Chapter 84: Replication Experiment 8
The Xinyin Biological office building had six floors in total—three underground and three above ground. There had never been a rule zone here before, or at least, there was no record of any rule zone in the Order Maintenance Department.
When the white mist cleared, Zhuang Ningyu found himself standing alone at the end of an empty corridor. The wall sign read “-3F—STAFF ONLY,” confirming he was on the third basement level. The air was thick with that distinctive “hospital” smell—disinfectant, or maybe formalin. The ceiling ventilation ducts hummed overhead, but, badly maintained, condensation was left to trickle down the walls, crisscrossing dark, wet lines on the floor.
His phone had no signal. Zhuang Ningyu tried the emergency exit door—didn’t budge. The elevator worked, but the screen said he’d need a staff card to use it. Next to the elevator was an emergency escape map, which showed six labs on this level, two restrooms, one janitor’s closet, and a cold storage.
He checked each room. The restrooms and closet were normal enough. The labs had no personnel now; their metal doors were sealed tight, electronic locks all flashing red “locked,” occasionally humming with static, which only made the silent, eerie atmosphere worse.
Thud, thud, thud. Rhythmic banging and chaotic footsteps sounded from outside the exit. Zhuang Ningyu quickly ducked into cover. The fire door swung open; a lab-coated experimenter used his foot to block the door, while two others hauled a man in black—more accurately, a corpse—toward the cold storage.
The experimenters weren’t human; they were monsters, with abnormally white skin and frosted-glass black, hollow eyes. Their long, thin bodies wobbled when they walked, seemingly ready to collapse in a breeze. Bright red blood dripped from the neck wound of the man in black, mixing with the condensation on the floor, then stamped into a trail of shoeprints. At the end of the corridor, they opened the cold storage and together shoved the man inside.
Five minutes later, all three experimenters left the cold storage. One frowned at the bloody floor and shrilled into the phone: “Disgusting! Have a cleaner come tidy up, quick!”
392887—the cold storage door code. Once the experimenters left in the elevator, Zhuang Ningyu punched in the number. With a “beep,” the heavy door slid open. Bitter cold air hit his face; the shadowless lamp cast a ghastly pale glow, and random patches of blood marked the floor. The man in black lay flat on a metal bed against the wall, haphazardly wrapped in a white cloth, fresh blood still oozing from the wound.
Zhuang Ningyu avoided the blood, approached quickly, and confirmed his guess: this man was not a rule zone monster, but a human from outside—already dead, with a large hole in his neck. It wasn’t made by a gun or knife—more like… he recalled the sharp fingers of the experimenters when they lifted him.
The other cold storage compartments were tightly locked, red lights flashing just as in the labs. A robotic voice repeated continuously—
“Beep beep beep, unauthorized personnel prohibited, please exit immediately!”
“Beep beep beep, unauthorized personnel prohibited, please exit immediately!”
“Beep beep beep, unauthorized personnel prohibited, please exit immediately!”
Zhuang Ningyu didn’t stay long. After covering the man with a white cloth, he left the cold storage.
Still no signal on his phone.
Outside the rule zone.
Two cars stopped behind the cordon. Huo Ting and He Mo got out one after the other. Xinyin Biological remained shrouded entirely in white mist. Three teams had already tried to enter—none succeeded. The “cocoon” stayed sealed, no cracks.
No one knew why Zhuang Ningyu could enter. If it were an evolution level, Huo Ting would also be S-class. If it was a “face check” like at Yin Bar, it seemed ridiculous—a bioscience institute isn’t a nightclub, so why would appearance matter?
“Don’t worry too much.” Huo Ting pat Yi Ke’s shoulder. “Ningyu has worked alone many times. He knows what to do.”
Nearby were two medical vehicles—one standard for site emergencies, and one just for Yi Ke. His evolution was unstable; as Doctor Liu from the management center had said, “always at risk of losing control—in extreme cases, recommend unconventional containment.” Right now, a group of medical staff watched him anxiously inside the car. Yi Ke noticed but didn’t bother to explain, just frowned, eyes locked on the mist-wrapped three-story building. The timing of this rule zone was strange: right before police were to summon Xinyin’s leader Shi Cheng, Xinyin was shut off in another world—felt artificially contrived.
Experiments had already shown that, during rule zone replication, its internal logic could be edited. It was entirely possible the replicator wanted Zhuang Ningyu inside—the trap might have been premeditated. Just thinking of this, Yi Ke’s temple began to throb uncontrollably. He stared at his own reflection in the glass curtain wall, trying to press all those tiny stabbing pains in his nerves back down.
Can’t lose control.
“Director Huo, call from Elder Zhong!” Huo Ting’s assistant ran over with the phone.
Zhong Pinghe had finished reviewing all Xinyin Biological’s records, and like most rule zones, this building had seen a homicide.
“Eight years ago,” Zhong Pinghe said over the phone. “Victim named Zhang Yunxia.”
Zhang Yunxia—female, only thirty when she died, very young. Yi Ke looked at the file—a woman with rimless glasses, long black hair, chin raised and expression lazy, proud, her gaze cool behind the lenses, as if inspecting the world. She looked like one of those “dominant intellectual goddesses” popular online, and she truly was an academic prodigy.
“She doesn’t look like a scientist,” Qing Gang peered at the photo. “She looks like a rich girl ditched at her engagement by some corporate heir, only to return ten years later in a Rolls Royce.”
Zhong Mu: “Can you watch less soap opera shorts?”
“Her family was very ordinary,” Yi Ke said. “She was a left-behind child.”
Born in a small southwestern village, her parents worked away from home. When Zhang Yunxia was eight, her mother, after enduring poverty, remarried and left. The year after, her father died in a car accident, the perpetrator vanished, and with no surveillance, no compensation was ever paid. The kindly villagers, seeing how wretched her elderly and young family was, helped constantly—one family gave rice, another clothes. Combined with grandma’s welfare and charity donations, they scraped by.
“Zhang Yunxia skipped two grades, was top of her cohort in the college entrance exam, got into Shanghai’s top math program, then switched to life sciences,” Zhong Pinghe said. “Her real breakthrough came after university; with access to the country’s best education, she soared. Like a dry sponge, she lived in the library, soaking up knowledge day and night.”
Her classmates said she “studied like she didn’t recognize relatives,” made few friends, but was “very popular.”
“No friends, but popular?” Qing Gang didn’t get how those could both be true.
“She’d reached another level. In campus, there were no peers to be her true friends, but if she looked down, beneath her were countless younger people who admired her,” Yi Ke explained. “Maybe I’m exaggerating, but that’s about it.”
No friends, no romance; after grad school, she joined Xinyin Biological, earning a high salary. Young, attractive, hugely talented—childhood shadows seemed far away. But three years later, everything changed.
She committed suicide, in the third-floor break room. When found by the cleaner, she was stiffly curled on the sofa, a spent syringe in her arm.
Zhuang Ningyu remembered the case. Police ruled “excessive mental stress.” Zhang Yunxia also had a younger brother, who’d rushed from home after being notified, protesting that his sister would never commit suicide—but after watching high-res video, fell silent.
Footage showed her enter the break room around 10 pm, stand at the window for half an hour, sit calmly, pull a toxic syringe from her lab coat, and inject herself without hesitation.
Society always pays more attention to “major cases,” and especially so for pretty victims—always inviting rumor, often salacious. Within days, net gossip linked her and Shi Cheng, calling them “teacher and student, but really lovers.” Shi Cheng responded directly: he called police, investigations proved the “lover” story was pure fiction, a bored netizen making things up for attention.
“In the last half month before her suicide, Zhang Yunxia displayed many emotional abnormalities,” Zhong Pinghe continued. “Long periods of dazing, talking to herself, vomiting, crying. Her manager gave her leave, recommended a psychologist, but she never went—she spent long stretches at work, wandering the halls at night, staring out the windows unmoving.”
Huo Ting wondered, “If her emotional state was so abnormal, why didn’t the company force her to take time off for treatment?”
“Because work pressure at Xinyin was huge,” Zhong Pinghe replied. “In an ordinary company, never mind for half a month—for these symptoms, managers would call 120 the next day. But at Xinyin, excessive hours were normal; everyone knew high pay meant huge effort. Stress from experiments, performance, constant updates—they had nowhere to hide, so even public breakdowns weren’t rare.”
Only after Zhang Yunxia died did senior management start taking employee mental health seriously, enacting several reforms. The music the pork stall owner heard—”Healthy Xinyin People”—was a product of higher-ups wanting to reduce stress and boost fitness.
“Gene Beat Exercises! One, two, three, fists forward, let’s lift our arms and draw spirals—” Suddenly, rhythmic music boomed in the hall. A cleaner who’d just come from the elevator let go of her cart, dashed to open space, threw up her hands, and began spinning, singing along, “Sweep away laziness, evolve stronger rhythm points!” Her footsteps mixed water and blood stains, making the floor muddier. After five minutes, the broadcast ended; she pulled out a bucket and mop, scrubbing the floor at breakneck speed.
She worked briskly, zigzagging back and forth, leaving no inch untouched. Zhuang Ningyu gripped his laser pistol; the restroom stalls on this floor had no doors, nowhere to hide, so he let her footsteps get closer.
“We are life’s coders!” the cleaner belted, swinging her mop. Dirty water and blood splashed onto a brand-new pair of white sneakers suddenly appearing around the corner. She gasped, dropped the “crime tool,” whipped a clean cloth from her apron, knelt, and wiped his shoes spotless, then nervously stood up and apologized, “Sorry, I didn’t see you there.”
“It’s fine,” Zhuang Ningyu said calmly, moving aside so she could continue working. She picked up the mop, dragged it quietly, then caught sight of him still standing there, and awkwardly made small talk, “It’s the weekend—are you here to work overtime?”
Zhuang Ningyu nodded. He wasn’t sure whether the cleaner had mistaken him for someone else, or—this time, he really had become part of Xinyin Biological. So he said, “I think I lost my work card, did you see it when you were mopping?”
The cleaner asked in surprise, “You need a work card too?”
Zhuang Ningyu: …Don’t I?
He vaguely sensed something, went straight to the elevator, and placed his hand on the card reader—
With a “ding,” the door slid slowly open, the “locked” sign turned green: “Welcome.” Zhuang Ningyu entered and pressed “3”—if memory served, that woman had died on the third floor.
Buzz… buzz… As the elevator rose, his phone finally regained signal. Zhuang Ningyu answered, “I’m fine, I’ll call after I get out.”
Yi Ke: “…Okay.”
Zhuang Ningyu pocketed his phone and left the elevator. Compared to the dark, damp -3F, this floor was bright and sunny, with white walls, glass, and bustling experimenters in the corridor—appearing like a normal biotech company. Almost everyone greeted him respectfully: “Good afternoon, esteemed Administrator 002.”
His guess was right: not only was he staff here, he was high-level. If a smaller admin number meant higher rank, then only Administrator 001 outranked him.
001—could it be Shi Cheng? Zhuang Ningyu pondered, pausing at the office signed “Administrator 002.” He opened the door; the lock disengaged. The room was large, with floor-to-ceiling windows and two walls lined with books, mostly not related to genetics—mostly humanities: Dostoevsky, Camus, Shakespeare, Brontë… more like a cozy reading room.
Zhuang Ningyu sat at the desk and called Yi Ke back; the latter answered in less than a second. Before the dog’s “wer” could start, Zhuang Ningyu asked, “Are you on speaker?”
“No,” Yi Ke said, a bit surprised. “Just me.”
Assured his affection wouldn’t go public, Zhuang Ningyu blew him a kiss, then quickly disclaimed, “You can’t blame me this time! You saw it, I was forced!”
Yi Ke: “I didn’t see.”
You didn’t see? Zhuang Ningyu’s eyes widened. “I was really forced!”
Yi Ke didn’t reply, just leaned against a wall, supporting his limp body, and continued, “I don’t believe you.”
Zhuang Ningyu: “…You did this on purpose.”
Yi Ke smiled, “We’ll settle this when you get out.”
Zhuang Ningyu once again felt monumentally wronged—why, after being forcibly sucked into a rule zone, did he still need to “settle accounts” later? Shouldn’t he get some king crab, red crab, salmon, swordfish, grouper to recover?
Yi Ke said, “I’ve sent you everything on Xinyin. What’s the situation inside?”
Zhuang Ningyu replied, “A little complicated. Someone got killed.”
The investigation team quickly identified the dead man from the photo—definitely not a monster. His name was Wang Daqiang, A-level evolver, thirty-eight, former overseas mercenary. After coming home, he was suspected in two gold store robbery-murders, always on the run and wanted. Three days ago, he’d surfaced at Jincheng bus station; police rushed after a tip but missed him, only finding a blurry camera image. No one expected he’d die in a rule zone.
“You think he was killed by a monster experimenter?” Huo Ting asked.
“Suspect so, I’m only going by the wound’s shape,” Zhuang Ningyu said. “No other proof yet.”
“Time of death?”
“Judging by blood clotting, probably just before I got in—very ‘fresh’.”
Knock knock knock. The secretary brought a double-sugar-milk coffee.
Zhuang Ningyu stirred it, leaned back, and frowned slightly, “This rule zone is treating me very well.” The bookshelves, the sweet coffee, the “Administrator 002” status—all bespeak attention and favoritism. Huo Ting guessed, “Maybe it’s your genes? Their life’s research is trying to make normal people into perfect evolvers like you. Maybe after pampering you, they’ll try to replicate countless new yous.”
“But if all it wanted was a perfect evolver, no reason to block… you.” Zhuang Ningyu paused, “How’s Yi Ke?”
Huo Ting handed the phone to He Mo.
He Mo answered smoothly, “Under the great power of love, Comrade Xiao Yi has suppressed all side effects of his evolution period. He’s organized, disciplined, turning with the group’s momentum like a cog in a precision machine, showing exceptional professionalism and superb work ethic.”
Zhuang Ningyu: “Switch to a real operator!”
He Mo: “He looks fine but he’s faking it. Either you get out fast, or hurry up and get him inside!”
Would you like a slightly lighter or darker tone for the next segment?
