Su Wan stepped aside, and the boy fell onto the gravel and rubble.
His knees struck the sharp stones, and blood began to seep through his pant legs.
But he seemed unable to feel the pain; he simply curled into a ball, clutching his head with both hands as his body trembled violently.
From this youth, Su Wan sensed a fear that was etched into his very marrow.
It was the instinctive, uncontrollable terror of a boy who had been locked away in a dark underground laboratory and studied as a test subject for untold years, experiencing the outside world for the first time.
Chen Shijie stood frozen, the silver remote slipping from his hand and hitting the ground with a sharp clink.
His mouth hung open, his glasses were crooked on his nose, and his hair was tossed into a mess by the cold wind. He looked utterly pathetic.
But his eyes—
Those eyes hidden behind the gold-rimmed glasses were terrifyingly bright.
He didn't look at the fallen boy.
He didn't even look at the three unconscious Ability Users.
His gaze was fixed deathly still on the silver-grey bracelet on Su Wan’s right wrist.
“What... what is that on your wrist?”
His voice was hoarse, carrying a tremor that was suppressed to the extreme.
Su Wan didn't speak; she simply watched Chen Shijie quietly.
The faint silver luster of the bracelet was reflected in Chen Shijie’s pupils.
His breathing grew increasingly rapid, his chest heaving violently, and a rattling sound escaped his throat, as if something were stuck inside that he could neither swallow nor spit out.
Then, he began to run toward Su Wan.
His dark grey combat suit was covered in dust and grit, and his shoes stumbled over the potholed road, nearly causing him to fall several times.
But he ran fast—far faster than an ordinary human should.
Su Wan watched as the thin middle-aged man with high cheekbones stumbled to a stop less than two paces away from her.
Chen Shijie bent over, hands on his knees, gasping for air.
Fine beads of sweat broke out on his forehead, and his gold-rimmed glasses slid to the tip of his nose, but he didn't even bother to fix them.
He looked up at Su Wan.
There was no fear in those eyes, no anger, not even a hint of hostility.
There was only fanaticism!
It was the near-obsessive, reckless fervor of a researcher facing unknown technology.
“That bracelet of yours...” His voice was still trembling, not from fear, but from excitement. “What is it? What’s the principle? Is it an energy pulse or something else?”
“That frequency... I didn't sense any energy fluctuations, yet it actually worked... How did it do that?”
He took a step forward, closing the distance to Su Wan.
“Subject 5’s gene chimerism rate is eighty-one percent. Our technology can’t maintain its stability for long at all; we have to rely on drugs and electric currents to suppress it.”
“But your bracelet... in just an instant, in just a single instant, it caused all the non-human genes in his body to collapse simultaneously!”
“This kind of technology... this kind of technology...”
His speech became faster and more urgent, his eyes becoming bloodshot.
“Where did your bracelet come from? Was it dug up from some Old Era ruins? Or is it the latest achievement of some research institute? It doesn't look like the Dawn Federation’s... and it doesn't look like Nightmare’s either...”
He reached out, grabbing for Su Wan’s wrist.
Those hands were gaunt and pale, yet they were remarkably steady.
Su Wan flicked her wrist, avoiding his hand.
Chen Shijie grabbed at empty air and froze for a moment. Then he looked up, adjusting his crooked glasses, his face filled with anticipation.
“Can I see it?”
“Just a look.”
“I won't touch it...”
“No, let me touch it just once... that’s fine too...”
“Let me touch it, just once...”
His voice grew lower and more rapid, his lips quivering and his fingers shaking. He had fallen into a state of near-madness.
Su Wan looked at Chen Shijie. Her expression didn't change, but a complicated emotion welled up in her heart.
The researchers she had imagined were a group of cold-blooded, ruthless scientific madmen who treated human life like grass—demons smiling at test subjects in a lab, cold-blooded animals who would use any means necessary for their research.
But the man before her...
He was completely different from what she had expected.
She thought he would be afraid, that he would run away, or even kneel and beg for mercy when faced with such a situation.
But he didn't.
He ran to her as if he weren't afraid of death, all just to ask about the origin of a bracelet.
Su Wan felt a bit stifled, so she reached up and pulled down the collar that covered half her face, revealing her features.
Seeing Su Wan’s face, Chen Shijie’s pupils contracted sharply.
It was actually her!
Just a few hours ago, he had personally input those descriptions into the research institute’s Portrait Generation System...
The portrait on the screen was identical to the face before him!
His Adam's apple bobbed violently, and his lips trembled as he let out a hoarse, almost distorted sound.
“It’s... it’s actually you! You’re Su Wan!”
“You’re the owner of that Terminal Station!”
He instinctively took a step back, his heel catching on the gravel. His body swayed, and he nearly fell.
In those eyes behind the gold-rimmed glasses, the fanaticism was replaced by shock for a split second, but soon, the shock was consumed by an even more intense excitement.
“It’s you... it’s really you...”
His voice was shaking, though it was hard to tell if it was from fear, excitement, or both.
“Why... why are you here?”
“And aren't you only at the Level 3 Late Stage? Why were those three unable to even fight back against you?”
“Is all of this because of that bracelet?”
Chen Shijie’s attention was drawn back to the bracelet. His eyes grew brighter as he looked at it, and he asked as if talking to himself.
“Is it yours? How did you get it? Did you dig it out of some Old Era ruins? Or buy it on the black market? Or...”
Su Wan didn't answer any of his questions.
She simply watched him quietly until Chen Shijie’s fanatical energy cooled down on its own, then she spoke slowly.
“My two subordinates—how are they?”
Su Wan knew that all the information Chen Shijie had about her came from the mouths of Scarface and Lei Lie.
She wanted to know their current situation.
Chen Shijie was taken aback.
He instinctively pushed up the glasses that had slid to the tip of his nose, only then remembering that there were still two living people locked in the second basement level of his research institute.
“You came for them?”
He didn't wait for Su Wan’s answer, nodding to himself with a tone of matter-of-fact frankness.
“That one named Scarface is quite stubborn; we had to use Truth Serum to pry his mouth open.”
“He didn't know much—only your name, that you’re the owner of the Terminal Station, and that it’s located on the edge of Ruin Zone A7.”
“As for that Level 3 hunter...”
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