The night deepened. The crescent moon, like a hook, stretched the shadows of the ruins into long, eerie shapes.
Chen Shouzhou's group moved like nocturnal animals through the urban jungle, carefully navigating the rubble and ruins, trying to evade Lei Bao's men. They didn't dare take the main roads, sticking instead to remote, complex alleyways and dilapidated buildings.
"I think we're going in circles," Lin Mo said, stopping. By the faint moonlight, he gestured at a tattered map, his brow furrowed. He typed a line on his handheld electronic notepad and showed it to Chen Shouzhou: "Their familiarity with this area might be on par with ours. If I'm not mistaken, they may have already set up an encirclement at several key exits."
Chen Shouzhou leaned over to look at the map, then at the pitch-black surroundings. Instead of looking nervous, he grinned, revealing a set of white teeth. "An encirclement? Perfect. Saves me the trouble of hunting them down one by one. Let them have a taste of my special 'welcoming gift'."
As he spoke, he pulled several simple flashbangs from his backpack—made from empty cans, camera flashbulbs, and batteries—and distributed them to Su Wan'er and Lin Mo. He had tinkered with these in his spare time; they had no lethal force, but the instantaneous flash of bright light was enough to temporarily blind anyone.
"Listen for my command. When I say throw, you toss them where the crowd is thickest. Don't be stingy," he instructed. "Remember, we're using tactics, not brute force."
Su Wan'er and Lin Mo took the flashbangs and nodded solemnly.
They continued forward. Sure enough, at a chokepoint up ahead, they heard faint footsteps and hushed conversation. Several armed men were closing in from the shadows on both sides like ghosts.
The encirclement was complete.
"They're here," Chen Shouzhou whispered, signaling for Su Wan'er and Lin Mo to hide behind a broken wall.
He took a deep breath and then, unbelievably, sauntered out from behind the cover, humming an off-key tune like someone taking a leisurely after-dinner stroll.
"Hey, fellas! Can't sleep? Playing hide-and-seek out here in the middle of the night?" he called out to the shadows, deliberately revealing his position.
The ambushers from the Viper Gang were clearly not expecting such arrogance and were momentarily stunned. But they quickly recovered, emerging from their hiding spots with menacing grins, surrounding him.
"You've got guts, kid," one of the thugs said, pointing his steel pipe at him. "Hand over your stuff quietly, and maybe Bao-ge will give you a quick death."
"Stuff? What stuff?" Chen Shouzhou spread his hands with an innocent look. "I've got nothing on me but a heart full of patriotism and dedication."
As the enemies were drawn in by his trash talk, their attention focused on him, and they began to close in. A cunning glint flashed in Chen Shouzhou's eyes.
"Now! Throw!" he roared.
Su Wan'er and Lin Mo, already prepared, immediately pulled the pins on their flashbangs and threw them into the densest part of the crowd.
Chen Shouzhou pressed the switch in his own hand at the same time.
POP! POP! POP!
Three flashbangs detonated, the blinding white light exploding like three miniature suns, instantly engulfing the entire intersection.
"Aaargh! My eyes!"
"Shit! I can't see!"
The Viper Gang thugs screamed in agony, clutching their eyes, their formation collapsing into chaos.
"Go!"
Chen Shouzhou didn't linger. As he turned, Su Wan'er had already thrown a chili smoke bomb. Thick smoke rapidly filled the area, completely obscuring the enemy's vision. The trio seized the opportunity, quickly slipping through a gap in a broken wall and vanishing into the night.
By the time the thugs recovered from their blindness and coughing fits, Chen Shouzhou's group was long gone.
During their escape, they passed through an abandoned car graveyard. Xiao Qi, running at the front, suddenly stopped. It dashed towards a pile of car wreckage and pulled out a rusty metal insignia from underneath, presenting it to Chen Shouzhou as if it were a prize.
Chen Shouzhou took the insignia, wiped off the dirt, and saw a complex symbol he had never seen before, made of a gear and a snake.
"What's this?" he asked, puzzled.
Lin Mo took the insignia and, after just one glance, his face became extremely grave. He wrote on his notepad: "I've seen this symbol before… in the most classified files at Sky-Curtain Biotech. It belongs to a scientific organization older and more mysterious than Sky-Curtain. They were secretly involved in the early research and development of the 'Test Subject Project' even before the virus outbreak!"
Chen Shouzhou's heart sank.
"Looks like we're in deeper water than we thought," he said, pocketing the insignia. He felt as if he were being ensnared by an invisible, tightening net.
Just then, Lei Bao's furious roar echoed from the distance: "They can't have gone far! Find them! Nobody goes home to sleep until we catch them!"
Lei Bao was leading the pursuit himself. He was clearly a skilled tactician. He no longer dispersed his forces but used a walkie-talkie to command his men to form a pincer movement from several directions, using the terrain to their advantage and gradually shrinking the encirclement.
Soon, Chen Shouzhou's group was forced into a dead-end alley with high walls on three sides.
"It's over. There's no way out," Lin Mo's face was ashen.
With the pursuers closing in and no path of retreat, Chen Shouzhou's mind raced. He glanced at their surroundings, then at the corner of an instrument peeking out of Lin Mo's backpack. A crazy idea flashed in his mind.
"Old Lin! Can you still use that portable signal jammer?" he asked urgently.
"Yes, but it will only last for one minute and will drain all its backup power," Lin Mo replied, instantly understanding.
"That's enough!" Chen Shouzhou's eyes gleamed with a mad light. "Set it to maximum power, create the strongest possible electronic noise! Quick!"
Lin Mo didn't hesitate. He immediately pulled the jammer from his backpack and hit the activation button.
VMMMM—BZZZZT—!
An intensely powerful wave of subsonic and electronic noise, inaudible to human ears, instantly spread out from their position.
As expected, less than ten seconds later, frenzied, agitated howls echoed from the shadows of the nearby ruins.
A pack of zombie dogs, driven mad by the electronic noise, swarmed towards the source of the sound like a tide.
"Holy crap! Are you insane?!" Lin Mo was scared out of his wits by the sight.
"Don't worry! They're not after us!" Chen Shouzhou yelled. "They're after the source of the noise! And we… are about to leave!"
As he spoke, he pointed to a thick sewage pipe that stretched across the alley above their heads.
Just as the pack of zombie dogs was about to storm the alley, Lei Bao's team arrived from the other direction.
The two "groups" collided head-on in the narrow alley entrance.
The zombie dogs had lost all reason, attacking anything that moved, unable to distinguish friend from foe in the chaos. The Viper Gang thugs never expected to suddenly encounter so many zombie dogs and were instantly thrown into disarray, locked in a brutal fight with the pack.
"Go!"
Chen Shouzhou seized the golden opportunity. Using debris piled against the wall, he was the first to climb onto the sewage pipe. Su Wan'er and Lin Mo followed close behind.
Like tightrope walkers, they moved quickly along the pipe, leaving the chaotic battlefield far below.
Lei Bao watched the carnage in the alley, his men being torn apart by the zombie dogs, then looked up at Chen Shouzhou's group calmly retreating along the pipe. His eyes turned crimson with rage, and he slammed his fist hard against the wall.
"Retreat! Fall back!" he could only roar in unwilling defeat.
Ultimately, Chen Shouzhou's group returned to the safe house, all of them collapsing to the ground, exhausted and panting heavily.
Xiao Hei and Xiao Qi immediately crowded around, nuzzling them to express their concern and welcome.
The system's prompt arrived, fashionably late.
[Ding! Mission Complete: Successfully broke through the encirclement. Reward: 'Basic Trap Upgrade' permission unlocked, 'Basic Farmland (Module)' unlocked.]
"Damn it, next time I go to the black market, I'm buying an invisibility cloak first," Chen Shouzhou complained wearily from the floor.
Su Wan'er looked at him, picked up her notepad, and wrote a line: "We can't trust outsiders so easily anymore."
Chen Shouzhou fell silent for a moment. He looked at the companions who had been through life and death with him, his eyes becoming incredibly firm.