After jumping down from the secret passage entrance, Xie Junping looked up. The Mimetic Membrane perfectly blocked his view, appearing to be a solid slab of alloy steel.
Who would have thought that behind it lay a short, narrow secret passage leading to the strange Tree Hole Space?
Ronan said nothing and silently headed back. Xie Junping glanced once more at the surveillance feed, hurried two steps to catch up, and walked beside him. Before long, though, he regretted that decision.
By then, every system module in the laboratory had resumed normal operation. On the way back, it was no longer pitch-black. Special blacklights shone down behind the glass curtain walls, their dark violet glow turning the waters into something dreamlike.
But to Xie Junping, the long journey was pure torture.
The Ronan beside him was clearly not in a normal state of mind...
All along the way, Ronan remained as repressed and agitated as he had been in the Tree Hole, constantly circling within the confines of his own thoughts. Sometimes, he would abruptly stop and turn to stare at the corridor behind them, or the increasingly dark waters beside them, lost in thought for long stretches. Whenever that happened, the blood-red in his eyes seemed bright enough to drip, impossible to look at directly. Several times, Xie Junping even heard the low grind of his teeth.
After several minutes of stopping and starting like this, Xie Junping became increasingly certain:
Ronan was about to go insane!
He had no doubt that if someone dared to say, "I'm so-and-so who lives in the Tree Hole," Ronan would pounce immediately, bite through that person's throat, and only then roar out his questions:
What the hell were you doing there!
*What am I even thinking... If this keeps up, I'll go