You went on a blind date and presented an A-level wanted criminal as a meeting gift?

The safe house is located in an inconspicuous old neighborhood in the eastern part of Jiangcheng.

The house has three bedrooms and one living room, with ordinary decoration, but all the doors and windows have been replaced with a security system that Lin Chen modified himself. The lock cylinder is a Swiss-made twelve-core concealed lock, which, together with fingerprint and iris recognition, is no less difficult to crack than a bank vault.

The RS7 was parked downstairs, and Lin Chen carried Jiang Tingxue up to the fourth floor.

She was placed on the bed in the bedroom.

Seven silver needles remained in the acupoints, and the subtle tremors indicated that the needles were continuously resonating with the meridian system deep within the acupoints, steadily suppressing her heart rate to around eighteen beats per minute.

It's safe.

It's safe for now.

But only one hour and forty-three minutes remained before the two-hour deadline for needle removal.

Lin Chen did not sit down.

He went into the kitchen.

From the outside, this kitchen looks no different from an ordinary home, with a stove, range hood, refrigerator, and microwave.

But when Lin Chen opened the hidden compartment at the bottom of the refrigerator, he found more than twenty sealed jars labeled with Latin names, all of which were rare medicinal materials that he had purchased and stored at different times.

He took out the vial of dark blue liquid that had been salvaged from the forensic room from the breast pocket of his white coat.

Three milliliters.

This is the core medicine that Prajna uses to shield assassins from pain, and it is also the key clue he is now using to analyze the composition of poison gas.

The logic is simple.

The pain-blocking drug that Prajna used on his assassins and the poison gas he used to silence them most likely came from the same laboratory.

Products from the same laboratory will share a unified "signature style" in their molecular structure design, just as different works by the same painter will always have similar brushstrokes.

Finding this "signature" allows us to deduce the core toxin structure of the poison gas.

Once the structure is known, targeted antidotes can be designed.

Conventional hospitals cannot do this because their databases simply do not contain information on this novel synthetic compound.

But Lin Chen had it in his mind.

[God-level chemical knowledge] A vast and breathtaking network of molecular structure data unfolded in his mind.

The three-dimensional structures of hundreds of thousands of known compounds are arranged and combined in this network, and the results of the spectral analysis of the dark blue liquid in his hand are compared at high speed.

While scanning the absorption spectrum of the medicine with his portable miniature spectrometer, he set up a simple yet highly professional distillation and purification device on the kitchen counter.

Three laboratory-grade glass flasks were connected in sequence with silicone tubing.

He precisely controlled the temperature of the alcohol lamp flame by folding a damp towel into three layers.

The distilled condensate was divided into four gradients, each corresponding to components in a different boiling point range.

His hands flew between flasks, test tubes, and pipettes, as fast as when he was mixing alkali neutralizers in the abandoned theater, but with greater precision.

Forty-seven minutes later.

Distillation and purification are complete.

The dark blue liquid was separated into seven basic components, three of which were known precursors to neurotransmitter inhibitors, while the molecular structures of the other four were completely unfamiliar. However, their carbon skeleton arrangement and functional group distribution presented a highly unified "design aesthetic".

This is the "signature".

Lin Chen stared at the molecular model in his mind for ten seconds.

"We've got to work."

The core toxin in the gas is a reversible cholinesterase inhibitor that targets the respiratory center in the brainstem.

It shares the same rare nitrogen heterocyclic skeleton as pain-blocking drugs, but the modification directions of the side chain groups are completely opposite—one inhibits the pain pathway, and the other destroys the respiratory regulation pathway.

Knowing the structure of the toxin, designing an antidote becomes a chemistry problem with a standard answer.

Lin Chen took out four kinds of medicinal materials and two bottles of high-purity organic solvent from the hidden compartment of the refrigerator.

It is used in conjunction with the distillation apparatus on the stove for secondary synthesis.

Another twenty-eight minutes passed.

A white porcelain bowl contains about fifty milliliters of pale amber liquid, emitting a bittersweet herbal aroma.

Lin Chen carried the bowl into the bedroom.

Jiang Tingxue lay on the bed, the subtle trembling of the silver needles approaching their maximum frequency.

In twelve minutes, it will be the two-hour deadline.

He sat on the edge of the bed, supporting the back of her head with his left hand and raising her head slightly.

She held the bowl in her right hand, the rim of the bowl pressed against her pale lips.

Amber liquid slowly flowed down the corner of his mouth.

Jiang Tingxue was in a state of apparent death and had no swallowing reflex.

Lin Chen gently pressed his left thumb on both sides of her thyroid cartilage below her Adam's apple with an extremely gentle but precise force to help the liquid flow down her esophagus into her stomach.

While administering the medicine, he removed the silver needles one by one, starting from the top and working down.

With each hair pulled out, Jiang Tingxue's body would experience a slight spasm, and her suppressed heart rate would jump several times, like an engine being restarted and igniting cylinder by cylinder.

When the last needle was pulled from the philtrum, Jiang Tingxue's chest heaved violently.

I took a deep breath, which I had been holding back for almost two hours.

Her expression began to change.

The bluish-gray faded, but the paleness remained, though the color of the lips gradually transitioned from rusty gray to light pink.

Lin Chen placed the bowl on the bedside table and placed two fingers on the radial artery of her wrist.

pulse.

Fifty-eight times per minute.

The rhythm is stable and the pulse pressure is normal.

He didn't let go.

I waited another fifteen minutes.

Jiang Tingxue's eyelashes trembled slightly.

"Well……"

She opened her eyes a crack, her vision blurred for a few seconds before focusing on the ceiling in front of her.

An unfamiliar ceiling.

It wasn't the white ceiling of the forensic lab, nor the milky white paint of a hospital.

She turned her head away.

Lin Chen sat on the edge of the bed.

The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up to his forearms, and the hem was stained with medicine and watermarks from the distillation apparatus.

His right hand was still on her wrist, two fingers gently pressing on the spot where her pulse was beating.

His hair was a little messy, and there was a light gray mark on his forehead that he didn't know when it had gotten there, probably from broken glass dust.

There are very obvious blood vessels in the back of the eyes.

But his expression was calm, and as he looked at her waking up, there was even a slight smile on his lips.

Jiang Tingxue stared at him for three seconds.

Then she remembered.

The gas was a ghastly green color.

A dizzying, spinning sensation.

The last thing she saw before her vision went dark was a person rushing out of the poisonous fog, catching the test tube with one hand and grabbing her with the other.

And then I knew nothing more.

"How long has it been?"

Her voice was as hoarse as sandpaper.

"Two and a half hours."

"poison……"

"It's cured. I prepared the antidote myself."

Jiang Tingxue remained silent for a few more seconds.

She wanted to say something.

I want to say thank you, I want to say how you are always so punctual, and I want to say that I shouldn't let myself be so useless.

But all those words stuck in my throat.

Finally, something surged forth that was so overwhelming that it could not be described in words.

She reached out and grasped Lin Chen's hand, which was resting on her wrist.

She tightened her grip, squeezing his knuckles with such force that her knuckles turned white.

Lin Chen felt the pressure of her fingers.

That's not the kind of force someone who has just woken up from a state of apparent death should have.

"Your patient has quite a bit of strength."

Jiang Tingxue did not laugh.

She grabbed his hand and pulled him towards her.

Lin Chen lost his balance and managed to avoid falling directly onto her by bracing himself on the pillow next to her head with one hand.

The two faces suddenly came so close that they were only a few centimeters apart.

His face was reflected in Jiang Tingxue's pupils.

Those eyes, which were always so aloof and unapproachable, were now like ice thawing in spring, glistening with moisture and burning with warmth.

"Lin Chen".

She called his name.

The sound was so soft that only the air between the two people could hear it.

"Save my life again next time..."

"Don't even think about taking your hand back."

Lin Chen looked down at her.

The collar of her white coat came undone during the tugging, revealing a small patch of skin below her collarbone, flushed pink from the heat as her fever subsided.

Her gold-rimmed glasses had fallen off at some point, and without the lenses obscuring them, the slightly upturned curve at the corner of her eye became exceptionally clear.

He raised his other hand, his thumb wiping away a lingering tear stain on her cheekbone.

It's not an act of comfort.

It is a response.

The rest doesn't need to be recorded in writing.

In the safe house in the early hours of the morning, the bedroom lights went out.

The rain was still falling outside the window, the sound of the rain spreading evenly across the glass, isolating this small bedroom from the dark purple, menacing world outside.

At least on this night, in their own world, there was no Prajna, no court of judgment, no poison gas and silver needles.

Only the warmth of surviving a catastrophe.