Chapter 119: Ye Jun

Ji Henghua’s hand instinctively rose but he stopped halfway.

He heard the sound of hurried paws running across the ground. His eyes immediately turned red.

Then... Bang! Bang!

The cat continued running. A final gunshot echoed.

Everything became silent.

Ji Henghua remained motionless behind the wall. Tears silently rolled down his face.

The guards, however, laughed.

"That cat was truly stupid. Why would it run inside? Maybe it was looking for death."

"Whatever. The boss is probably just playing around again."

Someone snorted. "The boss wouldn’t be stupid enough to take the form of a cat."

The others burst into laughter.

Ji Henghua slowly lowered his head.

He couldn’t bring himself to feel any joy over successfully entering the enemy’s territory.

The little cat had appeared whenever he was worried.

Even when he barely had enough food for himself, he had always broken his rations into tiny pieces to feed it.

And this time, it had appeared again. Only this time, it had saved him.

For the next three days, Ji Henghua remained hidden inside the institute.

He barely survived on the small amount of rations he had brought with him.

Most of his time was spent observing the guards and memorizing their routines.

He had specifically purchased a watch that made no sound.

Every night, he carefully checked the time.

Eventually, he discovered a pattern. At exactly 9:30 p.m., the guards changed shifts.

There was a five-minute gap between the outgoing guards leaving their positions and the next group fully settling into theirs.

It was the only weakness Ji Henghua had found.

The five-minute window wasn’t long, but it might be enough for him to slip past them and reach the laboratory they were desperately protecting.

However, there was another problem. The laboratory required a passkey.

He had only one more day to figure out how to obtain one.

As his rations continued running out, Ji Henghua’s anxiety grew.

His stomach had already begun aching from hunger, but his determination didn’t weaken.

He looked toward the heavily guarded corridor.

’Just one more day. Hold on a little longer.’

Maybe luck was finally on his side.

On the third day, one of the institute guards accidentally dropped a key card. Ji Henghua happened to witness it, but the guard didn’t notice and walked away without picking it up.

Ji Henghua waited until the 9:30 p.m. shift change before quietly retrieving it. He then waited another day.

When the clock finally struck 9:30 p.m., the guards began changing shifts, leaving their posts for the brief transition period.

Ji Henghua immediately moved. He rushed toward the laboratory and pressed the key card against the scanner.

Beep. The door unlocked. He slipped inside.

The moment he entered, however, he sensed someone else coming in behind him.

His eyes sharpened. He immediately pulled out the knife hidden in his sleeve. But when he turned around, he stopped.

It was the green-haired man he had seen before.

The green-haired man was equally surprised to see him. He quickly closed the door and gestured for Ji Henghua to follow him toward a hidden corner where the surveillance cameras couldn’t see them.

Ji Henghua silently observed the room.

The entire laboratory was filled with cages. Calling them cages was almost an understatement.

The room covered at least a thousand square feet, with rows upon rows of small metal cages stacked together. Inside some of them were children lying motionlessly.

Their faces were difficult to see. Ji Henghua’s heart tightened.

The green-haired man pulled him farther into the blind spot of the surveillance cameras before looking at him.

"I know you. You were the one who was eavesdropping on my conversation and followed me when I asked Lin Zuan to take me to the entrance."

A flicker of surprise crossed Ji Henghua’s eyes, but he quickly concealed it. He looked at the man warily.

"I don’t mean you any harm. My name is Ye Jun, and I’m here to find my brother, Ye Sha."

Ji Henghua didn’t lower his guard. The last time he had seen this man, one of his arms had been severed.

Now, that arm had completely regenerated. ’Is his ability regeneration? Or is this another trap prepared by the institute?’

He couldn’t trust him.

"There are too many cages here; if you check by yourself, it will take a lot of time. Let’s remember each other’s brothers’ names and find them. My brother’s name is Ye Sha. Tell me your brother’s name. I’ll try to find him."

Ye Jun looked at him. But Ji Henghua didn’t respond. He immediately began checking the cages.

Even if Ye Jun really was an institute trap, Ji Henghua couldn’t waste time. His brother came first.

Fortunately, every cage had a name attached to it. It was strange.

An institute conducting human experiments should have had no reason to openly display the real names of its subjects.

But Ji Henghua didn’t have time to dwell on it. He checked each name tag and then looked at the person inside.

The children were all unconscious, apparently kept sedated.

Ji Henghua could somehow sense that the names attached to the cages were genuine.

At least this wasn’t another obvious trap.

He quickly checked one cage after another.

Nothing.

He finished one row, but there were still twenty or thirty more.

At his current speed, he wouldn’t be able to search everything before the person in charge would notice that he had sneaked in.

Just as Ji Henghua was thinking about how to increase his speed, footsteps suddenly echoed outside. The laboratory door opened.

Ji Henghua’s entire body turned cold. He would have felt better if he had already found his brother.

But he hadn’t. And now he was about to be discovered.

’If I’m captured, who will rescue my brother?’

No one knew he was here. No one even knew where his brother was. A trace of ruthlessness flashed through his eyes.

’If things go wrong, I’ll blow this entire place up.’

He had brought more than just a smoke grenade. There was also a real grenade hidden inside his bag.

He had originally brought it for self-defence.