382: Chapter 382 Specimen Zero

Chen Mo pushed aside the deformed cart and stood up.

His black trench coat was covered in green mucus and dust.

He scanned the storage room.

Half of the Cultivation Tanks were in ruins, with severed limbs and glass shards floating in knee-deep sewage.

Those faces, identical to his own, bobbed in the murky water.

Nightingale stood up, shaking off the glass shards.

Her gaze lingered for a moment on Chen Mo's uninjured back.

Three seconds—calculating the defense zone, creating a water curtain, and neutralizing the impact.

This kind of reaction was no longer human.

Su Qingxue pushed herself up from the ground, coughing violently.

"Just now..."

"Clear the scene," Chen Mo interrupted her, walking toward the control console in the middle of the standing water.

The outer casing had been blown off, the motherboard was charred black, and that black rotary phone had melted into a puddle of plastic.

"The opponent wanted to destroy all the clones." Nightingale stepped on a piece of glass and stopped in front of an intact Cultivation Tank. "It has vital signs."

The chest of the torso inside was rising and falling weakly.

Nightingale drew her short blade.

"Keep it."

Chen Mo walked to the tank, his gaze falling on the metal nameplate at the bottom.

G-047.

The shattered nameplate next to it was G-046.

He turned and walked toward the heavy cargo elevator at the other end.

The elevator doors were tightly shut, with a red pattern sprayed on the panel.

A dark golden Hourglass.

Chen Mo pressed the call button, but the light didn't turn on.

"Physical power cut." Nightingale stepped forward to inspect the lock. "It'll take ten minutes."

"No need." Chen Mo pulled out his sidearm, ejected the magazine, pressed in spare bullets, and tucked it back into his waist. "The people above will come down."

Above them, a dull mechanical roar echoed.

Several beams of high-intensity flashlights pierced through the smoke and dust of the explosion.

"Don't move! Drop your weapons!"

A gruff male voice came from the passage. Over a dozen fully armed SWAT Officer waded in, their muzzles locked onto the three of them.

The inspector leading the team was burly, with a Provincial Department special assignment badge pinned to his police uniform.

Captain Zhao Tie, Provincial Department Criminal Investigation Task Force.

Chen Mo didn't move.

Nightingale sheathed her blade.

Su Qingxue held up her police ID: "Su Qingxue, Jiang City Municipal Bureau Cold Case Unit."

Captain Zhao Tie walked over, took the ID, glanced at it, and threw it back into her arms.

"Why are people from the Cold Case Unit here?"

"Tracking a suspect."

"This place is being taken over by the Provincial Department." Captain Zhao Tie pointed to the mess on the ground. "Everyone, hand over your weapons and return to the bureau for questioning."

Chen Mo walked toward Captain Zhao Tie, his combat boots creating ripples in the sewage.

"How many people did you bring?"

Captain Zhao Tie frowned. "None of your business. Follow orders."

Chen Mo stopped a meter in front of him.

"Who cleared the bombs on the perimeter of the water plant?"

"The Bomb Squad handled it three minutes ago." Captain Zhao Tie stared at him.

"Seven steps too slow," Chen Mo stated.

"What did you say?" Captain Zhao Tie gripped his rifle tighter.

"He took the drainage canal beneath the air-raid shelter,"

Chen Mo pointed back the way they came. "He left no more than fifteen minutes ago. While you were clearing the perimeter, he entered the East Port waters exactly two hundred meters beneath your feet."

Captain Zhao Tie's expression changed, and he pressed the communicator on his shoulder. "Search the underground sewers! Call the Coast Guard for interception!"

There was only static from the communicator.

"The signal is being jammed."

Chen Mo extended his left hand. The white mark on his wrist lit up, and a black terminal slid into his palm, which he handed over.

"It's connected to the Water Bureau's old frequency; it's not jammed."

Captain Zhao Tie took the terminal. On the screen was a real-time water flow map, with a red line marking the route of the underground river.

He looked up and re-evaluated Chen Mo.

The Water Bureau's encrypted interface wasn't something conventional technology could access.

Chen Mo took back the terminal and turned toward the elevator.

"Transport these specimens back to the bureau," he said to Su Qingxue.

Captain Zhao Tie stepped in front of him. "I said, the Provincial Department is taking over here, including all evidence."

Chen Mo looked at him.

"These aren't evidence."

"Then what are they?"

"They're my face." Chen Mo pointed to the nearest Cultivation Tank.

Captain Zhao Tie looked where he was pointing.

His pupils contracted behind his anti-glare visor.

That face floating in the liquid was identical to the Chen Mo standing before him.

"There are one hundred and twenty-seven Cultivation Tanks here," Chen Mo added. "That means one hundred and twenty-seven of my faces."

"..." Captain Zhao Tie's voice dropped. "Only one living specimen."

"Correct," Chen Mo corrected. "The rest are all scrap."

Captain Zhao Tie took half a step back, his gaze sharp. "Who exactly are you?"

"Chen Mo, special expert for the Jiang City Municipal Bureau."

Chen Mo pulled the soaked kraft paper bag from Su Qingxue's hand, tore it open, poured out the rusted police badge, and placed it on the wreckage of the console.

"A Provincial Department undercover identification tag from the nineties," Chen Mo said. "The miniature positioning mark on the back can be used to find the owner."

Captain Zhao Tie's breath hitched.

"This is classified."

"Twenty years ago, the person who took it died in an Orphanage," Chen Mo said, his finger pressing down on the police badge. "Now, the person who killed him back then has returned."

He pointed to the shattered glass wall.

"Using my face."

Captain Zhao Tie fell silent.

Chen Mo took out the miniature recording pen he had found in the corpse's hand and pressed it down next to the police badge.

"It contains their retreat route and their next target. We can cooperate."

He looked Captain Zhao Tie straight in the eye.

"Or, you can continue clearing scrap here, and I'll go catch him alone."

"You, alone?" Captain Zhao Tie questioned.

"Ten minutes ago, he alone took out six snipers and a heavy fire point above," Nightingale spoke up.

Captain Zhao Tie's gaze swept over Nightingale and returned to Chen Mo.

The bodies on the perimeter towers had indeed all been killed with a single shot.

"I need access to all paper archives related to the Orphanage from twenty years ago," Chen Mo stated his condition, "including the sealed portions."

"That's beyond my authority."

"Your authority allows you to apply for a special pass," Chen Mo put away the recording pen. "The information in here is enough for you to capture three core support personnel. This is a fair trade."

Captain Zhao Tie weighed his options.

"Twelve hours." He gave his bottom line. "I will apply for the Cold Case Unit to act as a coordinating unit."

"Enough."

Chen Mo turned. "Let's go."

The three of them returned to the surface along the path cleared by the SWAT Officer.

The sky was beginning to brighten.

Cordon tape was stretched across the ruins, with the lights of police cars and ambulances crisscrossing.

Li Ke ran over clutching a laptop.

"We intercepted a signal on a special frequency, sent from the console before that imposter died."

Li Ke turned the screen toward Chen Mo. "It's an update command for a Dark Web bounty list."

He hit enter.

The name at the top of the list refreshed.

Red English letters, glaring and eye-catching.

Target: Chen Mo. Bounty: 10,000,000 USD.

"The publisher is Tartarus." Li Ke swallowed hard. "Professional hitmen from all over Asia will be rushing to Jiang City."

"That's a good thing." Chen Mo opened the car door. "That way, he'll be forced to stay and watch the show."

Ten million US dollars was enough to mobilize most of the forces in the underworld.

The opponent's choice to cast a wide net meant their direct power within Jiang City had been damaged and they needed to rely on external help.

Su Qingxue spread the three water-soaked photos on the hood.

The photo paper was curled; in the first photo, the three men beside her mother had been crossed out with red pen.

"Who are these three people?"

Chen Mo leaned in, his fingertips touching the scratches.

The scratches were deep.

Beneath the skin of his left arm, a white light flickered.

[Target Sin Remnants Locked]

[Establishing Deep Causal Link]

A dim room invaded his vision.

A wooden table, a man holding a fountain pen, the nib piercing the photo paper.

He forcefully drew a red X, the veins on the back of his hand bulging.

"Don't trust them." The man's voice was hoarse. "They've all gone mad... for that perfect reshaped world."

The nib tore through the photo paper, stopping on the face of the woman in the police uniform.

"The only sober person is you."

The image shattered.

Chen Mo withdrew his finger.

"Any findings?" Su Qingxue asked.

"The person who drew the crosses was desperate. He knew these three people and was betrayed by them."

Chen Mo pointed to the handwriting on the back of the third photo: "'You're next.' The person who wrote this line is tonight's mastermind and the one who carried out the fire twenty years ago."

[sin value Accumulated: 45,000 points]

[System Core Threshold Progress: 78%]

Chen Mo closed the notification.

One piece of the puzzle was still missing.

The original archives of the Orphanage.

He pulled open the door of the riot control vehicle and sat in the passenger seat.

"To the Provincial Department archives."

On his tactical watch, a twelve-hour countdown had already begun.

The engine roared as the riot control vehicle drove away from the ruins.

The wheels rolled through the standing water, and the splashed mud covered a silver metal fragment on the ground.

On the fragment...

...the dark golden Hourglass pattern flickered in the halo of the crisscrossing police lights before finally fading away.

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