Chapter 258: The Laboratory
“Being careful is always better than being careless and losing your life,” Xu Sa replied with a nod.
The man glanced at the woman who had been ignored.
She was wearing a white dress, looking unusually young for her age—over forty, but easily passing for someone in her early thirties. Clearly, she hadn’t suffered much and was living well.
“You know her?” the man buying shrimp asked.
“No,” Xu Sa shook his head. “Look at me, scraping by on the streets—do I look like someone who’d know someone like her?”
He had been working all day, constantly handling frozen seafood that felt like blocks of ice. When things got busy, he would sometimes get scraped by the mutated protrusions on the seafood.
His fingers were pale from the cold water, and open wounds gaped visibly—quite a pitiful sight.
“Sa Sa, are you still mad at mom? I had no choice back then,” the woman said again, voice choked with sobs, tears rolling down her cheeks.
Xu Sa counted the crystal cores the man had handed over, verified them, and put them into his storage box. Then he turned to Zhang Bijuan and said, “Ma’am, that’s enough. This is a marketplace, not a place for you to mourn.”
“If you want to buy something, you’re welcome. But if you’re going to stand there crying and jinx my business, that’s a different story.”
Zhang Bijuan still looked like she did in his memory, flanked by two children—one big and one small. The older one, a boy, was likely the same one she had been pregnant with back then.
He should be about seven now—after all, Xu Sa had spent six years in prison.
“Sa Sa, don’t you recognize your mother anymore?” she sobbed.
Onlookers, seeing the drama unfold, began watching them with interest.
“Isn’t that… Mrs. Qin from the Morning Light Squad?”
“Yeah, that’s her. I’ve seen her with Mr. Qin before.”
“Didn’t she have only one son? Qin something? Why is there suddenly another one?”
“Never heard she had a second child.”
“Could he be an illegitimate child? Haha, does Mr. Qin know his wife has a love child this big?”
“Well, Mr. Qin has plenty of mistresses himself. Heard there are several who live with him openly—and one’s even pregnant.”
“Then if his wife fooled around too, it’d be fair, right? A match made in heaven, haha…”
Xu Sa overheard the whispering, which revealed bits of Zhang Bijuan’s recent life. He ignored the flicker of embarrassment on her face and calmly addressed the crowd, “Anyone still buying? Fresh frozen seafood—last batch. Don’t miss it.”
“If you’re not buying, move aside and don’t block the business.”
Zhang Bijuan, still getting no acknowledgment from him, pushed her son forward. “Yangyang, call him brother. He’s your big brother.”
The little boy glanced at Xu Sa but didn’t say anything. His eyes fixated longingly on the seafood displayed on the stall. “Mom, I want to eat fish.”
“Oh no you don’t—I don’t have a little brother. My parents are dead. Don’t go sticking random people on me,” Xu Sa immediately cut her off.
“Are you buying or not? If you can pay with crystal cores, fine. If not, then move along. Don’t stand there acting like a beggar—it’s embarrassing.” He struck directly at the thing Zhang Bijuan valued most: her dignity. “You don’t look like you’re doing badly. Are you really just here to get a freebie?”
Zhang Bijuan lowered her gaze without protest, tears welling up. “Sa Sa, don’t be like this. I know I’ve wronged you, but I had no choice back then,” she said as she suddenly dropped to her knees and made as if to kowtow to him.
That crossed a line.
The crowd that had been thinking of buying took two steps back.
Business was now completely impossible.
“Forget it. We’re done here. Pack up,” Xu Sa said, knowing the current situation his squad was facing—they couldn’t afford to cause a public scene with people from the base. If any hidden forces were watching them, it could give them the excuse they needed to make a move against his squad.
Holding back his frustration, he directed his two helpers to pack up the remaining goods.
“Sa Sa, please forgive your mother. If I hadn’t done what I did, your brother wouldn’t have survived. It was a matter of life and death,” Zhang Bijuan cried, actually kowtowing in his direction.
Xu Sa dodged quickly, a wave of disgust rising inside him.
She was undeniably beautiful, and with this pitiful act, some of the onlookers even began to feel sympathy. A few men started speaking up on her behalf.
“Young man, no matter what happened in the past, making your own mother kneel and kowtow to you—she’s still your mother after all.”
“Exactly. No matter what she did, wasn’t it all for your little brother? You’re family. As the older brother, why can’t you be a bit more forgiving?”
“Right. She knows she was wrong now, yet you’re still clinging to the past. You’re unworthy of being a son.”
“Looks like a decent person on the outside, but does something so heartless.”
“Madam Qin, stop begging him. Just get up. A son like that isn’t worth keeping.”
“Yeah, in times like these, just live your own life. He doesn’t look like he’s doing so well himself—why even bother?”
“Please don’t say that. It’s my fault as a mother.” Zhang Bijuan wiped her tears, speaking softly and weakly.
“The world is already like this… I just hope my son could stay by my side, offer a bit of comfort. He’s my own flesh and blood. How could I bear to watch him like this…” Her voice trailed off, and she began to sob again.
Xu Sa kept his head slightly down, his expression unreadable. His slightly long hair covered half of his face, making it hard to see any emotion.
Standing beside him, Liu Rui suddenly seemed to ignite like a firecracker, his whole body bristling with energy.
In a few quick steps, he positioned himself in front of Xu Sa, facing the pointing and gossiping crowd and shouted angrily, “You… you all… shu-shut… shut up!”
His fierce expression, combined with his stammering, failed to come off as truly intimidating.
Seeing that no one paid him any attention, Liu Rui looked ready to activate his powers.
*
While this commotion was erupting in the market, Zhuang Mingxu had already followed Zhuang Mobai into his laboratory.
Zhuang Mobai’s lab wasn’t far from where they lived—right behind the old Zhuang family patriarch’s villa was a row of detached houses, one of which was Zhuang Mobai’s personal residence.
Zhuang Mobai led him inside and headed straight to a nondescript room on the first floor. Opening a cabinet revealed a hidden passage leading underground.
“This is the nearest entrance. There are other ways in and out,” Zhuang Mobai explained as he took the lead.
It looked like an ordinary staircase, leading directly to an underground rest area.
Zhuang Mobai put on a white lab coat and handed one to Zhuang Mingxu.
“This is my bedroom. When I’m busy, I just rest here,” he said as they exited the room into what looked like a very normal office. It appeared completely ordinary, without any special features.
“Outside is the ward area,” Zhuang Mobai said, opening a door and leading Zhuang Mingxu out.
“This whole floor is for post-op patients. These ones had successful surgeries and have developed abilities. These two over here were unsuccessful. Up ahead are those who completed surgery but haven’t awakened yet,” Zhuang Mobai explained, calmly opening the door to a patient room.
Inside was a middle-aged woman in a loose hospital gown, looking like any ordinary housewife without anything notable.
She was drinking water, but when she saw Zhuang Mobai enter, she immediately put the cup down and excitedly called out, “Dr. Zhuang!”
Then she picked up a clean cup from the bedside table. Under their gaze, the empty cup slowly began to fill with moisture, gradually becoming half full.
“Dr. Zhuang, please have some water,” the woman said, handing him the glass.
Zhuang Mobai took it and sipped, “Not bad.” He then examined the water and began asking her a series of questions about her current powers and control over them.
Meanwhile, Zhuang Mingxu glanced around the room, eventually focusing on the medical chart hanging by the bed.
He picked it up.
It read:
Name: Wang Xiu
Age: 38
Day 10 Post-Operation
He flipped to the next page. It recorded each day’s progress and medications since the operation. Though Zhuang Mingxu couldn’t decipher the doctor’s handwriting listing the drugs, the symptoms were clearly described—especially the note that her powers appeared on the third day and gradually became controllable.
Once the conversation ended, Zhuang Mingxu followed Zhuang Mobai out of the room and was just about to continue when a man in a white coat approached. He addressed Zhuang Mobai, reporting an issue with another patient and asking him to come take a look.
“I’ll go check it out. Mingxu, feel free to walk around, but don’t touch the IV drips,” Zhuang Mobai said, skimming through what looked like another medical record.
“For those with successful surgeries, you can observe as much as you want. But avoid the failed ones—they’re emotionally unstable, and it’s better not to cause more distress.”
“Emotionally unstable?” Zhuang Mingxu asked in confusion.
While marking up the chart, Zhuang Mobai paused, glanced at the tightly closed doors of the failed patients, and said with a sorrowful look, “There’s always a risk of failure in surgery. When others from the same group awaken powers and they don’t, it’s hard for them to cope.”
“Right now, I don’t have the time or resources to study the possibility of a second surgery. So, for now, they have no chance of gaining abilities.”
“A few days ago, one of them even begged Dr. Zhuang on their knees for another surgery—willing to risk death,” the other doctor added with sympathy. “But as doctors, we must uphold our basic ethics. We can’t experiment on patients with unknown risks.”
As the man finished speaking, Zhuang Mingxu heard movement from behind several of the tightly shut doors—but no one came out.
“The recently operated ones up ahead are also off-limits. Their conditions are unstable and can’t handle external stress,” Zhuang Mobai added before leaving quickly with the other doctor.
The openness and lack of secrecy about the lab made Zhuang Mingxu drop his guard a bit more.
