350: Chapter 350 The Interrogation Before the Downpour

Nightingale walked behind, clutching one end of the tactical strap in her hand.

The other end of the strap was wrapped around The Craftsman's neck.

The Craftsman's arms hung naturally, the fabric at his shoulder blades soaked through with blood, his gait somewhat unsteady.

The sound of sirens outside was muffled by the thick layers of earth.

The south gate of Jiang University, a safe house converted from an underground garage.

404 sat at a workbench pieced together from four discarded shipping containers, fingers tapping against the keyboard.

Complex code ran across the screen.

Su Qingxue leaned against a nearby load-bearing pillar, the gauze on her left arm already replaced with new ones.

She watched the anti-theft iron door.

The door lock emitted a mechanical clicking sound as it turned.

Chen Mo walked in.

The light illuminated his torn black trench coat and his profile stained with dried blood clots.

Su Qingxue's gaze lingered on that ruined left arm.

The exposed gears had stopped turning.

"The medical kit is in the cabinet on the left." Su Qingxue gestured with her chin to show the way.

Chen Mo walked past her, leaving behind a scent mixed with gunpowder and blood.

He pulled open the iron cabinet, hauled out a white metal first aid kit with one hand, and tossed it onto the long table.

Nightingale dragged The Craftsman into the room.

She kicked The Craftsman in the back of his knee.

The Craftsman lost his balance and fell to his knees on the concrete floor.

Chen Mo ignored his own injuries.

He pulled over a folding chair and sat down in front of The Craftsman.

The metal legs of the folding chair scraped against the floor, emitting a harsh, grating noise.

"The antidote formula." Chen Mo rested his right hand on his knee.

The Craftsman raised his head.

One side of his glasses was shattered, while the other reflected the incandescent light from overhead.

"Formula?" A laugh rolled out of The Craftsman's throat, aggravating the broken bone in his shoulder and causing his features to contort.

"Tartarus doesn't need living trash. Even if you get the formula, it's useless; the original toxin sequence is already locked in the organization's database."

Chen Mo leaned forward.

He rested his fingers on the edge of the bloody hole in The Craftsman's right shoulder, caused by a sniper rifle.

The Craftsman's breathing rhythm faltered for a half-beat.

Chen Mo's fingertips probed into the mangled wound, pressed against the jagged bone fragment, and pushed down.

The sound of grinding bone echoed through the basement.

The Craftsman gritted his teeth, large beads of sweat rolling down his forehead, tracing along his scar toward his taut jawline.

"Forty-five seconds." Chen Mo watched The Craftsman's contorted face.

"Your heart-strengthening stimulant only has forty-five seconds left. Once the effect wears off, the backlash will sever your central nervous system."

Chen Mo withdrew his blood-stained fingers and wiped them on a rag on the corner of the table.

"If you don't want to become a drooling vegetable, start reciting the numbers. 404, get ready to record."

404 immediately opened a blank document, hands hovering over the keyboard.

Thirty seconds passed.

The fanaticism in The Craftsman's eyes began to fade, replaced by a coldness surging back through his veins.

His skin lost its sickly purplish-red hue, turning into a cyanotic blue-purple from oxygen deprivation.

"Atropine derivatives, Group C sequence additives..." The Craftsman began reciting several complex chemical terms.

The sound of 404's typing drowned out the noise of the exhaust fan.

Two minutes later, The Craftsman had dictated the complete molecular structure.

He slumped down, collapsing onto the floor like a pile of mud.

Chen Mo stood up and kicked the folding chair aside.

He looked at Nightingale.

"Take this and compare it with the incomplete version you obtained internally. Verify its authenticity yourself."

Nightingale took the A4 paper printed by 404.

Her gaze scanned back and forth between the two sheets.

Chen Mo walked toward the workbench.

He fished the blood-stained memory card out of his inner pocket and tossed it onto the keyboard in front of 404.

"Analyze the video. Find the experimental records of Chen Changhe from back then."

Chen Mo unzipped and took off his tattered trench coat, tossing it casually over the back of a chair.

Underneath was a black tactical vest.

It wrapped around his solid muscular frame.

Su Qingxue walked over.

In her hand, she held a pair of medical scissors and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

"Keep your hand flat." Su Qingxue pulled over a chair and sat opposite Chen Mo.

Chen Mo placed his severed metal arm onto the tabletop.

The bionic flesh at the interface between his left shoulder and the mechanical arm had been torn open, revealing the inflamed nerve connection terminals inside.

Su Qingxue used the scissors to cut away the remaining fabric on Chen Mo's left shoulder.

Hydrogen peroxide was poured onto the wound.

White foam bubbled up, mixed with blood.

Chen Mo did not move.

His gaze was fixed on the progress bar being analyzed on 404's screen.

Su Qingxue used tweezers to clean the metal debris from the wound.

The tip of the tweezers touched an exposed ganglion.

Chen Mo's muscles twitched slightly.

"Who exactly are you?" Su Qingxue asked in a low voice.

Her movements did not stop.

Chen Mo withdrew his gaze and looked at Su Qingxue.

The distance between them was less than half a meter.

He could see the bloodshot veins in Su Qingxue's eyes.

"An archivist for the Cold Case Unit." Chen Mo tossed out an answer.

The tweezers in Su Qingxue's hand stopped in mid-air.

"An archivist wouldn't know how to set tripwire booby traps, nor would they be able to crush the throat of a high-level Tartarus assassin with their bare hands in three seconds."

Su Qingxue stared directly into Chen Mo's eyes, not backing down an inch.

Chen Mo leaned back against the chair.

He tapped his right finger bones against the tabletop.

"The night wind in Jiang City is too cold; one has to learn some means of self-preservation." Chen Mo threw out this sentence.

The progress bar finished loading at that moment.

404 hit the Enter key.

The projector screen covering half the wall lit up.

The image showed that underground laboratory from ten years ago.

Chen Changhe was floating in a blue solution tank.

The camera zoomed in; the vital signs on the monitor were fluctuating violently.

A figure wearing a white lab coat walked into the frame.

The person had their back to the camera, holding a transparent glass test tube.

Inside the test tube was a golden liquid.

"The Zero-number original agent." Chen Mo's gaze locked onto that test tube.

The figure in the lab coat walked to the console and inserted the test tube into the reader slot.

Just then, the figure in the lab coat turned their head.

The moment that face was clearly seen, the atmosphere in the basement instantly froze.

The person who led the human experiments on Chen Changhe ten years ago.

The current Deputy Director of the Jiang City Public Security Bureau, Zhou Jianguo.

The eerie light emitted by the projector screen shone onto everyone's faces.

404 swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down.

"Di... Director Zhou?"

Ten years ago, Zhou Jianguo still had thick hair and lacked the pot-bellied bureaucratic air he had now.

He looked at Chen Changhe in the glass tank and pressed the red button on the console.

The golden liquid flowed through the tubes into the solution tank.

Chen Changhe struggled violently in the water, the solution churning with a large amount of bubbles.

Black keratin layers appeared on the surface of his skin, identical to the symptoms after The Craftsman used the agent, but the transformation was faster.

A few seconds later, the vital signs monitor inside the water tank went flat.

Alarms blared.

The image froze on Zhou Jianguo's merciless face.

Chen Mo grabbed the hemostatic bandage from the table, wrapped it around his left shoulder with one hand twice, bit down on one end, and pulled it tight to tie a knot.

"He was also the one who covered up the chemical plant explosion back then and faked my father's accidental death." Chen Mo tossed the scissors back into the medical kit.

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