379: Chapter 379 Memory Recall, Red and Black Lines

Chen Mo squeezed the trigger with his index finger.

The muzzle flashed.

The bullet tore through the air, piercing the white glove that was turning the chess piece.

Negotiation is a trap for the weak; he never negotiates.

The bullet penetrated the palm.

There was no splatter of flesh and blood.

The glove and the solid gold pawn distorted in mid-air, disintegrating into a cloud of blue light spots.

A holographic projection.

Chen Mo lowered his muzzle, his gaze following the path of the light.

In the corner of the console, behind the ventilation louvers, a miniature generator was emitting a faint hum.

"Decent reaction, but you can't save the people outside the water plant." A synthesized electronic voice leaked from all four corners of the ceiling simultaneously, cold and inescapable.

Chen Mo ignored the taunt, walked to the control desk, and slapped his left hand onto the open silver briefcase.

"Li Ke, cut off the external power grid of the water plant."

The sound of rapid typing exploded in the communication channel.

"I can't," Li Ke refused. "The independent power source has started. After physical isolation, they're using deep underground lines."

Chen Mo looked down.

There was no shock-absorbing foam at the bottom of the case, only a black metal plate.

In the center of the plate, a countdown timer glowed red.

02:15.

02:14.

"Twenty years ago, he walked into the South District Orphanage with this case."

The electronic voice echoed, "The position you're standing in now is where he stopped back then. He gave up the case to save a building full of orphans. What about you? What do you choose today?"

Su Qingxue stepped into the main control room with her gun drawn, her muzzle scanning the surroundings alertly. She saw the countdown timer.

"The Bomb Squad is still four minutes away." She glanced at her tactical watch.

Chen Mo slung his rifle over his back and drew his combat knife.

"By the time the Bomb Squad arrives, three hundred thousand people in Jiang City's East District will already be dead."

He stabbed the tip of the blade into the gap of the bottom plate and exerted force with his arm.

Crack!

The rivets snapped off.

The metal plate was pried halfway open, revealing a tangle of red and blue wires.

The wires were connected to six glass tubes, within which a pale green liquid was slightly roiling.

Nightingale stood guard outside the door, her short blade parrying a falling piece of the corridor ceiling.

She stared at Chen Mo's movements.

Physically dismantling this kind of military-grade composite fuse bomb without a schematic was nearly suicidal.

The brand on his left arm suddenly grew scalding hot, a searing pain stabbing into his nerves.

[Memory Retrospection Activated]

His vision was swallowed by pure white light.

In the next instant, the world reassembled itself.

The same main control room, five hours back in time.

A man wearing a white hazmat suit had his back to him, his fingers dancing among the wires.

He pulled out the red main control wire and swapped its position with an extremely thin black wire.

The man closed the lid of the case and, using the blood from his fingertip, drew an hourglass.

The image shattered, and reality flowed back.

He saw the bomb before him clearly.

The red wire was disguised as a dead wire, coiled beneath the glass tubes.

The black wire was connected to the detonator.

In a conventional bomb disposal, one would snip the black wire to cut the power.

Chen Mo's blade pressed down on the red wire.

Su Qingxue stepped forward, her palm pressing against his shoulder. "Chen Mo! This violates protocol! Without data, you'll trigger the anti-tamper device!"

"Protocol can't deal with him."

Chen Mo jerked his shoulder, shaking off her hand.

He pressed the blade down, cleanly severing the red wire.

The liquid inside the glass tubes instantly became still.

The countdown froze at 01:08.

"Li Ke, status of the poison valves."

"Valves locked... countdown terminated." Li Ke's voice was full of shock. "You... you disarmed a six-tube Biochemical Mine with just a knife?"

Chen Mo didn't answer. He pulled out the six glass tubes along with their base and placed them on the console.

The electronic background noise from the speakers paused for a second.

The person behind the surveillance had seen the whole process.

"You have decent luck." The tone of the electronic voice changed, its volume suddenly spiking. "This is only the first card. Look under the case."

Chen Mo moved the briefcase aside.

A secret compartment popped out from under the console, where a kraft paper file folder lay quietly.

It bore the top-secret seal of the Jiang City Municipal Bureau, with a serial number belonging to twenty years ago.

This was the real bait.

He picked up the file folder; it felt slightly heavy in his hand.

There was more than just paper inside.

Chen Mo unwound the string and poured out the contents.

Three yellowed photographs and a rusted police badge.

The serial number on the back of the badge had been ground smooth.

Su Qingxue leaned in, her gaze fixed on the police badge.

"This isn't the current service style," she identified the patterns on the edge. "It's an undercover identification tag from the Provincial Department in the early nineties. It has a micro-positioning imprint on it."

Chen Mo flipped through the photos.

The first one was a group photo.

In front of the Jiang City Police Academy.

Four young police academy students.

The faces of the three men were crossed out with red marks.

The only remaining woman had delicate features and bore a seventy percent resemblance to Su Qingxue.

Su Qingxue's breath hitched. She snatched the photo from his hand, her knuckles turning white from the grip.

"My mother."

The second photo showed the ruins of the South District Orphanage.

A man had his back to the camera, holding an infant wrapped in blood-stained clothes in his arms.

The third photo was a blank piece of photographic paper.

On the back was a line of fountain pen writing.

You are next.

The emergency lights overhead all went out.

Darkness swallowed everything.

Only the console screen lit up with a blood-red glow, reflecting a new countdown: 10:00.

A loud bang came from outside the door.

Nightingale flashed back inside and pressed the lock with a backhand motion.

"The exits above are sealed, and the backup generator has been destroyed."

"High-frequency vibrations are appearing in the load-bearing walls of the second basement level!"

Li Ke's voice crackled in the comms. "They're using a tunnel boring machine to break through the isolation layer. They want to let the river water in to drown you!"

The countdown on the screen overlapped with Li Ke's urgent report: "The flood discharge channel of the sedimentation tank will be filled by the backflowing river water in five minutes."

Chen Mo stuffed the file folder into the inner pocket of his tactical vest and walked toward the damaged blast door.

The loud roar of water impacting the steel plate came through, and water pressure was spraying jets of water inward from the door gaps.

"We can't get out." Nightingale held her combat knives in a reverse grip. "When the water pressure overloads, this door will be crushed, and we'll die thirty meters underground."

Chen Mo turned and walked toward the other end, where a ventilation outlet sealed with an iron mesh was embedded in the corner.

He raised his foot and kicked the iron mesh hard with his combat boot.

The screws popped off, and the iron mesh slammed to the floor, revealing a dark, gaping pipe.

"It leads to the bottom of the sedimentation tank."

Chen Mo turned on his flashlight, the beam piercing the darkness. "When the water flows back in, the flood discharge channel will create a vacuum negative pressure. That is our exit."

Su Qingxue put away the photo, checked her magazine, and retreated into the pipe.

The water jets from the door gaps had turned into a curtain of water, and the blast door emitted a distorted, mournful cry as it reached its limit.

Chen Mo was the first to crawl in.

Nightingale was in the middle.

Just as Su Qingxue pulled her feet into the pipe, the blast door behind them collapsed inward under the immense pressure.

The murky river water was Li Ke an unbridled beast, instantly swallowing the entire main control room.

The cold water spread along the pipe walls, quickly rising past their ankles.

Chen Mo used both hands and feet to crawl forward rapidly.

The flashlight beam wobbled. Fifty meters ahead, at a right-angle turn in the pipe, a dark shadow was stuck.

A red dot flickered within the shadow.

He probed forward with the hilt of his knife; it was a corpse in a water plant uniform, with strangulation marks on the neck.

The corpse's right hand was tightly clutching a miniature voice recorder, its indicator light still working.

Chen Mo used the back of his knife to smash the corpse's stiff finger bones and pulled out the recorder.

The brand on his left arm heated up again.

[Extracting Surface Evil Remnants]

Fragmented images flooded in.

Half an hour ago, two armed personnel strangled this maintenance worker.

One of them gave an order in a foreign language: "Blow up the isolation layer and let the water in. Take the number four sewage pipe and retreat to the East Port Pier..."

Warm reminder: The website will be revised soon, which may cause the loss of reading progress. Please save your "Bookshelf" and "Reading Records" in time (screenshot is recommended). We apologize for any inconvenience caused!