A group of people were enjoying the commentary on the post when, suddenly, the status update was deleted. Clicking on Fu Xin’s profile showed that the account had already been deactivated.

Qian Can laughed out loud: “The school administration really are trolls—they scrubbed that clean so fast, they didn’t even let people finish eating the popcorn.”

Qin Le: “Exquisite egoism is like this—caring nothing for others’ survival, only for their own protection.”

Under pressure from Li Xiao, the school administration had sided with him, but their handling of the situation was identical to their previous behavior: purely to save their own skin, not because they truly intended to address the root of the incident.

Song Jin shifted his gaze away, feeling annoyed. He sat down casually at the bar counter and fished out a small cookie Li Xiao had just baked. “Have you seen Wei Wen these past two days?”

Jiang Hao: “No, I just made an appointment to train with him tonight.”

Song Jin gnawed on the cookie stick, pondering. It had been several days since they returned from the expedition. Xiang Hong was dead; logically, a replacement “Ferryman” should have been dispatched by now, yet there had been no movement.

After Qian Can and the others headed to the training hall, Song Jin signaled 07 to hack into the medical center’s management system to check the intake records for the psychiatric ward over the last few days. There was no significant upward trend in patient numbers—a stark contrast to the situation at the Fifth Legion.

With 824 modified humans, each requiring medication every two months, they had to process over a dozen people a day on average. As the Dean of Students, if Xiang Hong were administering drugs within the military academy, such a high frequency would be hard to hide.

Thinking of this, Song Jin stood up and left.

Li Xiao had just sent a message to Wei Feng when he turned to see Song Jin walking out the door without looking back.

His terminal vibrated; Wei Feng had replied.

【Immigration and emigration at the Sub-vult constellation are very strict recently; my people can’t easily slip through.】

Li Xiao: 【Don’t you have channels?】

Wei Feng: 【They require conditions to be met for exchange. Nothing is free.】

Li Xiao: 【What do they want in exchange?】

Wei Feng: 【They set the conditions.】

Li Xiao thought for a moment and replied: 【What are the conditions for investigating all medical space stations?】

After waiting a few minutes, Wei Feng replied.

【They refused.】

This response was within Li Xiao’s expectations. There weren’t many people capable of investigating every medical space station, and agreeing to do so would be equivalent to exposing one’s identity directly.

Wei Feng: 【My people suspect they’ve found a blood transport chain in the Suyang constellation. I won’t take any other commissions for the next half month.】

Li Xiao: 【Where?】

Wei Feng: 【There’s blood trading at the S1326 underground casino. The rest is unclear; I’m still on the road.】

S1326 was very close to the S1301 mecha competition site.

Li Xiao: 【Don’t rush to leave after you finish the job. We’ll meet up then.】

After sending the message, seeing that Song Jin hadn’t returned, Li Xiao took a shower in his bedroom, jumped over to the next balcony, and went to check if the “kitten” who had walked out without a word was throwing a tantrum.

Song Jin had hurried back to his bedroom, pulled out Xiang Hong’s terminal, and sat at his desk: “07, read it.”

07: “Acknowledged!”

The blue crystal on the decorative buckle of the terminal bracelet enveloped Xiang Hong’s device, and a virtual screen popped up.

【Decrypting—】

Within a few breaths, the basic operating interface appeared on the screen.

07: “The positioning system has been blocked.”

Song Jin first checked Xiang Hong’s communication logs and message history. The content was vast and chaotic. He had 07 perform a preliminary screening before he began reading through them one by one. Even the smartest AI couldn’t filter out obscure code, such as using “What are you eating tonight?” as a routine undercover signal.

Xiang Hong’s recent communication logs were mostly with second-year students and faculty groups, as well as several officers from the Fifth Legion responsible for the internship program. Song Jin read through them and didn’t see anything obviously abnormal. However, the message history was much more extensive, with over five hundred different group chats.

Song Jin checked the groups rapidly and then opened the chat logs between Xiang Hong and various individuals.

“Have the ones he deleted been recovered?”

07: “Currently, I’ve only recovered the last three months of records.”

Given the medication cycle for the modified humans, three months was enough. Song Jin clicked on a contact labeled “Nameless.”

Xiang Hong: 【Target is questionable, needs further observation.】

Nameless: 【Find out the background of this person as soon as possible.】

The timestamp for these two records was right after Yan Qing’s car accident.

Xiang Hong: 【Channel blocked, stock is critical.】

Nameless: 【I’ve already arranged for a shipment.】

These two records were from two days before the Fifth Legion’s expedition.

Song Jin opened the personal information for this “Nameless” user. It showed an age of 160 and residence in the Sub-vult constellation. Although the average lifespan of an Alpha was around 150, without special means, most people at 160 would be too old to move. Either the information was falsified, or the terminal wasn’t being used by the owner. Most people’s terminals were deactivated upon death, but one could buy ownerless terminals in the black market for a very low price.

There was a faint movement on the balcony. Song Jin instinctively tilted his head slightly, relaxed upon hearing a footstep, and continued flipping through the logs.

Li Xiao pushed open the sliding glass door. Seeing Song Jin sitting at the desk, focused on a pile of large and small floating screens, he felt a flicker of disappointment. He’s not throwing a tantrum? What a pity.

Noticing the pile of teacher-related groups, Li Xiao walked over to Song Jin’s side, bent over, braced his hands on the desk, and looked at the screen closest to Song Jin.

“Xiang Hong’s?”

“Yeah. Can the terminal information for Danse be falsified—”

Suddenly catching a pleasant scent, Song Jin paused and looked up at Li Xiao. Li Xiao had just showered; his hair tips were still dripping, and he was wearing a loose loungewear set he had worn a couple of days ago. A beauty fresh out of the bath, wearing his clothes and taking the initiative to come over—who could handle that?

Song Jin pulled Li Xiao over and sniffed hard at his neck. Even though he couldn’t smell any pheromones, he felt like he was about to get drunk: “Wearing my clothes on purpose to seduce me?”

Li Xiao didn’t move, letting him rub against him: “Isn’t this my clothing?”

Song Jin: “Once I’ve worn it, it’s mine.”

Li Xiao looked down at him: “Are you part cat? Turning everything you mark into your own possession.”

Song Jin’s slender fingers slid into the back collar of Li Xiao’s shirt, his fingertips grazing Li Xiao’s gland: “Sooner or later, I’ll mark you too.”

Li Xiao paused slightly: “…”

This little action must be unconscious. The naive, passionate kitten was deadly.

Li Xiao calmly took hold of Song Jin’s hand and brought it to his lips to kiss: “The effect of an Alpha marking another Alpha only lasts a day at most.”

Song Jin: “I’ll just mark you once a day, then.”

Li Xiao looked at him: “Who was it that said ‘forget it, just bite me to death’ last time?”

Song Jin replied with a smug expression, having forgotten the pain once the wound had healed: “Since I fell for an Alpha, what’s a little pain like that?”

Li Xiao stroked his head: “As long as you aren’t afraid of pain, I can rest easy.”

Song Jin squinted slightly: “…What does that mean?”

Li Xiao looked at the screen: “What were you saying about personal information being fake?”

Changing the subject again. Song Jin didn’t dwell on it, turning his focus back to the business at hand: “Is it possible for the binding information of a Danse terminal to be falsified?”

Li Xiao looked at the “Nameless” interface. “Unless it’s modified by internal personnel, but that would leave traces, which is very troublesome. This kind of terminal can basically be determined to have been bought on the black market.”

After finishing, Li Xiao asked 07: “Can you lock onto the location where this terminal sent its messages?”

07: “Searching system data—found it!”

A line of address information appeared in a pop-up window; after decoding, the corresponding location was the Military Headquarters on Imperial Capital Star.

07: “I can only be precise to this step; I can’t determine which room in which building it was sent from.”

The past few days had been too quiet, making Song Jin doubt whether Xiang Hong was really G2. However, based on the location of this “Nameless” contact, coupled with the dialogue between Xiang Hong and Jin Lin, Xiang Hong was not entirely innocent.

Song Jin propped his chin up: “Xiang Hong’s daily life is normal. Looking at the messages, he almost never meets students in private, and he hasn’t had too much contact with modified humans. How was he administering the drugs to them?”

When they started suspecting Xiang Hong, they had intensified surveillance, but the results showed he was just a mundane office worker. That sky-bar had been involved in blood transport, and Xiang Hong had been there, but the modified students hadn’t. Their previous primary suspect had been the Time Second-hand Bookstore on Wanhua Street; Xiang Hong had been there too, but the frequency was low, and no information had been found about him meeting modified humans outside the school.

Song Jin looked at Li Xiao: “Could the Ferryman G2 be an organization? A general term for all Ferrymen in this area? Is the death of one Xiang Hong irrelevant?”

Li Xiao pondered for a moment and shook his head. “Wait two more days. If there’s no movement anywhere, it’s very likely there is more than one Ferryman.”

After the school administration released the disciplinary announcement, a wave of students on the intranet was paying attention to the progress of the student status cancellations, fearing the school would say one thing publicly and do another privately. As a result, within a day, all thirty people were truly canceled. Because they were still in the hospital with serious injuries, the decision was made to postpone their deportation by five days.

Some students saw Lieutenant Colonel Jin and Major General Fu go to the military academy to find the Principal in person. No one knew the content of the conversation, but after that, Jin Hai and Fu Xin’s status was not restored.

For a time, the intranet was more festive than the New Year.

After the bullying incident passed, everyone shifted their attention to the upcoming Mecha Selection Tournament. Usually, such competitions were only participated in by second- and third-year students. If the academic credits offered weren’t high, the students wouldn’t have much enthusiasm, and the big shots with real strength wouldn’t even participate.

But this selection tournament was different: after qualifying, they would go to the Suyang constellation to participate in a multi-school mecha league. The most important thing was that His Majesty the King would be attending in person!

On the day this was announced, all the military academy students were agitated. Only those who looked down on the Royal Family—the clique-based big families and their loyal lackeys—felt otherwise. Most ordinary students still hoped to be seen by the Royal Family, perhaps hoping to soar and change their fate.

Even some chaotic skincare and wellness posts were constantly pushed to the top of the feed. Omega students were frantically reading beauty guides in their spare time, wishing they could get a face transplant on the spot to make Li Ji fall head over heels for them.

A post titled #Textbook-style guide on how to attract His Majesty’s gaze, proven effective# had the highest traffic on the intranet communication area. The author had posted close-up photos of Song Jin from every angle, doing a 360-degree comprehensive analysis from facial contours to expression details to overall temperament.

Conclusion: Li Xiao is His Majesty’s brother, so the person he likes must also be liked by His Majesty. You can’t go wrong if you get surgery to look like Song Jin. Brothers, charge!

Countless people in the comment section seriously asked the author about various details. In the end, a nonsense prank post was actually sorted into the technical guide area. Because of the special nature of the competition, the Student Council checked the statistics after the registration deadline; the number of registrations was thirty times higher than usual for similar competitions, with Omegas accounting for 20%—a very high proportion.

Due to the large number of participants, plus about 40% of first-year and non-mecha-major students, the Student Council, after consulting with the school, decided to adjust the format of the first round of the preliminaries to simulated combat. This was both to speed up the competition and reduce unnecessary mecha wear and tear.

At noon on Monday, after Li Xiao’s class finished their morning practical training session, Zhao De stood in front of the team and looked at everyone: “Just received a notice: first-year students participating in the selection tournament can go to the intranet to draw for the time and order of the preliminaries.”

Everyone opened their terminals, found the corresponding portal, and clicked the draw button. The match times and numbers popped up quickly.

After Qian Can finished drawing, he looked at Qin Le’s and Jiang Hao’s, then leaned over to look at Li Xiao’s and Song Jin’s, cursing under his breath.

“Four matches for five people. What kind of luck is this?”

The preliminaries were spread over two days. Qin Le and Jiang Hao drew the second match, which would be at 7:00 PM. The two brothers-in-arms looked at each other and high-fived to encourage each other.

Qin Le: “The sooner the struggle, the sooner the relief.”

Jiang Hao: “Yeah.”

Qian Can: “…You guys are so depressed. Maybe you’ll get lucky and win?”

As they walked out of the venue, Jiang Hao’s terminal vibrated; it was Wei Wen.

Wei Wen: 【I’m in the second match, what about you?】

Jiang Hao: 【Me too.】

Wei Wen: 【Hahahahaha, what a coincidence. Do you want to eat lunch together and discuss some tactics for tonight?】

Jiang Hao looked at these “hahahahaha”s. Wei Wen’s sorrowful face flashed before his eyes, and he felt it was a bit strange. After thinking about it, he agreed, said goodbye to Li Xiao, and left first.

Qian Can shook his head: “The little son he just raised has already been hooked by someone else. This ‘old father’ is so sad.”

Qin Le: “Who is the ‘eldest son’?”

Qian Can instinctively looked at Song Jin and was startled by the look he got in return. “Lele, you got me in trouble!”

On the way to Restaurant 39, everyone was talking about the selection tournament. Li Xiao and the others found a quiet seat as usual. Just as they ordered, Li Xiao heard a noisy sound from not far away and glanced over casually. That direction was the passageway to the restroom. Two Alphas walked out, looking somewhat panicked.

Alpha on the left with gray hair: “Scared me to death! Why would someone scream in such a sacred place as a restroom? Too trashy.”

Alpha on the right with black hair: “They made me hold my pee back.”

Gray-haired Alpha: “He was hammering the wall and shouting ‘Why isn’t it here yet?!’ He must be crazy from too much stress, right?”

Black-haired Alpha: “Maybe he’s constipated.”

Just as Li Xiao was about to retract his gaze, he saw another Alpha walk out of the restroom with a dark face. He shoved the two people in front of him aside impolitely as he passed. “Get out of the way!”

The two Alphas were stunned for a moment, and they began hurling insults at the Alpha who had walked past. The three of them quickly fell into an argument, were dissuaded by passing students, and left feeling unhappy.

Li Xiao stared at the angry Alpha and narrowed his eyes slightly. That’s a modified human.

Restroom?

Li Xiao exchanged a look with Song Jin and stood up to head in that direction. There were ten stalls in the men’s restroom, and each one was completely enclosed, but the soundproofing of the materials used was mediocre.

Li Xiao scanned the space nonchalantly, and 09’s voice rang in his ear.

【No surveillance equipment.】

Li Xiao: 【Can you scan for hidden compartments?】

09: 【None.】

From the moment the three Alphas walked out to the moment he entered, no one else had entered or exited. Of the ten stalls, seven were occupied and three were empty. The door to the stall at the very back, against the wall, was swaying slightly.

Li Xiao walked toward that side at a measured pace. The stall was very small; one could see everything at a glance. Li Xiao scanned the walls, his gaze eventually landing on a position on the right wall, about 120 centimeters above the ground. There was a seam that was hard to notice if one wasn’t staring at it; it looked like a normal crack, but the edges had slight signs of wear.

Li Xiao pressed his palm against the wall and tapped it lightly with his index finger, confirming that the area behind this spot was hollow.

09: 【Anti-monitoring equipment must have been added here!】

Li Xiao: 【…Yeah, I’m not blaming you.】

09: 【I’ll help you pry it open!】

Li Xiao pulled his hand back, not letting 09 do it. There were too many people at this hour. It wouldn’t be too late to come back tonight when there was no one around.

When he reached the door, exactly another modified human came over. Li Xiao pretended to wash his hands, keeping an eye on the Alpha with his peripheral vision as he entered the stall he had just visited, signaling 09 to follow.

【I don’t want to watch other people use the bathroom at all.】

While complaining, 09 quickly transformed into a silk thread and drilled into the stall through the door crack. The next moment, a surveillance view appeared in Li Xiao’s field of vision. He walked out while observing the Alpha’s actions.

After locking the door, the Alpha pressed his terminal bracelet against a spot on the right wall. The crack silently opened into a square hole twenty centimeters wide, and a bamboo-tube-shaped metal device rose up from below. This was identical to the tool he had snatched from Jin Lin.

The Alpha, unable to wait, rolled up his sleeves and placed his arm over it. A palm-sized prompt window suddenly popped up above the device.

【Insufficient medication, please return at another time.】

“None again?!” The Alpha shouted, then realized he had lost his composure. He hurriedly straightened his sleeves, rescanned his terminal, and left only after the hole had closed.

In the restaurant, Li Xiao returned to his seat; the dishes had already been served. Qin Le and Qian Can were huddled together, discussing tactics for the evening. Song Jin ignored his main course, enjoying his ice cream by himself.

“Eat your food first.” Li Xiao snatched the ice cream away and put it aside.

Having finally discovered where the military academy’s blood supply was located, Song Jin was in a good mood and didn’t hold it against him, opening his mouth to bite the meat Li Xiao fed him.

The fact that the blood supply would be placed in a place as filthy as a restroom was shocking, yet entirely logical. Everyone had to use the restroom, so completing it there was the least likely thing to arouse suspicion. They had thought of the medical center, the political and educational office, and that old bookstore, but never the restroom.

After eating and returning to the dormitory, Li Xiao drew his finger across the air, and the internal wall structure recorded by 09 was displayed in the air in a holographic projection. Besides the outermost layer of veneer, the interior of the wall was military-grade metal with extremely high concealment.

The interior was hollowed out from top to bottom, with a horizontal pipe leading to a space twenty meters behind the restroom. There were two rows of slots on the conveyor belt, which appeared to be for placing blood and unknown solutions. The entire blood supply system could realize automatic delivery, requiring no Ferryman participation at all.

Song Jin raised his hand and lifted the entire image upward, circling a three-meter-square space at the bottom. “Incinerator. The used reagent tubes drop here and are destroyed directly. It’s safer than the operation Jin Lin used.”

Li Xiao nodded. “This way, you don’t need many Ferrymen.”

Song Jin: “Even if a Ferryman dies, as long as the blood supply is active, there’s no problem. No wonder it was so peaceful these past few days.”

Li Xiao: “But the blood supply is now insufficient.”

“The Ferryman is responsible for maintaining this system and the normal operation of the supply chain.” Song Jin sat on the side, chewing on a cookie stick. “When Yan Qing had his accident, Wanhua Street stopped completely. Maybe without Xiang Hong’s command, the external blood can’t enter the school, ensuring absolute safety.”

Li Xiao: “Lin Zhou said that blood needs to be exchanged for points, so the permission to open the hole in the restroom wall for the modified humans also needs to be activated by a Ferryman.”

Song Jin suddenly thought of something and laughed out loud.

“What is it?” Li Xiao looked over.

Song Jin: “Just think—if a modified human who can’t exchange for blood goes crazy and points at the toilet, saying that there is medicine there that can make people stronger, others will only think he’s crazy.”

Li Xiao sat down beside him: “Once this path is taken, there is no chance of turning back.”

A knock sounded at the door. Li Xiao turned off the holographic projection and had 09 lift the ban. Jiang Hao went in and closed the door behind him: “Big brother, there’s a situation with Wei Wen.”

Li Xiao: “Did Zheng Lin find him?”

Jiang Hao nodded: “Zheng Lin took Wei Wen to get a library card for the Time Second-hand Bookstore over the weekend. He looked very happy, saying it was a ‘pass’.”

“A ‘pass’?” Song Jin thought for a moment: “Blood access permissions?”

Integrating the permissions into a library card meant that even if the terminal was lost, no one would be able to trace anything. But the Ferryman was already dead; why would Zheng Lin suddenly give Wei Wen permissions?

Li Xiao asked Jiang Hao: “Did he say anything else?”

Jiang Hao: “I asked him what the pass was. He said it could make him stronger, but he still had to wait two more days.”

Song Jin said leisurely: “If the Time Second-hand Bookstore’s lending system and the blood supply system use the same program, then they really should be careful and cautious.”

Jiang Hao was puzzled: “Then how can we verify it?”

“It’s not hard to verify,” Li Xiao said casually. “Leave this matter to us; you go prepare for tonight’s competition first.”

Jiang Hao nodded and returned to his bedroom.

“Go check it out tonight?” Song Jin took another small cookie from the box. “The other side of the pipe should connect to a cold storage area. Maybe we can even find clues about the transport chain.”

Restaurant 39’s business hours were from 5:00 AM to 10:00 PM. Excluding the staff’s preparation time, 2:00 AM was the safest time to go.

“Go to sleep early after watching the competition tonight.”

Seeing Song Jin eating cookies one after another, Li Xiao asked casually, “Didn’t eat your fill at lunch?”

Song Jin replied nonchalantly: “Eating dinner and eating snacks use two different stomachs. You old geezers wouldn’t understand the joy of eating snacks after a meal.”

Li Xiao: “…”

Seeing Song Jin focused on the holographic projection of the structure, chewing on a cookie stick little by little, he looked a bit like a rabbit.

Li Xiao: “Jin.”

Song Jin didn’t look back: “Hm?”

A shadow suddenly loomed over him. Song Jin came to his senses and discovered that the other end of the cookie stick was being bitten by Li Xiao, staring blankly as he ate his way closer.

Their lips brushed lightly. Li Xiao retreated and his gaze settled on Song Jin’s lips: “Eating snacks after a meal is indeed very happy.”

Song Jin: “…”

Li Xiao’s eyes were too aggressive, making Song Jin’s throat dry. It seemed like the sensation of Li Xiao’s touch still lingered on his lips. Song Jin slowly finished the last small piece of the cookie: “Are the snacks you’re talking about me, or the cookie?”

Li Xiao: “Of course, the cookie.”

Song Jin: “…”