Chapter 91: Replication Experiment 15
The Management Center quickly located all available information regarding Miao Feng. Since she had exhibited extremely mild signs of evolution in her youth, the genetic test data preserved in the government database was incredibly detailed. Simultaneously, the police and the investigation team pieced together Miao Feng’s life trajectory before her death.
She graduated from a technical secondary school, married at twenty-one, and gave birth to a son and a daughter. Bowing to the pressures of life, she left her hometown at twenty-six to follow a fellow villager south for work, finding a job in the back kitchen of a five-star hotel—these facts had been verified.
Everything after that belonged to the realm of unverified “rumors.” It was said she met a guest dining at the hotel restaurant—a small-time contractor from Jincheng who was wealthy and philandering. With just a few sweet words, he coaxed the still rather attractive Miao Feng into abandoning her home and children to run away with him willingly. She left only a text message telling her husband, who was farming back home, not to hold her back anymore.
Shortly after, Zhang Yunxia’s father, Zhang Dashan, died unexpectedly in a car accident. With no one to care for the two children, the village chief attempted to call Miao Feng, but the receiver only transmitted the busy tone of a disconnected number. Based on this, the villagers solidified their impression of Miao Feng: a restless, cruel, beautiful woman. Later on, villagers working out of town even swore they had seen Miao Feng personally, decked out in gold and silver, having become the mistress of a big boss.
Gossip fermented happily in the isolated mountain village. Although most villagers were kind and would intentionally avoid discussing these things in front of the children, the Zhang siblings grew more silent day by day. Their longing for their mother was plastered over by layer upon layer of filthy, sticky shells formed by these bizarre legends. Over time, touching those memories felt only disgusting and shameful, so they simply stopped touching them. They didn’t touch them, and they didn’t allow others to touch them either. In Zhang Yunzhuang’s memory, the only time his sister ever smashed things at home was because he had mentioned their mother.
Zhang Yunzhuang’s exact words were, “She was like a crazy person.” His gentle, scholarly sister, wearing gold-rimmed glasses, had screamed hysterically, cursing “that woman” with language only a shrew would use.
And all this hatred stemmed from the idea that “Mother ran off with someone.” But what if Miao Feng hadn’t actually run away, but had been abducted instead?
“I’d rather believe Miao Feng ran away in the beginning,” Zhong Mu said.
The others understood her meaning. Between Miao Feng losing contact and Zhang Yunxia’s suicide, there was a gap of over twenty years. If she had existed as an “experimental subject” for those twenty years, it would be truly inhuman tragedy. It would be no wonder Zhang Yunxia collapsed and committed suicide.
“Captain Zhuang, the signal here is unstable; file transmission might take a little time,” Qing Gang suggested. “How about we send someone to bring the hard copies or a memory card directly inside? Just to be safe.”
Zhuang Ningyu nodded. “I’ll go to the Human Resources Department.” The next round of radio calisthenics music was about to start, and the rules zone needed more manpower anyway to suppress the experimenters who might go crazy at any moment. So, he planned to let another batch of “security guards” in.
Yi Ke accompanied him out the door and pressed the elevator button. According to the report from the team member guarding the purification room, the numbers on the electronic screen were no longer a stable 99:99:99 during this time. Instead, they had started showing unstable fluctuations like twenty-three hours, twelve hours, or eight hours. Although they would jump back to 99:99:99 after a brief moment, it indicated that Zhang Yunxia’s mental pollution status had begun to improve. At this moment, she was fighting against herself.
“If Miao Feng were to knock on the purification room door right now, do you think it would provoke her or help her?” Yi Ke asked.
“Based on complex human emotions, it’s hard to say. But according to the rules, finding her mother should be Zhang Yunxia’s wish.” Zhuang Ningyu walked into the elevator, and Yi Ke immediately pressed the number “3.” The elevator slowly ascended to the third floor. With a “ding,” before the cabin doors even opened, a loud crash suddenly erupted from the corridor, followed by screams of “Catch him!”
Zhuang Ningyu’s expression changed. He and Yi Ke rushed forward. The air was thick with dust. Shi Cheng was originally placed in an empty laboratory next to the Human Resources Department, watched by medical staff and two action team members. But now, a gaping hole had appeared in the wall between the laboratory and Human Resources, and gray-green aerated bricks were scattered all over the floor.
“Captain Zhuang!” A nurse ran out clutching her injured arm, speaking in panic. “Shi Cheng suddenly mutated!”
Without warning, his heart rate had accelerated abruptly, reaching 403 beats per minute—far beyond the human limit. Before the medical staff could find the cause, he had suddenly opened his eyes. Then, like a zombie in a doomsday movie, he stumbled but moved quickly, crashing straight into the wall in front of him.
Under the immense impact, the lightweight partition wall crumbled like a biscuit. The recruitment machine placed in the center of the Human Resources room was also knocked over by him, its shell smashing open with a bang, parts rolling in all directions. Zhuang Ningyu didn’t have time to think and shouted loudly, “Watch out!”
An action team member dodged to the side, avoiding Shi Cheng’s hands, which had suddenly sprouted sharp spikes. The appearance of this biological research institute director was changing rapidly: his skin was becoming paler, his head rounder, his pupils blacker—so black they revealed a hint of red—and his fingers were turning into sharp points. He had become an experimenter.
“Damn it.” Qing Gang, who had rushed over to support, cursed. He had thought this guy named Shi was ridiculously frail before, but it turned out the drug just hadn’t kicked in yet, saving up for a big explosion now. Zhong Mu looked at the monster-like Shi Cheng and asked in disbelief, “Is he crazy? Why would he inject himself with this kind of drug?”
“It could have been involuntary,” Zhuang Ningyu said. “Or he might have been deceived by someone and didn’t know the side effects of the injection. He is an experimenter, but he can also be an experimental subject in someone else’s eyes.”
Amidst this chaos, the radio calisthenics music started playing again. The doors of the laboratories on both sides opened one after another. The experimenters swept away their fatigue, lining up in the corridor full of anticipation, ready to receive their wages after their hard work. But reality disappointed them once again.
The instrumental broadcast music was noisy, sounding like high-decibel static. The experimenters’ anger was uncontrollable. Like last time, they raised their hands high, shouting “We want wages!” In a touch of dark humor, Shi Cheng actually raised his hand as well, but the surrounding experimenters soon discovered him.
“Give us back our wages!”
“Detestable administrators!”
“Wages! Wages! Wages!”
Shi Cheng was blocked in the center of the crowd. While mechanically and uncontrollably shouting “Wages! Wages!”, he tried his best to dodge the group. His mutated body gave him exponentially increased attack power. Soon, a flower of blood bloomed on the wall!
“Wages! Wages!” Shi Cheng cried out indistinctly, his fingers piercing through the chest of an experimenter in front of him with a squelch.
“Damn administrators!” the experimenters screamed, the conflict intensifying further.
“You go to the reference room,” Zhuang Ningyu ordered in a low voice. “Do not let the experimenters rush in. Pull two more people to watch Zhang Yunxia.”
Yi Ke was worried. “You are also an administrator—”
Zhuang Ningyu turned his head and glanced at him.
Yi Ke swallowed the second half of his sentence and patted him on the back. “Okay, be careful.”
“Here is another administrator!” He heard this shout just as the elevator doors closed.
Zhuang Ningyu kicked away an experimenter lunging at him. The action team members quickly surrounded him with guns drawn. The black firearms and fierce security guards brought a temporary stillness to the corridor again. Under the threat of death, some experimenters began to hesitate and retreat into their labs. However, another group stood their ground, slowly gathering and closing in, looking at Administrator 002 with hateful eyes. Zhuang Ningyu quickly noticed that the pupils of this group of remaining experimenters had changed from the original pitch black to the same color as Shi Cheng’s—black revealing a hint of red.
They appeared to be evolving.
“Wages! Wages!” Shi Cheng was currently like a split personality wavering between administrator and experimenter, standing before Zhuang Ningyu with both hands raised to demand payment. Zhuang Ningyu didn’t indulge him; he launched a flying kick directly. The gap between perfect evolution and drug-induced maturation became apparent immediately. Shi Cheng instantly clutched his stomach, squatting on the ground in pain, only able to squeeze wheezing sounds from his throat—and this was with Zhuang Ningyu holding back his strength.
“Take him back and watch him better this time.” Zhuang Ningyu turned and asked, “How is the machine?”
An action team member replied with a headache, “It won’t light up.”
The experimenters lingering in the corridor were still pressing closer step by step.
Zhuang Ningyu tightened his grip on his gun.
“Back off!” the action team members shouted angrily, but with little effect. The experimenters seemed full of ambition; something seemed to have filled the fear in their hearts, so they weren’t prepared to back down anymore. Gunshots rang out from the second floor. The experimenters on the third floor no longer hesitated either. Clutching syringes filled with yellow-green fluid, they lunged forward with a whoosh!
Zhuang Ningyu said, “Fire!”
The other floors were in equal chaos. Yi Ke guarded the door of the reference room. Monster experimenters fell to the ground amidst gunfire, but they would soon sway and crawl back up. It seemed that unless they were completely sliced into fragments by lasers, they would continue their endless advance. The action team members quickly buttoned up their protective suits to avoid being sprayed by the unidentified liquid splashing everywhere. The air was filled with a burnt and foul smell, and streaks of blood were left on the shattered glass.
“We want to be administrators too!”
“Administrators! Administrators!”
One experimenter leaped up from the ground like a flea, spreading his limbs in mid-air to pounce on a security guard who had his back turned. However, he was grabbed from behind. With a tearing sound, his white coat ripped open, and the experimenter stumbled to the ground. He turned angrily to look at the culprit: “Damn administrator! I’m going to kill you!”
Zhuang Ningyu dodged sideways, his shoe sole drawing a white mark in the blood covering the floor. A syringe filled with liquid brushed past his ear and stabbed into another experimenter. The victim immediately began to convulse in pain.
“Captain Zhuang!” A report came through the earpiece. “Miao Feng’s data has transferred thirty percent. It opens, but visual comparison is too difficult. We can’t understand it; it might take a very long time.”
“Let Little Yi find it; he has a photographic memory.” Zhuang Ningyu pulled the trigger. “Quick, hurry up!”
An experimenter with a syringe stuck in his arm fell in front of him. Some liquid remained in the tube, showing a strange pink color. However, the syringes the experimenters were using to attack the security guards and administrators contained yellow-green liquid.
They were injecting drugs into themselves! Realizing this, Zhuang Ningyu’s gaze quickly swept over everyone. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before he discovered a pale, slender hand reaching out from Laboratory 17. In the hand was a syringe filled with pink liquid. The thin needle silently pierced the skin of an experimenter at the door. As the liquid was pushed in, that experimenter immediately became extremely aggressive, practically pouncing on all fours toward an action team member!
Zhuang Ningyu decisively fired a shot to finish him, then strode toward Laboratory 17, grabbing the hand that was trying to retract secretly!
A small, thin experimenter was hoisted out, a “Intern” badge still hanging on her chest. The pockets of her white coat were stuffed with syringes containing pink liquid!
“Ah!” She screamed loudly!
“Captain Zhuang.” An action team member recognized her. “This experimenter was sneaking around the corridor earlier. We asked her what she was doing, and she said she picked up a syringe.”
“Where is the syringe?”
“She gave it to us.”
“Was there medicine in it?”
“No, empty.”
The back of the intern experimenter’s hand was covered in needle holes. During the struggle, blood sprayed out continuously, quickly dyeing Zhuang Ningyu’s protective suit crimson. As she struggled, terrifying cracking sounds came from all her joints, and her muscles expanded without limit. Her originally bony shoulders and back stretched broad and wide, and her legs became incredibly thick. With a thud, she actually forcibly broke free from Zhuang Ningyu’s grip!
“We don’t need the old administrators!” she roared excitedly, her voice shaking the lights on the ceiling. “I am an excellent evolver! I am the new administrator!”
Her white coat had been shredded to pieces during her mutation. Her completely naked body had long lost any gender characteristics, and barely any human characteristics remained. Her gray-white torso was covered in needle marks. Zhuang Ningyu’s gaze fell on the messy lab bench: pink liquid, red blood, and syringes used for drawing blood.
She was using her own blood to manufacture evolution drugs and then injecting them into the experimenters.
Zhuang Ningyu didn’t know exactly what she had picked up earlier, but it certainly hadn’t been an empty syringe. Judging by the fact that her pupils showed the same state as Shi Cheng’s, the evolution drug they injected was identical. A lowest-level intern experimenter shouldn’t have been qualified to inject the same drug as the boss, so what she picked up was likely the evolution drug syringe dropped by Shi Cheng. After finding it, she first injected herself to further her evolution, then drew blood from herself to create new evolution liquid to inject into the other experimenters.
She was one of the sources of this riot. Zhuang Ningyu deduced the complete logical chain in the shortest amount of time, so he pulled the trigger again. However, the laser only left a layer of shallow black scorch marks on that gray-white skin.
The intern experimenter looked down at him from above, shuffled forward two steps, and arrogantly announced word by word: “I—want—to—be—the—ad—min—is—tra—tor—”
Zhuang Ningyu shook his head. “I do not allow it.”
Inside the archive room, only Yi Ke was left comparing the DNA reports. Since the others couldn’t understand them even if they wanted to, it was better for them to go out and suppress the riot, creating a quiet… safe working environment for Little Yi. Although Yi Ke couldn’t understand the pages full of professional terminology either, he had a good memory. Normally, he could remember exactly which Taobao shop sold his wife’s ninety-nine yuan banana pajamas (shipping included). Now, he could also memorize every gene locus and mutation type on Miao Feng’s test report. His brain was like a scanning computer running at high speed; with just a rough glance, he could make an accurate judgment.
Yellowed reports were constantly tossed onto the floor by him.
“Captain Zhuang says don’t be nervous!” Qing Gang roared at the top of his lungs from the doorway. “He says he is very safe!”
Yi Ke continued rummaging through the mountain of reports without speaking. He knew Zhuang wasn’t safe at all.
The strong intern experimenter had clearly become the “guide” for all the experimenters in the corridor due to her excellent evolutionary performance. Seeing that Zhuang Ningyu was difficult to deal with, she switched tactics and led the experimenters to attack the temporary medical room, planning to find the other administrator first.
Bang! The door panel was knocked slightly loose!
Bang! This sound was much duller than the last. The intern experimenter stumbled back two steps, howling in anger as she clutched her broken leg bone. Zhuang Ningyu was dragging a tactical axe from the Order Maintenance Department in his hand and swung it up again. His judgment was correct: the intern experimenter’s mutated exoskeleton could withstand the scorching of laser guns, but it couldn’t withstand the most primitive impact force.
Blood sprayed out again. The intern experimenter pressed her back against the wall, digging her fingers deep into the lightweight bricks to maintain balance. Once she steadied herself, she immediately lunged fiercely at the damned Administrator 002! Zhuang Ningyu dodged sideways and hooked his foot underneath her. The intern experimenter instantly lost her center of gravity, sliding out face-up on a thick layer of blood plasma on the floor. Zhuang Ningyu didn’t give her a second chance to stand up. The axe blade, flashing with cold light, wedged into that metal-hard neck with the force of a thousand pounds, then twisted hard—
The mutated head rolled down amidst the ear-piercing sound of shattering bone.
“Either go into the lab,” Zhuang Ningyu stood up holding the axe, looking coldly at the remaining experimenters in the corridor, “or die.”
After a brief, dead silence, the experimenters chose to return to the laboratories.
The riot was temporarily quelled. Action team members rushed to support other floors. Zhuang Ningyu went to check the medical room again. Under the effect of anesthetics, Shi Cheng was currently in a deep coma. The doctor explained, “Although the injection of the evolution drug caused unpredictable mutations in him, but… his vital signs are indeed more stable, and the inflammation has subsided.”
Zhuang Ningyu had no time to ponder the pros and cons of the evolution drug right now. He turned to look at the two team members busy repairing the machine on the other side of the big hole. Judging by their wild techniques, there was likely no hope in the short term. He estimated that the only knowledge these two had regarding appliance repair was burying a wet phone in a rice jar or slapping a snowy TV screen a couple of times. So, Captain Zhuang prepared to give up on this thing for the moment. He raised his hand to press his throbbing temples, gave a few instructions, and planned to check on Yi Ke’s progress.
But before he could step into the elevator, a new situation came through his earpiece—
“Captain Zhuang!” The voice of the action team member on the negative third floor was tense. “The experimental subjects on this floor seem like they are about to mutate.”
Bang! A dull, strange noise also came from the laboratory opposite Zhuang Ningyu, followed by the terrified screams of experimenters—
“Ahhh, how did it stand up?!”
Zhuang Ningyu’s face was as cold as frost as he cast his gaze toward the severed head.
The head happened to be looking at him too, and then it grinned again, revealing a smile that was bizarre in the extreme.
