478: Chapter 474 There are kitchen knives in the kitchen.

[Somewhere in the Park]

The park wasn't crowded in the evening; most of the benches were empty, and a few children were playing on the swings in the distant playground. Li Mo sat on a bench in the corner, a cooler box at his feet.

He glanced at his watch and then at the park entrance. The woman arrived faster than he had expected, almost running. Her hair was disheveled by the wind, and she clutched a bulging cloth bag in her hand.

She came to a halt in front of Li Mo, panting, her eyes fixed on the cooler box by his feet.

Without a word, Li Mo leaned over, opened the cooler, and lifted out an infant wrapped in a blanket.

The woman's hands trembled as she took the child. She pulled back a corner of the blanket to look at the baby's face, then peeled it back a bit more to check the birthmark behind the ear.

Her finger pressed against that tiny mark and didn't let go. Tears fell, hitting the blanket and soaking into a small, dark patch.

"Stop crying," Li Mo said, leaning back against the bench, his voice low. "The effects of the serum are still uncertain. Take it back, and make sure to notify me if anything happens."

Holding the child, the woman bowed her head, her shoulders shaking. A stuttered "Okay... okay..." squeezed out of her throat.

Li Mo didn't look at her again. He stood up, closed the cooler lid, picked it up, and walked toward the park exit. After a few steps, he stopped and looked back.

"Be careful. Don't go dying on me now." With that, he turned and left.

He hadn't kept the child by his side for personal observation; that would have been too dangerous. If anything went wrong, he would be the first one hurt.

By handing the child to the mother for her to take home, if anything happened, it would be reported in the news. As a researcher for the The Authorities, he had channels to access that information.

Keeping the risk on others while holding the intel himself—that was the safe way. The Immortality Serum hadn't been fully researched yet, and he didn't want to die.

The woman sat on the bench holding the child, her crying gradually subsiding until only the occasional sob remained. Li Mo's figure disappeared at the park entrance without looking back.

A few days later.

When Li Mo scrolled to that news report, his finger paused on the screen for a long time. The headline was short, stating that a female corpse had been found in a certain residential area, the death was gruesome, and there were bite marks on the body. He didn't click on it, nor did he need to. He remembered that address; it was where he had sent the child last time.

He exited the news and scrolled to the mother's chat window. The last message was still from a few days ago—his own, telling her to observe carefully. She hadn't replied. He looked at the news push notification once more, then flipped his phone face down on the table.

"That mother," he muttered, leaning back and staring at the ceiling. "She didn't send me a single message. Or did she accept it completely?"

On the other side.

A cordon had been set up at the crime scene, the yellow tape reflecting the streetlights.

Shen Mingyuan crouched beside the corpse, wearing rubber gloves as he examined the mother's wounds.

Lu Jianchuan stood behind him, his gaze sweeping over the scattered bloodstains and signs of a struggle.

Several uniformed police officers were taking photos and marking evidence, while a forensic doctor crouched at the other end, organizing sampling tools.

Shen Mingyuan stood up and took off his gloves. "It wasn't a normal animal," he said quietly, looking at Lu Jianchuan. "The bite marks are too precise. The force, the angle—none of it seems like a beast's instinctive attack. There's intelligence and purpose behind it."

Lu Jianchuan nodded. They had seen too many scenes like this; every time meant an Evolver was involved, involving things that shouldn't appear in the lives of ordinary people.

"Senior Shen! Senior Lu!" Ye Ouyang ducked under the cordon, running and slightly out of breath. He stood by the corpse, his gaze falling on the face that was no longer recognizable, and he froze. "I know her."

Shen Mingyuan turned around. "You know her?"

Ye Ouyang nodded and recounted what happened before—he and Li Mo had been walking on the bridge when someone jumped into the river. Li Mo jumped in to save her, and he followed. Together, they pulled the woman out.

He spoke slowly, pausing occasionally to think, as if recalling blurred details.

"We didn't stay in touch after that." He paused. "She seemed... quite desperate back then. I didn't expect it to end like this."

After listening, Shen Mingyuan was silent for a moment. "It seems unrelated. But often..." He didn't finish, his gaze lingering on Ye Ouyang's face. "Instinct tells me it has something to do with Li Mo. I felt something was off back then, though I had no evidence."

Lu Jianchuan glanced at him. "You want to bluff him?"

"Without evidence, a little bluffing might not hurt." Shen Mingyuan crouched down, put his gloves back on, flipped the deceased over, and looked at the wounds on her back.

"But first, we have to find that thing. Where did the thing that was eating her go?"

Shen Mingyuan crouched down, keeping his flashlight low as the beam swept across the splattered blood on the ground. After a few seconds, he stood up and turned to Ye Ouyang.

"Did this lady have anything familiar? Or rather, was this a crime committed by an acquaintance? Or perhaps—someone or something she loved dearly, some kind of animal?"

Ye Ouyang blinked. "Why do you ask?"

Shen Mingyuan pointed to the bloodstains on the ground and then to the curled-up posture of the deceased.

"Look at these marks and this posture. There was a struggle, but it clearly wasn't a struggle of resistance; it was a struggle caused by pain. In other words, she didn't intend to fight back at first. Later, when it became too painful, her body reacted on its own."

He paused.

"For this to happen, either the other party used a special method to control her, or—she was willing."

"Willing or controlled?" Ye Ouyang repeated in confusion, looking down at the unrecognizable corpse on the ground before looking up again. "Let me think... If it was something she cherished so much that she'd be willing to be killed by it, the only thing I can think of is that child. She jumped into the river before because her child had drowned."

Shen Mingyuan nodded. Ye Ouyang briefly explained the mother's situation—jumping into the river, being saved, the child being gone. He didn't go into much detail, but the meaning was clear.

After listening, Shen Mingyuan was silent for a moment. "By the way, I remember you mentioned before that Li Mo was researching some kind of Immortality Serum?"

Ye Ouyang nodded. "Yes. He's using my blood for his research."

Shen Mingyuan didn't immediately respond. He looked at the corpse on the ground, then at Ye Ouyang, and finally turned to Lu Jianchuan.

"Do you sense the truth?"

Lu Jianchuan looked at him. "A little, it seems. What about you?"

Shen Mingyuan's gaze fell back on the curled-up corpse. "I've already grasped the truth." His voice was low and steady. "Let's hypothesize. What if this mother was killed by her already deceased child?"

Ye Ouyang was stunned. "How is that possible?"

"It is indeed impossible," Shen Mingyuan said. "But if the Immortality Serum Li Mo is researching has the effect of reviving the dead, then it's not so strange. After all, the New Federation has done this kind of thing with your cells—reviving Ancient Creatures that died long ago."

He paused. "So, let's hypothesize. To research the Immortality Serum, Li Mo needed test subjects. And this mother and her child were the perfect test subjects."

He spoke slowly, as if deriving the answer to a problem he already knew.

"He used the serum to revive the child. But he wasn't sure if the child would have side effects, or if it would have a frantic craving for food like those Ancient Creatures. He didn't want to harm himself but wanted to observe the results. So, he gave the child back to the mother."

He stopped, his voice dropping a bit lower.

"Only in this situation—where the child goes berserk due to the serum's side effects and devours the mother—would the mother not resist."