A Dangerous Path Alone, but the Heart Remains Steady in the Search for Love

The damp, salty air mixed with the scent of rust hit Bo Yu's face as his sneakers crushed the fluorescent moss growing in the cracks of the dock. With every three steps, he kicked a mechanical limb half-buried in the mud.

As the searchlight atop Container No. 7 suddenly lit up, the fur on the back of his neck bristled, like steel needles piercing his skin. The beam wasn't filled with moths, but with a swarm of tiny drones.

"Where's Tang Yao?" He howled into the emptiness, his fangs tearing at his lip as blood dripped onto the rusty gantry base, where it evaporated into smoke.

The response came from behind him—the hydraulic supports of a container suddenly shot out, and twenty-three modified humans slid out from the shadows, each of their knee joints outfitted with copper gears.

Bo Yu ripped off his sea-soaked jacket, the scar on his left shoulder glowing blue with energy.

As the first modified human lunged at him with an electrified harpoon, Bo Yu spun, kicking off the damp container wall. The recoil caused him to slam into his opponent's chest, crushing the energy core inside.

The sweet, metallic scent of cooling fluid splashed on his face as he heard Feng Hacker's warning crackling in his earpiece: "Those gears will record your combat patterns!"

"Let them record to their heart's content!" Bo Yu roared, tearing the mechanical arm from the second enemy, his claws raking through the entangled nerve wires within.

As the moonlight pierced through the fog, his pupils shifted to molten gold, and the wolf tail that shot out from his spine knocked down three crossbow-wielding assailants.

But the enemy's tactics changed after the fifth minute.

When Bo Yu tore through the throat of the fourth modified human, the remaining ones suddenly retreated in unison. The metal plates on their foreheads lit up simultaneously, weaving an electric net through the humid air.

Bo Yu rolled to avoid the first arc of lightning, but his back collided with the electromagnetic barrier that had risen from nowhere.

"The rules of the game have changed." Wu Guan's voice emerged from a rusted loudspeaker, accompanied by the crackling noise of seaweed clogging it. "Miss Tang Yao is watching your performance."

Bo Yu's wolf ears caught the hum of a yacht's engine three hundred meters away. His claws dug deep into the concrete beneath him.

As the electric net constricted again, he suddenly ripped off his neckband and wrapped it around his fist, the blood-soaked nano-glow carving a burning trail in the dark.

As the bandage touched the electric grid, the entire dock's lighting system exploded in a shower of sparks.

"Figured you'd tap into the port's power grid!" Bo Yu crouched and leaped five meters high onto an oil tank, knocking down a valve with his tail and letting black oil spew into the air.

The electric net clashed with the oil mist, and half the dock erupted into flames, turning the nineteen modified humans into human torches in the firestorm.

The searing heat blew Bo Yu's bangs back, and the burn on his right arm sent a sharp, itching sensation as the flesh began to regenerate.

He sprinted through the burning air, the smell of wisteria mixing with the acrid scent of the fire, but as he turned a corner, a flying iron chain struck his side.

Stumbling into an abandoned control room, his pupils suddenly burned with pain—on a webbed screen, a figure wearing a fisherman's hat was disassembling a bomb.

"Zheng Yufu?" Bo Yu's claws scraped sparks across the control panel as the figure turned, revealing mechanical compound eyes. In his hand, the tactical watch that his father had worn when he disappeared was unmistakably clenched.

Cold sweat mixed with blood slipped down his collar, and suddenly, he heard the melody Tang Yao hummed in the rhythm of his heartbeat.

As the eighth wave of enemies approached, their boots crunching over burning oil, Bo Yu's wolf tail wrapped around a steel beam overhead.

Hanging upside down, he tore open a ventilation pipe, letting the blaring alarm drown out the growl rumbling in his throat.

The skin on his claws started to heat up as the biological tracker Tang Yao had left him activated.

"There are still twenty-seven lashes left to count…" he grinned, blood dripping from his mouth, allowing his wolfish instincts to consume the last trace of clarity.

As the control room glass shattered, the moonlight illuminated a worn nautical chart on the wall—a cluster of reefs circled in red, perfectly aligning with the coordinates on his bandage countdown.

Moonlight reflected a strange purple-red hue off the oil-stained floor as Bo Yu stepped back, crushing half of a mechanical finger underfoot.

The metal joints still twitched, and suddenly, he recalled the rainy night when Tang Yao had taught him how to count lashes—she had stood on tiptoe, saying that werewolves should have exactly twenty-seven, the scent of wisteria and rainwater seeping into his wound.

"Time for an acting lesson." He deliberately tripped over the broken hydraulic pipe, staggering into the corner of a container.

His back pressed against the iron, which was oozing condensation, a painful whimper escaping his throat.

The gears in the modified human's neck clicked mockingly as five shadows closed in from different directions, their electrified harpoons dragging blue-purple arcs over the oil.

When the first harpoon sank into his side, Bo Yu's pupils suddenly contracted into vertical slits.

He controlled his muscles, squeezing the weapon tight, letting artificial blood pour out of the wound. "It's more fun when the prey dies." He mimicked the modified human's stiff voice, quietly driving his claws into the container seam.

Suddenly, the rusted rivets above his head exploded, and two tons of a container's lid crashed down.

The sparks from the metal collision ignited the leaking fuel, and Bo Yu spun midair to evade.

His wolf tail swept the hanging steel rope across the fire, and his claws tore through three enemies' energy cores.

The sweet, metallic cooling liquid drenched his burned skin, and he heard Tang Yao's voice mingling with the explosion: "Little pup, you play dead so well."

"This is the thirty-sixth trick you taught me!" Bo Yu laughed loudly, kicking a modified human's head off and watching it explode into sparks on the electromagnetic grid.

His wounds were visibly healing, the new skin glowing blue beneath, the seal Tang Yao had placed on him with silver needles last week still working to delay his wolf instincts.

Through the thick smoke, eighteen pairs of crimson mechanical eyes lit up. Wu Guan walked forward, his cane in hand, its jade inlaid and glowing with an eerie light.

The modified humans froze like puppets, their metal foreheads vibrating at high frequency. "Miss Tang Yao loves watching trapped beasts fight," Wu Guan struck his cane against the scorched ground, and six steel pillars covered in electric arcs shot up from the cement. "Especially clever beasts who think they have the upper hand."

Bo Yu's wolf ears caught the hydraulic sounds within the steel columns, and he suddenly grabbed a mechanical limb from the ground and threw it toward the southeast corner's camera.

In the ensuing sparks, he dodged the crossfire of electric arcs, feeling the biological tracker inside his claws heat up.

"Old man, it's time to change the batteries in your prosthetic eyes!" He deliberately collided with the third steel pillar. Just as Wu Guan sneered, Bo Yu's wolf tail shot toward a container hiding a secret door.

The rusted iron door crashed open, and the salty sea breeze mixed with black oil erupted.

As Wu Guan staggered backward, Bo Yu leaped to the top of the fallen steel pillar, moonlight solidifying into a glowing blade on his claws, cleaving through the cane and sending jade shards flying, slicing seven deep gashes across Wu Guan's face.

"It's impossible!" Wu Guan stepped back, clutching his bleeding mechanical eye. The electric cattle prod inside his cane crackled, "The combat data clearly shows…"

"The data only shows what I want you to see." Bo Yu tore off his burnt sleeve and wrapped it around the prod, absorbing the stored energy into the nano-fabric.

As the modified human battalion surged forward again, he turned and hurled the prod toward the oil tank's pressure release valve.

The 100,000-volt electric current detonated the remaining oil fumes, and the shockwave overturned containers in the entire loading area.

When Wu Guan was thrown into the control room by the blast wave, Bo Yu was already crouched on a twisted steel beam, licking his wounds.

His retina still held the holographic projection of the surveillance system Tang Yao had taught him to crack—she had drawn circuit diagrams on the dining table with red wine, her lashes flickering in the candlelight.

"She likes humming 'Moonlight Sonata' third movement when disarming bombs," Bo Yu stomped down on Wu Guan's hand as it reached for the alarm, his claws digging into the chip slot at the back of his neck. "Your replicas couldn't even get the tremolo rhythm right."

The neural wires he pulled still twitched. Suddenly, Bo Yu smelled a wisp of wisteria scent in the air.

When he smashed the glass and rushed up to the dock tower, Feng Hacker's encrypted signal clicked into his earpiece: "Coordinates locked, but it's in a private marine area…"

The sound of waves crashing against the rocks mixed with a familiar hum.

Bo Yu's claws sank into the steel railing as he watched, three hundred meters away, "Zheng Yufu" removing his hat on the yacht's deck—his neck glowed with the same chip light as Wu Guan's, and the tactical watch thrown his way displayed a countdown: 00:27:00.

When the last bit of moonlight was swallowed by the clouds, Bo Yu's wolf tail swept across the control panel's buttons.

The whole dock erupted in blaring alarms as he leaped into the dark sea.

As the salty water flooded his wounds, he heard Tang Yao's whispered voice from that night she was trapped: "The villa terrace has my least favorite blue roses."

Three kilometers away, on the cliff, a white villa cloaked in an electromagnetic barrier flickered faintly in the mist.

Twenty-seven rotating gun turret laser sights wove into a crimson net across the night sky, and the mechanical dogs patrolling the garden suddenly turned toward the coast, their biological scanners just having picked up a familiar wolf-like genetic signature.