Medical Examination

He paused for about two seconds.

Brian lowered his head, glanced at his specially made shoes, and continued toward the conference room.

He pushed open the door.

To his surprise,

the not-so-large conference room held only an uncle in a tank top, his knotted muscles on display. With his feet propped on the conference table, he idly played with what looked somewhat like a canine skull.

Other than that,

the room contained nothing but tables and chairs, all visible at a glance.

There was no trace of blood at all.

Brian's nose twitched slightly, and his heart jolted. He immediately shut off his enhanced Scent. Before Uncle Billy could look over, he lowered his head first and said softly, "Uncle, what is it?"

"Raise your head."

Billy set down the wolf skull in his hand and tapped the conference table. "Have you received any news about the new department lately?"

Brian raised his head as instructed and nodded. "I heard recruitment notices will be issued at the end of the month, but nobody knows the details."

"This is the information."

Billy tossed a stack of documents onto the table across from him, then motioned for Brian to sit.

Brian did not stand on ceremony.

After sitting down,

he picked up the documents and began reading them.

He had no idea how Billy had obtained these internal materials.

They were extremely detailed.

The new department's full name was the "Criminal Experiment Team."

However, that was merely a general term.

The entire department had been structured after the Robbery and Murder Division of the detective bureau, divided into several numbered teams. Each team included a leader, a deputy leader, and several members beneath them.

The rest covered the division of powers and responsibilities.

As for authority,

each Criminal Experiment Team unit possessed absolute control and law enforcement authority over suspected murder cases within its jurisdiction. From investigating crime scenes to making arrests, they could even mobilize and coordinate the local police departments.

They were essentially upgraded versions of the Forensic Bureau and police departments.

As for responsibilities,

the units' jurisdictions were divided according to Los Angeles police districts.

The documents did not provide any specific details.

But considering Los Angeles alone had four major precincts, twenty-one police districts, and nearly a hundred smaller police stations, there probably would not be few Criminal Experiment Teams.

After finishing the documents,

Brian asked in confusion, "Uncle, the Criminal Experiment Team has so much authority. Will the Forensic Bureau and the detective bureau agree to this?"

"Politics is the product of compromises between interests. You'll understand when the time comes." Billy's tone brimmed with disdain. Then he abruptly changed the subject and asked casually, "By the way, Brian, wasn't the Blood Moon phenomenon fascinating?"

As he spoke,

his gaze locked onto Brian's face, attempting to detect the slightest anomaly.

Brian shrugged naturally, lowered his gaze, and bowed his head slightly in agreement. "It really was spectacular. Too bad it only happens once every thirty years. By the next time I see it, I'll be in my fifties."

At that,

Billy frowned slightly. After a moment of silence, he nodded, picked up the phone on the table, pressed several buttons, and said into the receiver, "Bring the equipment in."

Brian, who had been doing his utmost to disguise himself, felt his heart jump.

He had long noticed that his uncle was highly skilled at reading microexpressions. That was why, before coming here, he had repeatedly suggested to himself that he was still the old Brian, while avoiding eye contact with his uncle as much as possible.

He had not expected his uncle to have another move prepared.

This inhuman uncle was so obsessed with the Blood Moon phenomenon, and Brian had suddenly gained his cheat ability after that night. Could it be...

At that thought,

Brian's expression remained unchanged, but beneath the table, his shoes had already shifted into position, ready to activate at any moment.

Before, he had been unprepared.

Now that he was prepared, even if his uncle truly had ulterior motives toward him,

Brian would drag him down with him!

Billy seemed to sense something.

He set down the receiver, turned to look at Brian, and remained motionless. Only the bloodshot veins in his eyes bulged out one by one, as though the scene from that day had returned.

Under his uncle's stare, Brian felt as though he had been marked as prey by a brutal brown bear that had gone hungry for three days and nights.

It seemed that if he made the slightest unusual move, he would be torn to pieces!

"Such sharp instincts?"

Brian clenched his fist beneath the table, ready to strike first.

The next moment,

creak.

The conference room door was pushed open again.

Several men and women in masks and white coats entered the conference room, pushing several small carts.

They respectfully stood in a row by the door, awaiting Billy's instructions.

At the sight,

the bloodshot veins faded from Billy's eyes. He pointed at Brian. "Give him a thorough physical examination. I want to make sure he doesn't lose a good opportunity next week because of a medical checkup."

At those words,

the masked men and women ignored Brian's opinion entirely, took various pieces of equipment from the carts, and busied themselves.

Half an hour later,

Brian drove away from his uncle's place with a grim expression.

He was now certain of one thing.

Uncle Billy was absolutely not human!

Or rather, not any kind of normal human!

When he activated his enhanced Scent,

Brian discovered that although Uncle Billy appeared spotlessly clean, every inch of his body—from every strand of hair to every pore—gave off a pungent smell of blood.

Those bloody odors, varying in freshness and age, were layered atop one another.

It was as if he had taken another blood bath before the previous blood smell had fully washed away. Even though every trace of surface blood had been cleaned off,

the faint residues from before remained hidden underneath, like a giant onion wrapped in layer upon layer of foul, bloody stench.

Brian suspected

that even a cougar standing before his uncle would be so frightened by the bloody smell on him that it would turn and flee without daring to think about fighting.

Humans, on the other hand,

could not detect those extremely faint scent molecules.

Standing in front of Billy,

they would at most feel uncomfortable and oppressed.

"And that beastlike intuition, absurd strength, and perceptiveness that can see through people..."

After leaving the neighborhood, Brian pulled over by the roadside and lit a cigarette.

His heart felt heavy.

Brian felt that his uncle resembled a legendary werewolf, or perhaps some kind of beastman from a novel. No matter what, he could not be classified as a normal person.

Why would an uncle like that

pay so much attention to him before and after the Blood Moon anomaly?

Brian felt as if he had grasped some truth, yet because he lacked certain information, there was always a thin veil between him and the answer.

Even after one cigarette burned down completely,

he had gained nothing.

"Fuck!"

Unable to figure it out, Brian slammed the steering wheel. "We're both carbon-based lifeforms. Who the hell is afraid of who? Even if you're a werewolf, piss me off and I'll still blow you to hell with rocket launchers and explosives!"

After thinking it through,

the oppression in Brian's heart eased once more.

He crushed the cigarette butt between his fingers, pocketed it, restarted the car, and drove home.

Elsewhere,

at dawn,

Billy handed an urgently prepared physical examination report to a disheveled old man wearing a bloodstained white coat. "Marquis, is it possible that my nephew is also God-Favored?"

The old man called Marquis glanced at the data on the report and shook his head.

"They are all perfectly normal figures.

Although the abilities of the God-Favored come from the desires of the heart, making them strange and varied, all of you undergo obvious hormonal changes in the early stages.

He clearly is not one of your kind."

Upon hearing that, Billy was completely disappointed.

"I thought this nephew, known as the Child of Calamity, was the same kind as me."

Feeling slightly disappointed, Billy abandoned the idea of stopping Brian from joining the Criminal Experiment Team.

A nephew with whom he had little emotional bond,

and whose relationship with him had soured because of what happened before,

could only be sent to serve as expendable cannon fodder for a test.

One more chapter should be up around seven.

Sorry.

I overslept.