Chapter 505: Remember This Face

"Sister Yan."

Zhang San's research room was fitted with the best soundproofing materials and anti-eavesdropping equipment, and Yan Long stood at a respectful distance, so she definitely couldn't hear what was being said inside. Xia Qing walked over without a hint of nervousness, greeted Yan Long, and looked up calmly to meet her eyes.

Just as Xia Qing expected Yan Long to give her a few words of warning, Yan Long issued an order in a cold, deep voice: "Special training begins at 8:35 a. m. on the 16th, ten hours a day. Day one's location is the second peak of Mountain Fifty."

Xia Qing stood at attention and answered crisply, "Understood. I'll give it everything I've got. Please guide me well, Sister Yan."

Watching the scene on the monitor, Huo Zhun found himself thinking, for no particular reason, that Xia Qing looked a lot like that Strength-Evolved Ram from Territory Three.

Satisfied, Yan Long tilted her chin slightly, signaling that Xia Qing could leave.

"Yes!"

That one simple gesture from Yan Long radiated an incomparably powerful aura, and Xia Qing's blood boiled with excitement—every step she took brimmed with force.

Huo Zhun in the monitoring room, however, had a bad feeling. He immediately pulled out his phone to contact his old man, telling him to hurry up and send over the Hardness-Evolved Snake-Skin Suit—otherwise Huo Zhun feared Xia Qing wouldn't survive Yan Long's special training.

Xia Qing returned to the territory to grab her tools, then rushed straight to the third peak of Mountain Fifty. As she neared Xiong Dong, she sent a message to her idol. After waiting for Yang Jin to leave before going up the mountain, Xia Qing first greeted Hu Zi Feng at the construction site, then used her key to open the heavy iron door of Xiong Dong's command room.

The key had been given to her by Yang Jin that very morning—she hadn't expected to use it so soon.

Once inside Xiong Dong, Xia Qing headed straight for the stone house and graves in the hidden valley.

Every small item in the stone house that could reveal the owner's identity—the family portrait, the clothes and bedding already beginning to mold—was packed into her bag. Large furniture, cookware, and tools were smashed to pieces on the spot.

After clearing the house, Xia Qing picked up her iron hammer and shovel and walked toward the graves where Shi Jiayi's family was buried.

The five exquisitely carved stone steles, which Xia Qing had propped upright on her first visit, were now toppled again and smashed to bits with the heavy iron hammer.

Down the mountain, the roar of machines cutting firebreaks and the buzz of chainsaws were loud enough to drown out any noise. And with Hu Zi Feng keeping an eye on the construction site, if anyone down there heard anything, Hu Zi Feng would smooth things over—so Xia Qing smashed away without a care.

After shattering the steles, she dug open the graves and pried up the stone coffins, carefully collecting every last bone of the eight family members into bags. Collecting Shi Jiayi's remains was the easiest part—all she had to do was lift the bag containing Shi Jiayi's bones out of her husband's stone coffin.

That bag was one Xia Qing herself had placed there not long ago.

After smashing the stone coffins, Xia Qing shouldered the several large bags she needed to bring back, contacted Hu Zi Feng at the construction site, and—after confirming the positions of the Disaster-Control Second Echelon and the construction task force members—finally left Xiong Dong with her heavy pack, taking a detour down the mountain back to Territory Three.

The eight bags of bones were taken straight to the abandoned village basement in the territory and buried there. Xia Qing had originally dug that basement to store food, but without temperature and humidity control it proved completely unfit for the purpose, so she'd abandoned it.

Now, it served perfectly as a tomb for the eight family members.

After burying the bones, Xia Qing thoroughly burned everything else she'd brought back, keeping only the family portrait, and the kindergarten textbook and homework notebook that had been stored with the phone.

Xia Qing took those three items, thoroughly disinfected her protective suit and sprayed it with an odor-isolating agent, then headed for Territory Seven.

Yang Jin had only just left, and now Xia Qing was back again—none of the others in Territory Seven thought anything was off. After all, one of them was in charge of on-site disaster-control command, the other managed Mountain Fifty, so it was perfectly normal for them to come report to Zhang San.

After a scan confirmed Xia Qing wasn't carrying any dangerous items or weapons, Ji Li walked her part of the way, then stopped. "Yan Long is up ahead. Go with her."

"Got it, thanks, Brother Ji." Xia Qing quickened her pace toward Yan Long and greeted her.

Yan Long looked at Xia Qing in silence. From the scent, she could tell that besides the faint weasel stench, Xia Qing also carried a faint smell of rot and mold.

It was a smell every human of the Calamity Era knew intimately—nothing out of the ordinary. Yan Long gave a slight nod and escorted her into Zhang San's laboratory.

After Yan Long had walked far enough away, Xia Qing locked the door from the inside, then took the items out. "Third Brother, I feel like these things should be kept. Do you think they should stay here with you, or over at my place?"

Zhang San shot Xia Qing a look. "Does your place have a Class-1 bulletproof chamber that can withstand an explosive shockwave?"

Xia Qing answered immediately, "No, you keep them. Your place is the most reliable, the safest. Only with you can we be absolutely sure nothing goes wrong."

Zhang San snorted, and in a flat tone delivered the harshest words: "Can't call it absolutely sure. Someone might break through Ji Li and the others' defenses, grab me, and force me to take them into the chamber. Once inside, I'd activate the immediate-seal self-destruct mode—no one walks out alive, myself included."

"Third Brother."

Xia Qing stood up, her face solemn. "Third Brother, a person like that isn't worth your life. You must have plenty of ways to both save yourself and take them out. You have to stay alive—only the living have hope, only the living can walk toward happiness."

Zhang San stared at Xia Qing in silence for a few seconds, then leaned his head back against the chair with a look of distaste. "Back up—you're stinking me up again."

Xia Qing, who could no longer smell the stench on herself, sat back down and discussed with her idol, "How about you find time to figure out how to get rid of the evolved weasel's stink as soon as possible?"

"No time." Zhang San refused flatly. "Yang Jin only went into the valley once to grab supplies—he didn't wander around inside, didn't spot the steles or the photos in the stone house. You've looked through the photos and videos on the phone?"

Xia Qing answered, "No. I only browsed the post-Calamity ones, and the only ones I watched carefully were the last two videos. I remember her mentioning in an earlier video that she had a younger sister in college who she'd lost contact with."

Zhang San turned the laptop screen toward Xia Qing. "The pre-Calamity photos and videos have no reference value anymore. Remember this face—this is what she looked like right after being rescued. No matter how a person disguises herself, the distance between her pupils, the position of her eyeballs, and the shape of her orbital bones can't change, because those are determined by anatomy."

On the screen, Shi Jiaran—her head freshly shaved—wore a loose hospital gown and curled up into a tiny ball on the hospital bed. Pale and emaciated, she stared blankly at the camera; both her features and her expression bore a striking resemblance to the Shi Jiayi in the last video on the phone.

Bright red, unhealed scratch marks crisscrossed her head, face, and neck, as though she had been cut by shards of glass exploding outward.

Those superficial wounds weren't the worst of it. What struck Xia Qing with震撼 and made her hair stand on end were the patches of bruising and the rows of needle marks covering the backs of Shi Jiaran's tightly clutched hands and the skin of her arms.

So this was the state of a precious experimental subject in the underground project—one who had suffered far less than the Fire Phoenix?