12: Take off your clothes if you don't want to die.

Swoosh—!

The heavy blackout curtains were suddenly pulled shut, plunging the cabin into darkness. Only the faint glow from the dashboard illuminated Li Sisi's pale face.

"Thermal imaging plus gait recognition lock-on."

Li Sisi's fingers slid rapidly across the tablet, her words coming out as fast as machine-gun fire.

"The enemy is using a military 'Falcon' Type III drone. This thing can measure your body temperature through two walls; it's confirming our identities."

"Confirming identities?"

Sitting in the corner, Zhao Wanting suddenly let out a scoff, a sound filled with self-deprecation and despair.

"No, it's confirming the location of 'trash'."

The former general's daughter stared intently at the covered window, her nails nearly digging through the leather seat.

"This is my father's... no, Zhao Jianguo's old subordinates. The 'Ark Project's' Purge Protocol has a clause—to prevent Gene Pollution, any male specimen found alive is to be prioritized for physical erasure."

She suddenly turned her head to look at Su Chen in the driver's seat, her gaze incredibly complex.

Fear, guilt, and a trace of inexplicable pity.

In this all-female apocalyptic blueprint, Su Chen, the one with a handle, was the fatal bug that had to be corrected.

"Physical erasure? We'll see if its teeth are sharp enough."

Su Chen didn't even turn his head; his gaze was fixed calmly on Lin Mengyao through the rearview mirror.

The campus belle, who had just experienced the collapse of her worldview, was currently curled up on the passenger seat with her knees hugged, crying piteously.

Her whole body was like a cooked shrimp, radiating an alarming amount of heat.

"Lin Mengyao, take off your jacket."

Su Chen spoke suddenly, his tone as flat as if he were saying, 'Pass me the salt.'

"Huh?"

Lin Mengyao was still sobbing, her long eyelashes wet with tears trembling. Her mind clearly hadn't processed it yet.

"You just cried; the intense emotional fluctuation caused an adrenaline spike. Right now, in the thermal imaging view, you're brighter than a torch."

Su Chen unbuckled his seatbelt while rapidly issuing instructions.

"If you don't want to die, do as I say. Take off your insulated jacket, unbutton your shirt collar, brush your hair to one side, and expose your carotid artery and collarbone."

This sounded like a rogue's unreasonable demand, but Li Sisi reacted instantly.

"A high-heat decoy! Su Chen wants to use the temperature difference to interfere with the drone's automatic locking logic!"

Lin Mengyao bit her lip. Though her face was flushed with shame, her body was more honest than her mind.

Her hands trembled as she took off her windbreaker, unbuttoned the top two buttons of her white shirt, and brushed her sweat-soaked long hair behind her ear.

That slender, fair neck and delicate collarbone were instantly exposed to the air. Due to shame and tension, her skin took on an alluring pink hue, and her body temperature rose instead of falling.

Outside, the drone that had been locked onto the license plate indeed made a move.

The servo motor whirred softly, and the crimson laser beam moved upward, finally focusing on the exceptionally bright 'red humanoid heat source' in the passenger seat.

"Now."

A sharp light flashed in Su Chen's eyes, like a leopard ready to pounce.

"Zhou Xiaomeng, with me! Bring the spare diesel and that scrap tire!"

"Yes!"

The Sports Committee Member, Zhou Xiaomeng, didn't say a word, shouldering the tire and following Su Chen out the back door.

Using the shadows cast by the factory building, they crouched and quickly circled to the back of the ruins, out of the line of sight.

Splash.

Half a bucket of diesel was splashed onto the worn-out tire. Su Chen struck a match and tossed it casually.

Orange flames instantly soared into the air.

In the infrared view, the heat released by this burning rubber far exceeded that of a human body, instantly creating a massive 'thermal blind spot' in this area.

But that wasn't enough.

Drones weren't stupid; they also listened for sound.

Su Chen knelt on one knee, pressing his right palm firmly against a broken metal pipe next to the pile of debris.

Extreme Yang Sacred Body, internal energy erupting!

The heat within his body, like a surging river, flooded through his arm and into the metal pipe.

Su Chen controlled his muscles to vibrate at an extremely high frequency. This 'Penetrating Force' derived from ancient martial arts families actually forced the pipe to emit a low, heavy, and rhythmic hum.

Hum... hum... hum... That sound, amplified and distorted by the pipe's echoes, sounded exactly like the idling of a heavy diesel engine!

The drone in the air was clearly baffled by this dual 'visual + auditory' deception.

Its lens hesitated for half a second between Lin Mengyao and the black smoke before finally judging the high-heat smoke accompanied by engine sounds as a 'high-value target starting sign,' whistling as it dove toward the source of the smoke.

Inside the vehicle.

Qin Ya watched this scene through a gap, her heart pounding wildly.

"You... you knew all along that Mengyao's emotional fluctuations would enhance her surface thermal radiation?"

Watching Su Chen silently slip back onto the bus, Qin Ya couldn't help but ask softly.

Su Chen glanced at the rearview mirror.

In the mirror, Lin Mengyao was hurriedly buttoning her shirt, her ears so red they looked like they were about to bleed.

"I'm not that divine."

Su Chen shifted into reverse while nonchalantly wiping the soot from his hands.

"I just bet that she'd be obedient enough. After all, these days, wealthy young ladies willing to 'undress' in public to save their lives are rare."

Before he could finish, a soft, hot little hand quietly reached over from the side and hooked onto Su Chen's sleeve.

Lin Mengyao kept her head down, not daring to look at him, but her fingertips gripped his sleeve tightly, refusing to let go even as her knuckles turned white.

The moment their bodies touched, a familiar warm current exploded from the sleeve.

[Detected "Trust" level bond contact, Perception Sharing activated.]

Su Chen's vision suddenly blurred, and a strange black-and-white image emerged in his mind.

The moment they "saw" this image, Su Chen and Lin Mengyao both gasped.

They "saw" a small suction device flashing with red light mounted on the belly of the hovering drone.

And another identical device was attached to the bus's chassis beam, like a blood-sucking tick, continuously transmitting a positioning signal!

"Damn it!"

Li Sisi clearly noticed the change in Su Chen's expression as well.

She quickly scanned the abnormal wavebands on the dashboard.

"There's a tracker! Right on the rear of the chassis!"

"Don't panic."

Su Chen let out a cold laugh, his smile carrying a hint of ruthlessness.

"Since it wants to listen, let's give it something intense."

He suddenly pulled out the USB drive that had previously contained top-secret data from his pocket.

With a "snap," Su Chen unhesitatingly broke the USB's shell, tossed the storage chip inside to Li Sisi, and kept only the empty metal casing.

He tore off a piece of diesel-soaked cotton cloth, stuffed it into the casing, and created a simple delayed-burn device.

Then he threw open the car door and rolled under the vehicle.

Three seconds later, Su Chen returned to the driver's seat, holding a small black square still flashing with red light—the tracker he had just pried off the chassis.

"Li Sisi, catch!"

Su Chen threw the tracker to the academic genius in the back seat while slamming on the gas. The bus, like a silent ghost, quietly reversed toward the mountain forest in the opposite direction.

At their original position, next to the burning tires, the USB shell Su Chen left behind, stuffed with diesel-soaked cotton, was ignited by the fire, making a "crackling" sound that mimicked the failure of electronic components.

"You didn't throw away the tracker?"

Li Sisi caught the black square in a flurry, pushing up her glasses with a look of utter bewilderment.

"We can't escape if we carry this thing!"

"The most dangerous place is the safest place." Su Chen turned the steering wheel sharply, driving the vehicle into a dried-up riverbed. "As long as its communication module is dismantled, it's mute. And..."

Su Chen glanced into the distance through the rearview mirror.

In the direction they had just left, a second and third drone were emerging from the clouds like vultures, launching a saturated strike on the pile of burning tires.

"I want to see what these people are so desperate to recover besides my life."

The cabin returned to a dead silence, save for the low rumble of the engine.

Li Sisi pulled a screwdriver from the toolbox and, by the faint light of the reading lamp, carefully pried open the shell of the military tracker.

"Communication module severed... power removed..."

She reported in a low voice as she worked, but suddenly, her movements stopped.

Within the layers of the complex circuit board, there were no conventional high explosives or self-destruct devices. Instead, a tiny cylindrical object wrapped tightly in black tape was wedged inside.

"What is this?"

Zhao Wanting leaned in, her soldier's intuition making her feel a sense of unease.

Li Sisi used tweezers to gently pull out the object, squinting at it against the light.

It wasn't an electronic component.

It was a roll of microfilm, and on the edge of the film, a line of serial numbers was engraved with tiny laser letters:

[Project EVE - Original Sin]

Li Sisi's hand shook violently, nearly dropping the film on the floor.

She looked up, meeting Su Chen's bottomless eyes in the rearview mirror.

"It seems."

Su Chen's voice sounded exceptionally cold in the dim cabin. "Someone sent us intelligence right under the monitors' noses."