said.
That area was said to be filled with some of the more dangerous shelters, and the closer to the exit, the more dangerous the shelters were.
This was because the shelters there were already nearly out of control and had no research value.
It only had the value of being destroyed and disposed of as rubbish.
The search inside the base was deepening.
But after nearly half an hour of searching by the guards, they still hadn’t gotten any news about the shelter.
Xi Han’s expression had become more and more ugly with the passage of time, and the usual smile at the corner of his mouth was barely hanging on.
The assistant stood aside warily, a cold sweat soaking his back.
Xi Han has really become very wrong lately; his mood changes were extreme, the smile on his face was getting more and more fake, and his gloomy eyebrows made people not dare to look directly at him.
“Still haven’t found it?”
“Er, no news yet.”
The aide carefully answered Xi Han’s one hundred and twelfth inquiry.
Now that the base was under full martial law, the best efforts had been made to find 301.
But after all, the base was just too big, covering thousands of square meters; it was simply not something that could be found in an instant.
The assistant saw Dr. Xi Han fall silent again after hearing his answer, pacing anxiously in the corridor.
The assistant could only see his tensed knuckles, still a little bloo-d-colored.
The assistant was really afraid that he would suddenly burst out and beat him up.
Luckily, this was just the assistant’s fantasy, and Xi Han still retained his sanity.
But the assistant didn’t know how long Xi Han’s sanity could be maintained.
Luckily, news soon came from the guards.
It said that the researcher who witnessed 301’s escape had been found.
It was a researcher named Duan An.
Before the assistant could finish speaking, Xi Han lifted his steps and headed to where Duan An was.
The assistant watched Xi Han go far away and finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Today’s Xi Han was almost like he had been in an icehouse for a long time; his body was radiating cold air, and the smile on his face was unable to dissipate this cool air.
The assistant who stayed next to him felt frozen to the bone.
But then again, wasn’t Dr. Xi Han a little too concerned about 301 this time?
There had been instances of shelters breaking through the base before, but the assistant had never seen Xi Han act this strangely.
That expression, which could be described as lost in thought, was almost as if he had lost his beloved.
This thought popped up in the assistant’s mind but was then denied by himself.
No matter who fell in love with number 301, there was no way that Xi Han would fall in love with number 301.
He was a supervisor who hated monsters to the core.
The assistant spat at himself for really overthinking this.
If Dr. Xi Han knew, he would be sacked on the spot.
And on the other side…
Xi Han had already found Duan An, who had supposedly seen number 301.
Duan An was currently sitting in his office, resting.
He looked at Xi Han, who walked in with a big stride, and his expression was a bit stunned.
Today’s Xi Han really wasn’t quite the same as before.
“Where did they go?”
Xi Han’s tone was gloomy, and his eyes looked cold as he looked at Duan An.
The previous gentleness was completely gone.
A simple white uniform over a white coat, with black loose hair falling behind his neck.
Although it could set off the broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted figure under the uniform, the wrinkled traces of clothing on the white coat inevitably looked a little sloppy.
The bandages on his fingers even carried shocking traces of blood.
He was so different that he didn’t look at all like Dr. Xi Han, who smiled brightly when facing shelters.
Duan An’s collar was yanked up by Xi Han.
Thinking of the last time he was strangled to the point where he couldn’t breathe, Duan An couldn’t hide his fear as he looked at Xi Han, almost forgetting the sentence he had organized long ago.
“Doctor, calm down!”
The guard next to him saw this and hurriedly calmed down.
Duan An was also a formal researcher, not a criminal, so it wasn’t appropriate for him to be treated like this.
Xi Han coldly glanced at the guard, who instantly silenced himself and left with good sense.
What the supervisor wanted to do, he, a guard, couldn’t stop.
He only hoped that this little researcher wouldn’t be beaten out of his mind by Dr. Xi Han.
Duan An could only face this terrifying man, Xi Han, alone now.
He barely managed to calm down and said, “You should not be so agitated; please put me down so that I can answer the questions properly.”
Xi Han was already disgusted with this researcher named Duan An, and with his current eagerness, he couldn’t put on a good expression at all.
All that could be done was to give him an icy look and let go.
“I hope you won’t pull any tricks.”
Xi Han was now suspicious of this Duan An.
Having a surplus of sympathy for monsters, he was very much like someone in one of those monster protection organizations.
But now that only this guy knew where 301 was going, Xi Han could only hold back for the time being.
He decided to investigate him properly afterwards.
“Was it accompanied by a researcher?”
Duan An rubbed his neck and could barely catch his breath, then he lowered his eyes to hide his shaky gaze.
This guy, Xi Han, was indeed smarter, instantly understanding that it was impossible for 301 to escape the holding area on its own.
“Yes, I saw their backs as they walked together, but that person had a gu*n in his hand, so I didn’t dare approach.”
“Hmph, those guys who aren’t in their right mind, the people in the Monster Protection Organization…”
Xi Han expressionlessly operated the tablet in his hand.
It was determined that the man was someone in the Monster Protection Organization.
Duan An, however, denied it. “Maybe not? Maybe it’s just a researcher who feels sympathy for what happened to 301.”
“……”
For a moment, the eyes of Xi Han glancing at Duan An looked extremely grim.
Duan An, however, gathered his courage and continued to argue, “No. 301 didn’t have a good time; that’s why he followed that person.”
“You’re too brutal; you faced a humanoid shelter and laid your hands on him!”
Duan An prepared to provoke Xi Han in order to stall for time.
At the same time, he also said what he had been thinking about for a while.
Xi Han was indeed an unapologetically brutal person.
“That’s why I don’t think it was done by someone from the Monster Protection Organization; it’s just the instinctive desire for survival of an intelligent being!
Duan An didn’t want the base to blame the Monster Protection Organization for this incident, and now wasn’t the time for the organization to be exposed.
It would affect the large-scale rescue operation afterwards.
So Duan An had to find a proper reason for this incident of the shelter escaping the shelter.
“That person got along well with 301; he must have done this because he couldn’t bear to see 301 die at your hands.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Xi Han’s amber eyes were so cold that they were almost murderous.
Duan An, however, only felt a blazing flame ignite in his heart—the fire of courage that was lit to save the tortured shelters.
Enhanced by this conviction, even in the face of Xi Han’s terrifying eyes, he remained calm and collected as he replied, “I’m right.”
Duan An felt that he had definitely angered Xi Han now.
Maybe the next moment he was going to be beaten half to death by Xi Han.
But if it was to save 301, he was willing to do it.
As a member of the Monster Protection Organization, he had long been prepared to pay a price in blo*od for the liberation of the shelters.
But, to his surprise, Xi Han didn’t make a move.
Only his expression grew more and more sombre.
His hair cascaded down, covering the upper half of his face, and only his pale, thin lips and pale, blo*odless jaw could be seen.
Obviously, when Duan An didn’t realize it, he had poked the most-feared point in Xi Han’s heart.
That he was feared and loathed by 301, which was why he couldn’t wait to get out of here.
“Do you know 301 so well?”
There wasn’t the slightest emotion in Xi Han’s voice.
The words, however, carried an obvious question.
Duan An choked and forced himself to calm down. “Although I didn’t have any close contact, I can tell that 301 was very close to that person; it must have happily followed him away.”
“If you still have an ounce of humanity, why don’t you just let him go like that? That would make him happy, and it would be considered a virtuous act on your part.”
Closeness.
Good feelings.
The palms of Xi Han’s hands at his side curled tightly together as the wound crumbled open once more, bloo*d soaking the newly changed bandage as well.
Drips of thick blo*od flowed downward.
Duan An looked at Xi Han, who stood still and didn’t say anything, thinking that he had finally impressed this hard-hearted guy.
But the next moment, the blackened muzzle told him.
It didn’t.
“Tell me where it went, or don’t leave here.”
Xi Han didn’t seem to be affected by Duan An’s words just now at all.
The smile that habitually tugged at the corners of his mouth still had a perfect curve.
But the eyes that curled up didn’t have the slightest hint of laughter in them.
The moment he locked eyes with Xi Han, Duan An somewhat understood why those tall and strong shelters, even if they weren’t tied up, would reveal expressions of incomparable fear and dread when facing Xi Han.
This evil mad scientist truly had an eerie aura that made people feel like falling into an ice cellar.
Especially when his amber-colored eyes were filled with bottomless ki*lling intent.
Inside the base.
Jiu Shu followed beside Lu Wen and looked at the group of shelters that were imprisoned in glass cages nearby.
These imprisoned shelters were huddled in cramped spaces, and only a few of the petite ones were able to get by relatively comfortably.
When they saw the two people in the corridor, they all moved closer to the glass, seemingly wanting to follow them to escape.
Lu Wen couldn’t bear to look at these shelters in a shrivelled state, covered in wounds, and forcibly ordered himself to withdraw his gaze, only wanting to take No. 301 and leave this place as soon as possible.
However, the sound of the guards’ footsteps soon came from behind them.
And now there was still a distance to the exit; there was no way to get there even if they sped up their pace.
What to do?
Lu Wen was somewhat at a loss.
Suddenly, his eyes once again looked at the nearby shelters that were thirsty for freedom.
Perhaps they could be released to disrupt the guards’ attention.
Maybe some of them could even follow them and escape.
As soon as he thought of it, Lu Wen immediately stepped forward and began to think of a way to open the cage.
As a staff member familiar with the holding area, he already knew how to open these cages after all this time.
Jiu Shu looked away for a second, and Lu Wen had already released a large batch of shelters.
Before Jiu Shu could react, a furry shelter with a raccoon-like appearance approached and hugged his waist.
“?”
Jiu Shu lowered his eyes and met the amber-colored eyes of the shelter.
In the next moment, large, round teardrops rolled down from the shelter’s moist eyes, soaking Jiu Shu’s newly changed uniform in a matter of seconds.
Snap-snap-snap.
The tears were still coming down.
The shelter let out a wailing cry.
It seemed to be begging him not to get close to others or to be kind to others.
TN:
Bonus Chapters tomorrow 🤸
Thank you for the chapter! (ノ＞▽＜。)ノ