Qiming Chapter 77

Chapter 77

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It seemed that this was the most peaceful sleep Xu Chengyue had had in the past half month.

There was no fresh air, it wasn't in a quiet room, and he wasn't even on a soft bed. Yet, he lay on the sofa in the hospital room filled with the scent of disinfectant, listening to the various murmuring sounds beside him, and fell asleep peacefully.

During the half month he had been apart from Gu Yunfeng, he had been trying to return to his previous life. He wanted to resume his extremely regular routine, but in reality, he was struggling with insomnia every day. He wanted to focus on teaching at the university and conducting research in the lab, but the moment he stood on the podium, his mind was filled with the unsolved criminal cases.

It was probably very difficult for him to return to a life without Gu Yunfeng.

Over the past few days, he had thought it over carefully. Lin Xiangrong's suggestion indeed suited him well. As long as he cooperated with her, allowing her a certain degree of control, he could eliminate the potential dangers within his body. He could continue to enjoy the pleasures of being human without paying any price. He could also stand alongside Gu Yunfeng, suppress the unease in his heart, and get a good night's sleep.

But for the Xu Chengyue who hadn't really died, this might be a kind of cruelty, right? Years of hard work and effort, just handed over to someone else, without even the chance to struggle.

In his sleep, he vaguely sensed a figure stopping in front of him. He groggily opened his eyes and saw Gu Yunfeng bending down in front of him, staring curiously at his face, not knowing what he was looking at.

"Is there something on my face?" he asked, rubbing his face.

"Your heart's on your face."

"Huh?" Xu Chengyue quickly stood up from the uncomfortable sofa, brushed the creases off his clothes, and noticed that Liu Shifu, who had finished his nutrient infusion, was watching television on the hospital bed.

On the TV, a poorly rendered fantasy drama was playing. The middle-aged man in his forties was staring at the screen with great enthusiasm.

"How long have I been asleep?" He looked up at Gu Yunfeng, who was standing upright, and took the hand he extended to help him up.

"Just about an hour."

"Are you awake? If so, let's continue outside and find that red building Fang Xing mentioned." Gu Yunfeng sighed. "We'll definitely have to pull an all-nighter tonight."

He put on his trench coat and nodded. "I'm awake."

Even though he had only slept for an hour, the quality of that hour's sleep was excellent, comparable to the shallow sleep he had been getting every night before. Staying up all night wouldn't be a problem.

Stepping out of the noisy hospital, he realised how quiet the streets were at this hour. The office buildings were lit up, filled with white-collar workers working overtime. Public transport was nowhere to be seen on the road; only taxis, with their lights on, wandered along the streets.

Above him was a cold, clear moon. He wrapped his coat tighter to ward off the chilly autumn wind.

"This afternoon, Old Qin said he might have found the kidnappers and Fang Xing. But after two hours, he told me it was just a drunkard who'd slept with a man," Gu Yunfeng said, unable to laugh or cry. "The others didn't find any clues either."

"Then we'll just keep looking. We've still got ten hours, we'll find it eventually."

"Yeah, we'll find it eventually." The city wasn't that big, there were many tall buildings, but very few red ones.

Typically, buildings wouldn't choose a red façade.

They walked side by side, yet there was a distance between them, not too long, not too short. In the night, Gu Yunfeng's facial features appeared deep and chiselled, with sharp edges outlined in the shadows. He hesitated several times before finally stepping closer to Xu Chengyue and saying, "Two hours ago, the kidnappers released the third piece of information."

"You were asleep at the time, so I didn't wake you."

"What did they reveal this time?" Xu Chengyue stopped in his tracks.

"Two years ago, Zhiyin Biotech recruited medical volunteers to participate in an experimental surgery," Gu Yunfeng said. "The volunteers required for the surgery were long-term comatose patients, or in a vegetative state. The decision to volunteer wasn't made by the individuals themselves but by their families."

"The informant claimed that this so-called surgery was nothing more than a death game, completely inconsistent with Zhiyin Biotech's description of 'certain risks', and none of the volunteers who underwent the surgery survived. If they had undergone conservative treatment instead, they would have had a chance of waking up."

Gu Yunfeng fell silent for a few seconds after speaking. His gaze grew sharp and suspicious as he put on the coat he was holding and walked down the deserted street.

"In that moment, I thought of you, and Jiang Hai."

He continued, "Zhiyin Biotech conducted this experiment at Ruihe Hospital. The initial chief surgeon had the surname Huang and was a student of Director Dai from Nanpu University's School of Biological Sciences. He later got promoted, and in the informant's words, he transformed from an executioner who had taken many lives into a high-ranking official at Zhiyin Biotech. After that, the chief surgeon has always been Ying Han."

"You and Jiang Hai both fit the requirements for this experiment, and the person who operated on you was none other than Ying Han."

"This matter, is it related to you?"

He stood there expectantly, not moving forward, quietly waiting for some sort of answer.

But reality often didn't align with expectations. Xu Chengyue turned his head away, unable to look him straight in the eye. He didn't deny it but instead simply told him, "It's related."

"But... I can't tell you."

This sentence suddenly pierced through him. He had hesitated for a long time before asking this question, precisely because he was afraid of receiving such an answer. During the ten or so days when Xu Chengyue had nearly disappeared, their relationship had become fragile and distant, as if it could shatter at any moment.

Who was the one who said they wanted to build an intimate relationship with him?

And now, not saying a single word, what kind of intimacy was this?

Gu Yunfeng's face darkened, and without thinking, he blurted out, "Why aren't you willing to tell me? You know about my past and understand what I've been through. I've entrusted my secrets to you, yet you're unwilling to let me know anything?"

He was genuinely furious. They had kissed, he had accepted that he was now attracted to men, and in order to ease the knot in Xu Chengyue's heart, he said a lot of encouraging words and told him that he would solve it together with him. But what was this now? What was Xu Chengyue trying to do?

Should he just turn straight again right away? What was going on in Xu Chengyue's head? What was he hiding?

The night was engulfed in an endless silence and darkness. The wind, footsteps, insect chirps, even the sounds of cats and dogs, all of these could not disturb the silence deep within his heart.

"Captain Gu, I really want to resign."

"Oh." Gu Yunfeng responded, then aggressively stepped closer to him. The veins on his arms bulged as he pressed Xu Chengyue's shoulders against the dim wall, almost pointing at his nose as he said, "Then go and apply to the higher-ups, follow the process, complete the paperwork, and only then can you set yourself free! Act on your own! For now, you still have to follow my orders!"

"If I don't let you go, you have to stay here!"

He rarely displayed such temper. Most of the time, he was gentle and composed. Perhaps it was the urgency of the case, but it was more likely Xu Chengyue's lukewarm attitude and his reluctance to speak that made him so agitated, causing him to lose his temper.

They weren't exactly close in the first place, and now it felt as if there was a wall between them, pushing them further apart.

After a while, he realised he had somewhat lost control of his emotions. He sighed and asked, "What exactly have you encountered? Do you have to leave your job to solve it?"

Xu Chengyue coughed a few times and looked at him calmly, smiling but not saying anything. He stood under a plane tree, half of his face covered by shadows, the other half illuminated by the dim streetlight.

"Lin Xiangrong invited me to work with her."

"Did you agree?"

—————

Gu Yunfeng didn't know that just twelve hours earlier, just two hours before he desperately knocked on Xu Chengyue's door, Xu Chengyue had already made a vague decision.

After half a month of anxiety and nervous exhaustion, weighed down by endless suppression and inner turmoil, he had called Lin Xiangrong again, his voice trembling as he said, "I'm considering your proposal."

"But you have to tell me, why are you monitoring Lu Yong? And why... did you have to involve me in this?" he questioned. He didn't want to follow in Wang Kun's footsteps, blindly becoming the scapegoat, taking the blame for this seemingly gentle and harmless woman.

"Because of a conflict of interest." Lin Xiangrong didn't hesitate at all, straightforwardly giving him the reason.

"The AI detective project was led by me, and the contract was signed with Lu Yong's lab. He provided the chips, and my side was only responsible for integrating the chips with the existing nerves in the brain. The data provider was the Third Public Security Bureau. Of course, the bureau had no idea that Lu Yong had the audacity to plan to apply it to real humans."

"Come to think of it, your Professor Lu is quite impressive, deceiving the law enforcement agencies into endorsing his crimes. With such talent, why doesn't he do something beneficial for societal progress and public order?"

She laughed softly, her voice light as she continued, "The contract we signed three years ago had some clauses that were vaguely worded. Later, Lu Yong exploited these loopholes, putting us in a difficult position, with our goals diverging completely."

"Aren't you supposed to have the same interests?" he asked sarcastically.

"Of course not. I don't know what Lu Yong's real intentions are, I can only guess that he wants to sell the chips to someone. But my stance is different. The reason we at Zhiyin Biotech, or rather, I, am involved in this, at its core, is for the sake of medical benevolence, to heal people, to push the advancement of science."

"No matter how unacceptable the methods may be, I genuinely hope you can survive." Lin Xiangrong, on the other end of the line, said in a seemingly sincere tone, "But Lu Yong isn't like that. As soon as the time is right, the chip in your brain will be removed by him."

"Ultimately, I hope you, a robot, can live on as a human being. Whereas he just wants to replicate you countless times and sell you for profit~"

"Do you understand now? Our interests align, so... you will definitely come to me, you will agree to all my plans, and you will stand firmly on the same side as me."

Those were the last words Lin Xiangrong said to him twelve hours ago.

You will stand firmly on the same side as me, simply because our interests align.

And that was indeed his desire at this very moment – to live fully and completely as a human being. Not as a cold, mechanical entity, but as a warm, living person.

And now, Gu Yunfeng's words only served to strengthen his resolve.

He wasn't the first person to undergo this surgery, but he might be the only successful case.

So how many failed experiments were there before him?

Among those failed experiments were volunteers, people with a desperate mindset, and a very few like "himself", innocent victims who were deceived.

If they had known the true nature of the experiment from the beginning, if they had known that even in success, it was merely a soul transferred into another body, would they have believed Lin Xiangrong's talk of 'healing people and advancing scientific progress'?

He lowered his head, sorrowfully gazing at the houses across the street. A few stray cats were perched on the rooftops. A cold wind, mixed with falling leaves, blew through, causing the cats to jump off the roofs in search of a warm and comfortable place to spend the night.

He had decided to cooperate with her, even as he felt a deep-seated hatred and loathing for them.

And the only way to accept all of this seemed to be to leave the criminal investigation team, a place that symbolised fairness and justice, and completely fall into an abyss of self-loathing.

"Lin Xiangrong invited me to work with her."

"Did you agree?"

He picked up his phone, avoiding Gu Yunfeng's gaze. Amidst Gu Yunfeng's barrage of irritable questions, he made his decision.

He dialled Lin Xiangrong's number, and before she could speak, he spoke first, his tone calm and measured–

"Ms Lin, I'm willing to work with you."

He turned around to face Gu Yunfeng's shocked and incredulous expression. Lowering his head, his long eyelashes concealed his eyes.

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

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Translator Notes

Please feel free to comment any mistakes I made so I can improve and do better as I go through the book.

Translated: August 29, 2024 by Angel

Edited: November 26, 2024 by Angel