Zhu Yuan's silence wasn't born from anything complicated; she was simply struck dumb by the atmosphere her senior, Qingyi, was creating—that of an old relative gossiping about their kid's love life.
Looking at Qingyi's gossip-hungry face, Zhu Yuan had a sudden vision of her own mother.
The kind of mother who was incredibly strict during her school years, but the second she graduated from university, suddenly wanted Zhu Yuan married within a year and was expecting grandchildren the year after. It had gotten to the point where even a simple greeting to a colleague would launch her mother into a two-day gossip frenzy.
It truly left her feeling speechless and helpless.
But she was her mom, after all. When faced with family nagging, even the most decisive person can't mount a direct resistance.
To deal with this, Zhu Yuan had perfected a flawless 'Tai Chi' technique over the two years she'd been working. She could play along while seamlessly diverting her mother's attention elsewhere, thus neutralizing the 'find-a-boyfriend' offensive.
And, during one of Senior Qingyi's teasing sessions, Zhu Yuan discovered this method worked surprisingly well on her, too.
As they walked, she continuously parried Qingyi's banter, her eyes scanning their surroundings, desperately searching for some special clue to divert her senior's attention.
An open door to a security room finally gave Zhu Yuan the breakthrough she needed—a breakthrough to figure out what happened here, and a breakthrough to distract Qingyi.
The young woman's tactic was a complete success; Qingyi's attention was successfully diverted.
However, how could the meticulous Ann possibly overlook such a crucial source of intelligence that would inevitably threaten the Silver Squad?
Remotely, using the incredibly powerful detection systems of the Phaethon siblings, she successfully identified and deleted all footage containing images of the Silver Squad members and Andrew.
"I feel like... when I was setting the filter conditions for the recording... I forgot something?"
Driving back to Random Play, Wise sneezed loudly, then rubbed his nose and spoke with a hint of confusion.
"Hah, if you can't remember it, it must not be important."
At some point, from somewhere, Andrew had procured a torch and was holding it high. On top of his head, he'd used crushed paintballs to draw a large capital 'F'.
Hearing Wise's voice through his earpiece, Andrew replied nonchalantly.
Research records, surveillance, videos, logs, equipment, even memories—Andrew had wiped them all with his grand amnesia technique. He refused to believe there could be any loose ends left. Anything at all!!
Zhu Yuan and Qingyi stared silently at the monitor. It showed a large, double-door refrigerator cardboard box from which two long legs in white armor would suddenly pop out. Their eyes betrayed a deep-seated doubt in the very nature of reality.
What made them question their sanity the most was that this small citrus-fruit crate and this large refrigerator box were just... jauntily scurrying all over the place, and no one noticed?
Was that even plausible?!
For some reason, Zhu Yuan felt the stealth knowledge she'd diligently learned during her academy training quietly cracking, scattering, and turning into white ash.
"This cardboard box... is actually the person who did all this?"
Zhu Yuan asked, the words catching in her throat.
It was just that, along the way, they had seen researchers knocked unconscious and thugs decisively beaten half-paralyzed with brutal, flesh-on-flesh blows.
An image had formed in Zhu Yuan's mind: a tall, burly figure, a decisive and righteous hero.
But that entire image was utterly shattered by the large, double-door refrigerator box on the monitor. Not just shattered, but run over back and forth a few times for good measure.
At this point, reporting to the deputy chief that a large, double-door refrigerator box was responsible for all this was something she just couldn't bring herself to do.
Work is tough, Zhu Yuan sighed.
The sheer absurdity of reality was far greater than any novel she'd casually read in school.
Who on earth would think of using a cardboard box for camouflage?!
"Mmm... such a novel infiltration method. I've learned something new. It has been filed as Emergency Response Protocol Four Hundred Thirty-One, available for use in future stealth missions as needed."
Hearing Qingyi's dead-serious tone, Zhu Yuan could barely keep a straight face.
"Senior, this method... I don't think we really need to record it!"
"Eh, you can't say that. As they say, practice is the sole criterion for truth. This method has already passed a live combat test."
Qingyi wasn't swayed in the slightest. She wagged her finger and spoke earnestly, her voice filled with what sounded like... admiration?
"I've been wanting to try something like this for ages! I can't believe someone else had the same idea and even used it in a real operation! I, Qingyi, concede defeat. As such, I must relinquish the naming rights for this technique."
"Don't concede defeat over something so weird, Senior!"
Just then, a conscious person appeared on the monitor, immediately grabbing their attention.
Seeing as the surveillance footage was unlikely to yield much more of value, the two of them were not about to let this one conscious person go.
After all, this was the only conscious person they had seen on their entire sweep of the facility.
The pair followed the map, and it wasn't long before they came upon a corridor that looked like a parking lot torn apart by a tornado. This confirmed it: the chaos on both the upper and lower levels was the work of the same person.
And that proved one thing.
"So many enemies... did he really do all this alone?"
Aside from the blade marks on the wreckage of a 'Guardian Mk. II', a closer inspection revealed that all the other damage was the result of fists and feet.
This made Zhu Yuan instinctively put herself in the perpetrator's shoes, only to realize that she currently lacked the ability to achieve such a feat.
Maybe if she had unlimited pistol ammo, she could give it a try?
"Little Zhu Yuan, don't forget the small citrus-fruit crate. So it should be one person and one Bangboo."
Qingyi's words broke Zhu Yuan's train of thought, and she couldn't help but shake her head.
'What is wrong with me? Did all the shocks today scramble my brain? To think I'd subconsciously start wondering about something like that.'
The two didn't stop, and soon they arrived at the room from the surveillance feed.
A deformed iron door, looking as if it had been rammed clean off its hinges by a wild beast, was stuck in the middle of the room, almost splitting it in two.
They scanned the area and found that besides the pink-haired woman from the monitor, there was also a man in the room, his body blocked from view by the iron door.
It's just that his entire body was a bit... swollen. Inflated, even.
The most severe injury Zhu Yuan and Qingyi had seen since entering the research institute was right before their eyes.
They had never before seen someone swollen so... uniformly from their injuries.
Even though he was unconscious, the pain coursing through his body still made him twitch from time to time, as if the ordeal he'd just suffered had happened only moments ago.
His face was so disfigured that Zhu Yuan struggled to identify him. Just as she was about to give up, a voice suddenly spoke.
"He's the director of this research institute, Wesker."
The pink-haired woman, who had been silent and unresponsive until now, had suddenly spoken!
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