Chapter 452: Please Sit

The corridor after evening study ended was empty.

Lu Yu leaned against the wall of the fire escape on the east side of the teaching building, clutching the caramel candy Chen Yao had slipped to him. Inside the wrapper was a flexible chip smaller than a fingernail; he pressed it lightly with his fingertip, and the data silently streamed into his bone‑conduction earpiece.

Chen Yao's voice was soft, but her speech speed was abnormally fast.

"Zhang Yuanqing ran away."

Four characters.

Lu Yu's pupils suddenly contracted.

"Spade Unit, all members, mobilize; Xu An's Correction Place was pierced head‑on, my brother went in personally, Zhang Yuanqing with a single punch—"

Chen Yao's voice faltered, and the pause concealed a tremor she herself could not hide.

"One punch shattered my brother's Psychic Force Shield."

There was no wind in the fire escape, yet every hair on Lu Yu's back stood on end.

Chen Shao.

Dominating Demon Eye.

S Ji wanted criminal.

The absolute ruler of Eden Garden.

Defense crushed by a single punch?

Lu Yu's fingers began to tremble. It wasn't fear—it was a deeper, marrow‑deep alarm screaming wildly.

"He fused something on the spot; the level assessment... after that, it was probably already S," Chen Yao's voice was pressed down to a whisper, "The Federation didn't intercept it either; the target vanished into a spatial rift."

The data cut off here.

Lu Yu tore the chip from the wrapper, crushed it, and the fragments fell through his finger gaps into the drainage grate.

He didn't move.

His whole body was nailed to the wall, like a frozen wooden stake.

What surged in his mind wasn't Zhang Yuanqing's combat stats, but a more terrifying inference—

Zhang Yuanqing, a wronged forensic doctor, a drunkard wastrel, who half a year ago was stitching wounds for people in the slum's Black Clinic.

How could such a person suddenly acquire that level of power?

How could he possess a method to channel cross‑dimensional energy?

How could he have been outmatched before, yet later easily crush Chen Shao head‑on?

There was only one answer.

Someone gave it to him.

Someone tossed the power away like spare change, handing it to a cornered avenger.

Lu Yu closed his eyes.

Memories from his past life flickered like faded film frames—before the apocalypse, those Weird scattered across the world, each precisely embedded in a desperate person's wound. Each seemed designed, deployed,... edited.

Perhaps Zhang Yuanqing wasn't the source.

Zhang Yuanqing was just a pawn.

A pawn casually tossed out by that "God".

And he, Lu Yu, after exhausting schemes and mobilizing Chen Yao and all of Eden Garden's resources to investigate the "true mastermind", in the end......

He hadn't even brushed the opponent's Shadow.

What he pursued was a pawn.

The real player was still sitting outside the board, perhaps even watching his every move.

That realization made Lu Yu's stomach convulse violently.

He bent over, hands on his knees, a sour, nauseous urge rising in his throat. It wasn't a physical reaction, but a mental one—the suffocating feeling of realizing he'd been bouncing inside a beast's mouth for ages, and the beast was too lazy to even close its jaws.

In his previous life, Su Ming had said a line when handing him the Time Marrow Worm.

"Assassinate it before the deity's wings are fully grown."

But if the opponent can already spawn S Ji monsters, can that still be called "wings not fully grown"?

What about after they are fully grown?

Lu Yu dared not think.

He forced himself to stand upright, pushed open the fire escape door, and hurried toward the nearest restroom.

He turned the faucet to its maximum.

Icy tap water poured over his head, streaming down his forehead, bridge of the nose, and chin, soaking a large patch of his school uniform's collar.

The boy in the mirror looked pale, water droplets clinging to his lashes, his eyes bearing a darkness far beyond a fourteen‑year‑old.

Calm.

Calm.

He began to replay the events.

He had Chen Yao retrieve Jiang Hai City's old case files, an action carried out through Eden Garden's encrypted intelligence network. Those who could access the command: Chen Yao, Chen Shao, and Eden Garden's core intelligence layer.

Lu Yu's fingers curled into his palm.

If that "God" could channel power to Zhang Yuanqing, it meant he knew Zhang Yuanqing's movements like the back of his hand. Then, could he also sense someone probing the source of the Weird?

Had he already noticed... him?

Water kept rushing.

Lu Yu stared at his own eyes in the mirror, forcing his brain to run at high speed.

No.

If the opponent had already sensed him, there was no reason to let him be. With that level of power, erasing a Qiu Ce Yuan student was easier than crushing an ant.

So either the other side hasn't noticed him yet.

Or… they have noticed, but don't care.

Both possibilities send a chill down one's spine.

Lu Yu turned off the faucet, wiped his face haphazardly with his sleeve, fished the deformed candy shell from his pocket, and pressed the transmit key.

Three seconds later, Chen Yao's voice sounded again.

"What's wrong?"

"This matter," Lu Yu's lips barely moved, his voice squeezed out between his teeth, "aside from you and your brother, who else knows I'm investigating?"

"No." Chen Yao's answer was crisp, "The intelligence directive was personally issued by my brother with Highest Authorization; the execution layer only knows the mission details, not the principal. Our communication runs over an independent physical line, bypassing the Eden Garden main network."

"Could your brother leak it?"

Silence for two seconds.

"He wouldn't." Chen Yao's tone carried an unquestionable certainty, "This matter concerns my safety; he'd rather bite off his own tongue than reveal it."

Lu Yu's breathing steadied a bit.

The information cocoon is intact. Only Chen Yao and Chen Shao know he's tracing the source. One could perform a lifelong role for his brother; the other could slaughter the world for his sister.

They have no motive to betray him.

"Fine." Lu Yu said, "I'll switch tactics. Since Zhang Yuanqing is still alive, he's a lead. I need to find him before the Federation and your brother do."

"Are you crazy? That's Quasi‑S—"

"No need to fight." Lu Yu cut her off, "Just need to follow. The thing behind him that gives him power is what I'm really after."

The communication was cut.

Lu Yu tossed the candy shell into the Trash Can, wiped the water stains from his neck with a tissue, and smoothed his school uniform collar. The boy in the mirror reverted to his clean, thin, harmless appearance.

He pushed open the restroom door.

The corridor's PA suddenly buzzed.

"Attention, students, please pay attention—"

The dean's office's perpetually nasal female voice echoed overhead.

"According to the academy's autumn schedule, tomorrow morning from eight to twelve, a campus‑wide physical exam will be held on the first floor of the Medical Building. Classes should proceed to the venue in their assigned time slots, carrying student IDs and health file cards. Repeating—"

Lu Yu's steps faltered.

Physical exam.

Heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, Weird perception threshold, cellular activity index…

The dormant monster inside him, after devouring the B09 Weird Domain Core, has remained in a subtly active state. If the exam equipment is precise enough, even a slight anomalous fluctuation—

Su Ming hadn't relaxed his monitoring of him.

Any data that falls outside the "ordinary student" range would become a new basis for interrogation.

Lu Yu leaned against the wall for a few seconds, then slowly exhaled a breath of stale air.

It's fine.

He's done this countless times.

In his previous life, to survive the apocalyptic ruins, he learned to fool every detection method. Heart rate can be suppressed with a specific breathing rhythm; as for the Weird perception threshold—if the monster's aura is pressed deep enough, ordinary equipment can't detect it.

He began adjusting his breath.

Four seconds inhaling, seven seconds holding, eight seconds exhaling.

It was a technique taught by a dead military doctor from his past life, able to drop the heart rate from 120 to below 60 within thirty seconds.

Students gradually emerged from the study room into the corridor, chatting in small groups toward the dorms. When someone greeted him, he gave a smile and nodded in response.

No one could see what lay beneath that smile.

Back in the dorm, Lu Yu didn't turn on the lights.

He sat on the bed edge, the darkness broken only by a thin, dim yellow glow from the streetlamp outside.

His breathing grew slower and deeper.

Heartbeats fell from seventy‑two… sixty‑eight… sixty‑three…

Stabilizing at fifty‑eight per minute.

A perfect athlete's resting heart rate—neither high nor low, unlikely to raise suspicion.

The restless undercurrent inside him was suppressed layer by layer, like locking a beast in a cage and wrapping thick sound‑proof padding around it.

It quieted.

Everything fell silent.

Lu Yu opened his eyes; in the darkness his pupils were so deep they seemed bottomless.

Tomorrow.

Just an ordinary physical exam.

He had played the ordinary person for fourteen years; this time would be no different.

The next day, 8:15 a. m.

A long line snaked along the first‑floor corridor of the Medical Building, the elementary Section A students chattering while waiting for their numbers. Lu Yu stood in the middle of the line, clutching his health file card, his expression calm yet slightly tense—just the right amount of nervousness for a teen who had endured Weird Domain trauma.

"Class A, next."

A nurse stuck out her head to call the number.

Lu Yu took a step forward.

The Examination Room door was half‑open, emitting the scent of disinfectant mixed with a faint hint of sandalwood.

He reached out to push the door.

The door opened.

The light in the Examination Room was soft and ample, and a person sat beside the white examination table.

A white shirt, its cuffs buttoned in a Regulation manner. Gold‑trimmed glasses perched on a high, straight nose bridge, the lenses refracting a warm, gentle arc of light. The slender, fair hands were turning over the medical examination form on the desk; hearing the door chime, they lifted their head.

The smile was warm and just right.

But the depths of the eyes were unfathomable.

"Classmate, please sit."

Lu Yu's footsteps halted on the threshold.

He stared at that face, at the eyes framed by the lenses, and at the two characters printed on the brand‑new Work Badge hanging over his chest—

Chu Che.