The ultimate blue sea

Chapter 8- The RZ unit

The young woman hurriedly walked down the hall, hugging a folder to her chest. She had bangs level with her brows, a fair and clear face, and big eyes. The dazzling smile never seemed to leave her face. She looked like a student still in school, with an unspeakable freshness. This was one of the RZ Unit's1 support personnel, Xue Xiaolu.

At the end of the hall, an office door opened from inside and a dark, skinny man walked out. Seeing her, he called, "Xiaolu."

"Liao-da-ge, is Captain Hu there?"

The man nodded and turned sideways to make way for her.

Strictly speaking, the RZ Unit amounted to a military organization, but its administration had become independent long ago. It specifically targeted the mysterious blue seals that had shown up at some unknown time. The personnel who composed it were generally separated into two parts: field personnel and support personnel. The support personnel included scientific research personnel and medical personnel.

This Liao Chenyuan was an example of a field agent, a sniper by training. He was very amiable, but not much of a talker; he was always somewhat reticent.

Xue Xiaolu knocked on the door and went in. Hu Bugui was on the phone. He made a gesture at her.

Without leave, Xue Xiaolu came over to him and sat down, putting the folder she was holding on Hu Bugui's desk. An unsecured photograph accidentally floated out from inside. She bent down to pick it up. The photograph was of a delicate-featured young man looking a little impatiently at the camera but still forcing a proper enough smile.

After a minute, Hu Bugui put down the phone. His eyes fell on the photograph in Xue Xiaolu's hand, and he frowned. "Has everything been collected? Is there news of him?"

Xue Xiaolu shook her head. "Fang Xiu and Qin Luo have been conducting a thorough investigation. They're about to hit bottom. Fang Xiu says not even the old South-East Asian drug barons could hide like this. We can probably be certain that he's disappeared."

Hu Bugui opened the folder, his fingers tracing the words "Su Qing, male, twenty-four years old." He put a cigarette in his mouth and was silent.

He sat there wrapped in black clouds, each of his cells issuing the warning "I'm in one hell of a bad mood."

Xue Xiaolu didn't dare to disturb him. She could only look down at the young man in the photograph. As she looked at him, her thoughts went astray. On the one hand, she consoled herself that as a normal woman, there was nothing unusual in letting her imagination roam when she saw a picture of a handsome young man; on the other hand, she was inwardly shrieking—damn, this Su Qing's looks really were noteworthy; what was his relationship with Captain Hu?

Captain Hu had only sketchily said that the blue seals had fixed on him while he had been with this person. Under the circumstances, it was likely that he would get dragged in, so he had sent people to check his residence and confirm his safety.

So Xue Xiaolu's reasoning was as follows: had he been a random bystander, the blue seals, who didn't all suffer from persecution complexes, wouldn't have seen just anyone as a threat. So the two of them must have shown a certain degree of intimacy at the time. But if he had been a friend, how could Captain Hu not even know where he lived?

So there were only two possibilities: either this was an online friend he had just met, or he was a one-night stand.

Xue Xiaolu's feminine instincts told her that their "earnest" Captain Hu wouldn't go out to meet online friends like a youngster. This had to be a one-night stand, had to be!

She visualized it: after his assignment, an exhausted Captain Hu was hanging around dead bored at a bar. Then this Su Qing walked in. Captain Hu's eyes lit up. He pounced and put the moves on, all this and that, and then...