After crossing the twelve-meter-wide collapsed ground, they had already moved away from the testing area’s light, and returned to darkness.
In the dim light, the Doll Master still clearly saw Bai Chunian’s condition. He was lying on the ground. Although his arms were wrapped around Lan Bo in a protective posture, his mimetic ear features had uncontrollably manifested under the shock to his psyche. Lion ears were pressed tightly against his head, his pupils were unfocused, and his mouth was slightly open as he panted rapidly—this was a stress response.
And the only thing nearby that could possibly trigger that kind of stress reaction was— The Doll Master swept his gaze around. In the dim environment, the only thing within sight was a flickering black shadow in the corner: a white laboratory mouse used for research experiments. Before graduating from medical school, he had dealt with them every day.
Seeing that pitiful, out-of-it state, the Doll Master could not even laugh. He observed Lan Bo’s familiar, habitual movements as he comforted Bai Chunian. It looked like a routine formed many years ago.
Lan Bo paid no attention to anyone else. He knelt on the ground and pulled Xiao Bai into his arms. Bai Chunian buried his head against him for a moment, then quickly composed himself and acted as if nothing had happened. He lifted his hand to gather Lan Bo’s hair, then bit off the blue plastic fish-shaped hair tie from his wrist and tied Lan Bo’s hair into a small bun at the back of his head.
“I’m fine. I just fell and got a bit dizzy.” Bai Chunian’s face was pressed very close to Lan Bo’s cheek, occasionally brushing against it.
“Is that so. I picked up something. Come take a look.” Footsteps approached and stopped nearby. The Doll Master leaned slightly down. In his hand was a metal object. He loosened his grip, and it dropped to the ground beside Bai Chunian’s feet with a sharp clang.
Bai Chunian turned his head at the sound. The moment he saw it, his pupils contracted sharply. Like a cat startled into panic, he sprang straight up from the ground.
Lan Bo was startled by his sudden reaction and turned to look. On the ground lay what appeared to be a large medical forceps, much bigger than a standard model—more precisely, a beast claw extraction tool.
“Trauma formed during the juvenile stage creates a conditioned reflex that can last a very long time.” The Doll Master stated calmly. “A slight test of whether the closeness of the companion is inversely proportional to childhood harm. It seems not. Adult personality is more dependent on postnatal formation rather than innate genetics.”
“Get lost.” Lan Bo lifted his eyelids and shot him a sharp glance. He picked up the medical forceps from the ground. Electricity surged from his palm, steel began to glow red and melt, and molten iron flowed down to the ground, releasing searing smoke before slowly solidifying again on the floor.
“Are you okay?” He hurried back to Bai Chunian and gently patted his back. Lan Bo had lived for too long—nearly three hundred years—and most pain and fear had long become familiar to him. But Xiao Bai was different. From the moment he was born, when he was still a blank sheet of paper, he had already been violently crumpled and torn apart.
“I’m fine.” Bai Chunian supported himself on the edge of the desk in the center of the room, lowered his head, and shook it to clear his mind. His pale face quickly returned to normal color.
Lan Bo gently stroked his ears, murmuring soothing phrases into his ear.
Eris laughed at an inappropriate moment, draping an arm over Bai Chunian’s shoulder as he mocked loudly, “Bro, you’re so weak.”
“Eris.” The Doll Master called his name. With a flick of his right hand, a sewing needle threaded with blood-flecked thread dropped at Eris’s feet. Eris startled and jumped back dramatically as if electrocuted.
At the same time, a strange rhythm in his chest core made him freeze and clutch his chest, as if the mechanical core inside was beating violently.
“Empathy.” The Doll Master said in a low, admonishing tone.
“Got it, got it~” Eris muttered, retracting his mocking expression. He wandered back to the Doll Master boredly, tugging at his suspenders while looking around the room.
The humid room was filled with a fading smell of disinfectant, and a foul odor that almost overpowered it.
Bai Chunian held Lan Bo’s hand to signal he was fine, then turned on a flashlight and slowly illuminated the room inch by inch.
To the left of the desk was a yellow trash bin filled with medical waste. The Doll Master’s sewing needle and forceps had been taken from there.
The Doll Master was reading documents left in the desk drawer.
“This is the examination room for experimental subjects who passed ability testing.” He closed the mold-spotted documents and pushed the drawer back in, which contained stethoscopes, thermometers, and other medical tools.
In the dark corner, mice squeaked. Bai Chunian carefully moved the flashlight beam over and saw a door at the far right end of the room, but when he pushed it, it wouldn’t budge.
He turned and noticed a crack in the wall.
“The wall is cracked.” Bai Chunian followed the wall farthest from the mice to the corner and traced the crack with his fingertips. “It looks like drilling in the next room forced it open.” But the crack was too small; even shining a light inside revealed nothing.
As he moved along the wall, his foot suddenly kicked something. He crouched down to inspect it: a refrigeration freezer. Scattered around it were broken reagent tubes. After so long, many chemicals had already evaporated, leaving stains on the floor.
“Xiao Bai, I just ate a melon.” Lan Bo squeezed in beside him. Bai Chunian turned around and saw Lan Bo holding a squeaking mouse by the tail, swinging it around and tossing it into the collapsed pit outside the room.
“It’s dead now,” Lan Bo said reassuringly.
“…Where did you even find a melon?”
“In the fruit basket by the clothes rack.”
“Wasn’t that all rotten? It stank.”
“The melon wasn’t rotten.”
“Don’t just eat random things,” Bai Chunian sighed. He found that the freezer couldn’t be opened directly. It had a password panel, but the screen was black due to a power outage.
These types of locks were similar to the one in the entrance stairwell. When powered, a password was required; when unpowered, the hydraulic lock automatically engaged and locked it from both sides. It couldn’t be opened unless forcibly destroyed—but the material was the same as the metal panel used for the strength test, not something just anyone could break.
“There’s a power control box here.” The Doll Master illuminated the left wall with his thumb flashlight, opened the cover of the control box, and examined it closely. “The switch was manually turned off.” He flipped the main switch upward.
A faint hissing came from the ceiling lights, and then with a soft pop, they lit up.
The room was suddenly flooded with brightness. All three of them—except Eris—raised a hand to shield their eyes, adjusting to the abrupt glare.
“Not bad. Much brighter now.” In front of Bai Chunian, the freezer also lit up with a green indicator showing it was running again. The keypad illuminated, prompting for a six-digit password. Bai Chunian patiently took a decoder from his backpack, connected it to the keypad, and waited for it to read.
“What are you even fighting with the cabinet for? If there’s a door, just smash through it.” Eris was already too impatient, banging on the door again. But something on the other side seemed to be blocking it, making it difficult to push open.
Bai Chunian’s decoder finished reading. The password auto-filled, and the freezer’s hydraulic lock released with a burst of air.
No one even needed to act—the freezer lid practically exploded open on its own. With a loud bang, swarms of flies burst out like a black, buzzing storm, carrying a wave of intense stench.
Lan Bo snapped his tail and released a lightning net in front of Xiao Bai, covering the freezer. The flies crackled and burned as they hit the electric grid, falling one after another. Within a minute or two, most of them had been cleared.
Inside the freezer was a gruesome, blood-soaked scene. The interior walls were covered in filthy stains of blood and grime. A heavily decomposed, headless corpse crouched curled up inside, wearing a white lab coat marked with “109 Research Institute.”
“Heh. That smell… this one’s been dead a while.” Bai Chunian lifted the collar of his combat suit and pulled up a small metal half-mask respirator over his mouth and nose. “Check if there’s anything useful on him.”
Lan Bo leaned over the freezer edge and reached inside to search. Blood, rot, and bodily fluids smeared his arm, but within seconds they were purified away, leaving him spotless no matter how long he searched.
The Doll Master couldn’t help but think: merfolk truly were ancient, mysterious, and pure beings. Only such high-level lifeforms—those capable of guiding their planet toward restoration rather than destruction—were worthy of existing in this world.
Lan Bo found an ID card in the corpse’s pocket. According to the magnetic card, the deceased was named Abido, an alpha assigned to the “Specimen Room” department.
Eris was still pounding on the door, making noise without pause. Bai Chunian rested his chin in his hand, thinking over what had happened in the room.
The Doll Master spoke: “Two points. First, a human without a head cannot perform such a complex action as crawling into a freezer and closing the lid by itself. Second, the corpse’s posture is natural; it was not placed there manually. He likely emptied the freezer, then crawled inside to hide from something. That implies a pursuer behind him. Whether human or experimental subject is unclear.”
Bai Chunian added, “He ran out, opened the freezer with a code, left it open, then went to cut power, came back to hide inside and lock himself in. The killer got there first, cut off his head, and slammed the lid shut.”
The Doll Master offered another possibility: “Or he crawled in first, then was decapitated by the killer, who then closed the lid and cut the power afterward.”
Bai Chunian: “Speaking of which… where’s the head?”
“……”
“Forget it. Not important. We’ll think about it later.”
He walked over to Eris, who was still violently shaking the door.
“It’s not locked. But it won’t move. Feels like something heavy is pressing against it on the other side.” Eris shook out his hand.
Bai Chunian tried as well. Indeed, it didn’t budge easily—the door felt solid, as if something was tightly wedged behind it.
Lan Bo also pushed.
From the crack in the door came the faint crackling sound of an electric mosquito swatter killing insects.
The door suddenly creaked open with no resistance. Lan Bo had pushed too hard and stumbled forward, almost falling inside before Bai Chunian grabbed his arm and pulled him back.
Lan Bo frowned and brushed dust off his shoulder. “There’s nothing blocking it.”
“Go in first.” Bai Chunian carefully leaned in, scanning the situation. Inside, now bright due to restored power, was a setup similar to a subway security checkpoint—except instead of scanning luggage, it scanned people.
Outside the enclosed inspection tunnel was a duty desk with a computer used to view scan imaging.
Lan Bo was familiar with this place and stepped straight into the X-ray passage, pulling aside the lead curtain without hesitation. Eris, also accustomed to the institute’s procedures, followed without concern, dragging the Doll Master along.
Bai Chunian deliberately slowed his pace. When he stepped onto the conveyor belt, he quietly stepped back down and sat at the inspection computer.
He entered the authorization code from Abido’s ID card.
The monitor successfully displayed X-ray imaging of the inspection process.
The first to pass through was Lan Bo. Only his skeletal structure could be seen; his internal organs were completely obscured by chaotic electric currents, making imaging impossible.
Because of this, Lan Bo had gone undetected in the breeding facility and research institute, and had been injected with a mimetic drug that led to tragedy.
“Lan Bo…” Bai Chunian sighed deeply.
After Lan Bo’s scan moved on, Eris ran through next. His body appeared as a solid spherical jointed doll—completely opaque except for the gland at the back of his neck, which showed as semi-transparent like a normal organ. The rest of him was porcelain white and fully impenetrable.
What Bai Chunian most wanted to see was where the Sacred Clockwork had been hidden by the Doll Master. Sure enough, there was a mechanism in his apron pocket—the Sacred Clockwork was concealed inside a hidden compartment.
Aside from that, the Doll Master’s organs and bones were identical to a normal human’s… except for the heart.
Strangely, that area of the heart appeared completely opaque and unreadable.