CH 139

“Storm Special Forces have been attacked. We don’t know what ambush we might step into if we withdraw now.” Bai Chunian pulled up Rimbaud, ran towards the corridor, and said to the listener of the IOA Technology Department, “Berna Pharmaceutical Factory in Santa Fe Island has been attacked by a mysterious experimental subject, it is unknown whether there are any survivors, so we request additional rescue personnel to help evacuate the wounded. In addition, the Storm Forces outside the island have been exposed, over.”

Then he said to others, “Rimbaud and I will clear the third floor of the middle section, and Lanxing will deploy new tactics for the rest.” 

“Yes.”

Perhaps because the situation forced him to stay calm, Bi Lanxing no longer had the initial sense of nervousness, but calmly re-divided the team members into three groups. Bai Chunian and Rimbaud went to the third floor, while Lu Yan and Firefly followed Dr. Han to the second floor. He took Tan Qing and Tan Yang to search the first floor and take control over the security control room on the middle section.

Bi Lanxing, “Quickly confirm the situation in the middle section. Xiao Xun, report the location outside the building and pay attention to Specter’s position at all times. After Bai Chunian and Rimbaud clear the anomalies in the third floor, directly advance to the inner section. The others will go to the inner section after finishing their search.”

Bai Chunian added, “Remember to take photos of all suspicious points and send them back to the headquarters. The miniature camera each of you were given is not for taking pictures and sending them to Moments on Wechat. Just now I saw a fool locked up in a room on the second floor. Be careful when you pass by. At the end of this mission, it is estimated that a few of you students will be able to become real agents in advance. Stay focused everyone.”

“Understood.”

Han Xingqian, “In Specter Hourglass’ memory, there was a person who made a deal with him, asking him to gather in the Pharmaceutical Factory. According to my observation, Specter Hourglass does not show much aggression and desire to attack. Let’s avoid him and see where he plans to go.”

The outer section of Berna Pharmaceutical Factory was used to store raw materials or goods to be transported, as well as large sized experimental animals and feeder animal breeding, while the middle section was filled with staff offices, reference rooms and some small experimental animal breeding rooms.

Bai Chunian loaded his pistol and walked deep along the dark and power-cut circular corridor. Rimbaud crawled on the wall carrying his light machine gun in his mouth and followed behind, the blue light from his fishtail illuminating the road ahead. There were many weapons hanging on his body, all rustling and clanking as he moved. 

When approaching Area D, Bai Chunian suddenly stepped on a puddle of sticky and slippery liquid.

Rimbaud sniffed the air and smelled a strong fishy stench in the air. When he raised his fishtail to light up the area, the floor tiles of the corridor covered with blood came into sight. In places that could not be fully illuminated, the walls, doors and windows were also covered with mottled splotches.

Bai Chunian held down Rimbaud, motioning him not to move.

Rimbaud didn’t care at all, and looked down at his nails boredly. “Do you need me to make this island disappear altogether? Just say it and I will do it.” 

“You can’t, there’s key evidence here, all of which would disappear if the island were to be submerged.” Bai Chunian held the gun with one hand and put the other hand on Rimbaud to prevent him from getting separated. He took pictures of the scene in front of him. There were special invisible cameras installed on the cuffs of their collars, which would take pictures at a slight touch of a finger, and the photos would be automatically sent back to the IOA headquarters. “Berna Pharmaceutical Factory is a secret subordinate factory of the 109 Research Institute. If the research institute dare not openly do it, it will be handed over to the subordinate factory. You should know what I want to do here, right?”

“I don’t know.” Rimbaud scratched his tail.

“I want to help you get back what you lost in the research institute.” Bai Chunian cautiously stared at the darkness ahead, “I still remember what you told me before.”

“It’s not something important, don’t worry about it.” Rimbaud looked away, “I’ve lived for so long, and I’ve lost everything. For me, there is nothing I can’t live without.” 

“Ah, except you.” Rimbaud climbed down the wall to Bai Chunian, rubbed his cheek against him, and said bluntly, “Without you, my heart would be broken, the sea would die, and this planet would be finished. My ancestors predicted that the planet will perish one day in the future, and I think it will be the day I lose you.”

“Hey, you really, you are really…” Bai Chunian admitted that his talent for talking love words was not as good as Rimbaud’s, but Rimbaud was not love-talking, he just expressed his thoughts without any embellishments.

“Why are you so hot?” Rimbaud licked Bai Chunian’s cheek, “Has anyone ever praised you for being cute? Everyone who sees you would certainly want to bring you home and hug you like this. I can’t figure out why anyone would be willing to hurt you.”

“We’re doing serious business, don’t get so excited now. Why don’t you talk more when we go home? You’ll be clamoring for obe as soon as we get home.” 

Bai Chunian suddenly heard a strange sound coming from not far away. In the darkness, a four-legged creature suddenly jumped out from the depths of the corridor, making a hoarse roar that somewhat resembled a dying hair dryer.

The monster’s face seemed to have been torn up on both sides by someone. The skull was severely deformed and the malformed eye sockets could not contain the eyes. The two eyeballs were almost completely exposed outside the eyelids, on the verge of falling out from the eye sockets.

He was also wearing the uniform of a pharmaceutical factory’s researcher, the hem of his clothes were torn and stained with blood, his mouth was torn to the ear, showing a creepy smile. On his forehead were branded gold, green and blue dots, arranged in an inverted triangle.

Bai Chunian raised his hand to stop Rimbaud, raised his gun and fired continuously, the bullets pierced the monster’s head and heart one after another. 

The powerful impact of the bullet caused the monster to fall backwards, but there was no bleeding from the bullet hole. The humanoid monster deflated like a leaking beach ball and only a few streams of pus leaked out from the bullet hole.

A strong rotten smell came from his face, like a dead mouse that had fermented in a kimchi jar, then was overheated in a microwave oven and produced that strong smell.

Bi Lanxing, “I heard gunshots, what happened?”

“It’s okay now, it’s just a Looping Virus infected person, an old trick.” Bai Chunian turned his head and saw a huge mouth full of rows of teeth right in front of him. 

“Hey, close up.” Bai Chunian closed Rimbaud’s mouth, turned back and squatted in front of the corpse to study, complaining, “You are much scarier than him.”

Rimbaud’s mouth could be fully opened and unhinged to a terrifying degree. His mouth was full of sharp teeth, capable of crushing everything easily, even metal.

“There is too much garbage on the seabed that needs to be cleaned up. At first I could only deal with it slowly, but the efficiency has evolved over time.” After Rimbaud closed his mouth, it returned to its normal size, and he leaned close to Bai Chunian explaining in a low voice, “You have to accept that I have flaws, even the king is not perfect.”

“Rb, sbe’gf qfgofma. P ilxf j klof ktb mjc ylaf ws tfjv boo klat bcf mgecmt.” Djl Jtecljc abbx bea j tjcvxfgmtlfo ogbw tlr qbmxfa ab mbnfg tlr wbeat jcv cbrf, jcv rdejaafv yfrlvf atf vfjv ybvs ab rfjgmt atgbeut tlr mibatfr. 

“…Ktf bcf ktbrf tfjv sbe yla boo pera cbk kjr qgbyjyis rlwlijgis oeii bo wjuubar. Xb yjmx jcv ygert sbeg affat kfii.”

Rimbaud pinched his nose and vomited out a puddle of small clean blue glowing jellyfish in disgust. The powerful purification ability allowed him to keep his insides and outside clean so as to maintain his health.

“The land is disgusting.” Rimbaud chewed a blue jellyfish to freshen his breath.

“It seems that because of the Looping Virus, an accident in the middle section did not affect the outer section at all. This virus is really incredible.” 

The dead researcher wore the badge of the financial office on his chest. Bai Chunian found a bunch of keys in his pocket.

He was about to stand up when a hand suddenly grabbed his wrist tightly.

There was no web on the fingers, it wasn’t Rimbaud’s.

Bai Chunian’s eyes widened and met the eyes of the corpse in front of him. The man stared straight at him, his dilated pupils were moving and the inverted triangle gold and blue pattern on his forehead shone with a gemstone-like luster. 

The corpse jumped up, its powerful hands were like a pair of sharp pliers, grabbing at Bai Chunian frantically, but luckily he dodged in time. The monster’s sharp claws only left three deep scratches on the body armor on Bai Chunian’s chest.

Bai Chunian took two steps back and shot at the corpse. Rimbaud wrapped his tail around the maddened monster, and his sharp fins rose up with a swish. The fins pierced the corpse’s body, and then the sharp as a blade fins unfolded, cutting the corpse into countless pieces.

Rimbaud landed on the ground, retracted the spines on his back, and purified the dirty blood all over his body, absorbing it into his body as energy afterwards.

“Are you okay?” 

“I’m fine.”

The people infected by the Looping Virus that they had encountered in Enxi Hospital could be completely killed by just shooting the head, so there seemed to be something different.

“Let’s go to the finance office and have a look.” Bai Chunian took the key in his hand and flipped it twice. Without wasting any more time, he followed the fire evacuation map on the wall to find the finance office. After making sure there was no ambush in each corner, he started rummaging through the desks and filing cabinet.

There was a locked drawer in the desk. Bai Chunian tried different keys, and one of them opened it. 

Inside were thick stacks of purchase receipts.

“Come, help me light up a little.” Bai Chunian squatted on the ground and quickly flipped through the receipts one by one. The receipts were arranged according to the date. Bai Chunian estimated the time and flipped through according to the time when Specter Hourglass had just entered and left the warehouse, and found a corresponding receipt.

Bai Chunian took out the receipt, and continued to flip through the pages before and after the receipt.

Generally speaking, this kind of large factory would not buy only a single experimental subject, but usually they bought a bunch of them all at once, so that many unnecessary expenses could be saved in transportation costs. 

In fact, Berna Pharmaceutical Factory only needed to inform the research institute if it needed experimental subjects, spending money to buy them was just to enjoy the tax avoidance policy. Bai Chunian learned this common routine from Uncle Jin.

Rimbaud found a chair and sat down, taking out dry food to eat while he was idle.

“A total of seven were bought, and six were sold. Specter came back by himself here after being sold.” Bai Chunian neatly matched the receipts one by one, “There is only one left… Experimental Subject No. 723, Odd Bones.”

“Odd Bones, what’s that thing?” Bai Chunian grew up in the cultivation base, and the experimental subjects he came into contact with were very limited. In fact, most of them were defective, not up to commodity grade and unsalable. In comparison, Rimbaud had seen more successful experimental subjects in Research Institute 109. 

According to the numbering rules of special weapons, the first “7” represented a bird imitation gland, the middle “2” represented 20% mimicry (tail mimicry), and the last “3” represented tampering ability, which was the same as that of Specter Hourglass.

“I have heard of them. The researcher had said their name before, Qi Sheng Gu.” Rimbaud recalled carefully, “Several subjects not far from me went to fight it, but they never came back, maybe they were eaten. ”

“Forget it, keep it first.” Bai Chunian took photos of some useful materials and sent them back to the headquarters.

While their attention was focused on the sale receipts, a distant, vague sound of music drifted over. Bai Chunian heard the strange noise and put away the receipts. He walked towards the door and raised his gun with his back against the wall, then went outside. 

Bai Chunian walked out of the accounting room, skillfully threw away the empty magazine, pushed in a new one, and loaded it, “Rimbaud, come here, don’t get trapped in the room.”

The commotion in the depths of the corridor intensified.

Bi Lanxing finally arrived at the security control room in the middle block. There was no one in the security control room, only bloodstains remained on the ground. Sitting in the chair in front of the monitors was a mangled corpse that died of a shotgun wound, wearing the white uniform of a pharmaceutical factory.

Bi Lanxing pushed the corpse aside, sat on the chair, connected the decoder to the computer, tapped the keyboard quickly and adjusted the picture to the desired parameters. He quickly checked the corridors and rooms from the first floor. There were a few corpses with the same death appearance, and there were also some living people with strange smiles locked in closed rooms, but overall they didn’t seem to be a big threat. 

He then adjusted the monitoring to the cameras on the second floor. Dr. Han took Lu Yan and Firefly to search through the various rooms and squatted on the ground to examine a dead body. Lu Yan and Firefly looked around suspiciously and kept looking overhead.

“What are they looking at…” Bi Lanxing adjusted the surveillance image to the third floor and searched from room to room.

The entrance to the corridor passage between areas C and D is closed. The corridor of the third floor of the middle block was the only way to the inner block. If they wanted to enter the inner block they could only pass through there.

From the silent surveillance video, it could be seen that some liquid was seeping from the gap under the tightly closed steel door. 

Xiao Xun’s cold voice came over, “I saw someone walking by in the corridor, but there was no light, so I couldn’t see anything else.”

Bai Chunian, “A living person?”

Xiao Xun, “…otherwise?”

Bai Chunian, “There is more than one monster here, be careful guys.” 

Xiao Xun, “I’m not certain. After the detection and calculation of Universal Dashboard, the probability that the target is considered to be a threat was 33.33%.”

Bai Chunian, “Did you hear any sounds?”

Lu Yan pricked up his ears to listen. Besides Bai Chunian, he was the one with the most sensitive hearing.

“Music…” Lu Yan searched for the source of the sound, “It came from the inner block. It sounds a bit like wind chimes.” 

The forehead of the corpse that was pushed to the ground by Bi Lanxing slowly showed a golden, green and blue coloured inverted triangle marking, and then its fingertips moved slightly.

After undergoing strict control training, Bi Lanxing had developed the habit of being wary of his surroundings changing at any time. He heard the slight friction of the cloth, and immediately put Poison Ivy Armor on himself. The vine armor was released right in time as the moving corpse attacked and bit the tough ivy armor.

Bi Lanxing calmly put the pistol to the head of the corpse, fired several times, and controlled the computer mouse with his left hand, telling Bai Chunian urgently, “I saw something. Many people were locked in the corridor on the third floor and were banging on the door. The glass window on the door has already started cracking and they’re close to your position. They were lying on the ground just a while ago, as if they were awakened by something.”

He unplugged the decoder from the main unit and wrapped vines around the corpse that was still biting frantically at his side. He pressed the camera on his collar to take pictures of the corpse, then rolled out of the security control room on the spot, and made an attack gesture to Tan Qing and Tan Yang. 

“Combined Explosion!” Tan Qing and Tan Yang clasped their fingers together, and blue flames burst out suddenly in the monitoring room. The huge explosive power and soundwave shattered the entire security room, and blue flames swept across the entire circular corridor with continuous explosions until they hit the wall. All the corpses rushing toward them were blasted away by the powerful exploding flames.

“Let’s go upstairs and meet up.” Bi Lanxing walked out of the blue flames and said quietly.

There were more dense and chaotic footsteps in the circular corridor on the third floor.

The explosion downstairs made the ground tremble. Bai Chunian stabilized his body and counted the remaining bullets. With a total of 130 rounds remaining, he raised his head to face the restless roar in the darkness not far in the circular corridor. 

“It sounds a bit serious, I don’t have heavy weapons with me.”

“Making me work without food.” Rimbaud had just taken out the compressed dry food and vacuum-packed ham from the elastic belt, and before he had the time to open it, he had to stuff them back again. He moved the mini submachine gun from his back to his hands and stuck behind Bai Chunian, his fishtail changing from blue to red.

There was a loud bang when the iron door was broken through, then the monsters that were originally blocked by the wall crashed in. Some of them crawled extremely fast and even jumped and sprinted between the walls, while some could only push their bodies with their faces on the ground, slowly wriggling and partially acting like a normal looping virus infection.

But the only thing in common was that they all had a gold, green and blue dot triangle-shaped mark on their foreheads. 

In an instant, the rotten smell came close to them. Bai Chunian raised his head and a corpse fell from the ceiling above his head. Bai Chunian shot it in the forehead, the corpse fell back after being shot, but it did not die, after shaking off the dripping pus, it rushed to his side again.

Rimbaud landed from behind him, giving two more shots on the corpse’s cervical spine and lumbar spine.

The corpse’s spine was entirely shattered, but it continued to attack in a thrice twisted posture.

“The third floor is under a siege. There’s a lot of them, a rough estimate being 100. But it seems that only 30 are strongly aggressive. Xiao Xun was right.” Bai Chunian briefly described the situation to the others and grabbed Rimbaud’s hand to jump behind some plastic boxes stacked in the corridor. Then, he borrowed two grenades from Rimbaud, pulled out the safety pin and threw them out. He turned around and hugged Rimabud’s head to cover his eyes, as well as buried his own head in the crook of his arms. 

The grenade did not make a sound when it landed, but split open quietly and a very dazzling strong green light burst out from it. The green light seemed to radiate all around, and fell on the rampaging corpses, cutting into them like knife blades. The first Flash Bomb only cut through their uniforms, but after the second Flash Bomb exploded, it directly cut the corpses within the explosion range into pieces, and the rancid minced meat fell all over the ground.

Firefly’s M2 ability, Flash Bomb, could transfer energy into grenades. When the grenade explodes, the burst of strong light would solidify in a thin blade-like shape. Once hit, everything could be cut through with the solidified light. This was not the scariest part of this ability. At the same time, Firefly’s ability could be stored externally and shared with others. The Flashbang and Flash Bomb he made could also be carried by ordinary people.

Xiao Xun gave a reminder, “The corridor of the inner block had been hit and it’s about to collapse, leave quickly.”

“Let’s go first.” Bai Chunian and Rimbaud rushed through the gap in corpse tide that had been exploded with the power of the Flash Bomb. 

“Take this!”

A magnetic card flew in the air, and Rimbaud jumped up from among the dead bodies, bit the magnetic card that Han Xingqian threw from the stairs, flung the corpse away with the card in his mouth and followed Bai Chunian into the inner block.

The layout of the inner block was completely different from the outer two blocks. The walls were the same silver steel inner walls as in the cultivation base, but the equipment was much more complete and advanced.

However, due to the intrusion, the security system was now completely paralyzed, and there was no one to stop them. 

Holding the researcher’s ID card handed over by Han Xingqian, Bai Chunian opened the door of the core laboratory smoothly.

The music they heard was coming from the core laboratory.

The inside of the core laboratory seemed to be intact. There was no power outage because of an independent circuit, bright light illuminated everything. The interior was cylindrical as a whole, and the area was about the same size as a standard football field. Transparent cylinders were embedded on the walls every ten meters. They were human-shaped cultivation pods, with the pipelines of each cultivation pod connected to independent monitoring instruments.

There were twenty cultivation pods inside, but most of them were empty and not working. 

There was a deep tank whose bottom couldn’t be seen in the center of the laboratory. Bai Chunian knew what this thing was, the cultivation base also had it. It was generally used to pressurize, cool down or store special reagents. If the only remaining HD agent was indeed in Berna Pharmaceutical Factory, it was likely to be kept here.

“Go down and get the HD agent. There should be a thermostatic suitcase next to it. Remember to put it in the box.”

“En.” Rimbaud leaned on the railing, plunged headfirst into the water, and disappeared with a flick of his fishtail, leaving two blue jellyfish floating on the surface of the water.

Bai Chunian stayed in the laboratory and waited, when he glanced at the clock on the wall, it was almost dawn. 

The music here was not loud, seeming as if it was coming through speakers. He walked along the laboratory road, trying to find the source of the music.

In the whole huge core laboratory, there was actually no researcher present. Bai Chunian walked along the row of cultivation pods in bewilderment. In front of the last cultivation pod, he saw a thin omega boy squatting in the corner and hugging his legs.

The omega wore a smiling clown mask on his face and held a deck of playing cards in his hand. He flipped the playing cards over and over again, with the back of the cards facing upwards, pulled out the big joker card inside, inserted it back, and pulled out the little joker card again.

“Samael?” Bai Chunian stopped in his tracks. 

When Samael heard someone talking, he raised his head dully and followed the sound. It was only then that Bai Chunian noticed that there was a small hourglass by his feet, the white sand in the hourglass was slowly falling down, with only a little bit left.

“It’s you.” Samael lowered his head again.

He was killed by Bai Chunian himself and was very afraid of Bai Chunian.

“Killing you once is enough to avenge my student.” Bai Chunian looked down at him coldly, “What happened here? Who told you to do this.” 

“I don’t have time to explain.” Samael lowered his head and said in a trembling voice, “Please tell Professor Lin Deng that I miss him very much. The formalin is too cold. I want to be buried in the garden of my father’s backyard.”

“Lin Deng? He’s just a researcher who created you. You’re quite sincere, you still take him as your father.” Bai Chunian felt disgusted and ironic from the bottom of his heart.

“Because I want a father, so it doesn’t matter who it is. We are the same, you can’t lie to yourself.”

The hourglass at Samael’s feet had run out, and the glass shattered into a pool of white sand. His body also became stiff, and the wounds cut by playing cards resurfaced on his body. He lost his breath after a while, his body looking the same as when he’d died. 

“…”

He raised his head and realized that the cultivation pod that Samael was leaning against was not empty, and there was an experimental subject soaked in the light green cultivation fluid.

Unlike other beautiful teenager-shaped experimental subjects, her body was softer and slender, with protruding breasts, soft and enchanting features and no Adam’s apple. She was an alpha experimental subject with a female appearance.

Unlike with human beings, there was no big difference between the male and female bodies of the experimental subjects. Only the appearance was different, with the strength, ability, toughness, and knowledge being exactly the same. 

Her tailbone was extremely long and she had gorgeous tail feathers flowing down in a jade waterfall-like way; with golden, green and blue dots shining on her elegant and gorgeous tail feathers.

The sound of music was created by her quivering feathers rubbing together in the cultivating fluid.

Bai Chunian tapped the magnetic card on the instrument connected to her cultivation pod, and the instrument opened the browsing authority after reading the magnetic card, displaying the current condition of the experimental subject.

Special Operations Weapon No. 723: Odd Bones 

Gland Prototype: Peacock

Nutrient concentration is normal.

The experimental subject has entered the maturity stage.

Cultivation direction: Cause biologically positive and negative mutation. 

Cultivation result: Success

Incubation time remaining: 14 minutes.

Bai Chunian lowered his head and flipped page by page on the touch screen displaying the experimental subject’s information, looking for her differentiation ability record.

There was a sudden chill on his waist as he felt something press against him. Bai Chunian clearly discerned from the caliber and model that it was a shotgun. 

Surprised laughter sounded from behind him, the man leaned close to his cheek, smiled and asked in his ear:

“Da-ge, it’s you. Didn’t I have Specter bring me the card?”

Bai Chunian turned around slowly and saw Eris pointing the gun at his heart. The cross tattoo on his face had become more vivid. It seemed that it had been retouched by someone with quite good technique, not even the thin lines on his tongue disappear.

Under the clock on the wall, Specter’s figure flashed and landed lightly with the hourglass in his arms, staring at him with misty eyes. 

“I’ve been busy for a month and there’s still someone who took the lead. Looks like your hands are filthy, let me pick your fingers one by one.” Another tall and strong alpha experimental subject kicked away the table stacked with reagents. He approached Bai Chunian with a light machine gun on his shoulders, his strong chest muscles were bound by a bullet belt and he had a crocodile scale pattern on his chest. “Eris, do you know him?”

Sitting beside the lab table in the distance was a blond haired caucasian alpha dressed in a gentleman’s suit with a silver square key hanging from his fingertip, which he was turning around gently.

Bai Chunian still remembered him, it was the one who piloted the helicopter and took Eris away on bail.