Ghostly Warehouse Investigation, Old Enemy Surfaces, and Danger Emerges

Bo Yu braced himself against the rusted steel frame, the starry moon clip in his palm glowing faintly under the moonlight.

The air, a mix of rust and formalin, stung his nostrils as he stared at the crippled white weasel thirty meters away. The little creature was tapping the vent cover with its front paws, its obsidian-like eyes reflecting the emergency indicator lights on the ceiling.

"You smell it too?" He ran his fingers over the gear pattern on the clip, the werewolf bloodline making the capillaries on his retina faintly glow.

The white weasel suddenly fluffed up, darting towards the right shelf. At the same moment, three poisoned crossbow bolts whizzed past his ear, embedding into the chemical barrels behind him.

A light pink mist erupted from the cracks, and Bo Yu spun mid-air, leaping onto a beam.

The corroded steel pipes hissed as they melted like butter, and Bo Yu twisted his body, his military boots landing precisely where the weasel had just tapped.

The rusted cover flipped open, revealing a moss-covered maintenance ladder below.

"Tang Yao's jasmine shampoo…" Bo Yu slid down the damp concrete wall, his Adam's apple vibrating faintly in the darkness.

The walls leaking water shuddered, a sound coming from the seven o'clock direction, accompanied by the distinct rubber friction of military boots.

In front of the cold storage door on the second underground level, the white weasel suddenly stood on its hind legs.

Its injured hind leg was still bleeding, but it stubbornly used its front paws to reach for the access system.

Bo Yu squinted—there, on the edge of the keypad, was a faint cherry-colored lipstick stain.

"When your heart rate exceeds 120…" He remembered the vision of Tang Yao with tear tracks on her face, the clip's end slipping into the card reader.

Frost instantly spread across the metal door, but the weasel screeched a warning.

As Bo Yu leaned back, a stream of liquid nitrogen shot from inside the door, narrowly grazing his chin, freezing the shelves behind him into ice sculptures.

The lab in the center of the cold storage made his pupils contract.

Six werewolf corpses, suspended in a pale green solution, their chests sliced open to reveal mechanical hearts, embedded with electronic components.

The white weasel suddenly leapt onto his shoulder, its wet nose brushing against the pulsating vein in his neck.

"You were once an experiment too?" Bo Yu stroked the barcode tattoo on the weasel's neck, his claws gently tracing the operation table.

The holographic projection suddenly flickered on, and a virtual figure in a white coat began speaking, "When werewolves enter a combat frenzy, replacing their hearts with cybernetic ones can…"

An explosion roared from above, and the white weasel's sharp claws suddenly dug into his shoulder.

Bo Yu spun to avoid a falling ventilation duct but caught a familiar scent of cologne in the swirling dust—the same aftershave Wu, the butler, had worn at the reunion three years ago.

"Bo Yu, good skills," the old man's voice came from the shadows. Twelve infrared laser dots locked onto Bo Yu's vitals, "But you should ask Miss Tang why her lipstick appeared on the procurement list for body preservative."

Bo Yu's claws pierced his palm, blood dripping down the gear pattern of the starry moon clip.

Behind Wu, a man in black was playing with a cherry-red lipstick tube, the moonlight revealing the "XY" engraving on it—an encrypted mark Bo Yu and Tang Yao had carved on the day of their first kiss at the observatory.

"Watch out!" The white weasel suddenly let out a human-like scream.

The entire warehouse's lighting system exploded with electric sparks. Bo Yu smirked in the darkness—when he had bypassed the access control earlier, he had already turned Tang Yao's clip into an electromagnetic pulse trigger.

He tapped the edge of his military boots three times, the prearranged danger signal Tang Yao had taught him.

The white weasel's tail brushed the back of his neck, its cold touch reminding him of the kiss on the observatory roof, laced with the scent of gunpowder.

"Seems Miss Tang didn't teach you the proper etiquette of a beast," Wu said, wiping the sapphire at the top of his snake-headed cane, and suddenly, six of the twelve infrared dots went dark. "How about a trade? You hand over the clip, and I'll tell you the body temperature when Miss Tang's heart stopped."

Suddenly, the liquid nitrogen pipeline in the cold storage burst. Bo Yu used the white mist to leap onto the shelves.

He deliberately let his left shoulder graze a sharp steel plate, blood staining his collar immediately.

As the seventh man in black lunged from the shadows, Bo Yu staggered and knocked over a cart full of chemical reagents.

"Watch out for hydrofluoric acid!" Wu's sharp warning echoed as Bo Yu rolled into a passage behind a fire door.

He licked the blood off his hand—werewolf bloodline turning pain into something as crisp and invigorating as peppermint.

Through the crack in the door, he saw three men in black removing their corroded boots, the skin around their ankles peeling off like melting wax.

The white weasel suddenly bit his belt and pulled to the right.

On the emergency cabinet's glass, there was a crooked wolf head drawn with lipstick.

Bo Yu's pupils constricted. It was the same graffiti Tang Yao had scratched into the concrete wall during their entrapment in the subway tunnel.

"So this is where it is," he muttered as he broke the cabinet's lock. The dusty fire axe handle had silver hair wrapped around it.

As the sound of rushing wind approached from behind, Bo Yu threw the axe toward the source of the noise, the metallic clash mixed with the dull sound of a rib breaking.

Wu's gold-rimmed glasses reflected the shaking explosion-proof light on the ceiling: "Mr. Bo, don't you want to know why Miss Tang's DNA showed up on…"

Before he could finish, Bo Yu suddenly pressed his hand against his bleeding abdomen and knelt, his fingers quietly flicking Tang Yao's clip into the ventilation pipe.

This is it!

Bo Yu tore open a blood bag disguised as a fake, crashing through the fireproof glass like a bullet.

In mid-air, he grabbed a falling power cable, using its momentum to knock two gunmen into a solution pool filled with potassium dichromate.

Amid the screams, he accurately kicked Wu's wrist joint, the snake-headed cane spinning as it plunged into one of the black-clad man's thigh arteries.

"38.2°C," Bo Yu squeezed the butler's throat, his werewolf slit pupils locking onto the shrinking ones, "That's her body temperature when she gave me CPR. Want to know more details?"

The white weasel suddenly let out a warning screech.

Bo Yu dodged the incoming tranquilizer dart but saw Qian Duobao emerge from the liquid nitrogen smoke, swirling a cherry-red lipstick keychain—exactly the one he had given Tang Yao for her 20th birthday.

"Didn't expect that, did you?" The brother who had shared a beer with him kicked aside the gas mask at his feet, revealing a bronze dagger with a mysterious totem carved into the handle. "Since you helped me cheat on that calculus exam, Boss Xu wired me a 200k deposit."

Bo Yu's claws scraped the cement floor, memories flashing back to their university dorm: Qian Duobao holding instant noodles while watching Bo Yu write love letters to Tang Yao, steam fogging up his glasses; during a rainy night, squeezing into an internet cafe, this chubby guy once shielded him from a flying beer bottle.

"She blocked three tranquilizers for you," Qian Duobao suddenly tore open his collar, and an electronic chip glowed red on his collarbone. "Do you know how they modify disobedient prey? With electrified collars…" His voice was cut off as Bo Yu crushed his iPhone—the screen showing live surveillance footage of Tang Yao's ankle shackled with iron chains.

Thirty-seven men in black poured out from all directions, and Qian Duobao retreated behind the human wall with a sinister grin, "You think awakening your werewolf bloodline makes you invincible? Boss Xu has prepared twenty kilos of silver nitrate…" He suddenly screamed, clutching his neck, where a pure white spider had somehow appeared.

Bo Yu blew off the nano-spider silk emitter from his palm, a small toy he had pocketed from the cold storage's lab bench.

When the first axe-wielding man lunged, Bo Yu caught the scent of jasmine shampoo on his bulletproof vest—identical to the one Tang Yao used.

"Seems your master didn't tell you," Bo Yu spun to dodge the electric prod, his claws carving deep marks in the tempered glass, "What makes werewolves most dangerous on a full moon night isn't the fangs—"

The entire glass wall suddenly shattered, and the salty sea breeze poured into the warehouse.

Bo Yu stood under the starlit sky, ripping open his blood-stained jacket. Moonlight bathed his skin in a silver sheen.

Qian Duobao's scream mixed with the clatter of gunfire, like a surreal symphony.

When the first silver bullet grazed his ear, Bo Yu suddenly remembered what Tang Yao had said before being tranquilized.

Her bloodstained fingers had traced circles in his palm, Morse code for "Wait for dawn."

The white weasel leapt onto his shoulder, its tail brushing past his transforming cheekbone.

Bo Yu counted his heartbeats, waiting for the moonlight to fill his pupils. The sound of heavy machine gun metal clashing came from behind.

Qian Duobao was trembling behind a container 200 meters away—at this distance, it was only three breaths for a fully transformed werewolf.

The horizon suddenly lit up with flares, and thirty drones formed a light web over the warehouse.

Bo Yu's wolf ears twitched as he heard Tang Yao's heartbeat mixed in a cryptic channel, like a butterfly trapped under glass.