Bai Chunian used his bone-steelized left hand to twist off a section of steel beam, pinching the tip into a sharp blade, which he wedged into the sealed elevator door seam and forced it open.
“Light ahead. Be careful.”
“en.”
Once they forced a gap open, Lan Bo inserted his fingers into the crack and tore the heavy metal doors apart in one motion, then crawled out through the opening.
Bai Chunian followed him out.
Beyond the sealed elevator was a small room lit by purple sterilization lamps. Ahead was a password security door, but it was already open—just pushed aside.
“Eris and the others ran off and even took my decoder. At least give it back…” Bai Chunian muttered while searching the area.
After passing several open security doors, the two of them were momentarily stunned by the vast space before them.
Dense arrays of shadowless lamps and wall lights illuminated the area so brightly that their eyes, accustomed to darkness, struggled to adjust.
Bai Chunian glanced back at the sign on the door: “Headquarters Cultivation Zone.”
Before them stretched thousands of transparent incubation pods, arranged neatly like library shelves. The control stations beside them were empty, and the researchers who should have been operating them were nowhere to be seen.
Bai Chunian held his breath and listened carefully. Lan Bo climbed onto the ceiling, searching for and disabling surveillance cameras.
“Juvenile cultivation pods.” Bai Chunian crouched beside a small transparent chamber and tapped it. It was empty, and the oxygen supply had been manually shut off. On the lower right corner was a photo of the intended occupant—a snow-white, fluffy seal pup.
“The entire juvenile cultivation area is empty. Every pod is empty.” He brushed dust off his palm and walked deeper along the corridor.
Lan Bo moved between vertically arranged capsule-shaped pods, using his tail to balance as electric arcs crackled faintly through it.
Past the juvenile zone, they entered the sub-adult experimental subject area—also completely empty.
“Back when the institute planned a mass destruction at the Walhua pharmaceutical plant, Eris and the Puppet Master intercepted it midway and brought the subjects to Canada. I wonder if any of those came from here.”
Bai Chunian pulled out a map. “Let’s see what it says.”
The annotation for this section simply read: “N/A.”
“…” Bai Chunian scratched his head and closed the map. “The main reagent storage is deeper inside, but Lin Deng didn’t map these internal experimental zones. Probably after Ailian expanded the trade, the zones were reorganized and Lin Deng had already been expelled.”
Lan Bo closed his eyes slightly, lifting his chin as he filtered faint scents in the air. When he opened them again, his gaze turned sharp. “I sense a similar presence. At the deepest point.”
“Then let’s go,” Bai Chunian said, moving forward.
After passing the sub-adult zone and several corridors with failed security doors, they entered the mature experimental zone. These pods were also empty. Logically, mature subjects should have been in their prime sales period, so mass removal was unlikely—but evacuating them all in such a short time also seemed impossible.
A bad premonition rose in Bai Chunian’s mind. He quickened his pace. “Hurry. We’ll blast through the south wall of the main reagent storage and get out of here quickly.”
After a few more doors, golden-letter laser engraving appeared on the wall: “Elite Zone.”
Inside, instead of transparent pods, there were individual sealed square chambers. Each had a metal door and an independent control unit. The only visible information was the name and ID of the subject inside—nothing else could be seen.
He tried the control panel; it was locked. Then he swiped the ID cards of the researchers Abbydo and Reno, but the screen displayed: “You do not have permission.”
“No permission…” Bai Chunian pressed his ear against one of the sealed chambers. There seemed to be water flowing inside.
Bai Chunian discovered a liquid delivery pipe outside the square-box cultivation chambers, extending along the corridor toward the depths. Every chamber had an identical pipe extending outward, all of them systematically converging together. For a moment, he couldn’t see where they led, so he could only follow the direction of the pipeline.
As he walked, Bai Chunian examined the square-box cultivation chambers. It seemed that everything in the elite zone belonged to A3-level experimental subjects, and anything below maturity level five was not even qualified to be housed here.
The sheer number of square-box chambers made Bai Chunian’s spine turn cold. Under natural conditions, the probability of developing an A3 differentiation gland was minuscule. Yet Ailian had managed to cultivate such an astonishing number of A3-level experimental subjects. This was impossible under purely natural circumstances—it could only be achieved through drugs.
And those who were forcibly pushed to A3 through pharmaceuticals were like beings who had overdrawn their lives in advance: deformed or short-lived. But the research institute did not care. As long as these “products” could pass a physical inspection stamp certifying A3 differentiation, they could be packaged and sold, exchanged for tens of billions in profit.
Walking deeper along the densely packed chambers on both sides, Bai Chunian suddenly saw a pool of blood on the ground. He crouched to inspect it. The blood had already dried and turned black; when he touched it, it crumbled into dust.
The further they went, the more frequent the blood became. Turning another corner, Bai Chunian abruptly stopped and stepped back.
Armed security personnel lay scattered across the ground. Their deaths were gruesome. One of them had a shattered skull, as if his face had been grabbed and crushed until half his head was obliterated.
Lan Bo climbed onto an open empty chamber and tapped the nameplate with his tail tip. “Unit 200. The Immortal Revenant’s cultivation chamber. He escaped from here.”
Lan Bo crawled inside. Apart from a bed, there was nothing else. Under the bed were two crumpled tissues. He leaned in and sniffed them—faint, lingering pheromones of tuberose drifted from them.
It was Pearl’s scent.
Bai Chunian also entered. Seeing Lan Bo staring at the used tissues, he quietly crouched beside him and placed a hand on Omega’s head in comfort.
“He cried. Was he thinking of us?” Bai Chunian lowered his eyes.
“What’s there to cry about.” Lan Bo shook his head to signal he didn’t need comfort, then turned and flicked the tissues away with his tail.
After a moment of hesitation, he quietly picked them back up and stuffed them into his backpack.
His sneaky actions were all seen by Bai Chunian, who could only suppress the ache in his chest and pull Lan Bo away.
Just as they were about to head toward the main reagent storage, Bai Chunian suddenly sensed something wrong.
He snapped his head back.
The corridor they had come from was now blocked by a square-box cultivation chamber, sealing the path completely. Bai Chunian rushed over to inspect it, lying down and peering through a gap at the bottom—he saw rails on the ground. The chamber had been moved here by mechanical control.
At the same time, while Lan Bo was moving toward the reagent storage, another chamber slid rapidly along the rail system. The speed was so fast that Lan Bo was forced to retreat or risk being crushed.
Bai Chunian grabbed Lan Bo’s arm and yanked him out of the narrowing gap just in time. The fish tail slipped out the last second before the chamber fully sealed the path.
Lan Bo fell into Bai Chunian’s arms. He checked his tail for injuries, his fins turning red in anger.
“Nali. (What happened?)”
“Ailian set a trap.” Bai Chunian scanned their surroundings.
They were now surrounded by twelve extremely sturdy square-box chambers, forming a narrow rectangular prison. Beneath them was the floor, above was the ceiling. After inspection, there was no gap large enough for a human body to pass through.
Bai Chunian pulled Lan Bo’s tail to measure distance, dragging him from one end to the other. Lan Bo’s tail was a standard three meters long. The distance between front and back chambers was nine meters; left and right was three.
“Lan Bo, try the ceiling and see if we can get out.”
“en.” Lan Bo climbed up and struck the ceiling once. A heavy punch left a dent. Several more strikes followed, but the solid metal ceiling remained intact.
He tested the floor the same way—same result.
“Forget it. Don’t waste energy.” Bai Chunian knew they were deep in the lower cultivation zone. Above them were hundreds of meters of earth and structure. Ailian had deliberately chosen this terrain advantage, intending to bury them here along with all evidence of the headquarters cultivation zone. Even if investigated later, there would be no proof left.
“Xiao Bai, the chambers are moving,” Lan Bo said, curling his tail tip.
Sitting against one chamber wall, he stretched his tail out. Moments ago it could just barely reach the opposite wall; now it could no longer stretch fully. The space around them was slowly shrinking.
Bai Chunian’s expression tightened.
“There must be a flaw. We can get out.” He inspected every external structure of the chambers.
He pressed his palm against the smooth surface, closed his eyes, and slowly felt along it. Suddenly, he opened them.
“Lan Bo, there’s a seam here.”
“en?” Lan Bo climbed over and scraped at the spot with his claws. A layer of paint peeled away, revealing a nearly invisible metal joint beneath.
“It’s real.” Lan Bo pried harder, exposing screws underneath.
Bai Chunian pulled out a multifunctional military knife, extended a flathead screwdriver, and began loosening the screws one by one.
They had to open at least one chamber. If time ran out and the space shrank further, they could at least enter the chamber to avoid being crushed.
The screws had been machine-tightened. Bai Chunian worked carefully, each turn difficult, worried the screwdriver might snap as he forced it loose.
After the six screws had been removed, Lan Bo forcefully pried up one corner of the ten-centimeter-thick metal casing, exposing the cluster of wires inside.
“Okay, give it to me.” Bai Chunian knelt on the ground and bent over to sort through the wires. Following the direction of the circuit board connections, he picked out a main wire and cut away the insulating sheath with a knife, exposing the conductive metal strands.
Lan Bo extended his fish tail inside, the tip crackling with electricity. The cultivation chamber instantly short-circuited and malfunctioned, and the sealed outer wall suddenly became completely transparent. The situation inside the chamber was now visible at a glance.
Suspended inside the sealed chamber filled with cultivation fluid was a humanoid experimental subject. A pair of white fluffy wings hung from her back, and white fuzzy antennae grew from the top of her head. Astonishingly, it was a female moth experimental subject, her eyes tightly shut, as though sleeping in a nightmare.
“Wasn’t it empty?”
The cultivation chambers were still slowly moving toward the center. Territorial as Lan Bo was, he had already begun feeling irritable from the narrowing space.
Lan Bo released a powerful electric current. The current passed through the wires and instantly surged through all the interconnected cultivation chambers. In an instant, the outer walls of all twelve chambers turned transparent at the same time, and inside each one floated a sleeping experimental subject.
Through the transparent chambers, Bai Chunian noticed that each chamber had a tube extending from it. Following the tangled tubes, he discovered they all connected to a single cultivation chamber, supplying nutrients to the experimental subject inside.
It could be said that these A3-class experimental subjects, each as high as mature stage level eight, were nothing more than feed.
And inside the cultivation chamber receiving the nourishment offerings stood suspended a completely gray-white, colorless albino devil ray mermaid.
“Pearl…” Cold sweat suddenly seeped from Bai Chunian’s palms. Lan Bo crawled over as well, pressing against the transparent outer wall and sniffing.
“This is Pearl’s undead summoning body,” Bai Chunian said, as though jolted awake. “The one outside, the one controlled by the undead—he has color, blue eyes and pink-white scales. He is—”
“A corpse,” Lan Bo said softly.
Outside the cultivation chamber containing Pearl’s undead summoning body, the screen on the independent control console suddenly unlocked itself, automatically popping up a video window.
Aileen sat elegantly in a swivel chair holding a wine glass, gently swirling the red wine with refined ease. Supporting her head with one hand, she chuckled softly. “I knew you would eventually find this place. Since you’re here, I have a gift for you. He’s very strong.”