Courtyard House: I fish in the heavens, a professional bird abuser.

The pickup truck stopped on a secluded side road.

A row of abandoned shops lined the roadside, their doors tightly shut and most of their windows shattered. He Yuanchao parked his car in front of the roller shutter of a laundromat—the shutter was still closed, at least blocking the view of zombies coming from this direction.

He jumped out of the car and walked to a public phone booth on the side of the road.

The phone booth still had power.

The low-frequency buzzing sound coming from the microphone sounded like something hissing and breathing in the night.

He Yuanchao picked up the phone and dialed a number.

That was the contact frequency Dr. Ashford had left on the radio—He Yuanchao had already intercepted that frequency using the system, but he needed a "legitimate way of obtaining" it to explain how he knew the number.

So he chose a public phone.

The dial tone went off three times.

"Click."

connected.

There was a hissing electrical noise on the other end of the microphone.

Then an old, weary male voice rang out.

"Who are you?"

"I'm here to pick up your daughter," He Yuanchao said calmly, leaning against the metal frame of the phone booth. "Angela is safe. She's in my car now, with a policewoman."

There was a two-second silence on the other end of the microphone.

Then the voice suddenly changed tone—from aged to trembling, from tired to excited.

"Angela...she...she's really alright?"

"She's alive. She wasn't bitten. But she's been alone at school for three days and is very weak; she needs proper care as soon as possible."

"Thank you... God, thank you..."

Dr. Ashford's voice trembled with emotion. The overwhelming sense of a father's devastation upon learning his daughter was safe and sound came through the telephone line.

He Yuanchao waited a few seconds to let him process his emotions.

Then he spoke.

The tone changed.

The previous soothing gentleness turned into a cold, businesslike approach.

"Doctor, I've saved your daughter. Now let's talk about your situation."

Ashford's sobs stopped.

"What...what do you mean?"

"You said on the radio that as long as someone rescues Angela, you should tell them the way out of Raccoon City—the internal evacuation route of Umbrella. Right?"

"Yes." The doctor's voice quickly regained some composure—after all, he was a senior scientist at Umbrella, and he possessed considerable mental fortitude. "There's a helipad on the top floor of City Hall; it's a private evacuation point for Umbrella's top brass. I have the access code; I can—"

"stop."

He Yuanchao interrupted him.

"I already know about the helipad."

There was a pause on the other end of the microphone.

"You...how could you—"

"Doctor, this isn't the information I need."

He Yuanchao lowered his voice, but pronounced each word clearly.

"What I want to know is something else."

"How much filth is hidden beneath this city's surface under the umbrella of protection?"

silence.

A long silence followed.

He Yuanchao could hear Dr. Ashford's heavy breathing on the other end of the microphone.

"What...what do you want those things for?"

"You don't need to know what I do. You only need to know one thing—"

He Yuanchao tapped his fingers lightly twice on the metal frame of the phone booth.

"Your daughter is in my hands."

That's a very direct statement.

It even had a slightly threatening tone.

But He Yuanchao knew that being polite to people from the protective umbrella system was useless. These people only cared about exchanging benefits. If you were nice to them, they'd take it as weakness. Only when you revealed your hand would they seriously discuss things with you.

really.

Dr. Ashford remained silent for about ten seconds.

Then he sighed.

There was both helplessness and a sense of relief that his hand had been seen through.

"Hive B," the doctor said.

What's in Hive B?

"The complete data of Project Nemesis—including the full technical documentation for creating that monster, the code for the control chip, and all its weaknesses."

He Yuanchao remained silent, waiting for him to continue.

"There's also a batch of the original progenitor virus stock solution, sealed in liquid nitrogen at -170 degrees Celsius."

"What about the quantity?"

"Fifty units. Each unit is enough for thousands of experiments."

He Yuanchao did the math in his head.

Fifty units of the original ancestral virus stock solution.

This thing is valued at least in the billions of dollars within Umbrella Corporation. Because the Progenitor Virus is the "mother" of all T-virus variants—controlling the Progenitor Virus is equivalent to controlling the source of all biological weapons development.

Of course, He Yuanchao didn't want these things to make weapons.

It was to find an antidote.

With the original strain of the progenitor virus, plus Angela's natural antibody genes, and combined with the existing G-virus database in his system—

He then had all the raw materials to develop "full-spectrum immune serum".

"What else?"

"The Red Queen's backup servers," Ashford said. "The main servers are in Sector A, which you guys have pretty much destroyed. But Sector B has a separate set of backup cores that store all of Umbrella's research data from its inception to the present—not just bioweapons, but also pharmaceuticals, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and even algorithmic models for military AI."

"Are they all in Area B?"

"It's all there. That's Umbrella's last safe haven. Even if everything on the ground is destroyed, as long as Sector B remains, Umbrella has a chance to rise again."

He Yuanchao closed his eyes briefly.

He quickly went through it in his mind.

The data from Project Nemesis—whoever controls it can control that behemoth and even create their own bio-weapons.

Progenitor Virus Original Solution – The core ingredient for developing a universal antidote.

The Red Queen's backup data—the culmination of decades of Umbrella's technological accumulation—is like acquiring an entire technology tree.

These three things together.

He didn't know how much the causal points were worth.

But he knew it was worth the risk.

"Doctor, one last question."

"What?"

"What is the current security status of Area B? Is Red Queen's defense system still operational?"

"Some parts are still operational." Ashford's tone became hesitant. "The chaos in Sector A has caused some power outages, but Sector B has an independent nuclear power system, unaffected by external factors. While you've weakened the Red Queen's authority in Sector B—I don't know how you did it—her basic defense protocols remain in place. Laser channels, gas release devices, and… those experimental subjects who aren't quite dead yet."

He Yuanchao's lips twitched slightly.

"Thank you for your honesty, Doctor."

"Are you really going?"

"It's already on its way." He Yuanchao hung up the phone.

He turned and walked toward the pickup truck parked on the side of the road.

Alice was leaning against the car door, the military knife in her hand gleaming coldly in the moonlight.

"Finished talking?"

"We've finished talking. There are three good things in Section B." He Yuanchao opened the car door. "Worth the trip."

"Then let's go."

The two people got into the car.

The sound of the engine starting echoed twice in the empty street, and then the pickup truck drove towards the entrance of the Hive.

He Yuanchao gripped the steering wheel.

He was already planning the route in his mind.

There is a drainage pipe inlet 300 meters east of the school. If you crawl into the drainage pipe and go through a pipe of about 500 meters, you can reach the sewage system outlet of Hive B area.

Go in from there, go around two isolation doors, and pass through an abandoned biochemical processing room to reach the core storage area of ​​Area B.

Go in, move things, come out.

Keep it under one hour.

"One hour," He Yuanchao said to Alice.

Are you telling me about the time limit, or are you just trying to motivate yourself?

"No, not at all." He Yuanchao stepped on the gas. "I'm calculating how many trips it would take to get all that stuff out."