Ben10: A Romantic Adventure with a Gender-Swapped Class

Mo Bai's heart sank suddenly.

He immediately rolled down the car window, leaned out, and his sharp eyes scanned the surroundings like a searchlight—the sidewalk, the shop entrances, the alleyway next door... all empty except for a few passersby who glanced at him curiously.

There was no sign of a fight or struggle.

He pushed open the car door and strode to the table.

Apart from the remaining slush and water stains and an empty cup, there was nothing on the table.

He bent down and carefully examined under the table, around the chair, and even turned over the empty cups, but still found nothing.

It's like the little class just vanished into thin air.

Just as he straightened up, his brows furrowed, a strong sense of unease creeping into his heart like cold vines, his gaze inadvertently fell on the bottom of one of the slush cups.

There, something lay quietly.

A tiny, cold chip that gleams with a dark metallic sheen.

Mo Bai's pupils suddenly contracted. A chill instantly shot from the soles of her feet to the top of her head, colder than the night wind.

All the clues, all the doubts, Ben's disappearance, Elena's evasive words, Vito Valida's strange behavior... instantly ignited a fuse in his mind, connecting them into a path that he desperately wanted to avoid, yet was all too clear.

Without a moment's hesitation, he grabbed the cold chip, turned around, and rushed back to his car.

The white bouquet was roughly thrown onto the passenger seat, its delicate petals trembling slightly from the impact.

The engine roared furiously, and the car shot off like an arrow toward the other side of the city—Elena's laboratory.

The wheels screeched as they rubbed against the ground.

Mo Bai held the somewhat incongruous bouquet of white roses and eucalyptus, standing in front of the familiar metal door of Elena's laboratory.

The gentleness and embarrassment on his face had vanished, replaced by an icy seriousness and suppressed anger.

Instead of knocking politely as before, he pounded heavily on the cold metal door with his knuckles, his voice accusatory!

Boom!Boom!Boom!

After a while, the sound of the latch turning came from inside the door.

The heavy metal door was pulled open a crack, and Elena's slightly tired face appeared behind it.

When she saw that it was Mo Bai standing outside the door, especially when she saw the bouquet of flowers in his hand that was obviously a gift, her eyes lit up with surprise and a genuine smile bloomed on her face.

"Mo Bai? What happened to you...?" She called out his name in surprise, seemingly thinking he had changed his mind.

However, Mo Bai completely ignored her smile and greeting.

He swept past her like a chilling wind, forcing his way into the brightly lit laboratory.

His gaze was as sharp as a hawk's, quickly scanning every corner of the laboratory—instruments, workbenches, containers... as if searching for something.

Elena was a little confused by his attitude. She closed the door and followed behind him, her eyes fixed on the bouquet in his hand, her tone carrying a hint of barely perceptible expectation and probing.

"What's wrong? This flower... is it going to..." Before she could finish speaking, she was rudely interrupted.

Mo Bai suddenly turned around and stopped searching.

His left hand still gripped the bouquet of flowers tightly, as if it were his final anchor point.

His right hand then pulled something out of his coat pocket and held it out to Elena's eyes—it was the cold, dark crystal chip that had been found at the bottom of the slush glass!

"Chip," Mo Bai's voice was terrifyingly low, each word like an ice bead hitting the ground, "Here we go again."

Elena's smile froze instantly.

She glanced at the tiny crystal on Mo Bai's fingertip, her eyes flickered, and she subconsciously took a small step back.

......

The cold scanner emitted a low hum, and a pale blue beam of light moved slowly across the chip.

On the screen, a waterfall of data and complex molecular structure models scrolled rapidly.

Mo Bai stood to the side, staring intently at the screen. Although he couldn't understand what the technical symbols and curves represented, he could understand Elena's expression.

Elena operated the instrument, her brows furrowing deeper and deeper. After a while, she turned off the scanning beam, looked up at Mo Bai, and repeated her previous words with a deliberately calm tone.

“The scan results are in... This isn’t my chip either,” she tried to make her voice sound confident.

Without saying a word, Mo Bai reached out and picked up the chip from the scanner.

A cold sensation came from his fingertips. He didn't look at Elena, but looked down at the little thing in his palm that had brought disaster, his voice calm to the point of being cold.

"prove"

"What?" Elena seemed not to have reacted.

“I said, prove,” Mo Bai raised his head, his gaze like two sharpened daggers piercing straight at Elena, “that it really isn’t your chip.”

Elena opened her mouth as if she wanted to say something, but something seemed to be stuck in her throat.

Her gaze began to wander, and her body showed a very subtle stiffness.

That moment of hesitation and guilt was laid bare under Mo Bai's sharp gaze.

Mo Bai seized this fatal flaw, and he suddenly took a step forward, his right hand gripping the chip, almost touching Elena's nose.

His brows furrowed, his eyes burning with the fury of being deceived and the sharpness of interrogation, and his voice suddenly rose, like a thunderclap in the laboratory.

"This is your chip!"

He stared intently at Elena's face, which had turned deathly pale, and pressed her for an answer, enunciating each word clearly.

Am I right!?

The overwhelming sense of oppression and the panic of being exposed instantly shattered Elena's defenses.

Unable to withstand Mo Bai's gaze, which seemed to pierce her soul, she subconsciously lowered her head to avoid his burning eyes. Her voice was barely audible, carrying an undisguised tremor and guilt.

"right....."

She admitted it with great difficulty, as if she had used up all her strength.

After a brief silence, she raised her head, her eyes filled with regret and panic, and confessed quickly.

"About the chips... I told a little lie..." She dared not look into Mo Bai's eyes again, her gaze drifting to the cold, impersonal equipment beside her, as if the courage she needed lay there. "Before I set up that energy field, a few chips slipped away."

She took a deep breath, her voice carrying a hint of relief and naive regret.

"I thought it wouldn't cause any problems, so I..."

"Enough!" Mo Bai slammed the chip in his hand onto the metal workbench next to him.

With a sharp "snap," the bouquet of white roses he had been clutching tightly in his left hand shook violently from the sudden movement, and a few delicate petals drifted down.

He abruptly interrupted Elena's weak and feeble explanation, his voice filled with suppressed rage and an undeniable urgency.

"I don't want to hear your explanations of these past, pointless platitudes."

He leaned forward, his gaze fixed on Elena as if it were a physical object, and asked the only important question at that moment, each word carrying immense weight.

"Where is Xiaoban?! Where is she?!"

Elena trembled with fright at Mo Bai's sudden outburst of anger and the sound of the chip slamming onto the table.

She suddenly raised her head, her eyes instantly filled with innocence and confusion, and her hands even subconsciously shielded her in front of her, palms facing outward, making a defensive and vulnerable gesture.

She shook her head repeatedly, her tone filled with resentment and urgency at being wrongly accused.

"Little Ban? Didn't she go shopping with you? She was still there when I left Snow Mud King! Wasn't she with you? What... what does this have to do with me?"

Seeing Elena's desperate attempt to distance herself and her perfectly innocent act, Mo Bai's last bit of patience vanished completely.

He knew that pressing the matter further would be futile.

He stopped looking at her and stopped dwelling on her performance.

He clutched the slightly disheveled bouquet of white roses tightly in his left hand, as if it were the last breath connecting him to Xiaoban.

He turned abruptly, his sharp, knife-like gaze sweeping over the laboratory—a place filled with lies and cold, impersonal equipment—like a searchlight.

My gaze swept over rows of flashing screens, over cold metal surfaces, over containers filled with unknown liquids, and finally settled on a tightly closed metal door in the deepest part of the laboratory.

That door stood out starkly from the rest of the lab's clean, modern style.

Most strikingly, hanging on the doorknob is a huge, heavy old-fashioned padlock that gleams with a cold metallic sheen.

In this brightly lit technology laboratory, it seemed so out of place, so suspicious, as if it locked away all the unspeakable secrets.

Mo Bai's gaze was fixed on the lock. His fingers, gripping the bouquet tightly, turned white at the knuckles.