Chapter 25

Chapter 25

The hellhound, true to its name, had two large heads resting above its shoulders, lying on its paws. Its body stretched three meters long, with a tail over half a meter.

At the sound of the door opening, one head immediately perked up, alert, while the other continued to rest silently on the ground.

Wu Yin stepped into the cell, and the alert head's ears pressed back in anger, barking furiously at him as if its territory was invaded, showing strong demeanor but weak barks. Its once glossy fur in photos now patchy and dry, its body covered in short hair that had been shaven and regrown.

The continuous barking annoyed the other head, which was trying to sleep; it grumpily opened one eyelid and grumbled, seemingly scolding the other head, which obediently quieted down after a couple of whimpers.

The silent head turned towards the door in a very human-like manner, amber eyes casually sweeping over Wu Yin, Xie Linyuan, and Kama's faces, before closing again to continue sleeping listlessly.

"Black Knight," Wu Yin entered the cell with a bottle of mineral water, "the princess sent me."

Despite the two keywords thrown out, the black golden retriever on the ground gave no response. The dog-like head bared its teeth in a barely intimidating manner, while the human-like head didn’t even twitch an ear.

"Why isn’t he reacting?" Wu Yin asked Xie Linyuan, "They told me just mentioning 'princess' would make the Black Knight unconsciously wag its tail rapidly, super cute... though I don’t see how this bear-sized dog could be cute."

Xie Linyuan smirked sarcastically, "What do you think the Core Station did to make it cooperate with the experiments, committing all sorts of atrocities?"

Wu Yin didn’t answer, and Xie Linyuan didn’t expect one, urging, "Stop beating around the bush and connect."

"I was trying to connect just now, but it ignored me."

"..." Xie Linyuan wished he could twist his head off, "Didn’t you say the person who hired you to steal the dog taught you a gesture for identification, and upon seeing it, the Black Knight would cooperate with you? You forgot it initially, and it took you almost half a year to finally remember."

His last remark, purely meant to mock Wu Yin’s stupidity, unexpectedly became prophetic. After saying it, he saw Wu Yin once again furrowing his brows in deep thought, with more than a minute passing without any sign of recollection.

Xie Linyuan was almost too exasperated to react, just deeply powerless, "You forgot again?"

"The gesture is really complicated," Wu Yin defended himself.

Xie Linyuan angrily retorted, "Then remember it quickly! Without the gesture, not even a dog would follow you. Actually, no, not even a dog would."

Wu Yin: "..."

Three minutes later, Wu Yin was still strenuously pondering, as the little beauty curiously caressed his chin with a lotus leaf, only to be swatted away in annoyance. Jie Linyuan concluded that this man would not recall.

He slowly stepped back, glanced outside the door, where Karma was lingering by HI004. Upon arrival, they had forced Karma to lock the door from the inside using admin privileges; breaking through would take some time. The commotion from their side seemed to have stirred some unrest among the other experimental subjects in the prison, either shouting or banging on the walls.

Jie Linyuan licked the corner of his lips, then returned to Wu Yin's side, leaning over to whisper in his ear.

Despite the urgent and critical situation, observing this unreliable man with black hair pondering leisurely, as if nothing in the world could make him anxious, was oddly calming.

He emanated a reassuring and affectionate aura, which Jie Linyuan had felt when he was parasitizing inside Palmer, irresistibly drawing people closer.

Perhaps this was why the mutated contaminants favored him.

Jie Linyuan did not know the source of this aura, nor if it would have any adverse effects on his body, but he could not deny his fondness for it, so much so that he preferred not to ponder further. Gradually, Jie Linyuan's restlessness and anxiety faded, even finding the mood to ask in a leisurely tone, quite inappropriate for their situation, "Wu Yin, did you just happen upon Karma and her brother, or had you calculated this encounter?"

Interrupted in his thoughts, Wu Yin glanced up at him, "The last time I came to the prison to find you, I felt that she was unusually intolerant of the provocations from creature number four." Remembering only the number four due to its length, "It was strange, so I figured there must be some special relationship between the two, and her claim that number four is her brother, I believe to be true."

Having said that, Wu Yin paused, lowering his gaze to continue recalling. After three seconds without a follow-up, Jie Linyuan couldn't help but ask, "So they are siblings, what then?"

HI004 is Karma's brother, and Karma's willingness to cooperate unconditionally for her brother implied there was more to infer about the nature of their relationship.

"What do you mean, 'what then'? If it's true, then a sister will surely protect her brother. We just need to threaten her with her brother's safety to get the password," Wu Yin said matter-of-factly, "Isn’t it natural for siblings to care for each other?"

Jie Linyuan couldn't grasp the logic behind Wu Yin's reasoning, "Of course there are exceptions."

"Impossible," Wu Yin countered, "Look at Yang Mo, so weak yet daring to kill for his sister; Karma, fierce and ferocious, but completely changes her demeanor in front of her brother, and then there’s..."

"What else to see... what else?"

His words vanished just as they reached his lips, like a fish slipping through fingers in the depths of a pond, disappearing without a trace. This unsettling sensation made Wu Yin involuntarily close his eyes.

Jie Lin Yuan was puzzled by Wu Yin's sudden halt in speech. Standing with his hands in his pockets, he prodded further, "From what you're saying, do you have siblings with whom you're very close?"

"Maybe," Wu Yin replied, his mood not particularly bright.

"What do you mean by maybe?"

"I don't remember," Wu Yin admitted without intending to hide anything. "I was forcibly extracted from my own body, and when I woke up, I had lost some of my memories."

Extraction? Amnesia? Bombarded with such a wealth of information so unexpectedly, Jie Lin Yuan found it even harder to grasp the identity and background of the man before him, like trying to discern a flower through the fog. He almost wished he could create a separate drive in his brain, solely for storing and analyzing information related to Wu Yin.

After a moment's thought, he even managed a joke: "You must have some, maybe even 59 siblings, making up a complete set of heavenly stems and earthly branches."

"Quite possible," Wu Yin agreed with his guess.

Suddenly, Jie Lin Yuan felt a pang of how unpredictable life is. He had lived strenuously these years, always on thin ice, never relaxing the tense string in his heart for a moment, plotting and disguising tirelessly for freedom, using every trick in the book. He hadn't slept a full night's sleep in years, always jolted awake by nightmares, covered in cold sweat.

Yet now, forced to reveal his malicious intentions and coerced by Wu Yin, wandering aimlessly in the prison like a headless fly, with the police about to surround them, an unreliable teammate forgetting their rendezvous signal, and unimaginable torture awaiting if their escape failed – or no freedom even if it succeeded, becoming a living assistant, and that of the more intimate kind, for an idiot.

But Jie Lin Yuan felt an unprecedented sense of relaxation and peace.

Was it the calming effect of Wu Yin's aura, or had he reached a point of resignation, his brain too tired to struggle?

Facing a bleak future either way, Jie Lin Yuan decided to be a wise ghost: "Wu Yin, how did you get your superpowers? What abilities do you have? Why do the mutants favor you? And why does being near you make me—"

"Shut up, I too want to know the answers to these questions."

Wuyin, unable to recall the gesture, paced back and forth. Seeing the Black Knight still listless, he suddenly stepped forward: "Black Knight, I've forgotten the gesture the princess taught me, but she told me she had three babies for you, names yet undecided. She wants me to bring you back to name your children."

Playing the emotional card? Unlikely to work. Xielin Yuan watched gleefully, expecting Wuyin to be rebuffed.

"If you don't believe me or refuse to follow me, that's fine. It's inconvenient to escape with such a big dog anyway. Just think of the three kids' names and tell me now. I'll relay them to the princess. That way, I'd have completed half the task and should get half the fee."

Xielin Yuan: "..."

This man really shouldn't have a mouth.

As Wuyin finished speaking, a snicker suddenly echoed in the cell, not from any person present, but from one of the dog's heads.

Yes, the dog actually snickered.

The Black Knight, who had been ignoring him, finally lifted an eyelid, his amber pupils reflecting Yang Mo's face. He sighed, then let out a low growl. Seeing Wuyin's puzzled look, he sneered again and closed his eyes to sleep.

The message was clear: You don't understand my language, so even if I name the kids, how will you convey it to the princess?

Wuyin: "..."

Wuyin, frustrated, pulled open the Black Knight's eyelids and snapped, "So you can't understand when I speak nicely, huh?"

"What do you mean you understand human speech but I can't understand dog speech?"

"Stop the nonsense, just name your three kids already. The second one is a female, the other two are males."

"Whether they resemble you or their mothers, how should I know? They all look like moldy, pink tumors, utterly hideous."

"Ugly, just like an ugly dog."

Without Wu Yin uttering a word, each intelligence in the Black Knight's brain grew more terrifying – the humanoid brain with a menacing gaze, the dog-like one barking angrily.

……

So, there they were, a man and a dog with three mouths, bickering heedlessly in the prison. Ever since Wu Yin had openly confessed his true identity to Jie Lin Yuan, he had become increasingly unguarded, his eccentric nature fully revealed.

And the Black Knight, likely due to being overdosed on some bizarre medication, had dulled the smarter part of his brain, taking several back and forth arguments to finally realize something was amiss.

It suddenly sprang to its feet, both heads and all four canine eyes staring in disbelief at the man before it.

A person capable of communicating with mutated animals far exceeds the rarity and importance of a hundred Black Knights; the shelter would not specifically seek out such an individual just to continue deceiving this abandoned mutant dog.

That leaves only one possibility...

The Black Knight wagged its tail, submissively lowered its head, and nuzzled Wu Yin's palm.

Seeing his goal achieved, Wu Yin withdrew his hand with amusement, "So you agree to follow me now, no longer suspecting I'm a dog trafficker?"

Having said that, he turned his head back to glance at Xie Linyuan smugly, as if to say: See, even without gestures, isn't the dog obediently following me?

Xie Linyuan leaned against the cell wall, clapping twice in amazement.

The Black Knight shook its head and tail back and forth, its skinny frame clearly outlining its bones. It quickly walked to the cell door, then turned back only to see the two people coming to fetch it exchanging looks, unsure of what they were up to.

It wasn't accustomed to Wu Yin's way of doing things, barking eagerly several times, wondering why they weren't hurrying to escape since it was a jailbreak, yet here they were, dawdling.

In contrast, Xie Linyuan seemed more sensible, directly asking: "The shelter has been alerted, the ugly dog has been retrieved, now it's time to leave. So, esteemed Mr. Wu Yin, I've already heard the sound of about twenty armed guards storming through the doors on the third sub-level, not to mention the numerous sniper rifles and cannons surrounding us outside. What's your plan for getting us out?"

He was ready to see Wu Yin blinking his clear, foolish eyes, innocently saying he didn't know, as this man always acted unpredictably, without any plan, whimsically exploiting his special abilities.

But unexpectedly, faced with his not-so-well-intentioned question, Wu Yin stuffed the mutated lotus into his pocket, pulled a gun from behind, cocked it efficiently, and then with a confident smile, said, "What's the hurry to leave? Your highest command hasn't arrived yet. A little delay won't hurt."

Xie Linyuan was never one to let temper get in the way of important matters. He suddenly dropped his mocking smile, asking seriously, "What do you mean?"

Wu Yin's smile deepened, "Being new here, I don't know where your highest command is hidden, nor what it looks like. So, I have to wait for someone who knows everything to take the initiative to retrieve it and personally deliver it to me."

After finishing, he even intentionally retorted, "Don't you think that's the reason?"

“……”

Seeing Jie Linyuan silent, Wu Yin tilted his head towards the door, gun in hand, leading the way. "Follow me, and let's make even more noise. If one of us isn't enough to get the leader to show up, adding me, someone who can control mutants, surely will. I insist on having the leader come down personally for negotiations."

Jie Linyuan's eyes followed his departing figure, and inexplicably, his heart skipped a beat.

This mysterious man always acted beyond his expectations. You'd think he knew everything, could see through anything, but in reality, there was much he didn't understand. Yet, when you underestimate him, his sharpness and observational skills far exceed your imagination.

It seemed like this man was always a step ahead of Jie Lin Yuan's comprehension.

Like watching Wu Yin coolly holding a handgun and stepping out, yet all five bullets just outlined the human figure, aiming to asphyxiate the enemies by depriving them of air rather than killing them.

Jie Lin Yuan: "..."

He had realized that aside from winning arguments with dogs, this guy was good for nothing else.