Chapter 5 Surprise Passage

Stepping back into the Processing Center, the familiar stench gave Jiang Zhe the absurd illusion of coming home.

Before he could even change into his overalls, Old Sun emerged from the supervisor's office.

"Oh, Xiao Jiang, you're here."

Jiang Zhe’s heart sank. What was bound to come had finally arrived.

"Supervisor Sun." Jiang Zhe lowered his head, feigning the look of someone who still hadn't recovered from last night's scare.

"How are you holding up? Sleep well last night? No nightmares, I hope?" Old Sun walked over, his rough, calloused hand patting Jiang Zhe’s shoulder with practiced affection.

Jiang Zhe averted his gaze, acting too timid to meet the older man's eyes. "F-fine... It's just that every time I close my eyes, I see that thing..."

"It's alright, it's over now. Surviving a disaster means good fortune is on the way," Old Sun consoled, before suddenly shifting the topic.

"By the way, Xiao Jiang, there's something I need to mention."

"This morning, the center's technicians ran a routine check on the equipment and found that the energy readings for Incinerator No. 3 from last night were a bit... off." As he spoke, Old Sun stared intently at Jiang Zhe's face, refusing to miss a single micro-expression.

"Energy readings? What do you mean?" Jiang Zhe looked up blankly, his face the very picture of a youth's innocent bewilderment.

"Xiao Jiang, the energy converted by the incinerator didn't even reach half of the projected output! Where did all that missing energy go?"

"Think back carefully. Last night, when you were processing that King Bug, did you notice anything... special?"

Not good, Jiang Zhe thought to himself. He hadn't expected to slip up here. To think this old fox would actually go and check the incinerator's data logs! At this moment, even a fraction of a second's hesitation could get him killed.

"S-Supervisor Sun, I... I don't know!"

"The King Bug's bodily fluids were too corrosive; it burned a huge hole right through the chest of my hazmat suit! I was terrified!"

"After I shoved it into the incinerator, my mind went completely blank. I just... I just mashed the incineration button blindly..."

"I think the flames did seem a lot bigger than usual..."

"Supervisor Sun, I swear I didn't mean to! I was just so scared! Please, you can't dock my pay! I... I still need to save up for a Gene Inducer!"

Jiang Zhe's voice grew quieter as he voluntarily "confessed" to the "mistake" he had made out of sheer panic.

Old Sun stared at Jiang Zhe’s face for a solid dozen seconds. Finally, the sharp, scrutinizing glint in the older man’s eyes slowly gave way to a trace of disappointment and disdain.

He had initially suspected the kid had stumbled into some dumb luck and secretly pocketed something valuable. But now, it seemed he was just a terrified idiot who had completely forgotten basic common sense—that emergency pressurized incineration drastically tanked the energy conversion rate.

"Sigh! So that's how it is! I should have known!" Old Sun sighed, patting Jiang Zhe on the shoulder again, though this time with much less force.

"Alright, alright, never mind then! You've got nine lives, kid, but you're too gutless to ever amount to anything!"

"Tell you what, go to Cold Storage No. 2 today and clean up the new batch of small Xeno corpses that just arrived. Barely anyone goes over there. You can get some peace and quiet, calm your nerves."

Old Sun waved him off impatiently, turned around, and headed back into his office.

The moment the office door clicked shut, the fear and lingering dread vanished instantly from Jiang Zhe's downcast eyes.

Old Sun... probably still hadn't given up.

Cold Storage No. 2? Barely anyone around? Peace and quiet? More likely, the man just wanted another opportunity to observe him from the shadows.

...

Cold Storage No. 2 was dedicated to piling up low-value, low-tier Xenos.

Corpses of various shapes and sizes hung from iron hooks on ceiling rails, packed so densely they resembled livestock in a slaughterhouse.

There were "Blade Mantises," insectoid creatures with bone-scythe forelimbs.

There were "Bursting Bugs," their bodies covered in pustules capable of spraying corrosive acid.

To an ordinary person, this place was a nightmare.

To the current Jiang Zhe, it was a lavish, all-you-can-eat buffet!

But he knew very well that a pair of eyes was definitely watching him from the shadows right now. The gnawing hunger originating from deep within his genes constantly disrupted his focus. The corpses of the Blade Mantises, in particular, emitted an incredibly seductive aroma.

Hold back, Jiang Zhe silently chanted to himself. It wasn't time yet. The price of exposure was one he couldn't afford to pay.

He expertly donned his hazmat suit and respirator, grabbed a specialized disposal cart, and began his work.

His first task was to dissect the corpses and sort their tissues by material grade.

Taking a specialized scalpel, Jiang Zhe sliced open the thoracic cavity of a Blade Mantis. Bypassing the rotting internal organs, he cleanly separated the hard chitinous shell from the relatively intact muscle tissue.

Wherever the blade passed, fascia severed flawlessly; there wasn't a single wasted movement.

It was while he was processing the fourth corpse—a "Spitting Worm" with a ruptured abdomen—that he followed standard procedure to check its venom sac for residue.

As his fingers peeled back the blackened, necrotic tissue of the worm's belly, he brushed against something unusually hard.

He paused for a fraction of a second, then seamlessly continued his movements, using forceps to pull back the surrounding gore.

A translucent, emerald-green crystal, no larger than a grain of rice, lay quietly nestled within the flesh.

A Venom Core!

This was the crystallized essence of a Spitting Worm's toxins, a highly sought-after material for crafting biochemical pharmaceuticals and weaponry.

On the black market, a tiny piece like this was worth at least five thousand Credits! More than enough to buy a base-tier Gene Optimization Fluid!

According to Federation regulations, all valuable biological materials were supposed to be extracted by specialized logistics teams long before the carcasses were ever shipped to the Processing Center.

This thing absolutely should not be here!

Clack... Clack... Clack...

Right at that moment, the sound of heavy footsteps suddenly echoed from outside the cold storage doors.

Jiang Zhe's heart skipped a beat!

With no time to think, he instantly used the forceps to shove the Venom Core back into its original position, burying it under the surrounding rot to restore the corpse to its previous state.

Then, he straightened up, grabbed his tools, and reverted to the exhausted posture of a drone numbed by endless manual labor.

Creaaak—

The door to Cold Storage No. 2 was pushed open a crack.

Old Sun peeked in through the gap, casually sweeping his gaze across the room. Seeing Jiang Zhe staring blankly at a pile of foul-smelling, putrid worm flesh, the supervisor nodded in satisfaction.

"Work faster. Finish up so you can clock out early," Old Sun tossed out before shutting the door. His footsteps gradually faded away down the hall.

Only then did Jiang Zhe's tightly wound body slowly relax.

Old Sun's ambush visit just now helped him figure something out. Yesterday's King Bug was indeed a side-hustle Old Sun was running under the table.

This Venom Core today was also something that shouldn't be here! It had been smuggled in, hidden inside the corpse of a low-tier Xeno.

This proved there was a complete, systematic pipeline at work. Someone in the military was using the Processing Center's channels to run a massive smuggling operation! And Old Sun was very likely the inside man, or at least one of them!

Should he just take the core? No.

If Old Sun was the inside man, then even if he didn't know exactly what was in every batch of "goods," he definitely had a rough inventory. If a crystal core went missing, Jiang Zhe would be the prime suspect.

The people backing this smuggling ring couldn't possibly be fools for it to have run successfully for this long. To draw the attention of these wolves for a mere five thousand Credits—and risk exposing the secret of his Devouring Evolution—would be sheer idiocy.

He couldn't take this core.

But even if he couldn't take it, he could still make it yield a value far exceeding five thousand Credits.