The moment that narrow gap in the rest pod door exposed him, the entire convenience store seemed to drop into silence.
The pale blue light from inside the pod fell across half of Xie Lin's face, making his already pale skin look colder still.
He didn't hide.
He didn't retreat.
He simply looked at Qin Zheng.
The exhaustion that had followed him through the night—running, bleeding, forcing himself forward—had been driven deep beneath the surface. What remained now was only clarity.
Qin Zheng's gaze locked onto him and barely shifted.
"Xie Lin."
His voice wasn't loud, but it carried more weight than before.
"Come out."
It wasn't a request.
It was the kind of command he was used to giving without resistance.
Unfortunately for him—
the place he was standing in no longer recognized that language.
Lin Wu didn't even turn around.
She only drew the ledger a little closer to herself and said in an even tone,
"Mr. Qin."
"Have you forgotten what your current identity is?"
Qin Zheng's gaze stayed on Xie Lin, but he answered her anyway.
"Customer."
"Correct." Lin Wu nodded. "And customers don't get to tell the owner how to arrange what's on the shelves."
The instant the line landed, Qi Ye flattened his mouth almost immediately.
Pei Wan's eyes shifted faintly too.
As for Xie Lin—
he slowly leaned back against the pod wall, and the tension that had reflexively tightened through his shoulders finally eased by a fraction.
Because he understood what Lin Wu had just done.
That was no longer ambiguity.
No longer slicing information into careful little pieces.
That was taking a side.
At last Qin Zheng dragged his gaze away from Xie Lin and turned it toward Lin Wu.
"You know what he is."
"I do," Lin Wu answered immediately. "A very valuable customer."
"That's all?"
"At least in my store, yes." Lin Wu looked at him calmly. "What you bought from me was he is here and he is stable."
"Not you get to take him."
She tilted her head slightly.
"Don't mix up your orders."
Outside, one of the second team operatives muttered a curse under his breath.
At this point, they were clearly close to losing their minds over this store's rules—and this owner's way of speaking.
Qin Zheng, however, said nothing.
He only looked at Lin Wu.
Then, after several seconds, he said:
"I'll raise the price."
There it was.
At last, a faint light flashed in Lin Wu's eyes.
The real order had finally landed.
"Go ahead."
Instead of placing something on the counter right away, Qin Zheng asked first:
"Your rules here… do they mean that if you don't agree, no one takes him out?"
That question was precise.
No longer pressure.
Now he was probing the edges of the rule set.
Lin Wu didn't answer directly. Instead, she gave the kind of answer only a proper shop owner would give:
"In theory, yes."
"In theory?" Qin Zheng repeated.
"Because I haven't actually seen anyone try to snatch a customer out of my store yet." Lin Wu smiled faintly. "But if you'd like to pay a testing fee, I don't mind giving you a live demonstration."
That time, even the people outside fell silent.
Not because they'd suddenly become polite.
Because they genuinely weren't sure whether this boss was joking—
or naming a price.
Qin Zheng clearly heard it too.
So he didn't take the bait.
Instead, he reached into the inside pocket of his coat and placed a small black case on the counter.
It was no bigger than a palm. Sealed tight, with only a thin silver line running across the surface.
"What is it?" Lin Wu asked.
"Type-II physiological monitoring chips. Six units." Qin Zheng answered. "Applied to the body, they track temperature, heart rate, blood oxygen, and baseline neural response in real time. No external network required. Local terminal only."
The system immediately evaluated it.
[Detected: Type-II Physiological Monitoring Chips ×6][Value: High][Note: Suitable for long-term observation of high-risk targets.]
Lin Wu understood the value at once.
Good equipment.
In a situation like this—who was overheating, who was changing, who was about to lose control—this would tell her first.
Qin Zheng placed a second item down.
A thinner silver injector than the suppressor from earlier, filled with a pale blue liquid so cold it looked almost like a shard of ice.
"Short-acting sedative for sample-contact subjects," he said evenly. "Not treatment. Reaction suppression only. Effective for six hours."
The system evaluated again.
[Detected: Short-acting Sedative ×1][Value: High]
Very good.
Very useful.
But Lin Wu let none of that show.
"And?" she asked.
Qin Zheng looked at her.
"And I buy a right."
"What right?"
"If he shows signs of destabilization while he is here," Qin Zheng said, each word precise, "I take over the handling first."
The atmosphere in the store changed instantly.
Xie Lin's gaze turned cold at once.
Pei Wan frowned.
Qi Ye stood to the side, his fingers tightening silently.
Lin Wu, meanwhile, did not even change expression.
She simply lowered her eyes to the monitoring chips and sedative on the counter, as if she were seriously evaluating an entirely ordinary business proposal.
A few seconds later, she looked up.
"Not for sale."
Qin Zheng's eyes darkened.
"Price too low?"
"It's not a pricing issue." Lin Wu's voice stayed level. "The product does not exist."
She tapped the ledger lightly.
"Xie Lin is currently a customer in my store, not an asset you get to pre-book."
"You can buy observation recommendations. You can buy anomaly notifications. You can buy priority awareness."
Her eyes met his directly.
"But you cannot buy…"
"the right to dispose of him."
Behind her, the gray mist over the Special Goods Cabinet drifted once, softly.
As if some deeper layer of the rules had approved that sentence.
Outside, the rain thickened.
One of the second team operatives couldn't hold back anymore and took a step forward.
"Captain Qin, why are we even wasting words with—"
Before he finished, the golden lines at the doorway flashed.
The stun device at his waist and the earpiece beside his jaw both died with a sharp click. Even his flashlight dimmed for half a second.
The system prompt appeared at once.
[External high-pressure verbal threat detected.][Warning executed.]
Silence dropped outside again.
Qin Zheng didn't turn around.
He only stared at Lin Wu, and now there was finally something genuinely sharp in his eyes.
"You want to keep him."
"Yes," Lin Wu answered, even faster than he had asked.
That single word came too cleanly.
So cleanly that even Xie Lin froze for a second.
He had expected Lin Wu to keep circling. To keep slicing. To keep peeling off information layer by layer and selling it.
But not this time.
This time she admitted it directly.
Not because of emotion.
Not because of kindness.
Simply because—
she would not sell.
"Why?" Qin Zheng asked.
"I told you already." Lin Wu closed the ledger gently. "This customer is very valuable."
"And right now, he is my customer."
"In my store, customers are not taken just because you feel like taking them."
Qin Zheng looked at her for a long time.
Then, unexpectedly, he let out a quiet laugh.
Not mocking.
More like confirming something.
"Do you know what's most dangerous about you right now?" he asked slowly. "It's not that you touched the box."
"It's that you're trying to keep a living key in your own hands."
Lin Wu raised a brow slightly.
"Thanks for the warning."
"That's exactly why I'm even less likely to sell him."
Qin Zheng: "…"
This time Pei Wan really did turn her head a little, and the corner of her mouth lifted.
She was becoming more and more certain that the second team was not going to have a smooth night.
The standoff lasted several seconds more.
Finally, Qin Zheng was the one who stepped back first.
Not because he accepted defeat.
Because he knew very well that if he kept pressing now, he'd walk away with nothing.
"Fine." He nodded once. "Then I'll buy it a different way."
A faint glint lit in Lin Wu's eyes again.
That was more like it.
"Go on."
"The monitoring chips and the sedative stay on the table." Qin Zheng nudged the black case forward slightly. "But I want two conditions."
"First: one monitoring chip goes on him."
"Second—"
He looked straight at Xie Lin, his voice lower now.
"The moment any of the symptoms you bought from me appear, you notify me first."
This time, he wasn't asking for the person.
He was asking to see.
To know.
To seize the first second before anyone else could.
Lin Wu did not agree immediately.
Because this condition had come right up to the line she had just drawn.
She lowered her eyes for two seconds, then asked the system silently:
"If the customer agrees to wear a monitoring chip, does that violate store rules?"
The answer came quickly.
[If voluntary, and with owner awareness, it does not constitute a violation.]
Good.
But it had to be Xie Lin's choice.
Lin Wu lifted her gaze and looked directly toward the pod.
"You heard him."
"You answer for yourself."
Every pair of eyes in the store turned toward Xie Lin.
Under the pale blue pod light, he stayed silent for a few seconds, his throat moving once.
Then he lifted his head, looked first at Qin Zheng, then at Lin Wu.
"I'll wear it."
"But the terminal data goes to you first."
He paused.
"Who you choose to sell it to is your business."
"Not his order."
At that, even Pei Wan's eyes shifted slightly.
She had assumed Xie Lin was just an external field operative who could run, endure pain, and carry a box through hell.
Apparently, his brain worked just fine too.
With one sentence, he had shoved control right back into Lin Wu's hands.
Qin Zheng understood it as well.
He watched Xie Lin for two seconds.
Then, in the end, he nodded.
"Fine."
Only then did Lin Wu smile.
"Good."
"I'll take the deal."
The system lit silently.
[Special Observation Transaction Completed.][Store Reputation +2][Notice: High-risk customer Xie Lin status management activated.]
Qin Zheng pushed the black case across the counter.
Lin Wu raised a hand, caught it, and opened it.
Inside, six thin silver-white chips sat in neat slots like six pieces of cold metal scale.
She picked one up, her fingers so light they barely seemed to apply any pressure at all.
"Where?" she asked.
"Behind the ear. Or under the collarbone," Qin Zheng answered.
Lin Wu did not waste another word. She walked to the rest pod with the chip in hand.
The pod door opened a little wider, spilling pale blue light outward and illuminating the line of Xie Lin's shoulder and neck.
He was still injured. Even with the shoulder reset, his body hadn't fully relaxed.
But his eyes were steady now.
Lin Wu stopped in front of him and placed the chip just behind his left ear.
The moment her fingertips brushed his skin, his body stiffened very slightly.
The chip bonded quickly.
A faint blue light ran along its edge, then vanished, as if it had already gone live.
The small display inside the black case lit up at once with baseline data:
[Heart Rate: 101][Temperature: 37.4][Status: Mildly Elevated Fluctuation]
Xie Lin lowered his eyes and glanced at it.
"…Lower than before."
"Obviously." Lin Wu snapped the case partly shut. "A while ago, you were halfway dead."
Something moved very faintly at the corner of his mouth.
Almost a smile.
Not quite.
At that exact moment, the system refreshed again.
[Monitoring linked.][Detected: "Sample Contact Subject" status stable.][Notice: A second target within the store remains unconfirmed.]
Lin Wu's eyes paused very slightly.
Second target.
She knew almost instantly who that likely meant.
Her own name, with the question marks behind it.
But she showed nothing.
She closed the black case without expression and returned to the counter.
Qin Zheng was clearly still waiting for her next sentence.
Lin Wu looked at him, tone steady as ever.
"There."
"I'm not selling the person."
"I'm not selling his life either."
Then she lifted the terminal in one hand, let it tilt slightly in the light, and the corner of her mouth curved.
"But from now on—"
"the data is for sale."
Outside, the rain never stopped.
The headlights from the three black vehicles still cut across the entrance like three blades that had failed to break through.
And Qin Zheng, standing under that light, looked at the small terminal in Lin Wu's hand and felt, for the first time, something close to absurdity.
It was their equipment.
Their target.
Their surveillance objective.
And yet the first thing truly turned into a product tonight—
was the data itself.
Worst of all—
he actually needed to buy it.