337: Chapter 337 The Night Hunting Ground: Who is the Prey?

Zhao Cheng leaned against the rear tire of the armored vehicle.

All around were the panicked shouts of his subordinates and aimless gunfire.

The searchlights were all extinguished, and the arrangements he had been so proud of had turned into a joke.

His hand gripping the gun was covered in cold sweat, and he kept looking around.

A cold droplet of water landed on the back of his neck.

Zhao Cheng looked up.

Chen Mo was standing on the roof of the armored vehicle.

The night wind blew the hem of Chen Mo's black trench coat as he bent down and jumped off.

Zhao Cheng raised his pistol.

Chen Mo reached out with his left hand, his silver metal fingers clamping directly onto the pistol slide.

The high-frequency vibration module activated, and the high temperature instantly melted the polymer grip of the pistol.

Zhao Cheng felt the pain and loosened his fingers.

Chen Mo grabbed Zhao Cheng's neck with his right hand, lifting him entirely off the ground.

He pressed him against the cold iron plating of the armored vehicle.

The collision with the steel made a dull thud.

"How much did Oracle Technology pay you to sell out even the bottom line of the Municipal Bureau?" Chen Mo watched Zhao Cheng's face, which was flushed from lack of oxygen.

"You have no idea what you are fighting against..."

Zhao Cheng slapped Chen Mo's metal arm with both hands, but it was completely futile.

"Inside that... is Pandora's box..."

Chen Mo tightened his fingers.

"My patience is limited. Answer my question."

"I'm just an outsider..." Zhao Cheng spoke with difficulty, his eyeballs starting to roll upwards.

"Inside the box... is sequence zero..."

The heartbeat radar on Chen Mo's retina suddenly showed an anomaly.

A heartbeat frequency as slow as twenty beats per minute appeared at the extreme edge of the radar's range.

A crisis warning sounded in Chen Mo's brain, and he quickly tilted his head.

A specially made, large-caliber armor-piercing round grazed his earlobe.

It pierced directly through Zhao Cheng's skull.

Blood splattered onto the side of Chen Mo's face, carrying a warm, fishy scent.

Chen Mo let go, and Zhao Cheng's corpse slid down the armored vehicle to the ground.

The distance was over fifteen hundred meters.

An absolute top-tier shooter.

Sent specifically to clean up this discarded pawn, Zhao Cheng, who had lost his value.

"Retreat." Chen Mo pressed the backup communicator at his collar and gave the order.

He turned to rendezvous with Jiang Hong and 404.

The three of them used the cover of the night and the burning cars to tear a gap in the line of SWAT Officer.

Chen Mo led the two of them into the water tank passage of the abandoned water plant.

He used his mechanical arm to smash the three surveillance cameras along the way.

As 404 ran, he scattered a kind of white powder on the ground.

"What is this stuff?" Jiang Hong asked.

"High-energy interference powder. It can disrupt the sense of smell of military dogs and the tracking routes of thermal imaging Drones." 404 was running out of breath.

They traveled through the intricate pipes for two hours before emerging from an abandoned air-raid shelter in the Old City District.

It had started to rain lightly outside.

The cold rain beat against Chen Mo's face, which was covered in blood and machine oil.

Three o'clock in the morning.

A basement in the Old City District of Jiangcheng.

This was an abandoned backup stronghold of the Cold Case Unit, and there was no record of it even on the internal network.

Chen Mo sat at a rusted iron table.

The surface of his silver mechanical left arm was covered in scratches, and the neural interface at the shoulder was emitting a faint smell of burning.

Forcing an overload of the high-frequency vibration module had caused slight spasms in the left half of his body.

Jiang Hong took a bottle of medical alcohol and half a roll of gauze from the first-aid kit in the corner.

She walked to Chen Mo's side.

"Bear with it." She unscrewed the cap.

Chen Mo took the bottle and used his teeth to bite open the inner plastic seal.

He didn't take the gauze, but instead poured most of the alcohol directly around the neural interface on his left shoulder.

Blood mixed with the transparent liquid, flowing down his solid muscle lines and dripping onto the concrete floor.

Chen Mo leaned against the back of the chair, biting his molars.

Jiang Hong took the gauze and bent down to wipe the bloodstains from the edges.

The distance between the two closed.

Jiang Hong's breath brushed against the side of Chen Mo's neck.

The smell of gunpowder on her body mixed with the faint scent of mint shampoo.

"How much longer can you keep going with this arm?" Jiang Hong's gaze fell on those reddened neural connection points.

"As long as I don't die, it's fine." Chen Mo replied without a change in tone.

Jiang Hong's movements became a bit heavier, using the gauze to press against a bleeding wound.

Chen Mo let out a muffled groan and glanced at her.

Jiang Hong met his gaze and tied the gauze into a tight knot.

"Your life belongs to the entire Cold Case Unit now. Don't go and get yourself killed."

She leaned against the edge of the iron table and fished out a pack of cigarettes that were half-soaked in water from her pocket.

She pulled one out and bit it in her mouth.

She pressed the lighter three times before it caught fire.

Blue-grey smoke diffused in the basement.

"The way you fought down there today, you were completely disregarding your own life."

Jiang Hong exhaled a puff of smoke, looking at Chen Mo through the smoke.

"What kind of answer are you looking for, anyway?"

Chen Mo looked at the metallic reflection of his left arm.

"Some past that has been deliberately erased by someone."

Jiang Hong did not press for more.

She held out the hand clutching the cigarette to Chen Mo's lips.

Chen Mo glanced at it, leaned forward slightly, and took a puff from her fingers.

The red glow of the cigarette tip flickered, illuminating the faces of the two who were extremely close.

The spicy taste of tobacco diluted the bloody scent in his mouth.

Only the dull whirring of the exhaust fan remained in the basement.

404 placed the black briefcase in the very center of the iron table.

He retreated to the corner and placed the fish tank on the dilapidated sofa.

"Old Blind Man says the lock core of this case is biometrically encrypted, and the outer layer is fitted with anti-tamper micro-explosives."

404 swallowed hard as he looked at the case.

"Forced disassembly will release nerve gas, and half the street will have to be buried with it."

Chen Mo sat up straight, his gaze falling on the Oracle Technology logo on the surface of the case.

The "sequence zero" that Zhao Cheng mentioned before he died, and the mention of three million lives by the person who called himself "brother" on the communicator.

Chen Mo reached out his right hand, his fingertips rubbing against the metal edge of the case.

"Old Blind Man." Chen Mo looked toward the fish tank. "Check the financial records and encrypted communication logs of Zhao Cheng from the last month."

"I'm running the data right now. The Municipal Bureau's firewall is a bit thick; give me ten minutes." Bubbles churned in the fish tank.

"We don't need ten minutes." Chen Mo stood up and walked toward the pile of debris in the corner.

He rummaged through it, found a toolbox, and picked out a small cutter.

"Brother Mo! What are you doing! Old Blind Man said there's a bomb!" 404 was anxious and jumping up and down.

Chen Mo walked back to the table and started the cutter.

The harsh sound of cutting echoed in the narrow basement.

He avoided the lock core area and made very shallow cuts along the four corners of the bottom of the case.

Three minutes later, Chen Mo put down the cutter.

He used the jaws of his mechanical arm to catch the bottom plate and pried it upwards with force.

The metal bottom plate came off.

There was no bomb.

There was no poison gas.

The anti-tamper device was only connected to the surface combination lock.

Chen Mo pulled out the entire inner liner.

There were no piles of documents inside, nor were there any terrifying biochemical weapons.

There was only an old-fashioned flip phone, lying quietly in the shock-absorbing foam.

The phone screen was glowing faintly, showing one unread text message.

Jiang Hong and 404 leaned in.

"Oracle Technology went to such great lengths, and so many people died, just to protect a broken phone?" 404 was incredulous.

Chen Mo picked up the phone. He pressed the read button; the text message had only one sentence.

"Jiangcheng Central Hospital, Cardiology Department, Bed 3, Su Qingxue."

Chen Mo's fingers tightened around the phone.

The plastic shell of the phone made a crisp cracking sound.

The screen's light shone on his bloodless face.

Su Qingxue.

Since he joined the Municipal Bureau's Cold Case Unit, she was the only partner who was willing to trust him, and even stood up against the pressure from superiors to investigate cases for him.

Now, her name had appeared in the encrypted communication that Oracle Technology had died to protect.

Old Blind Man's electronic voice suddenly sounded at this moment, with obvious stuttering.

"I... I found it. The IP address bound to Zhao Cheng's encrypted communication account... is right inside the internal network of the Municipal Bureau's Criminal Investigation Detachment."