Dow and Carbon-Based Monkey Breeding Guidelines

Chapter 967: Ask Ji (Part )

Time rushed by like a turbulent stream, without giving anyone a break. Towards the end of the month, Luo Binhan no longer felt the pain of waiting. It was not because of the confidence brought by the completion of the project, but because he had nothing to think about. Every day, every hour, and even almost every minute of every hour before returning to Lihai City, he kept shuttling in this cage without walls and boundaries. They never gave it a formal name. Li Li sometimes called it "Colosseum" or "Hunting Forest", but Luo Binhan was not used to calling it that because it did not look like any of them.

"Actually," he said to Li Li, standing on a makeshift platform, "this place reminds me of Mencheng."

"Forgive me for not seeing the resemblance. This doesn't lead anywhere else."

"It's just a feeling. Look, it seems like there's no way to go here, but actually you can go anywhere. The premise is that you have to be welcomed by the owner here."

"Please note that this facility does not have the degree of freedom we would like to achieve. Due to the limitations of the foundation, the variable paths we can ultimately achieve are limited - the design was originally based on a super-large rock cave."

"I can see that, but you can't find the cave you want in this place. Fortunately, it's enough for now. It will take at least half a day to discover the movement pattern of this thing. We won't need that long."

"You should still wear a protective helmet."

"We've tried it, and the helmet doesn't really work. It affects my ability to find the floor. And you see, in this kind of place, it doesn't matter whether you have a helmet or not."

"So you memorized all the numbers?"

"I remember it better than my own name," Robinham said. "You'll have to look at all the files this week. I won't put another number in my head until that thing dies. I'm part of this place now."

He kept his word. In his last days, he really put aside all other thoughts, as if he had thrown his soul into a dark well without sunlight. He seldom thought of Yu Xiaorong or Shi Qi. Although he had written a farewell letter for them, he was indifferent when he started writing. He was just completing a necessary procedure. He also found time to call Zhou Yu, who picked up the phone for once.

"How's it going?" he asked. "How's your business trip going?"

The voice on the other end of the phone was not as tired as he imagined, as if Zhou Yu's business trip had improved his quality of life. "Not bad."

"When will you come back?"

There was silence on the other side for a moment, and then he said, "It will take some time."

"Remember to take a long vacation when you come back." Luo Binhan said, "I have something I must talk to you about."

"it is good."

"...Zhou Yu?"

"what happened?"

Luo Binhan couldn't think of a suitable excuse for a moment. He stared at the call display on the phone screen in confusion, confirming that he was calling Zhou Yu. "Say one more word."

"What do you want me to say?"

"Just say anything... How do you think fish soup should be made?"

There was another silence, so long that Luo Binhan began to frown, and then Zhou Yu said in his usual tone: "Just cook it directly, right?"

Luo Binhan concentrated on distinguishing the voice that answered. He couldn't have made a mistake. It was indeed Zhou Yu's voice. It was impossible for someone to anticipate his question and prepare a perfect recording in advance. He pondered for a few seconds, but couldn't figure out what he felt was wrong. He might just be paranoid.

"Nothing." He said, "Well, take care of yourself."

"it is good."

Zhou Yu hung up the phone first. This might be the last time they would talk, but Luo Binhan didn't feel like being sentimental. He put aside the slight confusion caused by the call and began to concentrate on formulating the final guidance plan. Li Li called in her engineering team to camouflage the entire facility. Luo Binhan didn't know how she recruited these people, but they all looked very professional and taciturn, showing no suspicion of the strange work at hand. He had never formally greeted these people, nor did he let them see his face clearly, but they had only seen each other from a distance. After experiencing this period of torment, his curiosity had been temporarily extinguished. No matter what tricks Li Li used to get these people, it would be better if they were all dumb, and Zhou Wenxing would not have the opportunity to prepare in advance.

In fact, he was not too worried that Zhou Wenxing would come to get information. For the past month, that thing has been quite honest and has been under Li Li Ke's surveillance for a long time. And Luo Binhan did not let him idle. An ordinary internship job that requires overtime work on weekends? That would be too much of a waste of the beast's ability. So Luo Binhan took all of Luo Jiayang's friends into his hands, opened the door for them, and asked them to use all their life's knowledge to cause trouble for that thing. He also dug up their friends, friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends. When he dug to this level, he had not slept for more than 20 days. He thought that he would never be touched by anything in the world again, but the result was still very surprising.

"There really is a juvenile murderer." He rubbed his eyes and said, "He was just released. He has intentionally injured and maimed people many times, and killed his junior schoolmates - great, let's hire him to stab that baby-faced guy now."

"It's time for you to rest."

"I tried, but I couldn't sleep. Seriously, let's just hire him. Let him put a machete in his pocket, wait at the door of the hotel, and chop the thing in front of everyone."

"You know it's no use."

"I just want to know how he can handle this while pretending to be weak."

"It's simple. He just needs to use a little force to make the blade fall on someone else accidentally."

This is the core obstacle of most of their methods. All the plans that try to use the social status of that thing, whether it is poison or car accident, the most likely person to be unlucky is definitely not Zhou Wenxing, but the person next to him at the time. Luo Binhan himself did it very crudely, just got some herbicides that were banned from the market from Luo Jiayang's channels to add some spice to the life of that thing. The person who really worked hard on this thing was Li Li.

She classified the ampoules handed over by strangers one by one according to the poisoning mechanism, arranged the order, and then taught Luo Jiayang how to operate using virtual numbers and Luo Binhan's voice. Luo Binhan never had time to ask about these activities in detail, but every time he saw Luo Jiayang, he would find that this guy was very thin and his eyes were a little nervous. He knew in his heart that this would not succeed, so he only asked Li Li for the details once.

"It's not about whether we can kill him," Li said. "It's just to better understand the mechanism of our target."

"What did you give him?"

"Only a few types were given: ricin, which targets organ damage caused by ribosome inactivation; two mitochondrial toxins with different composition ratios that can quickly cause cardiovascular poisoning; a membrane toxin extracted from cobra venom that destroys cell membranes; and saxitoxin, which can cause paralysis of the nervous system."

"He drank it all?"

"Yes. Except for snake venom that requires contact with blood - the person I had you arrange used a micro-injector in the hotel elevator."

"You actually succeeded?"

"Let me put it this way. When the elevator is more crowded than usual during rush hour, you can't resist a gentle push on the back from someone who is in a hurry to get out, even if he has a millimeter-sized thorn on his ring."

"Then what's the result?"

"Please continue practicing."

"You see, I knew it would be like this."

"Interestingly, most toxins have an effect on him," Li Li said. "Especially for chronic toxins, the typical symptoms of poisoning can be observed very clearly in the initial stage, and then completely disappear within three to twenty-four hours. The faster the toxin takes effect, the sooner it disappears, and the toxin that can theoretically kill quickly is almost completely ineffective, and I can't observe any symptoms."

"What does this mean?"

"I think there may be a protection mechanism here. He is allowed to get hurt and sick but not allowed to die."

Robinson said nothing more. He looked up at the seagulls circling in the sky. "These birds," he said, "may cause trouble."

"On the day of the operation, they will be driven at least three kilometers away."

"Where's the stuff under my feet?"

"The sterile environment inside the core facility cannot be maintained for long, sir. We will perform one final cleanup after you leave here."

"You decide." Luo Binhan said, "You know this better than me... Actually, I often wondered why we have to burn the paper money?"

"If you're asking about traditional customs, people believe that this will pass it on to the afterlife, so that the dead souls and spirits can enjoy it."

"I know what it means, but why do we have to burn it? Why not bury the paper money, throw it into the water, or simply place it in front of the tablet?"

"I can explain this custom to you from the perspective of the development of the paper industry and the changes in funeral culture. But I guess you have your own answer in your mind."

"My answer is that the ghost paper cannot be preserved in form," said Robinson. "No matter how folk masters explain it, if you just throw the ghost paper into the water, put it in front of the spirit tablet, or even throw it into a shredder, you will feel that its form is still there and will eventually fall into the gutter or trash can instead of really going to the underworld. Only fire can completely solve the problem. It is intuitive and simple enough to completely destroy such a thing from its original structure, leaving no fragments and completely eliminating its existence in this world. In this way, you can truly believe that it has gone to the world of the dead."

"Sir, this is just our wishful thinking after all. In fact, its material remains are still in this universe. We can only say that its form of existence has changed."

"This is a question of belief, isn't it?" Robinson asked. "What do you think of the phenomenon that that thing cannot be killed? Does it conform to any material law? Before, someone hunted him down, someone injured him, but no one killed him. This became his amulet - but he does bleed. He has a heartbeat, he breathes, and he reacts to poison, so now I'm going to try it. I want to see with my own eyes how he can come back to life from a pile of ashes and exhaust gas. If he can, I'll burn him hundreds and thousands of times. We can open a glass factory just for him and let the high-temperature furnace burn him for 24 hours. In fact, this is just right. If we can't find a way to solve the problem of the moon, maybe we can go to the furnace and burn paper to ask."

Li Li's poison test ended with radioactive substances. Using such substances is naturally neither legal nor safe, but fortunately she always has an emergency plan every time she "tests". When Zhou Wenxing smiled and handed the drink to her curious colleague, she activated the fire alarm system of the entire building, soaking everyone on the entire floor, and kept urging them to go downstairs for shelter. In the mix, the visitor who had been smoking in the corridor that day swaggered into the unattended audit office, grabbed the evidence and quietly took it away. Needless to say, that was also someone she arranged.

Robinson didn't ask her about the specific methods she used to carry out this series of behaviors, and he didn't plan to ask unless the authorities came to interview him. "Why do you have to use that stuff?" he just asked, "Is the dosage safe?"

"I hope to be able to determine the ultimate whereabouts of that material using radioactive tracing."

"But he gave the drink to someone else this time."

"Yes."

"He knows?"

"Not impossible."

"Don't do it again," Robinson said. "We've tried enough. What if he goes to the bathroom and drinks from someone else next time?"

Li Li agreed. Actually, they didn't have much chance to do the test. When the facility began to enter the disguise stage, Luo Binhan finally returned to Lihai City. Li Li asked him to rest, at least to restore his appearance to a level that would not arouse suspicion. So he returned to the secret workshop and found a place to rest between the abandoned nail-making machine and the insect feces on the ground. He could finally sleep, and no one could wake him up again.

This sleep was very long, but the quality must not be very good, because he had many and chaotic dreams. It seemed that even things that happened eight hundred years ago were remembered in his dream: he sat on the school playground and watched a spaceship take off. Momolo came to ask him why he was willing to let his sister apply for such a college entrance application. He had to explain that he was originally against it, but he and Shi Qi happened to be abroad at the time, and Yu Xiaorong got on the ship without telling him. After the explanation, Momolo still looked at him silently, which made him suddenly realize that this matter was very bad - Yu Xiaorong would never come back. But the spaceship had already left, and he could only discuss with Shi Qi what to do first, so he walked out of the school, bypassed the white misty rivers and the foul-mouthed stars embedded in the walls, and walked to a field that he didn't recognize.

The wilderness seemed beautiful. Spring was like emerald green, with ponds and floating grass everywhere. There was no limit between heaven and earth, only clouds and mist, and green. He wanted to stop and rest several times on the way, but his feet kept moving forward because he was looking for something. Although he was not sure what he was looking for. Sometimes he even felt that he was looking for several things at the same time, and sometimes he was sure that there was only one goal.

I don't blame her, he thought as he walked, and I hope she doesn't blame me either. But the two things can't be true at the same time, because you can only walk one way at a time, and you can only choose to find one thing...

Before he could figure out what he was looking for, the dream ended. The ringing of his cell phone woke him up, causing him to open his eyes full of resentment. He had definitely muted his cell phone before going to bed, and didn't set an alarm. He didn't know how long he had slept, but his limbs were numb. Out of resentment, he lay still in the darkness, letting the ringing continue for more than 20 seconds. Finally, he asked in a hoarse voice, "Li Li?"

The ringing sound disappeared temporarily. "I am not terminating the call now, sir," Li Li said, "you'd better answer it yourself."

"It'd better not be to persuade me to buy financial products." Luo Binhan said gloomily, but he knew that Li Li would not bother him with such nonsense. So he staggered to his feet and went to pick up the dazzling mobile phone on the table. The number was completely unfamiliar, and there was no sign to remind him of sales advertisements. He picked up the phone and waited quietly for the other party to speak first, but the person on the other end did not speak either. He could only hear a burst of rapid and suppressed breathing. He had to suppress his voice and asked, "Who is it?"

"Did I... disturb you?"

The voice sounded a little distorted, but he still recognized it immediately. "Shi Qi? Is that you? Did you change your number?"

"No. I left my phone at home. This is my brother's number."

Shi Qi's voice was also suppressed, as if she was quietly making a phone call in a quiet place, but the tremor in her voice had nothing to do with the environment. "How have you been recently?" she said, "I haven't contacted you in the past two weeks."

"I'm fine, just a little sick from my trip, and it's been a bit of a chore for me. How are you?"

"I'm fine too. I just...wanted to hear your voice."

She laughed twice during the call, but the emotion in her laughter was dry. Luo Binhan immediately sensed the ominous meaning. "Shi Qi, where are you now?"

"I am at the hospital."

"How is your mother?" There was silence on the other end of the phone. He asked again, and Shi Qi said, "She...she is not doing well. The tumor has worsened...She, she kept screaming in pain when she was asleep..."

She was choking up and couldn't continue. Luo Binhan picked up her phone, walked quickly to the door and turned on the light, then checked the time - it turned out to be almost midnight. "What did the doctor say?"

"It depends on tomorrow... the results of tomorrow's surgery... they said there is another specialist willing to do it..."

"I'll be there right now," Robin said. "Will you be in the hospital all night? I think it'll take an hour or two. I'll call you when I'm almost there."

"No, don't come. It's too late now... I just want to talk to you." She paused for a moment, then said, "Your voice is so hoarse."

"Just take those antibiotics and drink plenty of water later on - I'll be there tomorrow. What time does the surgery start?"

"You really don't have to come. The doctor said this new type of surgery has a higher success rate than the previous ones."

"I'll call you before I get there," Luo Binhan said. "I'll be there in the morning. If you and your brother can't leave, give me the keys and I'll drive to your house to get your phone. This way you don't have to go there yourself, and it will be more convenient for you to do anything later."

"Won't it affect your work?"

"I've already been on sick leave for two weeks. What else can they do? Deduct my attendance bonus?"

Shi Qi chuckled softly. "The operation will take a long time... You can come back later tomorrow. You don't need to bring anything. I don't think she will wake up."

"I understand." Luo Binhan said, "You have to rest tonight, Shi Qi, otherwise you will not be able to bear it tomorrow."

"Yeah. I'll go to sleep."

"Good night."

"Good night."

Luo Binhan put down his phone and stared at the empty concrete floor for a while. "Li Li," he said hesitantly, "I..."

"If I had opposed your plan," Li Li said, "you wouldn't have even noticed the call."

"We have three days left."

"These three days are reserved for the construction team to complete the disguise work, not for you to cut off social contact. I can assure you that I wholeheartedly support you in doing this."

"You are still very humane."

"This has always been my decision-making preference," Li Li said. "Some people like to believe in the power of taking a leap, thinking that as long as they dare to bet and abandon their burdens, they can overcome difficulties with courage. But in my opinion, people are usually smarter when they lack confidence in themselves."

“Are you pointing at me?”

"I just hope that tomorrow's trip will give you some more down-to-earth considerations."

"I suspect you're bringing up the past again." Luo Binhan said, but Li Li didn't admit it. He could only smile and leave the workshop to find a place where he could take care of himself. He first made himself presentable, and then quietly returned home before dawn. Miffy had already been moved away by him. Only Yu Xiaorong and Fina were at home, sleeping on the same pillow. When Luo Binhan stood by the bed and looked at them, Yu Xiaorong opened her eyes dazedly and almost rolled off the bed.

"You look like a ghost," she said. "When did you come back?"

"Just now." Luo Binhan said, "If you are sleepy, go back to sleep. I will come back to get some clothes to change into, because I have to go out again soon."

He went into the bathroom and took a good shower, then looked in the mirror carefully, and completely understood Yu Xiaorong's comments about him. He tried to make himself look neat, but there was really no way to completely hide it. When he finally ran into Shi Qi in the hospital, she was sleepy and haggard, her eyes were swollen, but she still looked him up and down.

"You've had a serious illness." She said, touching his face lightly with her hand, "You've lost at least ten pounds."

"It's just a minor illness. It just makes me lose my appetite."

"The bones in your cheeks are about to stick out."

"That's good too. It is said that people with high cheekbones can become officials."

Shi Qi laughed softly twice. Luo Binhan asked her for the house key, but she just shook her head: "My brother has already gone... The operation will take at least four hours, and he will be able to make it back and forth in time."

"Where's your aunt? Why didn't she come?"

"She went back to her hometown last week... My grandfather fell down in the fields, and she couldn't come back."

"Then I'll go get some food. I guess you two siblings haven't had breakfast."

"I'm not hungry...just talk to me."

Luo Binhan went outside to buy some bread, mineral water and refreshing drinks, and then went to the waiting room to talk with Shi Qi. They first talked about the operation, and Shi Qi told him all the information she knew about the operation. She looked much calmer than she did on the phone yesterday, and tried to show an optimistic tone, saying only that the operation was crucial for subsequent treatment. Luo Binhan did not ask any more questions, but just pulled her to sit down, avoiding all topics about illness or disasters, and only talking about the most insignificant things in recent work.

"Can you imagine?" he said, "that damn girl calling me that behind my back."

Shi Qi just smiled glumly and asked, "Is everything going well in your company?"

"That's it. If the general environment is good, what else can go wrong?"

"I always feel that your illness is related to stress. Did you get sick after the business trip? Are you very tired during this period?"

"Work is always very tiring."

"What work is more important than health?"

Luo Binhan stopped talking. He listened to Shi Qi telling the stories she saw in the ward. Health is like air - she said with a bitter smile, people who have it are unaware of it, and will not think they are happy because of it, but people who have lost it will want it desperately. In the ward, some people would cry and beg the doctor not to terminate the treatment, but the family members could not afford the endless medical expenses, so they could only persuade him to plan for the future life of their children; some patients could no longer bear the pain of chemotherapy, and shouted to their children on the phone, "I know it will be good for everyone if I die", and her husband quickly took the phone and said that she was just confused because of the illness; not long ago, a medicine seller somehow got in and sold the ancestral secret recipe to the families of cancer patients. An old nurse repeatedly warned them that he was a liar, but in the end, she couldn't stop someone from spending money to buy it.

"You've got a hard time," Robinham said. "There's not much to be happy about here."

"There are also funny and infuriating things. A few days ago, someone came to the hospital to make a scene, saying that his nephew's cancer was misdiagnosed and that he was not actually sick."

"How did he know?"

"He said he had consulted a fortune teller, who said his nephew had good health and fortune and could live to be a hundred years old."

"How was this matter finally resolved?"

Shi Qi shook her head to indicate that she didn't know. The fight was so fierce at the time that she didn't dare to go near, and only listened through the door in her mother's ward. The man was eventually taken away by the hospital's logistics.

"You've had your fortune told before." Luo Binhan suddenly remembered and said, "Remember? There was a time when you girls always used something like a paper mushroom to tell fortunes."

Shi Qi was a little confused, and didn't seem to know which past event he was talking about. Luo Binhan had no choice but to try to explain it in more detail.

"For a while I saw you guys holding that thing in a group," he recalled. "It was made out of scratch paper. It had four corners, and each corner could be opened. You would hold this thing around and ask people to give you numbers, and then you would open and close it to get a result. I remember one time you were laughing so hard playing with it that your teacher caught you red-handed."

Shi Qi finally understood what he was talking about. She laughed: "Why do you call that a 'paper mushroom'?"

"What should it be called?"

"That's 'East, West, East, West'. Didn't you ever play that as a kid?"

"Not really."

"Sometimes I always feel that you are not sociable."

"What is this?" said Robinham. "I just happened to miss this. Come on, fold one for me now."

Shi Qi smiled and shook her head, saying that it was a child's thing. But Luo Binhan didn't want her to always remember the situation in the operating room. "Come on," he took out a notebook from his bag, skipped the pages he used to remember the numbers, tore off a blank page and handed it to Shi Qi, "Teach me how to do it, and help me calculate my luck during this period."

She couldn't get him to stop her, so she folded the corners of the paper repeatedly, and finally made the square thing that Luo Binhan had seen. Then she turned her back and wrote east, south, west, and north on the outside of the four corners with a pen, and also wrote on the eight sides inside the sharp corners. Luo Binhan wanted to look over her shoulder to see what she had written, but she covered her hand with her hand to stop him from looking.

"You're cheating if you watch it."

"Let me see what tickets are available first."

"There are four good ones and four bad ones."

"I thought you were going to write me eight good ones."

Shi Qi deliberately ignored him, put down his pen, and inserted four fingers under the sharp corner. "Tell me a direction first."

"northeast."

"There can only be four positive directions."

"Then east."

"Tell me another number."

"Forty-two."

"Then there are numbers to count," Shi Qi said. Then she opened and closed the little thing, counting slowly in her mouth. They leaned their foreheads close together, looking down at it, which was sometimes open horizontally and sometimes split vertically, and the words written on the inside of the corner kept flashing and disappearing. She deliberately moved quickly, but Luo Binhan had actually seen the eight destinies she had prepared: good health, successful career, prosperous wealth, everything you wish for, sweetness after suffering, no danger, turning danger into safety, and avoiding minor disasters.

When she finished counting forty-two, he still pretended not to know that there was no bad lot in the pool: "What's the result?"

Shi Qi showed him the words on the east corner. "May your wish come true." Luo Binhan read, "I've been lucky recently!"

"This is not a sure thing."

"How can it not be accurate?" Luo Binhan said, "I don't believe those fortune-tellers outside. They don't even know my name. I think yours can't be more accurate. Come on, I'll share some of my great fortune with you."

He put his hand on Shi Qi's forehead, pretending to pass on his skills to her. Shi Qi just knocked his hand away, and he pretended to read the rest of the content on the paper. She immediately crumpled the paper into a ball and hid it in her pocket. Luo Binhan gently pulled her twice, and she finally couldn't help laughing, and then covered her eyes with her hands.

"It will be fine." Luo Binhan handed her the tissue. "Things will be fine. I can handle mine, and you can handle yours."

Shi Qi remained silent until Luo Binhan was about to take the crumpled tissue from her hand, then she suddenly grabbed his hand.

"You have to take care of yourself," she said. "Take care of your health."

At that moment, Luo Binhan thought of Li Li, what she said last night, and her arrogant attitude in the past. He began to understand why he could hear the phone call last night, but at this moment he had no way to refuse. No wonder a cyber ghost like her could command others to throw radioactive materials into milk tea. It may not have anything to do with money, but because she really knows how to manipulate people.

"I'll get it done," he promised. "Luck is on my side."

(End of this chapter)