Chapter 16: Seeking a Person

Li Cheng held his breath, focusing intently on the changes in his body. His strength, speed, and endurance showed no significant fluctuation, and no new organs had appeared in his limbs.

Only the facial muscles faintly itched.

“Hm? This is—”

He rushed to the mirror on his wardrobe and examined closely, discovering his face was subtly shifting, with fine details of his features altering.

“The number of facial muscles has increased, and their sensitivity is higher.”

The human face has only about forty muscles total—the orbicularis oris, levator anguli oris, zygomaticus minor, levator labii superioris, transverse part of the nasalis, orbicularis oculi, and so on.

Control over these muscles allows the face to form expressions like joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness.

Now, Li Cheng could not only control each muscle’s stretching and contracting, but also make them swell and compress, dragging along the lateral nasal cartilage and ear cartilage in the process.

“The range of possible modifications includes, but is not limited to, facial contour, shape of features, and skin texture. With makeup as an auxiliary, one can further refine details like pore size, skin tone, and number of eyebrows.”

Li Cheng manipulated the folds of his eyelids, repeatedly switching between single and double eyelids. “Though I can’t completely alter my skull structure, I can easily fool surveillance cameras and make my original appearance unrecognizable.”

He held his breath, first transforming his face into that of the infected man from earlier that day, then into his wife’s.

Perhaps due to absorbing their blood, these two faces changed with exceptional ease, achieving near-perfect similarity—even up close, differences were nearly undetectable.

“Wait, how is there a third preset face?”

Li Cheng’s expression twisted as he patted his face, relaxing his muscles, and randomly shifted into Luo Zhengxin’s face.

He remembered—he’d thrown a ball at Luo Zhengxin’s face earlier, causing him to bleed; then, during their attempt to stop him, Qiu Yourong and Qiu Yingxun had smeared Luo Zhengxin’s blood onto him.

“This works too?”

————

At the same time, in the exorbitantly priced city of Yinshi, the Yinshi branch of Prometheus Laboratory.

Security chief August Perez stood with arms crossed, frowning deeply.

Behind a layer of blast-proof glass, he could see the sterile, dust-free lab ahead, where automated robotic arms suspended from the ceiling on rails were manipulating an ancient quartz crucible eighty centimeters in diameter.

The crucible’s exterior was covered in moss; inside, it brimmed with thick purple liquid.

A six-axis robotic arm stirred the crucible repeatedly with a wooden rod, and occasionally, bizarre objects—bird bones, mushrooms, animal eyeballs—floated to the surface.

“Introduce the blood now.”

A researcher wearing a mask and goggles issued the command. Another robotic arm, holding a test tube, slowly poured a minute amount of blood into the crucible.

Puff!!

The crucible immediately erupted in thick purple smoke, which rose slowly and coalesced in midair into a human face, then gradually dispersed.

Over fifty high-speed cameras placed around the room had captured thousands of images, transmitted via data cables to computers, ultimately forming a 3D model of a teenager’s head.

“Found it! Luo Zhengxin, seventeen, second-year student at Zhuoyue High School in Yinshi, ID number 310106.”

An operator found matching information in Yinshi’s household registry, hesitating: “But according to surveillance footage, on the night the insect lord’s host appeared, he was at home. Also, the blood left at the scene was type AB—different from Luo Zhengxin’s blood type.”

“Hm?”

August raised an eyebrow. The divine corruption fragment was important, but not irreplaceable—it occasionally surfaced on the black market, sold to interested organizations or individuals.

He’d requested this perfect-grade [Ectic Cult of the Wraith Crucible] from his superiors mainly at the request of a friend at Gen-Sys Biotech—they were exceptionally interested in anything related to the insect lord.

(Also, the Special Affairs Bureau disliked external forces acting recklessly in the city and forbade Prometheus from conducting overt, widespread searches.)

“The crucible’s blood-based tracking ability shouldn’t malfunction…”

August paused, then turned to the operator. “What’s his family background?”

The operator replied: “His parents run a small cosmetics company—nothing significant. But his aunt married into the Lu family.”

“Direct or collateral line?”

“Collateral.”

“Then it doesn’t matter.” August waved dismissively. “Where is he now? Send someone.”

————

On the fifth floor of Longheng Mall in the city center, Luo Zhengxin, dressed in streetwear, browsed luxury stores, selecting clothes for tomorrow.

His cousin Lu Zhicong was coming to Yinshi; according to his mother, the Lu family was a true aristocratic clan—he had to treat them well.

Suddenly, his stomach ached. Luo Zhengxin’s face paled, and he hurried toward the mall restroom.

As soon as he entered, two burly men in janitor uniforms grabbed him on either side and dragged him into the farthest stall. Another man placed a “Under Maintenance” sign on the restroom door, blocking entry to outsiders.

The air seemed to carry a foul, rotting odor.

“What are you doing? Let me go!”

Luo Zhengxin had never encountered anything like this. His face turned ashen as he struggled violently.

But the men remained unmoved. They drew a syringe, extracted a full vial of blood from his arm, then scanned him repeatedly with some device, barking questions: “Where were you last Wednesday at midnight? What were you doing?”

“I was home! Watching TV!” His shoulders were pressed down hard, his face slowly sinking toward the toilet bowl’s water surface, his voice rising in pitch.

The man barked: “Where did you hide the insect lord’s divine corruption fragment?”

“What insect lord? What divine corruption fragment? I don’t know!”

The lie detector confirmed Luo Zhengxin was not lying. After several more interrogations, Prometheus agents confirmed he knew nothing and reluctantly released him, pulling a flashlamp-shaped memory eraser from a case and flashing it at him.

“.”

After an indeterminate time, Luo Zhengxin awoke to find himself sitting on the toilet. “Huh? Why is my face wet?”

He extended a finger, wiped his cheek, then cautiously licked the mysterious liquid clinging to his fingertip. “Why does it taste salty?”

(End of Chapter)