Although it is autumn, the summer heat has not subsided, but has become more and more intense.

Following Chocolate's instructions, Yang Qianye paid special attention to Shi Ran's every move between work.

Since David's dismissal, the position of deputy manager of the second marketing department has been vacant. Shi Ran took the lead alone, not only to deal with business but also to supervise and administer, which was quite stressful. But because of this, he works every day except for work, and he does not expose anything suspicious.

On this day, twenty minutes after the end of work, the office area was empty. Shi Ran processed the last document and turned off the computer to leave, just entered the corridor and pressed the elevator, Chiba walked out from the side.

"Manager." She greeted politely.

"Eh, you haven't left yet?" Shi Ran smiled and looked at his watch.

"I searched for some photos of similar products on the Internet, and just printed them out, thinking that you might be able to use them for tomorrow's meeting."

"You're saying that Bev's creative meeting tomorrow?"

"Beve" is a well-known milk merchant that will launch new products at the end of the year, ready to enter the market with the help of Huanyu's plan.

"Yes, I found a few pictures of competing Tetra Paks, as well as some public data, I hope it will be useful."

"That's good, Chiba, it's getting better...... No, it's easy. Thinking of her timid appearance when she first joined the company, Shi Ran couldn't help but boast, "Advertising is to fully grasp the information of opponents and customers, and know yourself and your opponent." Not bad, yes, it's already on the road. He gave her a thumbs up.

"The manager has won the prize." Chiba nodded slightly and looked at the elevator display. The number above has stopped at 28 for a long time, and it is estimated that someone is using the elevator.

Shi Ran also noticed it, and said angrily: "These hungry wolves have no quality at all. The hungry wolf in his mouth is talking about the third department of the market. This department is very strong from the manager to the staff, and there is no humility or sharing in their values, only unscrupulous means and success and failure, so they are crowned with the title of "hungry wolf".

"Why don't I go up and have a look?" Chiba asked, pointing to the emergency channel.

"Forget it, wait a minute, this one is coming up soon." Shi Ran pointed to another elevator and was traveling from bottom to top to the 23rd floor.

The first to arrive was the first elevator. Sure enough, the three female staff stood inside and laughed, and when they saw Shi Ran coming in, they immediately closed their mouths, nodded at him without smiling, and called Manager Shi.

Everyone stood in the car and didn't speak, Yang Qianye was in the first row, and Shi Ran was side by side with her.

She faintly heard a malicious laugh coming from behind, the laughter was very shallow and soft, blending in with the sound of the elevator running. You can guess that several girls are pointing at her. Female employees in the world generally take off their work clothes and put on beautiful clothes before leaving the company, but she does not have them and is still wearing work clothes. There is nothing wrong with looking at this dress alone, but it can be compared with fashionable casual clothes, which immediately shows old-fashioned and old-fashioned.

Naturally, they were laughing at her rustic appearance, and the most normal unfriendliness between women and women usually appeared in such moments.

Fortunately, she didn't think so, and she was used to similar treatment since she was a child.

Shi Ran, who was on the side, naturally knew the tricks between women, and swept her with his peripheral vision, feeling that she was very calm.

In his opinion, a girl like her may be more favored by her boss - low-key, down-to-earth, and if she is more capable, she will definitely have a great future in Huanyu. As a man, he also knows that with a boss like He Yina, no matter how beautiful other women are, they can't follow suit, so they have no interest in other styles in the company.

What he's really interested in is where he's going next.

Arriving on the first floor, Chiba said goodbye to him and walked out. He continued to the B2 floor, got in his car and drove away from the office building.

He drove a Gotland Green Audi A7 and walked west towards the old town on Yanshunjiang Road. About forty minutes later, we came to a remote neighborhood.

Park the car on the shoulder of the fork in the road, and drill down a one-person-wide alley to find an old-fashioned red brick house. The word "demolition" is painted on the wall, and the residents have moved out.

Going up the stairway, the wooden staircase at your feet crunched with age. He went straight to the top floor, looked left and right, and walked straight to the room at the end of the hallway.

The door was closed, and he took the key from his bosom, opened the door and got inside.

After a while, the door was open again, and he looked out and cautiously walked out.

His outfit — no, styling — had changed. When I first arrived, I wore suits and leather shoes, but now I have changed. With a coffee-colored jacket on the upper body and leather trousers on the bottom, what is even more exaggerated is that he is wearing a mid-length curly wig at the moment, and he doesn't care about the sultry weather in early autumn.

Locking the door, he left the place, still walking through the alleyway, but chose the opposite direction to where his car was parked.

The road in front of it is narrow at one end and wide at the other, and the wide end leads to the main road. The narrow end looks like a dead-end road - in fact, from the end to the right, you can still go around the red brick house and go back to the parking position. At the intersection there is an electric pile, plastered with mottled small advertisements, and the overhead wires are coiled in a circle, like a spider's web, and there is a danger of falling down at any time.

He looked at his watch, as if waiting.

After a while, the sound of a bell ringing in the distance was heard, and he straightened his clothes, swallowed his saliva, and moved his Adam's apple up and down.

Come over a garbage truck, the old-fashioned manpower kind. The cart puller wore a straw hat and a sweat towel around his neck, but his face was difficult to see because the brim of the hat was pressed so low.

Seeing this person, Shi Ran had irrepressible joy on his face.

The driver greeted him with a vague voice: "Haven't moved yet?" ”

"Wait for someone." He greeted him excitedly.

The puller looked up slightly, looked under the brim of his hat, then opened the door of the container where the garbage was stored, and asked, "Get in the car and wait?" ”

He nodded, and couldn't wait to step on the board and get in.

The inside of the box was very clean and there was no rubbish at all. Although he couldn't see clearly, he still touched the small bench and sat down.

The car door closed from the outside, it was pitch black, and he only heard a "bang" above his head, and he immediately fell asleep under the effect of *.

……

I don't know how long it took, but in a beeping sound, Shi Ran woke up.

The sound came from the vertical security gate behind him, and several men in black plastic suits were carrying another man through. The man was in a comatose state, and he found himself and the man wearing masks.

When the man in black heard the alarm from the machine, he touched the sleeping man, searched for a mobile phone, and threw it into a box next to him.

He was not very skilled at finding a switch on the mask at the chin position, pressed it down, then got up and walked forward through the passage, and the curtain appeared at the end of the right turn. There were two people waiting outside, also wrapped in black plastic clothes from head to toe, as if they were in charge of security.

"Welcome to Elysium." One of them beckoned to him, and his voice was robotic.

"Will the Queen of Night come today?" He asked in the same processed voice.

"I don't know." Another said, apparently impatient with his question.

He groaned and held out his left hand. At the feet of the man in black were two boxes full of seals, and he picked one from one of the more boxes and poked him on the wrist.

"Milk Snake, District III." The man in black said.

He was a little disappointed, looked at the box on the ground and muttered, "Can you change it?" ”

"IDs are random, don't pick and choose."

The man in black said as he pulled the curtain.

He didn't rush in, but looked back into the hallway where he came, and someone came over again.

The man in black coldly urged, "Please hurry. ”

At this time, he noticed that the seal on his wrist had changed from red to silver, and it slowly showed the appearance of a snake, with a metallic luster. He took a deep breath and walked through the curtain expectantly and nervously.

In front of me is a theater-like place, with many masked people already seated. They talk to each other, all of which are processed with robot-like voices. If you look closely, you can see that only a few seats are still empty.

Almost late!

"Find a seat, it's time to start." A masked man came in from behind him and said to him.

He came back to his senses and hurried down to the back of the center to find the seat that belonged to the "Milk Snake" according to the name of the flower on the back of the chair. Not long after taking their seats, a few more people came in, and the seats were finally filled.

After a while, as the lights faded out, the light in the room was almost dim to the point where you couldn't see your fingers, and the only thing that could tell where they were was was the flickering power spots on their masks.

Music sounded in the venue, and an excerpt from the opera "The Magic Flute" "Aria of the Queen of the Night".

Everyone fell silent and turned their eyes to the stage. The spotlights suddenly lit up the stage, and there was a commotion in the audience.

A masked master of ceremonies walked up to the stage, bowed slightly, and read the opening sentence in a matter-of-fact manner.

"Everyone, welcome to the Elysium, we meet again."

Tide of applause.

"Red dust in the blink of an eye, Bliss is infinite, welcome to Bliss. Before the start of the show, I would like to inform you that I will not be able to meet you tonight. However, she entrusted me with my sincere greetings and hope that everyone here can reap the ultimate happiness. ”

At the same time, a group of masked waiters pushed food carts in and set up utensils for everyone.

Everyone pushed the mask on their jaws up to reveal their mouths, but the light was so dim that no one could see each other's thin lips or yellow teeth.

The waiter brought another drink, Shi Ran chose a sake that was not too strong, and kept his eyes on the stage in front of him, unwilling to move away for a moment.

only heard the master of ceremonies announce "the show begins", and the whole venue was silent.

The stage sounded with the sound of a magician appearing, and an iron cage about ten meters long was pushed onto the stage, holding three people who were almost ** inside. They were locked in cages, with foot pads less than the size of a basin, and a green fox-headed object on the left lower abdomen, which was connected to their bodies by a ten-centimeter-long golden pipe.

Shi Ran knew that it was the "Jade Fox Golden Tube" of the Elysium.

He frowned, blinking his eyes again and again because of his slight night blindness, and only then did he see that the three people in the cage were two men and one woman. Among them, the female is the student and looks the youngest.

"Doctor.J, please!" With the call of the master of ceremonies, a man in a white coat and a doctor came out of the background, wearing a mask.

The master of ceremonies said, "Over to you, Doctor J." ”

Doctor.J nodded, and took a black suitcase from his assistant's hand.

He opened the suitcase, which folded and overlapped into six sides, each with a knife of different shapes.

The two men in the cage woke up from a coma, and the girl had already witnessed it in horror.

They want to struggle, but their legs and feet are firmly locked, and they want to shout, but they can only open their mouths exaggeratedly, watching their little tongues beat in their mouths, and they can't make any sound.

Those knives that shone with sharp light made the audience burst into thunderous applause again.

Doctor.J prepares the tools in place, and the screen behind them lights up at the same time.

There was a snowflake on the screen, and then the logo appeared. It was a silhouette of a woman, but it was evident from the crown on her head that she had supreme rights.

Everyone cheered and kept chanting: "Queen of the Night! After the Night! ”

Shi Ran also shouted hard, and the blood in his whole body began to stir - he melted into the atmosphere of Elysium a minute before the show started.

As soon as the postnight sign passed, Doctor J began his routine speech. He talked a lot at length, some drinking, some whispering, like an inattentive student meeting an indifferent teacher, each doing his own thing.

After a few moments, Doctor.J suddenly turned to face the screen, and a VCR began to play. The video is very short, the captured images come from a certain laboratory, the staff are all masks, and various instruments and equipment also show a sense of high-precision technology.

The lens freezes under a microscope, and a dropper drops a drop of liquid into a petri dish, which contains a large number of cells. The reason why this cell is so large is that it is compared to the other cells in the petri dish. As soon as those cells saw this huge cell, they came to life, like hyenas who were excited when they smelled the carrion.

Strange images appeared. Hundreds of small cells in the petri dish rushed up to surround the large cells, colliding wildly, like a piranha encircling its prey. Soon, gaps appear at the edges of the large cells, and the vicious small cells begin to eat away at each other, and the gaps become larger and larger.

In less than two minutes, the large cells disappeared into the petri dish, and the small cells spread out irregularly but in an orderly manner, as if nothing had happened.

The video ends, and Doctor.J concludes.

"Substantial progress has been made in the Nirvana Sacred Studies project so far. We refine pure blood by removing enzymes from blood in living samples, which is the key to achieving the transition from constant temperature to variable temperature. However, as you have seen in the experiment just now, although the viability of R18 cells breaks through the limitation of aerobic and anaerobic states, we do not yet have the means to prolong the survival of pureblood because macrophages of different individuals still have aggressive immunity, and chromosomal genes will also have a direct impact on the stability of pure blood. But I hope that you will stick to your faith and that we will be able to win in the near future. Thank you. ”

There were coherent and crescendo applause of "pop", "pop", and "pop".

"Do you understand?" A fatter man next to him whispered.

Shi Ran shook his head and smiled in return, but he forgot that the other party couldn't see it through the mask.

"I don't understand either, to be honest, I don't care."

He nodded again, humming, about the same point as his neighbor. The life science research conducted in the laboratory was too advanced for him, and the ultimate goal seemed far away, and his original intention of participating in Elysium was only for the rest of his membership time.

"Next up is membership time." Doctor.J announced that the master of ceremonies handed him the remote control.

The screen lit up again, and the code names scrolled rapidly, like slot machines in a casino.

Doctor.J holds up the remote control with his back to the screen, and presses the button for about ten seconds.

Including Shi Ran, everyone stared at the screen with bated breath. In the alternation of code names that became slower and slower, he actually saw the word "milk snake", and he was so nervous that his tongue almost slipped out. Even though the air conditioning was on well, he was sweating.

In the end, the code name was fixed on the "human-faced bat", and his straight waist slackened, very disappointed.

"Congratulations, Human-Faced Bat!"

The applause could not cover some regretful sighs, and a masked man stood up from his position in the first district and walked onto the stage with the excitement of winning an award.

The master of ceremonies and Doctor J shook hands with the man. Under the focus of the light, Shi Ran judged by her figure that it was a woman.

The woman took the cloak and put it on, looking majestic, and then proudly and confidently stretched out her arms to salute the audience.

Doctor.J motioned for her to begin.

Walking around the cage three times, the woman seemed to be using this way to raise the fear of the prisoners in the cage.

Finally, she stood still in front of the girl and held out her finger. The other two men relaxed their bodies as if relieved, but more like two corpses that had just died and had not yet had time to freeze.

Two assistants stepped forward to release the girl from the cage. As soon as the handcuffs and anklets were unfastened, the girl went crazy and wanted to escape, but the people on the stage did not chase her, only to see Doctor.J press another button on the remote control.

The unexpected happened. The girl had barely taken a few steps before she fell to the ground, her whole body spasming like an electric shock. What's even more terrifying is that her originally white skin began to become transparent, and there was a fluorescent blue light in the intervals.

A pillar descends from the sky, and the top and bottom are all decorated with expensive agate jadeite and diamonds, which looks particularly luxurious.

The assistant tied the prostrated girl to the pillar, her dark hair scattered across her cheeks, and the spotlight showed a sense of ancient ritual under the light.

This over-whitewashed pillar is the altar of the Elysium.

The cloaked woman, codenamed "Human-faced Bat", pulled out a Mongolian knife from Doctor.J's box and walked slowly towards the girl.

Instead of acting immediately, she took another goblet and placed it on the girl's left abdomen. The "Jade Fox Golden Tube" was twisted, and the girl's blood flowed into the glass like wine.

The "human-faced bat" took about half of the cup, closed the "Jade Fox Gold Tube", and raised a glass to the audience. The people in the audience understood, and they all raised their hands to clink glasses with her.

The girl regained consciousness and shuddered as she watched the other man walk towards her with a Mongolian knife. She looked helplessly at her knee, where the knife had been placed.

In a moment that was too fast to capture, the girl's knee was sliced off like the lid of a teacup......

Shi Ran subconsciously closed his eyes, but opened them in a very short time, and something similar to electricity passed through his body, and he trembled slightly.

There was a commotion in the audience, especially the guests in the front area, who were excited.

An inexplicable wave of pleasure pushed back from front to back, and he felt himself tossed up by the excitement and fell steadily......