Chapter 153: Silhouette in the Rain 15
The temperature in the incineration room was very high. Even through professional protective equipment, the surging heat waves seemed capable of scorching the entire respiratory tract. The chips were uniformly implanted in the left side of the experimental subjects’ necks. Some, due to being implanted for too long, had completely fused with flesh, and when peeled away, carried a color like rusted metal.
“Captain Zhuang, three minutes until the security system activates.” Gao Weicheng reminded.
After collecting the chips in the shortest time possible, Zhuang Ningyu arranged for two team members to retreat to the coconut grove first to maintain contact with the external command group, while he and Ye Jiaoyue led the remaining team members straight to Tower One. Before Liam’s cleansing plan officially activated, everyone had to collect as much information as possible, quickly decipher the hidden rule codes, complete the mission, and rescue the trapped people.
Sea wind howled past their ears. The “Collection Hall’s” door remained wide open. Under Gao Weicheng’s arrangement, the experimental subjects who had been walking on the lawn had been brought back early, so there were currently no patrol personnel here.
The Collection Hall was filled with a thick scent of Eastern sandalwood. In the most prominent position of the hall stood an extremely beautiful classical beauty—Cui Jin transformed into a monster. Seeing everyone, her eyeballs moved woodenly without much reaction. The entrance to Tower One was located behind Cui Jin. The bright red flashing “No Entry” on the electronic screen carried a strong modern light pollution effect, overlapping with the antique Eastern collection hall, appearing extremely eerie and disharmonious.
“Split up!” Zhuang Ningyu commanded.
Ye Jiaoyue led people to find the other six researchers.
Tower One had 50 floors, most of which were laboratories. If this rule zone was built modeled after the real invisible giant base, then the top floor should be Liam’s office. The higher the floor, the smaller the laboratory number. Laboratories Three and Four were both located on the 49th floor.
The elevator could only reach the 48th floor. There should be a hidden elevator inside the building, but with limited time, Zhuang Ningyu didn’t waste time searching. Instead, he directly climbed out from the end of the 48th floor corridor, with Yi Ke following closely. As the small explosive device was activated, two window panes directly above shattered inward. Yi Ke, wearing specially made gloves, leaped up, his entire body instantly adhering to the tilted glass curtain wall like a gecko. Zhuang Ningyu secured his safety rope and landed not far beside him in the same manner, then stepped on Yi Ke’s knee with one foot, borrowing force upward again to successfully grasp the window frame edge of the 49th floor.
Their coordination was extremely seamless, the entire process taking less than a minute. After landing back on the ground, Zhuang Ningyu stuffed the gloves back at his waist, his gaze quickly sweeping the surroundings. The closer to the tower’s peak, the smaller the single floor area, so there were only four laboratories here, numbered 1 through 4. Each laboratory was equipped with highly secure blast-proof doors. The laboratories had no windows. Yi Ke said: “Forcing the doors open would require at least forty minutes.”
“Let’s go upstairs.” Zhuang Ningyu said. “Liam should have left himself door-opening privileges.”
…
Meanwhile, in Jin City, the investigation team was racing against time to review all materials related to the Lullaby Island rule zone, including the case file of Cui Jin’s disappearance. The incident occurred on August 13th five years ago. After attending a drinking party, Cui Jin didn’t go directly home but had her assistant drive her to Cuirong Road. After getting out, Cui Jin walked straight into an alley and completely vanished without a trace.
“Sister Jin actually resisted attending those drinking parties very much, and even more disliked the cold persona the company created for her.” Cui Jin’s assistant from back then said. “It’s not that she didn’t mention it to the company, but the boss wouldn’t agree to let her change her image. The penalty for breaking contract was too high. There was no choice but to continue. Continuing and continuing, psychological problems emerged.”
Though the problems weren’t major, they were still problems. During that period, Cui Jin went out every night to an underground bar near her home, often sitting for several hours. Her manager initially tried to stop her, but later seeing she neither drank excessively nor caused trouble, always welded a big mask and fisherman’s hat to her face, and chose corner shadow locations, turned a blind eye. The assistant said: “Sister Jin’s internal emotions were unstable, but she’d always improve after going to the bar, so we generally didn’t stop her.”
“Did she have friends at the bar?”
“No, she just listened to music.”
“A favorite singer?”
“Can’t say whether she liked them or not, but Sister Jin went every Thursday, always the same resident singer. Their schedule was fixed.”
“What was the singer’s name?”
“Dong Feifan. He wasn’t very famous back then.”
…
Inside the rule zone, Zhuang Ningyu and Yi Ke broke through the window and entered Liam’s office. Zhuang Ningyu quickly opened the computer on the desk and began attempting to invade the system. Five minutes later, a piercing alarm suddenly came from outside the window. Yi Ke flashed to the window to look down and saw red lights flashing across the entire island. The patrol monsters must have discovered the destroyed incineration room isolation door, realizing there were intruders.
Zhuang Ningyu’s fingers rapidly tapped the keyboard. This island’s main system adopted the same protective mode as Little Pegasus Amusement Park—not difficult for him to crack. Large segments of rapidly flashing code soon appeared on the screen. Yi Ke raised his gun high, silently shooting down a drone circling outside the window. The fragmented fuselage wreckage fell toward the ground, landing right at the feet of a patrol team. They looked up, their gaze falling on the huge glass breach at the tower’s peak, immediately letting out a horrified scream!
The next moment, this group of monsters actually climbed up the tilted tower body like apes, on all fours, “whooshing” upward!
The eerie shouting grew closer and closer, so noisy that even Zhuang Ningyu, busy behind the office desk, had to look up. Yi Ke gave him a reassuring look, then decisively pulled the trigger toward the window. Monsters screamed and rolled down from the heights, yet more new monsters climbed up again!
Seeing Yi Ke could handle it independently, Zhuang Ningyu wasn’t disturbed by the monsters again, continuing to focus his gaze on the screen. Code continued to emerge endlessly. More than ten minutes later, he seemed to have found this island’s rules, but—
“Bang!” A loud crash came! Using human wave tactics, the monsters actually successfully climbed to the top floor, but before they could enter the office, Yi Ke picked up a chair and physically hurled them away. Black shadows appeared wave after wave, then were struck down wave after wave. Finally, while Yi Ke’s attention was all on the window, a monster silently slid along the ground, about to leap up for a sneak attack when a black bullet had already pierced through its skull!
Yi Ke turned his head.
“Let’s go,” Zhuang Ningyu’s gun muzzle was still smoking. “I know how this rule zone was formed.”
He had found the password from the system. This time they could leave through the main door. Yi Ke fired to cover his retreat first, following closely behind himself, and before the monsters could chase them, “bang”—slammed the protective door shut. The high-precision lock tongue re-engaged, isolating all the angry roars inside the office.
There was a dedicated passage connecting the 50th and 49th floors.
Laboratory Three was more like a cold storage, storing large quantities of medications—at least tens of thousands of doses. Zhuang Ningyu had already searched the system earlier for the POV3 that Gao Weicheng mentioned, but found no related records. Yi Ke manually searched through a cabinet and found at least half the medicines were named by code numbers. Without a reference table, there was no way to know what was specifically in the bottles.
“Let’s check Number Four.” Zhuang Ningyu said.
Zhong Mu promptly deployed drones to seal the windows in the 49th floor corridor for them. As monsters were continuously shot down, the terrifying sounds finally temporarily ceased from their ears.
Laboratory Four’s door opened with a “beep.” Yi Ke thought, if this place was also like Laboratory Three, randomly stuffed with mountains and seas of medicine, then they really could only chalk it up to someone’s luck… uh, not being great. He looked at the empty Laboratory Four and silently took back the rest of his unspoken complaint. There was no medicine here at all, no POV3, no other medicines either—only a freezer.
Ford lay in the freezer. Liam used extremely low temperatures to pause all his cellular activity, forcibly maintaining the possibility of his “revival” at any time through instruments and medicines in an extremely complex manner. Yi Ke asked: “Should we bring him down and let Nathaniel see his grandson? Could this be the solution to the rule zone?”
Zhuang Ningyu shook his head, frowning at him, preparing to say something when his ears suddenly keenly caught a whisper of wind breaking—the sound of space being torn! Accompanied by air burning under high temperature and the howling of wind. His hearing sensed danger a step ahead of him. Zhuang Ningyu had no time to explain more, pushing Yi Ke out the door in one motion, shouting: “Get down!”
An earth-shattering explosion immediately followed!
The world shook, tilted, then skylight burst forth! Bricks, steel bars, and dust fell like rain. Zhuang Ningyu lay prostrate on the ground, opening his eyes amid chaos and severe pain. He could feel the weight covering his body, his ear damp—scalding blood.
“Captain Zhuang, Liam’s cleansing plan started early!”
“Captain Zhuang, Captain Zhuang, Little Yi, are you all okay?”
“Ningyu? Little Yi?”
Noisy voices and static came through the earpiece—Gao Weicheng, Zhong Mu, and Ye Jiaoyue. Zhuang Ningyu struggled to respond, then propped himself up, turning to see Yi Ke clearly, but the building tilted heavily again amid terrifying sounds!
The giant prefabricated slab crushing Yi Ke fell straight toward the ground a hundred meters away with this tilt! Their bodies were also sliding at high speed. At the critical moment, Zhuang Ningyu grabbed the steel bar in front of him with one hand and grabbed the unconscious Yi Ke with the other.
Half a minute earlier, with the activation of the island cleansing plan, the first passage officially opened. The large weapon Liam named “God’s Wrath” instantly leveled the “pyramid’s” peak, the intention obvious—he wanted to immediately destroy this rule zone’s mainframe to prevent the rules from being deciphered.
And Yi Ke, one second before the explosion occurred, had firmly protected Zhuang Ningyu beneath him, absorbing the vast majority of the shockwave for him.
The two were now precariously suspended outside the tilted building. Zhuang Ningyu clenched his teeth, gripping Yi Ke’s hand tightly, waiting for his self-repair. When his gaze extended far, everything within sight was almost entirely dark passages that had been opened.
Massive amounts of monsters were flooding in like tides, endlessly.
The coconut grove was no longer a safe zone. The entire rule zone had been set by Liam as a cleansing area.
Qinggang hoisted Nathaniel and ran, but his path was blocked. A monster raised its gun at him, but before it could pull the trigger, those grinning ugly heads went “bang” and flew high into the air!
“&#…#()￥&!” The International Joint Rescue Team brushing past threw out another segment of English Level 4… possibly Level 6 listening comprehension. Qinggang’s voice was steady and powerful: “OK!”
Nathaniel knew he certainly hadn’t understood, so he tried to explain English with simpler English, saying wearily and elderly: “They’re requesting more firepower support.”
