1:55 AM.
In the master bedroom on the second floor, the unique night tide of Haicheng drifted through the slightly open window gap, causing the curtains to ripple like waves. Shen Qingzhou was sunken deep into the snow-white bedding, his slightly damp black hair scattered messily against the pillow. Even in his dreams, his fair brows remained slightly furrowed. The indulgence of the previous night and the counter-soothing of his mental power during the day had left his mental domain in a state of deep sleep after extreme depletion.
On the nightstand, the manuscript that Zhou Jiande had publicly accused him of harboring—containing the core molecular formulas of the first-generation autonomous blocker—lay silently under the dim light of the night lamp.
At this moment, outside the white marble-carved railings of the master bedroom balcony, a wisp of stranger Omega pheromones—extremely thin and faint, yet pungently jarring in the quiet of the night—slid into the room like a viper, tracing the path of the sea breeze.
It was not the pure scent belonging to a high-tier Omega. It was an industrial fragrance mixed with large amounts of illegal mental catalysts, carrying a sticky, corrosive stench of rot.
Click…
A tiny, crisp sound of metal gears being forcibly dissolved by acid rang out abruptly in the deathly silent room.
The next second, Shen Qingzhou's long lashes fluttered violently, and those phoenix eyes, as clear as cold pools in the darkness, snapped open. As a top-tier professor who dealt with biochemical reagents year-round, his sensitivity to strange chemical components in the air was instinctive.
However, before he could sit up, the stranger pheromone, laden with potent nerve-paralyzing toxins, bore down on him. Shen Qingzhou felt a sharp, needle-like pain in his brain; his limbs went limp, and he fell weakly back against his pillow.
"Professor Shen, don't move. Once a high-tier Omega's mental domain is polluted by this agent, you won't be able to invoke even a single milliliter of blocker mental power within three hours."
A lean, black shadow slowly emerged from the shadows of the balcony. The intruder wore a baseball cap and a gas mask, gripping a syringe filled with glowing, eerie-green high-concentration genetic toxin. The eyes visible behind the mask flickered with a gambler's greed no less intense than Zhou Jiande's.
Zhou Jiande had merely been a discarded pawn pushed to the forefront. The real targets of the core patent for the first-generation autonomous blocker were the overseas multinational medical giants who had long attempted to monopolize the Omega market. The chaos on the eve of the wedding and the red carpet had provided these desperate outlaws with the perfect opportunity to infiltrate.
"The manuscript is on the table, and you… you're coming with me," the shadow chuckled hoarsely. He turned to pull the balcony door shut, cutting off the last of the sea breeze, and stepped toward the pale Shen Qingzhou on the bed with absolute malice.
Shen Qingzhou bit the tip of his tongue hard, using the sharp pain to force a sliver of clarity into his mind. The caramel-colored imprint Huo Xingran had left on the inside of his silk robe the night before seemed to sense the host's peril, beginning to burn frantically against his skin.
But his voice was too hoarse to shout; in this master bedroom, which had been specially soundproofed, he couldn't call for help.
The shadow reached the bedside. The eerie-green needle tip refracted a deadly light under the dim night lamp, aimed directly at the most vulnerable spot on the back of Shen Qingzhou's fair neck—his gland.
Meanwhile.
1:59 AM.
At the corner of the staircase on the west side of the second floor, a black "large nocturnal animal" was hunched over, moving stealthily along the wall toward the master bedroom.
Huo Xingran held a set of micro-lock-picking tools he'd acquired from who-knows-where. He wore a loose, sloppy robe, radiating an extremely excited and somewhat frantic scent of orange candy.
"My brother restricts me to three months—that's his business," Huo Xingran thought smugly, calculating his 'Midnight Capture Plan' from the hidden clauses. "Once it hits two o'clock, I'll just say there are mosquitoes on the first floor. The Professor can't just watch me get bitten to death. Once I get my pheromones in there, climb through the window, and roll into bed with the duvet, there's no way Lu Yu will come to check the room in the middle of the night, right?"
Thirty seconds remained until 2:00 AM sharp.
Huo Xingran had reached the main door of the master bedroom with practiced ease. He grinned, ready to insert his tools into the keyhole, when his high-tier Alpha senses captured a jarring anomaly.
The air, which should have been thick with the scent of fir trees after snow, was being stifled by a nauseating, sour, rotten smell. Most terrifyingly, the mental imprint he had linked to Shen Qingzhou's flesh and blood was screaming a shrill, bloody alarm in his brain!
"Qingzhou…!"
The string in his mind labeled "special permission application" snapped in an instant.
Huo Xingran didn't wait to pick the lock. Before his reason was consumed by the rage, his tall frame recoiled a step, and his right leg—packed with the terrifying, explosive physical power of a top-tier Alpha—slammed into the expensive solid wood door!
Bang—! Boom!
The entire door panel shattered into pieces under the violent force. The thunderous roar even knocked over the decorative vases in the hallway.
The shadow in the room flinched violently at the sudden boom, his syringe tip veering off by a centimeter, missing Shen Qingzhou's gland by a hair's breadth.
"Who?!" the shadow turned in terror.
But what greeted him was neither inquiry nor warning.
It was a golden-furred beast—a nightmare of a wolf who had been thoroughly provoked in the dead of night, his eyes red enough to bleed.
The moment the door shattered, the air in the master bedroom was ignited by magma-like orange pheromones. Huo Xingran didn't use any combat techniques; his body became a blurred golden-red shadow. From halfway across the room, before the shadow could even press the syringe, he launched a strike in mid-air—a palm blow capable of shattering bone, slamming it straight into the intruder's chest!
Crack!
The sound of shattering bone accompanied a shrill scream. The shadow flew like a broken kite, crashing hard into the white marble railing of the balcony and cracking the stone into a spiderweb of fissures before collapsing to the floor, vomiting black blood.
The eerie-green syringe tumbled onto the carpet, rolling toward the bedside.
"Professor! Qingzhou!"
Huo Xingran didn't even glance at the trash on the floor. He scrambled to the bedside, his crimson beast-eyes filled with madness and lingering fear. With trembling hands, he scooped up the limp, gasping Shen Qingzhou into his scorching embrace.
"I'm here… I'm here, I'm sorry, I'm late… I'm sorry…" The boy's voice was hoarse beyond recognition, filled with the sob of someone who had just barely cheated death. He fought with every ounce of his energy to drown out the stench in the air with his own sun-drenched orange pheromones.
Leaning in his arms, though his limbs were still unresponsive, the cold, clear phoenix eyes of Shen Qingzhou now flickered with a spark of piercing, breathtaking rational light.
He used the last of his strength to grip Huo Xingran's trembling wrist. He looked down at the poison-tipped syringe on the carpet, his voice weak but resolute:
"Student Huo… collect that toxin sample on the floor. The core reagent of an overseas pharmaceutical company… well, the data chain is complete now."