The night before the promotion

Chapter 28 News of Death
"Dear citizens, please note that our city will experience continuous heavy rain in the near future, and the heavy rainfall is expected to continue for several days..."

The announcer's voice became thin and fragmented amid the incessant sound of rain.

Li Weiyun glanced at Zhou Si who was sitting in the passenger seat. He was wearing a thin hospital gown and he and Zhou Si ran out of the hospital as if they had escaped from prison.

No matter how rational Zhou Si was, Pei Dong's disappearance was like a heavy hammer hitting him in the chest.

Zhou Si became a little negative, but not much different from usual. Since getting in the car, he stared blankly out the window, even though there was only heavy rain outside the window and he couldn't see anything clearly.

Li Weiyun glanced at the navigation and saw that the location was very close. "Go to the clinic, or go back to your home."

"Go home first. I need to wash up and change my clothes."

Zhou Si tugged at his collar. He was soaked. His clothes were wet and stuck to his body, reminding him of the blue biological gel.

Li Weiyun drove into Zhou Si's old neighborhood. Downstairs of Zhou Si's house, the heavy rain obscured the view, but a row of lit red car lights could still be seen.

He reminded, "Doctor Zhou..."

"I saw it," Zhou Si said, "it's her car."

Touching his empty left arm, Zhou Si knew that his every move could not escape her eyes.

In the past few years, she didn't bother him, maybe because she was heartbroken by him, or maybe the time was not right. To be honest, Zhou Si didn't like to have any intersection with the past. Those troubles were like a ball of tangled wool, which was a headache.

"Want to get out of the way?"

Although Li Weiyu had only met Ruan Linrui once, he could sense the danger in this woman.

"No need. Ruan Linrui and I have been living in peace for so long. She must have something important to tell me. Why not listen to what she has to say?"

Zhou Si opened the car door and the heavy rain poured down on him. Due to the summer heat, the rain was not cold but very mild.

Zhou Si stretched his facial muscles and tried to muster his enthusiasm and friendliness. The other party had just paid a high medical bill for him. Whether out of old friendship or the bill, he should make the other party feel happy.

"Long time no see, Ms. Ruan."

Zhou Si shouted to the woman standing at the door of the building.

Ruan Linrui looked at Zhou Si in the rain. His figure was blurred by the rain, like a malfunctioning phantom.

Zhou Si trotted over quickly. The heavy rain almost soaked him. His hair stuck to his forehead and raindrops kept flowing on the surface of his skin.

"Oh, you don't look any different."

Zhou Si glanced at Ruan Linrui. Even in this hot summer, she was still wearing bulky work clothes, which protected her tightly like armor, just like in his memory.

Ruan Linrui said in a cold tone, "You look good too."

She raised her hand and pressed the car key. The car parked nearby turned off its engine and the flashing lights also went out. It seemed that Ruan Linrui was not going to leave for the time being.

After Li Weiyu parked the car, he walked over quickly. The three of them stood at the door of the building. The atmosphere seemed a little serious, like solidified concrete.

"Is this a gift to congratulate me on my discharge from the hospital?"

Zhou Si noticed that Ruan Linrui was carrying a heavy suitcase. He continued, "Judging from the size and weight, this should contain my arm, right?"

Ruan Linrui didn't bother to beat around the bush with Zhou Si and picked up the suitcase with great effort.

"Your prosthesis was slightly damaged. During the week you were in a coma, I got you a new one."

Li Weiyun reached out to take the suitcase for Zhou Si, but was stopped by Zhou Si. He asked, "A new one? This thing is not cheap."

Ruan Linrui said, "Of course, this is a prosthesis removed from a new generation of cutting-edge experimental products after four years of iteration."

"Armed avatar?"

"Yes, armed avatar."

Zhou Si kept smiling and took a deep breath. "Can I refuse? For example, give me back the old one. It was given to me by Chen Wen Ge. It is very memorable."

Ruan Linrui looked up and stared into Zhou Si's eyes. She was a head shorter than Zhou Si, but her aura was no weaker.

"Stop talking nonsense, Zhou Si, you have no choice."

The smile on Zhou Si's face became even wider. He turned his head and frowned helplessly at Li Weiyu, then pointed at Ruan Linrui.

"Look, just like I said, this girl is extremely controlling. If you don't agree to her, she will never stop."

Li Weiyu reached out to take the suitcase. It was much heavier than he had imagined and he almost couldn't hold it. Therefore, he took a closer look at Ruan Linrui. Under the bulky work clothes, her physical fitness might not be much worse than Li Weiyu's.

As the Director of the Information Security Department, holding such a position, he has more or less undergone some biological enhancement.

Seeing Zhou Si and Li Weiyun walking upstairs, Ruan Linrui said, "Aren't you going to invite me upstairs to sit down?"

"Even if I didn't invite you, you would have come along, right?" Zhou Si looked back at Ruan Linrui, "Come on, Ms. Ruan, let's catch up and talk about the purpose of your visit."

Li Weiyu stood aside, his eyes moving repeatedly between Zhou Si and Ruan Linrui.

The current atmosphere is very much like what is often played in romance movies, where two people who meet again after a long separation have a bit of strangeness and hatred towards each other. Movies often express this in a more romantic and dramatic way, but in these two people, Li Weiyu only felt that sharp contradictions were coming at him.

With a buzzing sound from the electronic lock, the door of Zhou Si's house slowly opened.

Zhou Si walked in first, not caring about the looks of Li Weiyu and Ruan Linrui. He took off his wet hospital gown as he walked and went straight into the bathroom.

The sound of rushing water sounded.

Ruan Linrui followed closely behind. This was not her first time to come to Zhou Si's house. Even though the last time she came here was three years ago.

But Li Weiyu stood at the door, stunned for a moment.

Having known Zhou Si for such a long time, this was the first time that Li Weiyun learned that Zhou Si actually had an ex-girlfriend. Moreover, this was also the first time he stepped into Zhou Si's home.

really weird.

Li Weiyu knew nothing about Zhou Si's experiences before the Xianyu accident, and Zhou Si never mentioned it on his own initiative. As for what kind of person Zhou Si was in the past, he had no idea at all.

From the day they met, they were closely connected by the disease. However, apart from work, they had almost no communication in private.

Li Weiyu has always regarded Zhou Si as his friend, but he has to admit that he doesn't know much about this friend.

Walking into the room, Li Weiyun looked around, and a stronger sense of strangeness emerged in his heart.

Li Weiyun knew very well that Zhou Si was a unique person. He was usually as calm as a precision-operated machine, and his analysis and judgment were without any emotion. However, in some unintentional moments, he seemed to simulate human emotions to avoid being noticed as different from ordinary people. He suddenly told cold jokes, and an elusive neurosis revealed in his words.

When practicing medicine, Zhou Si would burst out with an almost insane enthusiasm. His devotion and concentration could only be described as "fanatic".

In summary, Zhou Si is an individual full of contradictions and eccentricities.

Privately, Song Qiliang and Li Weiyun had discussed Zhou Si's character many times. Song Qiliang suggested that Zhou Si might have a histrionic personality, and that he deliberately created this mysterious image in front of everyone, which might just be a disguise.

Song Qiliang speculated that behind the curtain of his private life, Zhou Si might be no different from ordinary people and also have an ordinary side.

Li Weiyun agreed with Song Qiliang's conjecture until today, when he stepped into Zhou Si's residence and witnessed everything inside, his opinion began to waver.

As soon as you enter the door, the first thing that catches your eye is Zhou Si's living room. It is empty and has no furniture - no tables, sofas, or even a TV. There are no decorative paintings on the walls, and no flower pots or green plants in the corners.

The entire living room was unusually tidy, as if it had just been through a thorough ransacking and all personal belongings had been swept away, or perhaps it had just been renovated and nothing had been arranged except the floor.

Li Weiyun couldn't help but feel an unusual sense of emptiness and alienation, without any breath of life.

If it were just that, Li Weiyu would still think that Zhou Si was a minimalist, but as he stepped into the room, he saw and heard.

As the breeze blew into the room, it carried the photos with it.

Yes, those photos.

They are pasted on the walls and hung from the ceiling by silk threads. They are densely packed and everywhere, as if it were an avant-garde and strange art exhibition, some kind of incomprehensible art installation.

Li Weiyu put down his suitcase and walked forward curiously. Scenes from the past appeared before his eyes.

Gloomy streets, burning avatar bodies, insane patients, blood-stained walls, cables tangled like snakes, bloodshot eyes...

Countless photos overlapped together, like a bizarre slide show, a strange montage.

Li Weiyu's breathing stopped for a moment. He remembered these photos. They were the clues and evidence he and Zhou Si had taken when they were solving cases together over the past three years.

Countless photos, countless memories, countless pain and torture.

They move with the wind, gently scraping against each other, making a sound similar to that of rain.

"Rustle, clatter" - Li Weiyun slowly turned his head, and amid the complicated sounds, he noticed a cushion placed in the middle of the living room.

He fantasized.

Whenever night falls, when the breeze blows these photos, when thoughts are as quiet as a pool of stagnant water, Zhou Si kneels on the cushion and closes his eyes...

Ruan Linrui walked over. She was also surprised by everything in the living room, but that was just surprise.

She took off her heavy coat, revealing a black vest, picked up the cushion in the middle of the living room, threw it against the wall, sat down, and waited patiently for Zhou Si to take a shower.

"This place doesn't look like a place where people live at all," Li Weiyun took a deep breath and said to Ruan Linrui, "It's more like..."

"More like a strange ritual site?"

Ruan Linrui spoke first, with a faint smile on her face. Ruan Linrui had the same idea as Li Weiyun.

Li Weiyun hesitated for a moment and continued to ask, "Excuse me, what kind of person was Zhou Si in the past?"

Ruan Linrui thought for a moment and replied, "He is humorous, kind and upright... a good person and a qualified partner in the secular sense."

Li Weiyun continued, "Until the Xianyun incident, which caused his temperament to change drastically?"

"I feel that Zhou Si has not changed. He is still the familiar person in my memory," Ruan Linrui gave a surprising answer, "but the difference is that on top of the original foundation, he has a lot more."

"I don't quite understand."

"It's like a pile of code. Its underlying logic is still 'Zhou Si', but above Zhou Si, there are too many new codes that we can't understand. We can still find the old him in this complexity, but he personally has no interest in it."

Ruan Linrui paused for a moment, "Very familiar, yet very strange."

Li Weiyun pondered Ruan Linrui's words and slowly walked towards the depths of the house.

Zhou Si's house is a standard one-living room, one-bedroom and one bathroom. Given his financial situation, he can only afford such a house.

He was still washing up in the bathroom while Li Weiyu silently came to Zhou Si's bedroom.

The bedroom door was not closed, it was just wide open. The layout of the bedroom was the same as the living room, with nothing in it except a mattress in the corner and a small storage cabinet with a buckled photo frame on it.

Is it a group photo?

Being able to appear alone in Zhou Si's bedroom, it must have a special meaning to Zhou Si.

Li Weiyu was driven by curiosity. Just as he was about to find out what was going on, Zhou Si came out of the bathroom wrapped in a bath towel. He dried his body and his skin looked pale.

After taking a look at Li Weiyu, Zhou Si turned and walked towards the living room. Li Weiyu stayed there for a moment, carefully closed the bedroom door, and followed Zhou Si back to the living room.

"As you can see, there's nothing here to entertain you. Just sit down for a while."

Zhou Si took out a cushion from somewhere and threw it directly to Li Weiyu, while he himself sat on the floor with a bath towel as a cushion.

The three of them looked at each other in bewilderment until Zhou Si took the initiative to speak, "Has Shenwei Technology also noticed the Land of Bliss?"

Ruan Linrui nodded. "I noticed it a long time ago. It's not uncommon to see groups like them pursuing feathering technology, but we didn't expect them to grow so fast."

"They have a list of qualified people, and they also have a very powerful incarnation killer group, which is different from those cats and dogs."

Zhou Si's eyes became sharp, "Are you sure that the Land of Bliss has nothing to do with Shenwei Technology?"

Ruan Linrui was silent for a full half minute, and said uncertainly, "I can't guarantee this."

She continued, "Since the Xianyun accident, Chen Wen Ge has retreated to the second line, and the power struggle among the company's top management has become more intense. I'm not sure if anyone, driven by desire, has done something out of line."

Zhou Si was not surprised by this. "Sure enough, such important data can only be leaked within the upper echelons."

"So, Ms. Ruan, what purpose do you, or rather, Shenwei Technology, which you represent, have for me?"

Zhou Si glanced at the suitcase in the corner. "Advanced armed prosthesis, expensive treatment plan. I don't think you are showing me mercy because you have rekindled your old feelings for me, right?"

Ruan Linrui's words became sharper. "Oh? Then you underestimate yourself too much. Zhou Si, you are the most perfect qualified person, the one closest to becoming an immortal. Even if you leave, you are still an important asset of Shenwei Technology. You and I know this very well."

"So, you plan to use me to investigate Elysium and even expose the scum in the upper echelons?"

Zhou Si shook his head and refused, "I don't want to have anything to do with Shenwei Technology. If necessary, I suggest you go to the Supervisory Bureau."

"Isn't Team Leader Li from the Supervisory Bureau here?" Ruan Linrui said as she looked at Li Weiyu who was standing aside.

Li Weiyun had a gloomy expression, his eyes wandering between the two people. The verbal battle between the two seemed to reveal some extremely important information.

The list of qualified candidates is suspected to have been leaked from the top management of Shenwei Technology.

Zhou Si evaded the question, "Then you can talk to Team Leader Li alone. Team Leader Li is very capable in handling cases..."

"That's enough, Zhou Si."

Ruan Linrui's voice became louder, with a hint of anger in her eyes, "You know you can't stay out of this."

Li Weiyun defended his friend, "You can't force him. He has nothing to do with Shenwei Technology anymore."

When Ruan Linrui saw Li Weiyu standing firmly beside Zhou Si, she burst out laughing.

"Team Leader Li, you probably don't know the truth yet, right?"

"What truth?"

Ruan Linrui looked at Zhou Si and said in a stern tone, "The truth about the immortal's death."

Li Weiyu looked at Ruan Linrui in a daze and only heard her say.

"After the Immortal Falls accident, Shenwei Technology found a record of data being written into the severely damaged mind storage core. This means that the experiment was successful."

Ruan Linrui tried to look Zhou Si in the eye, but his gaze kept evading her. "Shenwei Technology named this upgraded consciousness that died just after it was born as The One."

Li Weiyun couldn't believe what he heard. In an instant, it seemed that all the sounds were fading away, leaving only the sound of rain outside the window.

Ruan Linrui said playfully, "Zhou Si, you are more than the person closest to becoming an immortal, you are definitely the first one."

Zhou Si looked out the window irritably. Chen Wen Ge, Pei Dong, Ruan Lin Rui... On the eve of the fairy's death, everyone regarded themselves as the first person.

"Since the list of qualified candidates has been leaked, it is very likely that the information about The One has also been leaked. Elysium will not let you go easily."

Zhou Si said nonchalantly, "Then let everyone from the Supervisory Bureau protect me and lock me up in a safe house until the incident is resolved."

"Please rest assured, I have received mental training and will not feel stressed about the confined life. I can endure it whether it is a few months or a few years."

Zhou Si resists his past and everything related to Shenwei Technology.

Ascend to heaven.

It was a long nightmare and Zhou Si didn't want to experience it again.

"Zhou Si, don't be so quick to reject me," Ruan Linrui said jokingly, "You will definitely agree to me."

"why?"

Ruan Linrui ignored Zhou Si's question and said directly, "About two weeks ago, on the evening of June 6, an experimental accident occurred in Shenwei Building."

September 6th?
Zhou Si remembered that it was the night of hunting Luo Yong, when the chaos began.

Experimental accident?

More memories emerged from Zhou Si's mind. He recalled the glimpse he caught of the Shenwei Building that night, how a few broken pixels suddenly appeared on the dazzling crystal tower, and Dude's AI-like news broadcast the next day.

Zhou Si asked in confusion, "So what?"

"The experimental accident was just a cover-up by Shenwei Technology to the media," Ruan Linrui explained. "The fact is that on the evening of June 6, a serious accident and explosion occurred in a secret laboratory in Shenwei Building."

"We found a lot of equipment related to feathering technology and a charred body from the wreckage at the scene."

Ruan Linrui took a deep breath and stated the facts in the calmest tone possible.

"After DNA comparison, we confirmed the identity of the deceased is Chen Wen Ge."

A dazzling flash of light appeared in the distant dark clouds. After spreading for more than ten seconds, the roar of thunder fell into Zhou Si's ears, hitting his heart and bone marrow.

Ruan Linrui stood up and walked slowly to Zhou Si. A bolt of lightning fell from not far away, turning her figure into a gray sculpture.

"Zhou Si, on behalf of Shenwei Technology, I entrust you to investigate this case."

(End of this chapter)