“The storm team’s already been attacked. If we retreat now, who knows what ambush we’ll run into.” Bai Chunian grabbed Lan Bo and sprinted down the corridor, speaking into the IOA tech operator’s headset.
“Saint-Fei Island, Berner Pharmaceutical Factory, under attack by unknown test subjects. Status of survivors uncertain. Request reinforcement for evacuation of the injured. Additionally, storm team outside the island has been exposed. End transmission.”
Turning to the others: “Lan Bo and I clear the third floor of the mid-level. Bi Lanxing, deploy new tactics for the rest.”
“Yes.”
Under pressure, Bi Lanxing had shed his initial nervousness, calmly reorganizing the team into three groups: Bai Chunian and Lan Bo to the third floor; Lu Yan and Ying with Doctor Han on the second; Bi Lanxing taking Tan Qing and Tan Yang to the first floor, maintaining control of the mid-level monitoring room.
Bi Lanxing instructed: “Quickly assess the mid-level. Xiao Xun, report Wangliang’s location from outside. Once Bai Chunian and Lan Bo clear anomalies on the third floor, proceed to the inner floor. Others follow after completing searches.”
Bai Chunian added: “Document all suspicious points. Every operative has a micro-camera—not for selfies or scenery. On the second floor, I saw a fool locked in a room—be careful as you pass. Completing this mission likely means early promotion for you trainees, so stay sharp.”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
Han Xingqian added: “Wangliang’s memories involve a person who struck a deal to meet him at the pharmaceutical factory. His aggression is moderate; we can avoid him and see where he intends to go.”
The outer floor of Berner Pharmaceutical housed raw materials, goods for transport, and large experimental and livestock animals. The mid-level held offices, data rooms, and small-scale experimental animals.
Bai Chunian chambered a pistol, moving along the dark, powerless circular corridor. Lan Bo followed, crawling along the wall with a micro-submachine, his tail’s blue glow illuminating the path. Various weapons clinked softly against his body.
Near D Zone, Bai Chunian suddenly stepped into a slick, viscous substance.
Lan Bo sniffed the air—a heavy stench of blood—and raised his tail to illuminate the corridor. Floor tiles were soaked; walls and windows bore mottled bloodstains.
Bai Chunian held Lan Bo still, signaling him not to move.
Lan Bo, unconcerned, casually examined his claws. “Want me to make this island disappear? Just say the word.”
“Can’t do that. Key evidence’s here—drowning it would ruin everything.” Bai Chunian kept one hand on his gun, the other on Lan Bo to stay together, while his throat-collar cameras automatically captured images and transmitted them to IOA HQ. “Berner Pharmaceutical is a secret subsidiary of the 109 Research Institute. They delegate what the Institute dare not do openly. You know what I intend.”
“No idea.” Lan Bo scratched his tail.
“Retrieve what was left at the Institute,” Bai Chunian said cautiously. “I remember what you told me before.”
“It’s not important,” Lan Bo replied, gazing elsewhere. “I’ve lost everything before; there’s nothing I can’t live without.”
“Ah, except me.” Lan Bo crawled to Bai Chunian, brushing his cheek against him. “Without you, my heart would break, the seas would die, this planet would perish. My ancestors foretold the planet’s death—probably the day I lose you.”
“You…” Bai Chunian muttered. Unlike Lan Bo, he wasn’t used to speaking plainly like this.
“Why are you so warm?” Lan Bo licked Bai Chunian’s cheek. “Has anyone ever called you cute? Everyone wants to take you home. I can’t understand why anyone would hurt you.”
“Doing serious work here. You’re getting carried away—save the lovey-dovey talk for home. You’ll just pester me for OBE as soon as we’re back.”
Suddenly, a distant noise grew closer. From the dark corridor, a quadruped lunged with a hoarse roar, like a dying hair dryer.
Its face looked as if forcefully pulled from both sides, skull deformed; the eye sockets could barely hold the eyes, which nearly bulged entirely from beneath the lids.
It wore a torn, bloodstained researcher uniform. Its mouth split to the ears in a grotesque grin, forehead marked with an inverted triangle of gold, green, and blue dots.
Bai Chunian raised his hand to shield Lan Bo, firing continuously. Bullets tore through its head and heart.
The impact sent it flying, but no blood spurted. The humanoid creature collapsed like a deflated balloon, spewing maggots from the bullet holes.
A pungent, rancid stench filled the corridor—like a dead rat fermented in a kimchi jar, then microwaved.
Bi Lanxing’s voice came over the comm: “I hear gunfire. Situation?”
“All clear. Just another circular virus infection, old trick,” Bai Chunian replied—then froze. A massive, spiked, tooth-filled mouth gaped right in front of him.
“Ah, close it already.” Bai Chunian snapped Lan Bo’s mouth shut, crouching by the corpse to examine it while muttering, “You’re scarier than it was.”
Lan Bo’s mouth could open to a horrifying extent, lined with razor-sharp teeth capable of crushing even metal with ease.
“There’s a lot of debris in the ocean that needed clearing. At first, I was slow, but over time, evolution increased my efficiency.” Once his mouth closed to normal size, Lan Bo crept up to Bai Chunian and whispered, “You have to accept my flaws; even kings aren’t perfect.”
“Not true. Perfect as can be. I just like a wife who could bite my head off in one gulp.” Bai Chunian pulled a handkerchief from his pocket to cover his nose and mouth, crouching to search the corpse for useful items.
“From appearances, you couldn’t tell. This person must have been dead a long time… the one whose head you just bit off was probably the same. Infested with maggots—remember to brush your teeth back home.”
Lan Bo pinched his nose and regurgitated a puddle of purified blue light jellyfish. His strong cleansing ability allowed him to maintain internal and external hygiene, essential for health.
“The land is truly disgusting.” Lan Bo chewed a small blue jellyfish to freshen his breath.
“It must be the circular virus. The mid-level suffered an incident, yet the outer floor remained completely unaffected. Incredible virus.”
The dead researcher wore a finance office badge. Bai Chunian retrieved a ring of keys from his pocket.
As he was about to stand, a hand suddenly grabbed his wrist. No webbing—definitely not Lan Bo’s.
Bai Chunian’s eyes widened. The corpse’s gaze locked with his; the slack, sunken pupils moved, and the inverted triangular gold-and-blue pattern on its forehead shimmered like gemstones.
The corpse leapt up, its hands acting like sharp pincers, slashing at Bai Chunian. Luckily, he dodged in time—the claws gouged three deep trenches in his bulletproof vest.
Bai Chunian stepped back, firing his gun. Lan Bo’s tail wrapped around the frenzied creature, his sharp fin spines piercing the corpse, followed by his blade-like fins slicing it into countless pieces.
Lan Bo landed and retracted his spines, purifying the blood that soaked him, absorbing the energy.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
At Enxi Hospital, circular virus infections were always terminated with a headshot, but this one seemed different.
“Finance office—let’s check it out.” Bai Chunian tossed the keys in his hand, following the fire escape map on the wall. He unlocked the office, ensured all corners were clear, and began rifling through desks and shelves.
Under one desk, a locked cabinet caught his eye. Trying different keys, he found one that fit. Inside were thick stacks of purchase invoices.
“Help me verify these.” Crouching, Bai Chunian flipped through the invoices quickly. They were arranged chronologically. Estimating the timing, he compared them to Wangliang Sandglass entries and found a matching invoice.
He pulled it out and scanned the preceding and following pages. Large factories rarely purchased single test subjects—usually they bought in batches to save on transport costs.
Berner Pharmaceutical technically only needed to request test subjects from the Institute; paying for them was just a tax loophole trick, something Bai Chunian had learned from Uncle Jin.
Lan Bo grabbed a chair, settling in and pulling out some rations.
“Seven purchased, six sold. Wangliang returned on his own after being sold.” Bai Chunian organized the invoices. “One left… Test Subject 723, Qishenggu.”
“Qishenggu… what is that?” Bai Chunian had grown up at the breeding base, only seeing a few, mostly defective subjects. Lan Bo had seen more finished products at the 109 Research Institute.
Judging by special weapon numbering: 7 indicates avian-type glands, 2 indicates 20% mimicry (tail mimicry), 3 indicates alteration-type ability—like the Wangliang Sandglass.
“I’ve heard of him. Researchers called him Ji Sheng Gu.” Lan Bo recalled. “A few nearby test subjects went to fight him… never returned. Probably eaten.”
“Keep the data.” Bai Chunian photographed the useful documents and sent them to HQ.
As they focused on the invoices, faint, distant music drifted down the corridor. Bai Chunian, sensing movement, packed up the invoices and moved toward the door, gun raised, hugging the wall.
He exited the finance office, swapped out an empty magazine, chambered a new one. “Lan Bo, come here—don’t get trapped inside.”
Noise deep in the corridor grew louder.
Bi Lanxing finally reached the mid-level monitoring room. It was empty, bloodstained. A chair lay overturned with a body shot to pieces by a shotgun, clad in the pharmaceutical factory’s white uniform.
Bi Lanxing pushed the corpse aside, sat down, connected the decoder to the computer, and quickly adjusted the feed, checking corridors and rooms from the first floor. Some rooms held similarly mangled corpses, while locked rooms contained strange, giggling living humans. Overall, threats appeared minimal.
He switched to the second floor feed. Dr. Han, Lu Yan, and Ying finished searching, examining a corpse, glancing upward repeatedly.
“What are they looking at…” Bi Lanxing shifted the monitor to the third floor, checking each room.
The C-to-D zone connecting corridor was locked. On the third floor, this was the only path to the inner floor. To reach it, one had to pass through this corridor.
From the silent surveillance feed, a dark liquid could be seen seeping out from the bottom of the tightly closed steel doors.
Xiao Xun’s voice cut through coldly: “I see someone walking down the connecting corridor, but there’s no light. Nothing else is visible.”
“Alive?” Bai Chunian asked.
“…What else?” Xiao Xun replied.
Bai Chunian warned, “There’s more than one monster here. Be careful.”
“I’m not certain. The universal console calculated a 33.33% probability that the target poses a threat,” Xiao Xun reported.
“Do you hear that?”
Lu Yan pricked his ears—besides Bai Chunian, he had the sharpest hearing in the group.
“Music…” Lu Yan scanned for the source. “Coming from the inner floor. Sounds like wind chimes.”
The corpse Bi Lanxing had set on the ground slowly displayed a gold-green-blue inverted triangular pattern on its forehead, and its fingers twitched slightly.
Trained in strict control exercises, Bi Lanxing had developed the habit of constantly monitoring his surroundings. Hearing the faint rustle of clothing, he activated a Thorned Vine Armor just in time. The sudden corpse bit down on the tough vines, immobilized.
Calmly, Bi Lanxing pressed his pistol to the corpse’s head, firing multiple times while using his left hand to manipulate the computer mouse. Urgently, he reported to Bai Chunian: “I see them—many people trapped in the third-floor corridor, banging on doors. The glass panels are cracked. They were lying on the floor… like something woke them.”
He unplugged the decoder from the main unit, wrapped the frenzied corpse in vines, snapped a photo with the camera in his collar, then rolled out of the monitoring room, signaling Tan Qing and Tan Yang to attack.
“Chain blast!” The twins interlocked their fingers, unleashing a surge of blue flame inside the room. The explosion shattered the monitoring room, blue fire sweeping through the circular corridor. The consecutive blasts smashed into the walls, sending the rushing corpses flying.
“Move, meet upstairs.” Bi Lanxing stepped out of the blue flames, composed.
On the third-floor circular corridor, footfalls became increasingly dense and chaotic.
The explosions downstairs shook the floor. Bai Chunian steadied himself, counting remaining ammo—130 rounds—and faced the dark, roaring chaos ahead.
“Sounds bad… I didn’t bring heavy weapons.”
“Not letting us eat, just making us work,” Lan Bo grumbled. He had been about to unwrap compressed rations and vacuum-sealed ham from his ammo belt, but shoved them back, swapping his micro-SMG to both hands. His tail fins glowed from blue to red.
A massive crash of the iron door erupted. The monsters that had been blocked outside surged in, some climbing walls and leaping between them, others dragging themselves on the ground, still others moving like normal circular-virus-infected humans.
The one thing they had in common: a gold-green-blue mark on each forehead.
A stench approached quickly. Bai Chunian looked up—a corpse plunged from the ceiling. He fired at its forehead. It fell back, but didn’t die, shaking off pus and lunging again.
Lan Bo dropped behind him, two shots aimed at the corpse’s cervical and lumbar vertebrae.
The corpse was broken, yet continued to attack in three segmented pieces.
“Third floor under attack, roughly a hundred. About thirty seem highly aggressive—Xiao Xun was right.” Bai Chunian briefed the others, grabbed Lan Bo’s hand, and leapt behind a stack of plastic crates in the corridor. He pulled two grenades from Lan Bo’s back, removed the pins, and tossed them out. Then he covered Lan Bo’s eyes, burying his own in his arm.
The grenades hit silently, then cracked open, releasing blinding green light that cut like blades through the charging corpses. The first flash only tore their uniforms; the second shredded the bodies within the blast radius, leaving pungent pieces of flesh on the floor.
Ying’s M2 ability infused the grenades with energy. The explosions produced solidified sheets of light, slicing anything in their path. The terrifying part: the ability could be stored externally and shared, allowing ordinary people to carry his flash or blast grenades.
Xiao Xun warned, “The inner corridor is about to collapse. Move quickly.”
“Let’s go first.” Bai Chunian and Lan Bo dashed through the corpses torn apart by the flash grenades.
“Take this!”
A keycard flew through the air. Lan Bo leapt between the corpses, biting it from Han Xingqian at the stairwell, tossing it aside and following Bai Chunian into the inner floor.
The inner floor’s layout differed completely from the outer two floors: silver steel walls like the breeding base, fully equipped with advanced machinery.
The security system was entirely down due to prior intrusion, leaving no one to block them.
Using Han Xingqian’s researcher ID card, Bai Chunian easily swiped open the core laboratory door.
The music came from the core lab.
Inside, the lab appeared intact. Independent circuits kept the lights on, illuminating a cylindrical space roughly the size of a standard football field. Every ten meters, transparent cylindrical pods contained human-shaped specimens, each connected to independent monitoring instruments.
There were twenty pods, though most were empty and inactive.
At the center of the laboratory was a bottomless deep water tank—something Bai Chunian recognized from the breeding base, typically used for pressurizing or chilling special reagents. If the last remaining HD compound was indeed at the Berna Pharmaceutical Factory, it would likely be stored here.
“Dive down and get the HD compound. There should be a temperature-controlled case nearby—remember to put it in the case,” Bai Chunian instructed.
“En.” Lan Bo leaned over the railing, plunging headfirst into the water. A flick of his tail and he vanished, leaving only two bioluminescent blue jellyfish floating on the surface.
Bai Chunian stayed in the lab, checking the wall clock—it was almost dawn.
The music wasn’t loud, likely played through speakers. He moved along the lab’s pathways, trying to locate its source.
In the vast core lab, surprisingly, there was not a single researcher present. Bai Chunian walked along the row of cultivation pods, puzzled, until he reached the last one. There, a small omega boy was crouched in the corner, hugging his knees.
The omega wore a smiling clown mask and fidgeted repeatedly with a deck of cards, pulling out the big joker, inserting it back, then pulling out the small joker.
“Samuel?” Bai Chunian halted.
Samuel, hearing a voice, looked up blankly. Bai Chunian noticed a small glass hourglass at his feet; the white sand had nearly run out.
“It’s you,” Samuel murmured, lowering his head again.
Bai Chunian had killed him personally, and Samuel still feared him deeply.
“Killing you once was enough—my trainees have been avenged,” Bai Chunian said coldly. “What happened here? Who made you do this?”
“I don’t have time,” Samuel said, trembling. “Please tell Professor Lin Deng… I miss him. Formalin is too cold. Can you bury me in my father’s backyard garden?”
“Lin Deng? He’s just the one who made you a researcher. You’re sentimental about… your father?” Bai Chunian felt a mix of disgust and amusement.
“I wanted my father… so it doesn’t matter who else it is.”
The hourglass emptied. The glass shattered into white sand, and Samuel stiffened. The card-inflicted wounds reappeared, and moments later he lost his last breath.
Bai Chunian looked up and realized the pod Samuel had been leaning against wasn’t empty. Inside the pale green fluid floated a specimen.
Unlike the other male-appearing specimens, this one was soft and slender, with a subtle chest and delicate, smooth facial features—no Adam’s apple—a female-appearing alpha.
Like humans, specimen gender was only external; strength, abilities, resilience, and knowledge were identical.
Her coccyx extended unusually long, adorned with tail feathers resembling a jade waterfall, the gold-green-blue circular spots shimmering along their graceful length.
The music came from her feathers brushing the fluid as she twitched.
Bai Chunian swiped a keycard on the device connected to her pod. The machine granted access, displaying the current specimen status.
Special Operations Weapon Number 723: Ji Sheng Gu
Gland Prototype: Peacock
Nutrient solution concentration: normal
Specimen maturity: reached
Breeding purpose: induce positive and negative biological mutations
Breeding result: successful
Remaining cultivation time: 14 minutes
Bai Chunian flipped through the touch screen pages, searching for her differentiation ability records.
A sudden chill at his waist—something pressed against him. He felt the weapon’s caliber: a shotgun.
A chilling laugh came from behind. Someone pressed against his cheek and whispered in his ear:
“Big brother, it’s you. Didn’t I have Mourn deliver the card for me?”
Bai Chunian slowly turned. Eris held the gun to his chest, the cross tattoo on his face brightened—recolored—and the fine lines on his tongue were still visible. Skillful work.
Beneath the wall clock, Mourn appeared in an instant, lightly landing while cradling the hourglass, his misty eyes fixed on Bai Chunian.
“After a month of effort, someone still beat me to it. Looks like you’ve got dirty hands. Let me reattach them one finger at a time.”
A tall, burly alpha specimen kicked aside a reagent rack and approached Bai Chunian, carrying a heavy machine gun. The ammo belt wrapped across his muscular chest, which bore a complete crocodile-scale pattern.
At a distance, a blond white alpha in a gentleman’s suit sat near the reagent table, rotating a silver square key in his fingers. Bai Chunian recognized him—the one who piloted the helicopter to extract Eris.
Almost seven thousand words so far.