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

It was already 4 a.m. when I got back to the police station.

Lin Chen sat in his private office for two hours, disassembling the heartbeat detector wreckage he brought back from the abandoned factory into seventeen parts, and examining the laser-etched codes on each component one by one with a microscope.

The code points to a military-civilian integration electronics company located in Shenzhen.

The registered legal representative of this company is a 43-year-old retired soldier named Wang Jiangong. His name and background are very ordinary, so ordinary that they arouse suspicion.

Lin Chen wrote down the name, preparing to use his "god-level hacking skills" to delve into the company's equity structure.

Su Qingge pushed open the door and came in.

Her expression made Lin Chen's fingers pause on the keyboard for a moment.

"Found it."

Su Qingge placed a newly printed document on his desk.

The surveillance cameras within a three-kilometer radius of the abandoned chemical plant on the outskirts of the city had their signals remotely cut off between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m., but Su Qingge took a different approach and retrieved data from speed cameras on a county road outside the plant area.

Those speed cameras are old-fashioned devices with independent power supply and local storage; they are not connected to the internet and cannot be remotely turned off.

At 2:17 a.m., a black Toyota Coaster minibus without license plates passed in front of a speed camera at a speed of 68 kilometers per hour.

The car windows were completely dark, and the interior was not visible.

But the speed camera captured something.

A piece of mud stuck to the rear bumper of the vehicle.

The mud was a different color from the yellow soil around the factory; it was a silt with a distinct grayish-green hue, a color that only soil that had been soaked in industrial wastewater for a long time would exhibit.

Su Qingge investigated all the areas around Jiangcheng that had this type of soil characteristic.

Three.

One is the old industrial park in the north of the city, which has been demolished.

One is the area around the sewage treatment plant in the west of the city, where the residential areas are too dense to be suitable for hiding people.

The third is an abandoned dock and warehouse area in the east of the city near the Yangtze River. That area was designated as "undeveloped land" during the urban redevelopment five years ago and has been abandoned ever since, covering an area of ​​more than 100,000 square meters.

"The abandoned dock in the east of the city."

Lin Chen drew a circle in his mind.

This location and the subsequent tracking direction of the fluorescently tracked powder create the possibility of cross-validation.

If the black-robed contact returns to that area after the evacuation, the fluorescent powder and silt soil features will overlap at the same location.

But it will take time.

Fluorescent tracking requires Lin Chen to personally carry an ultraviolet emitter to the target area for scanning, and approaching rashly now might alert the enemy.

He needs to wait a little longer. Wait for a more suitable opportunity.

"in addition."

Su Qingge's tone changed, becoming more somber than before.

"I have some preliminary results from your investigation into possible informants within the police department, which you asked me to do."

Lin Chen looked up.

"When the news was announced at the bureau's routine meeting yesterday morning that 'the sample was preserved,' there were a total of fourteen people present."

"I checked all their communication records and behavioral patterns in the two hours following the notification."

"There was nothing unusual about the thirteen people."

"The fourteenth person, thirty-seven minutes after the announcement, sent an encrypted text message on his personal mobile phone to a prepaid SIM card that had been deactivated."

"Who?"

Su Qingge's lips tightened slightly.

"Zhao Kun, Deputy Chief of the Intelligence Section."

Lin Chen tapped his fingers lightly twice on the table.

Zhao Kun.

He was 44 years old and had worked in the intelligence section of the municipal bureau for 12 years, where he was responsible for information analysis and internal security review.

He has access to core intelligence in almost all cases, including control over the security system of the forensic lab.

If Prajna wanted to plant a mole in the police station, the deputy head of the intelligence section would be the perfect position.

"Don't touch him for now."

Lin Chen said.

"Keeping him alive is more useful than arresting him."

Su Qingge nodded.

She understood what Lin Chen meant.

A mole who is exposed but doesn't realize he's been compromised is an information channel that can be manipulated.

Lin Chen could use Zhao Kun to send the information he wanted Prajna to see.

This is called a counter-espionage operation.

Su Qingge turned to leave, but stopped at the door and glanced back at Lin Chen.

There was worry in his eyes, and something unspoken, but in the end he said nothing. He just pursed his lips slightly, opened the door, and left.

The door closed.

Lin Chen rubbed his temples, preparing to refocus his attention on the equity penetration analysis on the computer screen.

My phone rang in my pocket.

It's not Su Qingge's number.

It's not Ye Qingcheng.

It's not Jiang Tingxue.

The incoming call display on the screen was a string of numbers he knew all too well.

Su Ke'er.

He pressed the answer button.

"elder brother!"

When Su Ke'er's voice came through the receiver, Lin Chen's entire body tensed up instantly.

It's not because of the content, but because of the quality of the sound itself.

This wasn't Su Ke'er's usual sweet, lively, and endearingly coquettish voice.

This is fear.

Pure, undisguised, and compressed to its limit, fear on the verge of exploding.

"Brother Lin Chen, help me!"

She was crying, but she was clearly trying to keep her voice down, her voice was intermittent, and there were rapid, almost suffocating breaths in between.

"The school...the students at the school have all gone mad! They're banging their heads against the walls in the hallways, grabbing things, and lunging at and biting anyone they see! I locked myself in the music room, but the door...they've been banging on it so hard it's almost..."

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

A heavy thud came from the phone's receiver, like many people simultaneously pounding on a wooden door with their bodies and fists.

Interspersed among them were sounds that didn't sound like a human being.

It wasn't a scream, nor a roar, but a muffled noise squeezed from deep within the throat, somewhere between a sob and a howl, like a large number of vocal cords vibrating in the same irregular way at the same time.

Lin Chen stood up.

The chair slid backward and hit the wall.

All the expressions on his face were wiped away in 0.3 seconds.

It's not that the "god-level micro-expression control" is working; it needs to be activated actively.

This time it was spontaneous, a more fundamental physiological response.

When a truly dangerous predator is provoked, its expression does not become ferocious.

Its expression will disappear.

Prajna.

When this name appeared in Lin Chen's mind, the surrounding air temperature seemed to drop by five degrees.

First, a bomb was delivered to his doorstep, addressed to his father.

Then the poison gas was poured into the forensic room, almost killing Jiang Tingxue.

Now, he has reached out to Su Ke'er and hundreds of teenagers at a school.

Lin Chen strode out with his phone in hand, saying something in a low voice.

"Ke'er, hold the door shut, don't open it."

"Close your mouth and breathe through your nose."

"I'll be there in seven minutes."

He hung up the phone.

The RS7's engine roared out of the underground garage three seconds later.