Major Discovery

Behind him, Changye and Number 88 followed cautiously as well...

At last, he had entered a field he excelled in.

Following the footprints, two days had passed. After being washed over by flash floods and disturbed by wild beasts in the mountains, could he still track down No. 325?

At the very least, they could not do it themselves.

But after following Lin Xiaosu for seven or eight hundred meters, their eyes lit up. A footprint appeared in the wet ground, and its mark had clearly been left by specialized shoes.

Those shoes were exclusive to Qianlong.

"Which of these two do you think is the real talent?" A thread of Number 88's voice reached Changye.

"Why can't they both be talents?" Changye said.

"True enough! Xin Yue's unique skill simply has too few chances to be displayed. She has always been floundering in fields she is not good at. To have achieved what she has in an area outside her strengths truly does make her a genius!"

"That isn't the key. The key is that she still has one chance to awaken an ability. That is a privilege exclusive to Second-Generation Gene Humans. Some say that Second-Generation Gene Humans are the most likely to 'awaken'!"

Awaken!

Even spoken by them, those two words still carried endless mystery...

"Second-Generation Gene Humans... that truly is a profound subject." Number 88 said, "What does a grandmaster of the medicinal path like you think of Second-Generation Gene Humans?"

"Our ancestor once said that fortune and misfortune cling together. Applied to Second-Generation Gene Humans, that is probably the most accurate judgment..." Changye suddenly raised her gaze and stared at Lin Xiaosu above.

Number 88 raised his gaze as well. "Did you find something?"

With a swish, the two appeared at Lin Xiaosu's side at the same time.

From the side, Lin Xiaosu's face wore an expression of lingering terror.

Lin Xiaosu drew a deep breath and pointed at a lone cliff ahead. "That should be where he sent the photo."

Number 88 let out a breath. "It's fine. Just climb that cliff. You won't fall."

He assumed Lin Xiaosu was shaken because the lone cliff was dangerously steep. As an ordinary person, Lin Xiaosu was afraid of heights.

Yet he could never have imagined that Lin Xiaosu had "seen" a truly soul-stirring scene.

When No. 325 passed through here, a white snake shot through the grass. It was incredibly fast, and No. 325's reaction was freakishly quick as well. With a twist of his feet, he moved three steps forward.

Even so, he had not completely avoided the white snake's attack. It slid past his leg, and in that instant, the scales on its body suddenly flared open like sharp swords, actually slashing a gash through the Dragon Armor.

By the time No. 325 fixed his sharp gaze on the grass below, the white snake had already burrowed underground.

He probably had not seen it clearly.

But when he saw the slash in his Dragon Armor, he was greatly startled.

This was the "major discovery" he had spoken of!

There was some alien creature in the mountains that could tear apart Dragon Armor.

But he had not seen clearly what it was.

Lin Xiaosu had seen it clearly. It was a white snake. It looked exactly like an ordinary snake, differing completely only when it launched an attack.

Its speed surpassed that of ordinary snakes by more than tenfold.

Its scales could even rip apart Dragon Armor.

How formidable was Dragon Armor? Even the False Dragon Armor Lin Xiaosu wore could not be easily torn open by wild beasts in the mountains.

Lin Xiaosu's lingering fear came from suddenly realizing that even with powerful equipment and three Qianlong experts beside him, if he encountered a surprise attack from that snake, he would still be unable to escape disaster...

Even these three Qianlong experts would face great danger.

Lin Xiaosu climbed the lone cliff, and Number 88 followed. After taking out his communicator and checking it, Number 88 nodded lightly. "Indeed, there is a faint signal here. No. 325 transmitted the photo from this spot."

"The next step is to track the traces of him descending the mountain. When you came up just now, did you find any signs of him coming down?" Changye asked Lin Xiaosu.

"No. He didn't retrace his route down."

"If he didn't retrace his route, then it can only be over there..." Changye pointed to where Lin Xiaosu had just found the white snake. A mountain ridge there led toward another range.

Lin Xiaosu nodded and returned to the patch of woodland where the white snake had appeared. He saw No. 325 again. No. 325 made the same movements he did, only even more conspicuously.

He deliberately headed into the deep grass...

He was using himself as bait to lure the unknown hunter into attacking.

The Dragon-Scale Dagger was clutched in his hand, and his mind was focused to the utmost.

In modern society, on the eve of Gene World, miraculous genes were what every nation dreamed of. Encountering a mysterious creature capable of tearing apart Dragon Armor, he saw it as a "major discovery." Therefore, he disregarded the danger and lured the hunter to attack him in the deep grass. Yes, at this moment, he was using himself as bait, so was not the attacker the hunter?

Of course, as a Hidden Dragon Gold Medal, he himself was also a hunter!

It remained to be seen whose methods were superior.

Time passed second by second...

Lin Xiaosu seemed to have stepped into the role of the person he was "observing"...

Without realizing it, he held his breath and concentrated.

Number 88 and Changye exchanged a look, unable to understand, but they keenly sensed that Lin Xiaosu had discovered some hidden mystery again.

What was it?

They turned their eyes toward the direction of his gaze, yet they could see nothing.

Within Lin Xiaosu's "field of vision," he finally saw the whole picture...

It was so terrifying that it shook the soul...

As No. 325 took a step forward, a white snake burst out of the ground, swift as lightning. From the way it moved, it hardly seemed like a living creature at all. It was utterly like an arrow.

It shot toward No. 325's lower abdomen.

No. 325's reaction speed was freakishly fast.

He abruptly reached out, and his hand, wearing a specialized glove that glimmered with blue light, firmly seized the white snake.

The white snake's tail suddenly snapped out like a sword and swept across No. 325's chest. The Dragon Armor over his chest split in two, and blood sprayed through the air.

Yet No. 325's face was still and deep as water as he gripped the wildly struggling snake in a death hold.

The snake struggled with unprecedented force. Though it was only a small snake about two feet long, it was like a massive crocodile in his hand. No. 325's face twisted fiercely, the veins on his forehead bulging as he clearly exerted every ounce of strength.

Still, the snake repeatedly used its tail as a sword, tearing his Dragon Armor to tatters and slicing apart his flesh bit by bit.

For the first time in his life, Lin Xiaosu saw such a fierce and brutal battle between life and death, and his heart tightened in waves.

As time passed, the white snake finally went limp and drooped down.

It looked as though No. 325 was about to successfully obtain the Mutant White Snake.

But then, a completely new script unfolded...

Two people suddenly rushed out from a cave behind No. 325, dressed like hunters...

The instant they moved, their speed was unbelievably fast...

Cold light flashed in their hands. No. 325's eyes abruptly widened as a sharp knife pierced precisely into his chest. If Dragon Armor had still protected him, that thrust might not have penetrated, but his Dragon Armor had already been torn apart by the white snake.

Had No. 325 not fought the white snake in a battle of life and death, he could theoretically have avoided that fatal strike. But that unprecedented battle had already left him exhausted.

On Prison Mountain, he had reached the end of his life in the most unimaginable manner.

He was already dead.

The spoils he had obtained with all his strength became someone else's spoils. The two killers quickly cleaned up the battlefield and covered the bloodstains. Soon, the grass returned to how it had been before. This was the fundamental reason they had not immediately seen with the naked eye that a bloody battle had occurred here.

Lin Xiaosu moved his foot and brushed aside the turf on the ground.

Changye's gaze sharpened, and she was greatly startled.

Number 88 also saw the bloodstains on the ground.

He bent down, and a silver needle extended from his glove toward the blood. Light flickered across his glasses as the database performed a comparison. Although there was no signal here anymore, these glasses had another function: storage. They stored No. 325's genetic information, and after comparing the data, they quickly reached a conclusion. "It's him!"

"He was injured. How was he injured?" Changye's face darkened.

With a swish, a half-real, half-illusory figure rose up from below. It was Xin Yue.

She had climbed two mountaintops in a short time and looked into the distance as far as she could, yet still failed to find the target she sought. She could only catch up with the main group.

The moment she joined them, her heart sank. "Damn! You brat, you—"

Her voice cut off abruptly because she saw Changye's dark expression.

Xin Yue lowered her voice. "Sister Changye, what happened?"

Changye did not answer her. Her gaze shifted to Lin Xiaosu. "A Qianlong member being injured is no small matter. We need to hurry..."

Lin Xiaosu walked toward the cave.

Changye's figure flickered, and she arrived at his side, on high alert.

Just as she had said, a Qianlong member being injured was no small matter.

Under normal circumstances, a fully equipped Qianlong member could not possibly be injured. Once they were injured, it meant a massive crisis had appeared.

Lin Xiaosu had locked onto this cave. There might be danger inside.

She feared destroying the faint traces ahead and did not dare walk in front of Lin Xiaosu, but she also had to ensure that if danger arose, she could rescue him immediately.

The cave was dark and gloomy, seemingly never visited by anyone. Yet if one observed carefully, traces of human activity could still be found.

Light came from ahead. The four passed through the tunnel-like cave, and before them stood a cliff.

Below the cliff was a pool of water.

"Do the traces end here?" Changye let out a soft breath. She had held her breath the entire way until now.

Lin Xiaosu nodded lightly. "He went down from here. Let's take a look!"

He pointed to a stone. Its edge had broken off recently, showing that someone had descended from there.

"Down!" Number 88 tapped the ground with his toes. His clothing spread open like a glider, and he leaped down from dozens of meters in the air.

Xin Yue spun, changing in a thousand ways through the air as she descended more than ten meters out of thin air. She landed on a tree, swung from a branch with one hand, then sprang up and stood steadily atop it.

Changye reached out and grabbed Lin Xiaosu's belt. "I'll take you down!"

Lin Xiaosu felt wind stir by his ears as Changye's clothes billowed open as well.

Her clothing differed from Number 88's. Number 88 wore a standard skintight suit, a Qianlong uniform.

Her clothing, meanwhile, was more like ordinary autumn clothes, the kind commonly seen in the Outside World. Yet when she spread her arms, those autumn clothes became like a glider as well. The clothes she wore were clearly Dragon Armor too, except they had returned to simplicity, transforming Dragon Armor into everyday clothing.

Lin Xiaosu had always been somewhat puzzled about what rank she held within Qianlong.

Number 88 arranged the operations while she cooperated. It seemed that her rank was lower than Number 88's, which was normal. There were tens of thousands of official Qianlong members, and being ranked Number 88 was already an extremely high position.

Yet whenever Number 88 spoke to her, his tone was especially gentle. Changye rarely spoke, but once she did, Number 88 obeyed directly.

From that perspective, Changye's status seemed to exceed even 88.

What exactly was her identity?

As Lin Xiaosu glided down through the air, a string of thoughts ran through his mind.