Chapter 61: The Iron Law of the Execution Department

"Mingfei, don't!"
"Mingfei, don't leave!"
In the makeshift medical center of the temporary camp, the doctor who had just finished setting Gao Pi's bones frowned as he looked at the operation commander, who was pressing his face against the ground with a bright red chest. He felt that this old foreign man was truly out of his mind.
Having inhaled only a tiny bit of Frigga anesthetic, how on earth did he manage to talk nonsense and writhe around as if he had taken hallucinogens?
His complexion was so miserable and his voice so tragic that anyone unaware would think his wife had run off with someone else.
"Give Comrade Gundersen an injection."
Normally, splashing a basin of cold water would be enough to wake someone from this dosage, but considering the man's advanced age, complications from a cold or fever would be troublesome. In the end, the doctor instructed a nurse to give him a shot.
The injection took effect rapidly. Almost as soon as the needle was withdrawn, Gundersen opened his eyes.
Unsurprisingly, his very first words upon waking were: "Mingfei, don't leave."
With that posture and expression, if one were to shave the front of his head into a queue, dye his hair black, and flare his nostrils a bit more, he would be the spitting image of an internet meme.
Just at that moment, Sake De Aki, who had been running about on missions all night with a dust-covered face, dragged her exhausted body over from afar.
As she approached, she saw Gundersen kneeling on the ground, gazing affectionately into the distance. Even his thick, glass-bottomed spectacles could not conceal the sorrow and reluctance in his eyes.
Beside him, Ye Sheng lay on the ground with a pale face, one hand half-clenched over his chest while the other hung limply toward the earth. His lips were stained crimson with blood, making him look as though he had departed in profound peace.
Combined with the dim lighting, the helpless-looking doctor, the blood on Professor Gundersen's chest, and the lifeless form of Ye Sheng, a vivid scene instantly flashed through Sake De Aki's mind:
A Gaki, having narrowly escaped the encirclement, had bypassed numerous obstacles to quietly infiltrate the temporary camp, launching a surprise attack on Professor Gundersen as he cared for Ye Sheng's condition!
At the exact moment when razor-sharp claws were about to pierce Professor Gundersen, Ye Sheng had shoved him aside, using his own body to absorb the fatal blow.
Though the Gaki was eventually eliminated by others who rushed to the scene, yet...
At the thought of a dying Ye Sheng collapsing powerlessly into the professor's arms, coughing up blood while delivering his final words, Sake De Aki's complexion instantly turned as pale as paper.
"Ye Sheng!"
The Uzi slipped from her hand and clattered to the ground. Stumbling forward, she fell helplessly to her knees beside Ye Sheng.
Tears, like a broken string of pearls, gushed uncontrollably from her eyes, slowly tracing down her dust-stained, delicate cheeks to carve mottled, damp tracks.
Her pupils mirrored Ye Sheng's pale face, while her mind replayed every single heartwarming and joyful moment they had spent together:
his mischievous, cunning smile when playing pranks; his resolute yet faintly vulnerable figure during missions; and that indescribable, subtle sentiment exchanged in glances whenever they were alone together.
The girl's heart was squeezed tight by these memories, and she finally choked back a sob, cupping the boy's still-warm hand with trembling palms and pressing it tightly against her cheek.
She yearned, in this final moment, to pour out the deeply buried and unvoiced feelings she held for him, praying that his not-yet-fully-departed soul might hear them.
Yet, just as these countless words were about to pour forth, a nurse holding a tray quietly stepped closer, gently taking the boy's right hand—which still retained its body weight and warmth—from her grasp, as if conducting a silent ritual of farewell:
"Excuse me, please make way. I need to administer the antidote to Special Agent Ye."
Watching as the nurse used an alcohol swab on the back of his hand and smoothly pushed a full syringe of medicine into him, Sake De Aki stood frozen in a daze:
"Na... Nani?"
Under the shock, the girl—whose gentle temperament resembled that of a traditional Yamato Nadeshiko—blurted out her native language, casting a look of utter disbelief mixed with a plea for help toward Professor Gundersen.
She found him looking at her with a complex gaze woven from "What on earth are you doing?" and "Are you two actually in that kind of relationship?", while the doctor and nurse nearby also wore the knowing expressions of veterans, their eyes carrying a sentimental air that seemed to say youth is truly wonderful.
Yet, during the brief moment she stood there stunned, Ye Sheng, who had been lying on the ground like a corpse, suddenly began to cough and quickly blinked his eyes open.
At that instant, Sake De Aki desperately wished she could find a crack in the ground to crawl into, or simply bury her head against Ye Sheng's chest and play the ostrich.
Ultimately, however, she did not run away from this socially agonizing moment. Instead, she threw a punch at Ye Sheng's chest and muttered softly, "Baka!"
Having just regained consciousness from his faint, Ye Sheng's memory was still frozen on the image of Lu Mingfei snatching his gun. Seeing a crowd gathered around him and being lightly struck by his partner and ambiguous romantic interest, he felt rather bewildered.
Just as he was about to ask, he heard Professor Gundersen chime in with a melancholic tone:
"I used to think Nonno and the others were just joking around, but I never expected you two were actually serious."
"Huh?" Hearing this, Ye Sheng rose abruptly from his bed of supposed death, opening his mouth to offer an explanation, but paused upon catching sight of Sake De Aki's face—streaked with gray and white, stained with tears like a little calico cat.
"I'll report your situation to Professor Mance and Professor Schneider. Neither of you will participate in the subsequent operations for now."
Looking at this ace pair of underwater operations experts from the Execution Bureau, the expression on Gundersen's face was unprecedentedly grave, and his tone left no room for argument.
Seeing this, Ye Sheng wanted to say something, but ultimately swallowed the words back.
The Execution Bureau held an ironclad rule: romantic relationships between partners performing coordinated underwater operations were strictly prohibited.
Rumors had it that someone had once violated this discipline, leading to heavy losses during an operation in the Greenland Ice Sea several years prior.
No one knew what that operation entailed, nor whether those who participated were still alive, but at least in the eyes of the public, that task force had been utterly annihilated.
Ye Sheng could not deny his feelings for Sake De Aki; he had simply thought that because their coordination was the most seamless and their underwater missions had never failed, perhaps they could circumvent tragedy.
He had even planned to confess his feelings to Aki once the Gormenghast Operation concluded, using the dragon tomb of the King of Bronze and Fire as the catalyst for the elevation of their relationship.
That way, even if they could no longer execute underwater missions together, it would still be fine. Should an accident truly occur, only he would die, without implicating Aki.
"Professor, it's not like that, we..." Ye Sheng chose default silence, but Sake De Aki still wanted to put up a struggle.
She knew Ye Sheng was a man born for the water, and she understood that he wanted to carve out a name for himself within the Execution Bureau. As his soul partner, the only one who could unconditionally and unreservedly cooperate with him in perfect synchronicity, how could they possibly stop their advance in a place like this?
Yet, before she could finish, Ye Sheng pressed down on her hand and gave a slight shake of his head, signaling that some things needed no further words.
The boy with lips stained crimson glossed over this unpleasant topic, turning his head to search for the fellow who had seized his sidearm. However, scanning his surroundings yielded no trace of Lu Mingfei's figure, prompting him to ask in startled astonishment:
"Professor, where did Lu Mingfei go? That brat took my gun!"
"Ah? Oh no, I forgot all about Mingfei!"
Reminded thusly, the single-tracked Gundersen sprang up from the ground, grabbed the walkie-talkie, and issued a loud command instructing a portion of the cleanup crew to split off and search for Lu Mingfei.
He heavily emphasized that Lu Mingfei was a crack shot equipped with a firearm and Frigga bullets, while instructing the searchers to avoid harming him as much as possible and bring him back safely.
Hearing those orders, the men assigned to the search nearly cursed Gundersen's parents and eighteen generations of ancestors, yet the search still had to be conducted.
Following the tracks all the way, however, aside from thumbtacks from tactical boot soles and stinky stink-bombs buried beneath fragments of Gakis, they found absolutely nothing.
Upon learning of this result, Gundersen felt as though his long-coveted title of Cassell lifetime professor was drifting further and further away, leaving him with no choice but to report back to headquarters.