The Beauty CEO's Personal Expert

Ling Chen walked up and saw that there was a safety house of several dozen square meters behind the wall, enclosed with only a few fist-sized ventilation openings. No wonder... He was puzzled earlier about how so many people could evacuate so quickly; it turns out they hid in here. As the staff gradually walked out of the safety house, Ling Chen counted the number of people—thirty-eight in total.

"Ling Cheng, how do you plan to deal with them?" Qiu Yong asked.

Ling Chen took out his phone and checked the time; it was already past eleven o’clock, and they couldn’t afford to delay too long here. When they attacked the stronghold, the person in charge here must have reported to the Netherworld Snake headquarters. Once the other side realized they fell for a ruse, they would certainly quickly order the reinforcements to return. Thus, they had no time to interrogate these researchers here.

"Get some vehicles arranged and take them all back." After speaking, Ling Chen walked to the front of the crowd and swept his gaze over their faces one by one, noting their anxious expressions. He then addressed them: "Who’s the person in charge here? Step forward!"

As his words fell, a portion of gazes immediately locked onto a middle-aged man. Seeing this, Ling Chen pointed at him. The latter hesitated for a moment before finally stepping forward.

"What’s your name?"

"Bai Zhangqiu."

"Are you in charge of this laboratory?" Ling Chen asked.

Bai Zhangqiu shook his head and replied, "I’m only the deputy director of the lab; the person truly in charge has already evacuated with others." He paused and pleaded, "We are just a group of researchers who know nothing. Can you... can you let us go?"

"Let you go?" Ling Chen smirked, "Don’t worry, as long as you cooperate, I won’t harm you. Let me ask you, was there a woman named Nanrong Wanqing brought here a few days ago?"

Bai Zhangqiu nodded and replied, "Yes, I was involved in her treatment at the time."

"Treatment?" Ling Chen asked, "What treatment, what happened to her?"

"She was already on the verge of death when brought here, not long for this world. However, after our emergency treatment, she was out of danger."

Hearing Bai Zhangqiu’s words, Ling Chen was shocked. What had happened to Nanrong Wanqing to bring her to the brink of death? No wonder Jiang Yue’e brought Nanrong Wanqing here, likely to use the medical facilities to save her daughter. If he guessed correctly, Nanrong Wanqing must have been injured on Nanrong Yong’s birthday banquet day; otherwise, her gown wouldn’t have appeared here.

"Since you cured her, where is she now?"

"She was taken away."

"Did she evacuate with your person in charge?"

"No, she was taken away before you arrived."

After Bai Zhangqiu finished speaking, Ling Chen’s face sank. Taken away by someone? Was it... right! Previously, when they were monitoring outside the teahouse, Wei Jiahao had informed him that a car appeared at the entrance and three people got into the car. At the time, he didn’t think much of it, but now it seems Nanrong Wanqing is probably in that car.

With this thought, he immediately took out his phone and dialed a number. When the car left, he had arranged for people to follow secretly; perhaps they had already located the car. However, although the call went through, no one answered. After dialing seven or eight times without a response, Ling Chen felt a sense of foreboding.

"Ling Cheng, what’s the matter?" Seeing Ling Chen’s solemn expression, Qiu Yong approached to ask.

Ling Chen shook his head, "Nothing. Brother, you take the others outside first; I have some matters to deal with." Then, he pointed at Bai Zhangqiu, "You come with me."

Watching his colleagues being taken away, Bai Zhangqiu asked nervously, "What... what do you want to do?"

"This is the Netherworld Snake’s laboratory; I want to know what this laboratory is researching. If I’m not mistaken, all the lab’s data should be stored in hard drives. Give me the hard drives, and I’ll let you live. How about it?"

"All the important data was taken by the person in charge; I..."

"In their haste, they can’t have taken everything. I won’t make things hard for you; bring me all the data you can find. Of course, it has to be valuable data. If you give me useless data to fool me, then don’t expect mercy from me."

"Okay, I’ll... I’ll do it right away." Bai Zhangqiu agreed and hurriedly ran to a computer. Ling Chen followed, looking at the row of folders displayed on the screen, he asked, "What is all this?"

"All lab data is organized on the main server, which is only open from eight in the morning to eight at night. Outside these hours, it’s closed. To access files, you need to log in with your ID, and every ID login is monitored. What you browse and copy is clear to the backend. This way, staff cannot steal confidential data from the main server. Since I’m the lab’s second-in-command and often work late, I applied to copy some usable data to my own computer for convenience. Although the person in charge took all the data, some remains on my computer and hasn’t been deleted."

Ling Chen nodded, "Good, you’ve earned yourself a lifeline."

Soon enough, the computer data was copied out. Ling Chen took the hard drive handed over by Bai Zhangqiu and pointed to the laboratory exit, "You go up first."

After watching Bai Zhangqiu leave, Ling Chen took another stroll around the lab, searching through all the refrigerated cabinets used for storing reagents. Unfortunately, there was nothing left behind.

Leaving the lab, Ling Chen walked out of the teahouse to see several large buses parked by the roadside; Bai Zhangqiu and his colleagues were all on board.

Getting onto the bus, Ling Chen gestured to the driver, who nodded and immediately started driving the bus down the road.

Halfway down the road, Ling Chen pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed a number. When the call connected, he asked, "Has Yang He returned?"

He planned to chat with Yang He before the operation, but Yang He had left the hotel since morning and never returned. To avoid delaying the operation, he had to assign a few people to stay at the hotel. But according to the feedback, Yang He never returned to the hotel.

"Where did that guy end up?" Ling Chen wondered to himself, even Hu Fei couldn’t find his whereabouts—could he have left Jin Hai City already?