You're a US police officer, what are you thinking about going back to the East for?

Chapter 217 The Mentor's Mentor Came From the Third Reich (3k)

"An unfamiliar ceiling —"

Christopher's deep-set eyes stared intently at the mottled, moldy dome above the baptismal chamber, his withered lips parted slightly, and he unconsciously uttered a murmur.

His vision cleared, and he saw peeling paint on the wall, smelled a strong musty odor in the air, and heard faint screams coming from outside the door.

This is definitely not a ward in any normal hospital.

"Hey, old man, you're awake?"

Alex saw the person on the marble table open their eyes and quickly went over.

Christopher's eyes rolled stiffly for a moment before his gaze focused on Alex's face.

A massive, dark shadow, 1.9 meters tall, loomed over him.

What's worse, the fat man was wearing two blue medical masks on his face, which made him look anything but kind; he looked more like a deranged serial killer or an illegal underground organ harvester.

Christopher's pupils suddenly contracted.

Stagnant memories surged forth like a floodgate being opened in that instant.

Chemical plant ruins—dead birch forests—the pungent smell of chemical solvents—and three eerie green eyes and the excruciating pain of tearing flesh!

Coyotes!

"No—don't touch me! Get away!"

Christopher yelled, waving his hands wildly, trying to push the guy away while struggling to sit up on the marble table and run away.

"Holy crap! Don't you dare move!"

Alex was startled by his sudden resurrection.

He had personally witnessed how Pastor Thomas painstakingly stitched up the old man's severed anterior tibial artery.

If the sutures had ruptured due to the violent struggle, and blood had spurted onto the ceiling of the baptismal tub, Leon would definitely have stuffed himself into a refrigerated truck to keep Christopher company when he returned.

In desperation, Alex's brain, which was a complete slacker in biology, started working frantically, trying to calm the guy down with his best trick of talking nonsense.

"Calm down! You absolutely mustn't move right now!"

Alex gripped the edge of the marble countertop with both hands and stammered a loud shout.

"Your body is currently in a vulnerable—uh—cell wall remodeling phase!"

"???"

Christopher's struggling movements actually stopped abruptly.

His eyes were wide open, staring intently at Alex.

Cell wall?

Where do human cells get their cell walls?

I'm a researcher at Pfizer, not an onion!

Seeing that the old man seemed to be impressed by his "technical jargon," Alex immediately pressed his advantage and continued to spout nonsense.

"That's right! It's the cell wall!"

"You were bitten by a coyote, causing a severe and irreversible rejection reaction in your soft tissues and chloroplasts!"

Alex got more and more fluent as he talked, and even deliberately added a rigorous academic tone to his speech.

"We've just performed an emergency intervention on you. Your mitochondria are now working overtime to supply ATP to your anterior tibial artery!"

"If you exercise vigorously now, it will cause the concentration of ATP in your blood to be too high, triggering—reversal of photosynthesis syndrome!"

"You'll explode on the spot, you understand?!"

A deathly silence fell over the baptismal chamber.

Only the occasional wails of homeless people echoed from outside the door.

Christopher lay on the marble table, his hands still in a pushing-back posture.

The panic on his face had completely vanished, and now his face was contorted as if he had been constipated on the toilet for three hours.

As a top-tier talent standing at the pinnacle of global biomedicine, Christopher has heard countless stories of academic fraud and pseudo-scientific theories throughout his life.

But he swore he had never heard such a horrifying, intellectually insulting jumble of biological terms.

Does your entire statement have any logical connection between its parts?!

Human chloroplast rejection? Photosynthesis reversal syndrome?!

What kind of idiotic dropout from a third-rate university could come up with such nonsense?

Christopher's chest heaved violently.

His attention had been completely pulled away from the shadow of the coyotes by Alex's nonsensical remarks.

He really wanted to curse and yell, he really wanted to jump up and grab the fat man by the collar, and smash Gray's Anatomy into his hand.

And "Basic Cell Biology" was smashed in this fat man's face.

But he dared not.

Because he had absolutely no idea where this freak who was spouting nonsense came from.

Correcting a psychopath's basic biological knowledge in a dark, moldy, slaughterhouse-like place is clearly not a wise move.

So Christopher had no choice but to swallow his complaints.

He stiffly lay back down on the dust cover, staring straight at Alex with the look one would give a purebred idiot.

His eyes were filled with despair over the diversity of human species.

Alex felt a chill run down his spine from the old man's intense gaze.

He subconsciously touched the mask on his face, coughed twice, and tried to ease the suffocatingly awkward atmosphere.

"Ahem—why are you staring at me like that?"

Alex rubbed his hands together and awkwardly chuckled as he took a half-step back.

"I know the medical principles I just explained may be a bit profound, but don't worry, I'm a professional—a biological structure processing expert."

"As long as you lie still and don't move, your chloroplasts will return to normal soon."

"Bang."

Just as Alex was about to continue his fabrication, the dilapidated wooden door to the baptismal chamber was forced open with a knee.

Lyon walked in carrying two paper bags with the fast food restaurant's logo on them.

He looked up and saw Christopher staring at him on the marble table, and Alex next to him, who was practically burying his face in his mask.

"He woke up faster than I expected."

Leon raised an eyebrow, walked straight to the marble countertop, and placed one of the paper bags on the empty spot next to Christopher with a soft "snap".

He casually took out a bowl of still-steaming mashed potato soup and stirred it with a plastic spoon.

"You were seriously injured just now, and now that you're awake, you need to replenish your energy. Eat something, old man, we have important things to discuss later."

Christopher struggled to shift his gaze from Alex to the tall, imposing man in front of him, who wore a black mask.

He didn't take the mashed potatoes.

As a former researcher at Pfizer, the vigilance he developed amidst workplace infighting and capital attacks did not disappear with the bankruptcy.

"Who exactly are you people?"

Christopher's chapped lips were pressed tightly together, and his voice sounded dry due to weakness.

"Why did you save me? What do you want from me?"

Leon put the mashed potatoes back on the table, put his hands back in the pockets of his jacket, and looked down at him.

"Don't be nervous. We're not Pfizer's security team, nor are we a gang planning to cut you up and sell you to underground organ dealers."

Lyon's voice came through the mask, sounding somewhat muffled.

"You can think of us as headhunters. We're very interested in what you know about CRISPR gene editing and targeted drug delivery systems."

"Simply put, we plan to poach Pfizer's employees."

Lyon only touched on the topic briefly and did not delve deeper into it.

He knew that for elites like Christopher, who had long held high positions and were now at rock bottom, they needed to be given a buffer period.

If we bring up "going to the East" now, it will most likely provoke the old man.

Upon hearing the words "poaching" and "headhunting," Christopher's tense shoulders relaxed slightly.

As long as the other party is after his skills, not his life, it means he is currently safe, and at least has some bargaining power within the other party's tolerance range.

After confirming that he was not in any immediate danger, he turned his attention back to Alex, who was standing behind Leon.

"Since you're not crazy, can you tell me who hired this 'biological structure processing expert' who can't even distinguish between human and plant cells?"

Christopher stretched out his withered finger and angrily poked Alex's nose.

"Human chloroplast rejection? Reversed photosynthesis? Do you know I almost thought I'd been abducted by aliens just now?"

"Which sewer did you go to university in? What was your advisor's name?"

"I need to write this name down so that if I have the opportunity to return to academia in the future, I can help my team avoid potential pitfalls."

Leon was taken aback by these sudden words, and his eye twitched slightly.

Although he was an amateur, he still had basic common sense.

He turned his head and looked at Alex with a "what the hell did you just do?" look.

Alex was so embarrassed by those words that he started coughing. He was so awkward that he almost dug a three-bedroom apartment out of the baptismal chamber floor with his toes.

The face of his university biology professor uncontrollably appeared in his mind.

He was a stern-looking old Germanic man with a high-bridged nose, cold blue eyes, dazzling blond hair, and a very imposing double chin.

The most fatal flaw is that the professor's former mentor was an old relic trained during the Third Reich.

The professor also treasures some yellowed academic notes, which are said to have been passed down from his mentor.

It was covered with a lot of obscure Bavarian slang and non-standard Old German, and I didn't dare show it to anyone, including myself. Heaven knows what it was all about.

It's one thing to embarrass myself, but how could I possibly drag my professor into this embarrassment in front of this Pfizer researcher?!

"Ahem—what the heck—"

Alex guiltily avoided Leon's gaze, awkwardly forcing a smile and taking a step back, attempting a feeble attempt to salvage his reputation.

"That's called tactical bullshit, you understand?"

"You just woke up and were thrashing around like you were in heat. If I hadn't said something shocking to calm you down, the veins in your legs would have burst!"

Alex patted his chest, looking like he was trying to cover something up.

"I'm a legitimate biology graduate, do you think I don't know that humans don't have chloroplasts? I just used those words on purpose to provoke you and distract you!"

"Tell me, have you calmed down yet?"

Christopher let out a long sigh of relief as he looked at Alex, who was putting on a brave face.

His previously tense nerves miraculously relaxed considerably due to the fat man's clumsy performance.

"That's good."

Christopher leaned against the table, a weak smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"I knew it. Even if someone is incredibly stupid, surely they can learn biology!"

Alex felt as if he had been struck in the knee by an arrow, and his expression froze completely.

broken.

He let out a silent wail.

I really can't learn it.

Alex felt his pride being brutally trampled in front of this withered old man, but he couldn't find any words to refute him.

He pursed his lips, deciding not to humiliate himself any further.

Alex silently took two steps back, giving Leon the space to communicate, pretending that he was just an emotionless background figure.