Above the Blood Moon

Pisius stood beside a pile of abandoned shipping containers, his hands behind his back, his posture as elegant as if he were strolling in his own backyard.

He was wearing a dark red uniform, the standard attire for the Red Men, but the material was clearly of a higher grade, with gold patterns embroidered on the collar and cuffs, the insignia of the President's direct troops.

His face was young, he looked to be under thirty, with regular features and a gentle smile on his lips.

If it weren't for the fact that his mechanical eyes, made entirely of precision optical components, were emitting a faint blue light, he would look like an ordinary office clerk.

But he is not.

Eighty-seven percent of his body has been modified. His limbs are "War God-IV" type military combat prosthetics, his chest cavity contains a small fusion core, his spine has been replaced with "Neural Bridge-III" type neural enhancement system, and a level three auxiliary type superpower chip has been implanted in his cerebral cortex.

He was the commander of this twenty-man squad and one of the president's most trusted subordinates.

At this moment, he was looking at the holographic projection in front of him.

The projection displays a 3D map of the warehouse area, with twenty green dots on it.

Those were his teammates, scattered in various key positions, forming an impenetrable encirclement, and in the center of the encirclement, a red dot of light was slowly moving.

The target of this manhunt is Huang Shuangyan.

"Sir," a team member approached him and reported in a low voice, "the target has hidden in warehouse C7 and hasn't moved for fifteen minutes. Our men have sealed off all the exits; she can't escape."

Pisius nodded, his smile unchanged.

"Good. Remember the instructions to keep her alive. We need to access the information in her brain, as well as that bottle of blue tissue fluid."

"clear."

One of the team members, who seemed to have a fairly good relationship with Pisius, stretched his muscles gently. He hadn't had a proper rest lately. After looking around to make sure no one was nearby, he gently approached Pisius.

"Captain, why are those people at headquarters so frantically urging us to find this blue tissue fluid lately? It's strange, these things seem to have appeared out of thin air in the Deep Space Graveyard."

And does this stuff even work? We tried it on test subjects before, and it had no effect whatsoever.

Pisius ignored him, maintaining his faint smile, and casually pulled a pistol from his pocket, pointing it directly at the team member's head.

"I don't want to execute another one of my team members. Don't say what you shouldn't say, don't do what you shouldn't do. Have you forgotten the Red Man's principles?"

The team member, realizing he'd made a fool of himself, raised his hands and shut his mouth.

Just then, another team member suddenly looked up. He was a level two psycho-chip ability user. As this type of ability user, one of his basic abilities was to sense emotional fluctuations within a radius of two hundred meters.

[Emotion Detection]: The basic ability of a Level 1 neuro-type ability user, who can initially grasp the emotional fluctuations of intelligent beings within a 100-meter radius.

His prosthetic eye was flashing wildly, and a confused expression appeared on his face.

"Sir, I sense a new emotional fluctuation."

Pisius turned his head, his smile fading slightly.

Explain yourself.

"Just now, two new sources of emotion suddenly appeared in the direction of C7 warehouse. One was very calm, with almost no fluctuations, while the other was very complex, showing both vigilance and decisiveness, as well as a bit of excitement."

Pisius's mechanical eyes narrowed slightly. A contact?

The target did indeed have accomplices, and they were in the warehouse area, very close to them, close enough that his subordinates could sense their emotional fluctuations.

"Location." Pisius's voice turned cold.

"C7 warehouse, no, they're moving now, heading southeast, very fast."

The psycho-chip user closed his eyes and activated his ability chip with all his might.

"They're on the roof! Moving along the roof!"

The smile on Pisius's face vanished completely, and he raised his hand and made a gesture.

Several men in red immediately stepped forward and took real military equipment from their backs: rocket launchers, grenade launchers, and a multi-barrel rotary cannon.

"Headquarters said they wanted her alive, but they didn't say her accomplices had to be alive too. They ordered us to use violence to blow up the wall and run over her. I need to see the target or her body within five minutes."

"yes!"

In Jockley's superpowered state, the heat sources suddenly began to move at high speed.

"Run!" he roared.

The three of them started running. The warehouse roof was sloping and covered with non-slip metal mesh, making it slippery as they ran.

But no one dared to slow down. Big Yellow rushed to the front, its mechanical legs making a thud on the roof.

"They've found us?!" Huang Shuangyan shouted as she ran, her voice filled with fear.

"Not just discovery!" Jockley glanced back. "They're launching a full-scale assault! With heavy weapons!"

No sooner had he finished speaking than a series of explosions came from behind him.

"Boom! Boom! Boom—!!!"

At least three rockets struck the walls of the C7 warehouse, tearing the thick metal walls apart like paper.

As flames and thick smoke shot into the sky, the shockwave even caught up with them, causing Jockley to stumble.

He didn't stop, and he couldn't stop.

As he ran, Chokley observed the surrounding terrain. Ahead was a gap about five meters wide, and opposite was the roof of another warehouse. Below was a drop of more than ten meters; if he fell, he would be crippled even if he didn't die.

"Big Yellow!" Jockley shouted.

"Understood!" Big Yellow rushed to the edge of the roof and, without the slightest hesitation, leaped into the air.

Its mechanical legs unfold in the air, the hydraulic system at the joints operates at full power, and its two arms extend forward.

Big Yellow drew an arc in mid-air and landed heavily on the opposite roof, its metal feet creating two shallow dents, but it stood firmly.

"Master! Jump!" Big Yellow shouted as it turned around.

Without hesitation, Jockley grabbed Huang Shuangyan's wrist, took two steps back, and jumped.

The wind howled in his ears, the blood moon spun overhead, below lay a dark abyss, and in the distance, the flames of an explosion raged. In that instant, Jockley's mind went blank, leaving only the instinct to survive.

He landed on Big Yellow's back, the impact making his chest feel tight, but he didn't let go, and neither did Huang Shuangyan. This woman actually didn't let up at the crucial moment, holding on tightly to his waist.

"Keep going!" Jockley said breathlessly.

Big Yellow started running again, but this time, Choklee didn't let it rush straight ahead.

He released Huang Shuangyan and slid off her back.

"Take off your coat," he said.

Huang Shuangyan was stunned.

"W-what? Didn't you just say you didn't want to, and that it's not appropriate to be here..."

"Outerwear! Take it off! Quickly!" Jockley's voice trembled with urgency. Why was this woman still thinking about these things at a time like this? "No time to explain!"

Huang Shuangyan looked into his eyes, and the urgency in them was genuine.

She gritted her teeth and began to unbutton her Taoist robe. It took her a long time to get it off. Once the robe was off, she was able to see the T-shirt underneath, which was so dirty that its original color was no longer discernible.

"Anything else?" Jockley asked.

"……what?"

"Take off everything inside—coats, scarves, hats—anything that can be seen!"

Huang Shuangyan blushed.

"Jockley, you motherfucker—" she started to curse, then suddenly realized, "You mean…"

Jockley interrupted her. The priest had taught him a few tricks to play a little trick on neurotic or supportive ability users. He didn't know if they would work, but he was willing to try anything.

"Stop talking nonsense, hurry up!"

Huang Shuangyan gritted her teeth and took off her T-shirt; thankfully, she was wearing a vest underneath.

She gave all her clothes to Jokley, leaving herself only in a vest and cargo pants, shivering in the night wind.

Jockley didn't look at her. He crumpled the clothes together and took out the last smoke bomb and a small tape recorder from Huang Shuangyan's tool bag.

"When did you...?" Huang Shuangyan stared in disbelief.

"I just picked it up." Joker didn't even look up. Art's little hands weren't clean, and he had developed some tricks to protect himself.

He turned the tape recorder to maximum volume, and it started playing a recorded heartbeat sound on a loop, thump, thump, thump, very regular. Then he stuffed the tape recorder into the ball of his clothes and pulled the safety pin on the smoke grenade.

"Big Yellow, throw it over there." He pointed to a corner of the warehouse across the street, "the more conspicuous the better."

Da Huang took the bundle of clothes, flicked his arm, and the bundle of clothes drew an arc and landed precisely at the corner.

A few seconds later, the smoke grenade exploded, and thick white smoke instantly spread out, completely enveloping the corner.

"Let's go!" Qiao Keli pulled Huang Shuangyan up and turned to run in the opposite direction.

The level-two psycho-chip ability user shut down his ability state. Maintaining emotional perception within a 200-meter range was too much of a strain on the chip, and his energy core had already issued an overheating warning. But it didn't matter; the target had already been exposed.

"Sir!" one of the team members pointed ahead, "There's movement over there."

Pisius looked up and saw smoke billowing around a warehouse corner in the distance. He could vaguely see something moving and hear a heartbeat.

It was a very regular heartbeat, as clear as a drumbeat in his prosthetic ear.

"Got you." Pisius's lips curled into a smile again. "Team A and Team B, surround that corner. Team C, block the outer perimeter. Don't let her escape again."

More than a dozen men in red rushed out. They were extremely fast, their military cybernetic bodies giving them superhuman mobility. In just a few leaps, they reached the edge of the smoke.

The leader in red made a gesture, and everyone stopped at the same time, raised their weapons, and aimed at the center of the smoke.

Then, charge.

They rushed into the smoke, their energy blades already deployed, ready to subdue their target immediately.

But when they actually rushed into the center of the smoke, they found nothing there except two tattered pieces of clothing crumpled together, with a small tape recorder underneath playing a heartbeat on a loop, and the remnants of a smoke grenade next to the clothes still hissing.

Pisius walked over, looked down at the scene, and his smile froze.

A few seconds later, he stomped hard on the tape recorder, and with a crack, the plastic casing shattered, and his heartbeat stopped abruptly.

Pisius looked up, her mechanical eyes flashing wildly as she scanned her surroundings. There was no heat source, no signs of movement, nothing at all. The person who was supposed to meet her was cunning.

The target disappeared, and they were tricked, having the twenty men in red completely outmaneuvered.

Pisius took a deep breath.

His mechanical lungs emitted a slight hum, and the fusion core in his chest cavity increased its output power by thirty percent—a sign of his anger. Although he still maintained a smile on his face, that smile had begun to twist.

He looked up and gazed at the other side of the warehouse area.

Under the blood moonlight, three figures were leaping from one warehouse rooftop to another.

At the very front was a cobbled-together mechanical body, in the middle was a woman wearing a vest, and at the very back was a young man, who was quite far away, at least four or five hundred meters away.

But Pisius's mechanical eye had an optical zoom function. He locked onto the young man's back and zoomed in, as well as the thing in his hand, a small glass bottle containing a blue liquid that glowed eerily in the moonlight.

Blue tissue fluid.

"Chase."

"Pursue them at all costs!"

The men in red behind him responded in unison.

"Yes, sir!"

Twenty red figures simultaneously launched themselves and chased after the three figures leaping on the rooftop.

The blood moon hangs high, its light as red as blood.

The chase has only just begun.