Chapter Ninety-Five: Was That a Scream Just Now?

With a series of crunching sounds, like an empty tin can being slowly crushed, Zuo Hao straightened his upper body.

“This damn hive laboratory is riddled with biotraps. I was already being careful, and I was even carrying a red access card, yet I still nearly lost my life.”

His combat suit had been eaten through in many places, and the fastening straps at the front had snapped cleanly in two.

“My spine must already be hollowed out. If my gene template were not unusually special, I would not be able to walk at all right now.”

Supporting himself against the wall, Zuo Hao moved forward with great caution. Through the tears in his clothing, one could clearly see a dense spread of fish-scale-like blisters, with yellow pus seeping out in a web-like pattern.

He clenched his teeth. “Once I get hold of a second-stage gene template, I have to inject it immediately, or I’ll never hold out.”

A little boy floating in midair advised, “Actually, you could contact the others in the squad and ask them to help carry you out. After all, you told me before that a second-stage gene template should best be injected in a safe, undisturbed environment.”

“No.” Zuo Hao refused, breathing hard. “Don’t forget the message we just learned at the main brood chamber: with the authority of a research supervisor, one can apply for ten gene templates.”

“So what? What does that have to do with you not wanting to ask them for help?”

“It’s not that I’m willing to have them help.”

Step by step, Zuo Hao went on. His right leg hung at a nearly broken angle, and a large stretch of skin and flesh on his back was exposed, his spine covered with rust-colored growths.

The crunching sound from before had been produced by these growths when he had straightened his back.

“First, with the level of radiation here, there’s no way to establish communication.” His eyes were deep and dark, reflecting the gray-yellow dust on the ground.

“Second, by the rules of the mining zone, even if I obtained the gene templates on my own, I still have to share them with the squad members who carried out the mission with me.”

Because different people were assigned different tasks during mining, some responsible for gathering, some for drilling, the source crystals could not simply belong entirely to the person who collected them.

That was why, when a squad entered the mining zone on a mission, there were rules for sharing the spoils.

And now the hive laboratory was already part of the mining zone. The gene templates, too, counted as spoils of war. Even if all ten of them had been acquired solely by Zuo Hao, he would still have to hand over at least two or three to the other members of Yao Lun’s squad.

“Second stage, huh? Do you even know what a second-stage gene template means?” Zuo Hao suddenly grew a little deranged. “How could I possibly share it with them? Not a single one! Not one can be given away!”

“But even if you inject one, you still have nine left. You still have to hand over two.” The little boy floated lightly in the air and, after a moment’s hesitation, blinked and asked in return.

“Once I become a second-stage ability user, I’ll go find them.”

Zuo Hao’s voice in his throat suddenly turned eerie, low and rough, brimming with killing intent.

“As long as I kill them all, there’ll be nothing to share.”

The little boy fell silent at once. His temperament was fairly gentle, and this approach had been rather beyond his expectations.

Even so, he loyally analyzed the matter for Zuo Hao. “What if you run into mental contamination again?”

“Second-stage ability users are much more resistant in every way. Something that can affect a first-stage ability user’s mind may not necessarily affect a second-stage one.”

Zuo Hao stopped. “How far is it to the main brood chamber? Let’s take a shortcut. The central control node has been shut down, and many of the biological detection doors are open now. Going straight through shouldn’t be a problem.”

With his current walking speed, returning by the original route would still take thirty-seven minutes. If they took a straight shortcut, it would probably take about eleven minutes to arrive.

The little boy placed his finger on Zuo Hao’s wristband computer and answered very conscientiously, “Then let’s take the shortcut.”

Zuo Hao took out a tiny adrenaline injector from his pocket, stabbed it into his vein, and pushed the entire dose in.

...

Nine minutes later.

Zuo Hao limped into the main brood chamber.

“Why has it become such a mess in here?” The floating boy’s expression changed, his brows knitting into a deep frown.

Under the simulated sunlight, countless test tubes, instrument racks, and distillation flasks lay smashed on the ground, the fractured edges of the glass shards reflecting a riot of colors.

Before, only a dozen or so of the giant glass pillars had been damaged, but now more than half of the pillars within sight were broken.

“Could someone have come in?”

“No. It must be because the central control node was shut down, and these plants ran wild.”

Zuo Hao pointed calmly at a short willow branch slowly swaying in front of them. “Clearly, a lot of the plants here can move. They’re the ones that caused this.”

Deep down, he simply did not want to believe that anyone had come in.

Zuo Hao hurried deeper inside. After roughly a hundred meters, he reached a circular platform.

As soon as he stepped onto it, a magnetic suspension card slot floated up beside his hand.

He inserted the red access card.

—Error warning. Error warning.

“Hm?” Zuo Hao could not help but tremble.

A fresh crack split open from his abdomen down to his hip.

“It looks like it has crashed. Maybe it’s because the central control node was shut down and the power went out.”

“Then what do we do?” Zuo Hao looked over with a bloodthirsty glare.

“This may actually be a good thing. I can naturally enter various electronic devices, so I can try getting into this one.” The boy’s eyes flashed as an idea came to him.

“Then hurry up. I feel like my condition is getting worse.”

Zuo Hao dug a piece of rotten flesh covered in crystalline blisters out of his abdomen and hurled it forcefully onto the floor. It quickly decayed into yellow pus, hissing softly.

He pulled out another tube of adrenaline and injected it into his vein.

Not long after, the little boy cried out excitedly, “I’ve taken control of the cluster intelligence!”

“Quick, apply for the gene templates. Right now.” Zuo Hao gripped his own wound tightly and roared.

—Supervisor Wei Changshun cannot apply for second-stage gene templates.
—Please first return five in full.

“Return them? Damn it, I haven’t even borrowed them yet!”

At the prompt, Zuo Hao’s heart clenched so hard he nearly could not stand.

“Was there a mistake? Was there a mistake? Check it now. What on earth is going on? Where are my gene templates?”

After a moment of silence, the little boy appeared once more.

“I’m sorry.”

Shaking his head in pain and self-reproach, he said, “I let you down.”

“Those ten gene templates were taken by someone else, weren’t they.”

Zuo Hao’s expression suddenly became calm. His tone was deep, and every word seemed soaked in cold rain.

He looked at the cluttered surroundings, at the faint footprints visible on the floor.

In the corner were several needles left behind after the injection of thiol chelating agent, along with a tissue soaked with mucus.

A gene storage chamber on the left had been dragged open, and the tarp covering the distiller bore clear signs of being torn.

Thud.

Zuo Hao let out a muffled groan and collapsed bonelessly.

Rotten, pus-like fluid kept choking out of his mouth and nose, and the stench instantly filled the room.

At this moment, though he had not yet died, he was already in his final moments.

The boy’s cries, the beeping from the instruments, and the tinnitus brought on by the intense radiation surrounded him. Thirty-plus years of experience surfaced one by one, flashing before his eyes like scenes from a revolving lantern.

The joy of discovering his gene compatibility in his youth, the high spirits of becoming an ability user, the enormous pressure of all those mining missions, the ambition to become a second-stage ability user at any cost—everything, all of it, gradually drifted away with an endless coldness.

“Who was it... ah!!”

...

“Did someone just scream?” Ji Cheng scratched at his ear.

“Don’t be so scary. You must have heard wrong.” Zhang Lingfei’s face went pale as she clung tightly to his arm.

“Let’s get in the vehicle already. I don’t want to stay here one second longer.”

Carrying the spoils, everyone climbed into the rail car in turn.