Chapter 70: Face It Together. As for the so-called pheromone compatibility report…

Pei Jiqing wrapped the hemp rope Xiao Ling handed him around his hands a few times, and in a flash, he had the man tightly bound.

Suddenly, another dark figure rushed out of the darkness, its fists brushing past Pei Jiqing. He stumbled back, exchanging a few blows, then realized he was no match for the other man. His back slammed into the cold wall, and he whipped out the gun from his waistband. The muzzle gleamed coldly in the dim light. "Don't move! Or I'll shoot."

The man suddenly laughed, his voice deep and familiar. "Didn't you say you couldn't shoot?"

Footsteps approached, and moonlight filtered in through the window, illuminating Shen Huixing. "You lied to me again."

Pei Jiqing lowered the muzzle of his gun, his tense shoulders instantly relaxing. But before he could catch his breath, the sound of fighting erupted even more fiercely outside. Sparks from bullets exploded in the night, blinding him.

In the fleeting light, he finally got a clear look at Chen Huixing's attire. His black combat uniform clung to his muscular features, the lower half of his face obscured by a mask made of a special material, revealing only those familiar, bloodshot eyes.

Chen Huixing swooped in, pulling Pei Jiqing into his embrace. Without a word, he said, "Let's go."

Pei Jiqing's fingers clutched his shirt tightly, his eyes burning intensely. The exhaustion of the past few days surged back like a tide, his temples throbbing, and his legs suddenly gave out. If Chen Huixing hadn't held him up, he would have collapsed to his knees.

"Those are the hostages they're holding outside,"

Chen Huixing said. "I know."

Pei Jiqing's fingertips brushed against the cold metal mask on Chen Huixing's face. The touch was unfamiliar and strange. He couldn't help but feel it a few more times, his fingertips brushing against the buckle at the edge. "What is this?"

Chen Huixing paused, his breathing noticeably heavier beneath the mask. He raised his hand and pressed the back of Pei Jiqing's head against his shoulder: "You've been treated like a dog all the way."

"You're very smart."

If it weren't for the marks Pei Jiqing left along the way, they might still be wandering in the dense forest.

Pei Jiqing suddenly reacted and said in a complicated tone: "...You've worked hard."

Chen Huixing grabbed his hand and rubbed the scabbed scratch with his fingertips. The edge of the wound was covered with light brown crust: "It's okay. But after you go back, you have to be mentally prepared to accept the investigation with me."

Pei Jiqing curled his lips: "Were you thrown rotten eggs?"

Chen Huixing: "...Maybe more than that."

The two fell silent at the same time. This is the tacit understanding of being a husband and wife for many years.

"Most of them are your fault,"

Chen Huixing added. "And some you've offended."

Pei Jiqing then told Chen Huixing, "A long time ago, I told myself I'd share the good times with you, not the bad."

Chen Huixing no longer got upset when hearing such words, but accepted them calmly. "Well, but now we're both tied to the same boat, with no chance to jump."

During the midnight raid, Chen Huixing wore that strange mask, truly being used as a military hound.

The pheromone amplifier, made of a special material, could amplify Pei Jiqing's faint traces dozens of times. The rebels' passages were deeply hidden, winding like a maze, and they had meticulously maintained their tracks, rendering even the most sophisticated detectors ineffective.

This plan had been in motion since the night Pei Jiqing was abducted. Finding a hidden entrance was already incredibly difficult, let alone tracking a nearly vanishing pheromone trail through the dense, intricate forest.

Chen Huixing led the squad through the darkness like a hound, his visor display flickering with data waveforms that only he could decipher. At each suspicious opening, he paused, waiting for the visor to filter out all scents. He sought to isolate that familiar pheromone from the tangled air, so faint it seemed almost illusory.

Soil analysis could also trace traces, but the equipment was so slow that by the time the results came back, the fruit had already dried up.

Chen Huixing found the edge of the cave, and the visor suddenly began to beep rapidly, and the curve on the display suddenly jumped.

The searchlight swept over, revealing the cave walls stained with blackened blood, mixed with the mud and congealed into mottled, hardened masses. This place was impervious to outside influence, and every trace was clearly preserved.

His soldiers crept in like shadows, following the cracks in the rock, their pheromones completely suppressed.

Snipers took up positions high above, the red dot of their infrared scopes silently moving over key locations. The rebels' last stronghold had been surrounded like an iron barrel, waiting only for Chen Huixing's signal.

Chen Huixing led his men to the back of the bunker and ripped off the black metal mask. His sweat-soaked hair stuck to his brow bone. He quickly adjusted the frequency of his headphones and nimbly put the bulletproof vest on Pei Jiqing. When the buckle clicked, he turned to the soldier next to him and said, "Take your wife to the safe zone."

Pei Jiqing suddenly grabbed his wrist and said quickly, "Be careful. No matter what happens this time, I will go through it with you."

This was his decision not to leave the ship.

Chen Huixing lowered his head and rubbed his cheek against Pei Jiqing's cold nose. "Thank you for being okay."

Then he rubbed the back of Pei Jiqing's neck. The muffled sound of an explosion was heard in the distance. Chen Huixing turned and plunged into the smoke with his men.

Pei Jiqing later recalled this scene many times. At that moment, he only thought about one thing: he and Shen Huixing. They could say one thing and mean another, but at the critical moment, they could open up to each other without any sincerity.

Pei Jiqing dragged Xiao Ling by the wrist as they weaved through the crowd, trailed by a long line of ragged civilians. They stumbled, some of the emaciated men relying on each other for support.

Xiao Ling suddenly screamed and threw herself into the arms of a woman. Her ribs were visibly protruding, but she held her daughter so tightly that her knuckles turned white.

"Mom, this is the executive officer's wife," Xiao Ling's voice muffled in the woman's arms, a sob tinge of tears. "They never gave up looking for us."

The woman raised her bruised and purple face, tears streaming down her cheekbones. "I know... if the Alliance hadn't given up on us, we would have rotted in the ground."

Pei Jiqing urged them to rest: "You won't be abandoned."

At the foot of the mountain, a makeshift medical tent was set up, and doctors in white coats examined the hostages one by one. Imprisoned in the darkness of the underground, they had been used as blood bags and as test instruments for drug testing. They were only hanging on by a thread.

Pei Jiqing looked at them. When he returned to the base and saw Lao Yu and Bai Cai, he didn't have time to reminisce about the past. The first thing he did was to put on his equipment and looked at them and said, "Okay, now it's time for us to do something."

Lao Yu said, "Okay!"

Bai Cai: "Let's do it!"

Ten hours after Shen Huixing lost contact with the Asian Alliance, the contact was reconnected

when the communicator was reconnected to the Asian Alliance channel. It was the news of victory. The last stronghold of the rebels had been uprooted and all the hostages were safe and sound.

The public opinion that clamored for him to resign suddenly fell silent like a duck with its neck strangled.

The spokesperson beside Shen Huixing said in a sonorous and powerful voice: "The commander's combat plan has never been interrupted. This is all a strategy."

"Madam risked her life to buy us seventy-two hours."

"As for the so-called pheromone compatibility report, it was a deliberate frame-up."

The news of victory was like a bucket of cold water, dousing the public's opposition into pieces.

Chen Huixing's spokesperson casually mentioned that "this operation was entirely dependent on the commander's precise tracking of the lady's pheromones." With just this one sentence, the direction of public opinion immediately changed.

Ordinary people perceive pheromones as if there are countless synaptic lines around them, while the lines faced by S-level Alphas are overwhelming.

But Chen Huixing can accurately grasp the one belonging to Pei Jiqing among the tens of millions of intertwined pheromone traces, not by instruments, not by data analysis, but by instinct in his bones. This is no longer something that can be explained by simple compatibility, but more like some kind of recognition engraved in the DNA.

When the medical team later extracted the data from the mask, they found that Chen Huixing's reaction speed to Pei Jiqing's pheromones was several seconds faster than the most sophisticated detector.