Chapter Seventy-Six: The Little Tree and the Apple of Growing Up

The body’s time of death was estimated to be between thirteen and seventeen hours earlier, and the cause was asphyxiation. Based on the wounds on the corpse, it was determined that the victim had been whipped after death, and no outside force had intervened in the process of dying.

An airway compressed from the outside is different from injuries caused by one’s own struggle; that alone proved the girl’s testimony was false.

Of course, judging by the time of death alone, Chen Qing had nearly an entire police precinct as his alibi.

“So tell me, why did you identify me?” he asked the young woman lying in the hospital bed, sitting at her bedside with that strange, uncanny smile on his face.

Her tongue had been cut out. Her limbs bore wounds of varying severity. She lay there in bed, almost exactly in the same restrained posture as before.

Her eyes were wide with fear deep in them.

She stared at Chen Qing’s face, inching herself toward the far side of the bed again and again, until she was pressed against the bed rail and could retreat no farther.

Behind her, Jiang Wan spoke as well: “Do you know what happens when you give false testimony? Do you know how much pressure that puts on the police?!”

Her expression was stern, but the girl seemed not to hear a word of her rebuke. She still stared fixedly at Chen Qing, her face full of terror.

Chen Qing looked into the girl’s fixed gaze, and the smile on his face grew even stranger. It carried a touch of excitement, a touch of curiosity, and it made beads of sweat appear on her brow.

“You’ve seen them… but why accuse me?” He leaned in closer, studying the girl as though she were some neglected object no one cared to claim.

That gaze was invasive, blatant, staring nakedly at every tiny change in her expression.

“You know perfectly well it wasn’t me, and yet you still made such a forceful accusation? You’re afraid of me.”

He watched the girl before him. Her breathing quickened a little, and she gripped the blanket so tightly that her knuckles turned white.

She looked at him as if she were seeing some creature that should not exist, as if the dead had risen and stood before her.

“Oh, I forgot—you can’t speak.”

He fetched a drawing pad and flung it rather roughly down in front of her.

“You’re afraid of me. What are you afraid of?”

He smiled as he watched the girl, who did not even dare to take up the pen.

“You’re afraid of why I’m still alive.” He reached into his pocket and took out that cassette.

“You know what this is, because you’ve seen it. And because you’re alive, you know what it means.”

Her fingertips trembled, but she forced herself to snatch the pen from the blanket. She waved frantically at Chen Qing and wrote on the drawing pad.

No. I haven’t seen it. I don’t know. I don’t know it.

Those few brief lines seemed hardly convincing. She likely knew that too, yet panic had already robbed her of any further words.

“She knows what this is. That’s why she was able to survive…”

Seeing the girl’s panic-stricken state, Chen Qing also lost the desire to press further. Interrogation required give and take; only when the other side opened their mouth did it become interesting.

What was the point of venting all by oneself?

He gave a tired sigh, shook his head, and put the cassette away, while Jiang Wan followed behind him.

They walked for a long while. Only after leaving the watchful eyes of the hospital and the police bureau did Jiang Wan frown and ask in a low voice, “And you just took that thing with you?”

“Then what else?” He lowered his voice as well. “Leave it there to keep harming people?”

Chen Qing shook his head, his gaze heavy. “Those four people at the scene absolutely need to be investigated. They’re definitely not normal. And also…”

He paused before continuing, “The investigation into Jie Hongbo has to be accelerated. I keep feeling…”

“You think the problem is him?”

He nodded, but said nothing.

After they parted, it was quite a while later before Bu Zhaozhao’s figure appeared again beside Chen Qing.

He glanced at her. It had been a long time since she had shown herself. “What is it?”

She looked at Chen Qing, her face so dark it seemed she could wring water from it. She pointed at the cassette in his pocket and said coldly, “You were right. Two hundred years is enough time for this world to become something entirely unknown to me.

“You were right… Two hundred years. They were already able to regard human beings as swine two hundred years ago. How could they possibly value the lives of ordinary people now?”

He frowned slightly, understanding her meaning. “Those four people are them?”

“That uniform is.” She still retained a sliver of hope. “Do you remember what I told you? Those ordinary people who happened to stumble into extraordinary events and barely survived were mostly taken away by them and used as expendable material.”

“So she was too…”

“Her first task may well have been to spread the cassette.”

“Why?” Chen Qing did not understand.

“This is an extraordinary object involving rules and ancient gods. Why would you even ask why?” She looked at him gravely. “That in itself is the most precious treasure. And you’re asking why?”

He was silent for a moment before asking Bu Zhaozhao, “How do I find them?”

“Find them for what?” She gave a mocking laugh. “Kill them to uphold justice? They are indeed spreading the offspring, but they are not the source. That treats the symptoms, not the root.”

“You don’t want to find them for revenge?”

Bu Zhaozhao fell silent. She looked at Chen Qing, her emotions exceedingly complex. She thought for a long time, and only after making her decision did the pressure in her seem to ease at once.

She let out a sigh, suddenly seeming far lighter. “I do, but not now.

“I want to kill every last one of them, but I want even more to solve this problem.

“Killing them all won’t protect those innocent civilians. They changed, but I did not.”

For the people of that era, faith existed in the mind, a faith placed above all individualism.

She wanted revenge, yes. She hated every contemporary member of the Foundation. But she did not want revenge now, because she still remembered the Foundation’s original mission.

We contain. We protect.

She sighed and continued, “That cassette is also an extraordinary object. When your time of observation matches the time of recording, you can hear what is inside. Try it. Maybe they said something.”

Chen Qing froze, then nodded. He went all the way back home, and by the time Jiang Wan brought over the player, it was already five in the afternoon.

He inserted the cassette and sat together with Jiang Wan in the room, watching the screen by the light of dusk.

“I never expected this cassette to be an extraordinary object.” She looked at the image on the screen, quite surprised.

But Chen Qing did not answer. Turning the volume knob on the machine, he instead asked, “How is the result of Jie Hongbo’s investigation?”

“Him…” Jiang Wan fell silent for a moment. “He’s gone missing.”

“Missing?” Chen Qing stopped moving his hand. He tilted his head, frowning. “Where could he vanish to? When did you lose contact with him?”

“Last night. Right after you told me, I couldn’t find him anymore.”

“Was it reported?”

She shook her head, eyes narrowed. “No… There’s no evidence. Besides, he checked our phones for us before. We had no reason to restrict him, right?”

“That may be so…” He fell silent for a moment. Suddenly, a sound came from the player before him, a crackling, static noise like the busy signal from a satellite dish with poor reception in a bygone century.

After a brief wait, a voice emerged from the player.

The man’s voice seemed separated from them by an entire age, as though it were transmitted through the oldest of walkie-talkies.

He said, “Mission event: recover offspring contamination. Mission grade assessment: E-class. Conclusion: low containment risk. Expected containment return: two units of offspring contamination. Mission begins.”

When he finished, images began to appear on the screen. Chen Qing watched the four men walk into view, all of them muttering under their breaths toward the direction of the recording camera.

“What a pity. This round’s offspring contamination is only E-class.” This was the first man. He was dressed entirely in black, but a bit of white shirt cuff had been turned out at his wrist.

“After we finish this main-world mission, who knows when the next one will come.” The second man was gaunt, and his all-black suit hung somewhat loosely on him.

“Two units of E-class offspring contamination—how long will that be enough for us to live?” The third man was short and looked unusually young.

“Two weeks and four hours.” The fourth man was the most eye-catching of the group. A black-and-white Su embroidery badge adorned his clothes, and he walked with the most ease.

“The breathing tax has gone up again.” He added that line.

“Gone up again…” The third man spat. “A bunch of blood-sucking worms.”

“But without them, you’d have been dead long ago.”

“I’d rather die that way.”

They muttered to one another as they began rummaging through the things in the house.

“From a single F-class backrooms incursion, we can only get one-tenth of the profit, and before we leave we even have to buy the gear ourselves!”

“You could work harder, you know,” the fourth man added. “There are ten apples on a tree, and you can only keep one. But if you bring back a hundred, then you’ll have ten. Why not?”

The youth hesitated, muttering under his breath about something, while the two outside the screen watched with furrowed brows.

“Did none of them ever think of resisting? They already had some degree of ability themselves. So what if they left the Foundation?” Jiang Wan frowned and asked, somewhat puzzled.