Chapter 85: Replication Experiment 9
Zhuang Ningyu also felt that only he could soothe the evolving Yi Ke. However, he didn’t want him to come in; he just wanted to solve the problem as quickly as possible and get out himself.
The office computer in front of him could be turned on, but not used. After the startup screen, the screen was completely frozen on the familiar blue sky and white clouds. Zhuang Ningyu pressed the call button on the desk. A moment later, the secretary pushed the door open and asked respectfully, “Esteemed Administrator 002, is there anything I can do for you?”
“I just saw three experimenters downstairs, carrying a bleeding corpse into the cold storage,” Zhuang Ningyu asked. “Who was he?”
The secretary showed no surprise at the appearance of a “bleeding corpse” in the research institute. Instead, she explained naturally, “An intruder. He entered Administrator 003’s office this morning, attempting to steal company secrets, but triggered the alarm. Please don’t worry, the experimenters eliminated him in time. He did not succeed.”
Zhuang Ningyu nodded, deliberately not mentioning Administrator 003, and asked directly, “Where is Shi Cheng?”
The secretary replied as expected, “Esteemed Administrator 003 just entered Laboratory Nine an hour ago.”
Shi Cheng was Administrator 003.
He continued to ask, “What about the other administrators?”
A trace of confusion appeared on the secretary’s face. It seemed that in her perception, Xinyin Biological only had two administrators, 002 and 003, and there were no “others.” Zhuang Ningyu had to remind her further, “For example, Administrator 001.”
The secretary hesitated. “…Are you referring to, the system?”
Administrator 001 was not a real person. It was the existence of this biological research center, similar to a “mastermind AI.” All the authority of Administrator 002 and Administrator 003 was granted by it. And compared to Administrator 003, who could freely enter and exit all laboratories, Zhuang Ningyu’s high status as Administrator 002 seemed to be reflected only in the superior office environment and the fact that “everyone had to greet him respectfully when they saw him.” The only employee he could directly manage was the secretary—responsible for explaining some trivial, unimportant daily matters to him.
After the secretary left, Zhuang Ningyu reported to Huo Ting, “I tried to have the human resources department and the head of the experimental group come see me, but I was refused. Or rather, not refused, the secretary automatically ignored my words.”
“You can’t get into the laboratories?”
“I can’t. I can’t even get into the cold storage with the lowest security level.” Even if he stole an experimenter’s password, he would be continuously warned by the sharp, piercing “unauthorized personnel are prohibited from staying.”
Shi Cheng’s Laboratory Nine was located on the second floor. The heavy metal door showed the words “In Use.” According to the secretary’s answer, he wouldn’t be out for at least three days. Zhuang Ningyu took this opportunity to inspect all six floors, up and down. He even entered the cold storage again and, ignoring the warnings, stayed inside for a full half-hour. He still couldn’t trigger any rules, but he did attract a group of monster security guards. They stood outside the cold storage with their hands down, looking at this “esteemed Administrator 002” with trepidation, not daring to move or persuade him to come out.
Zhuang Ningyu had participated in many missions before, but this was the first time he felt as if he was detached from the rule zone.
“What do you mean?” Yi Ke asked on the phone.
“I mean, I don’t seem to be a participant in the rules, more like a bystander,” Zhuang Ningyu said, leaning against the corridor railing, finding a simple explanation. “For example… a well-connected person?” In most companies, there is such a type of person who holds a seemingly proper position but does nothing all day, has no real power, and is only responsible for loafing around and waiting for their salary.
Yi Ke said, “The police have already taken a group of Xinyin Biological staff into custody. According to the current interrogation results, they are indeed conducting a massive amount of illegal animal and human experiments, trying to turn ordinary people into evolvers and evolvers into stronger evolvers through drugs. The drugs injected into U-Shield and Tang Xiaoyuan came from this laboratory.”
U-Shield had the “GI” mark representing the Invisible Giant on his ear, but the staff currently being interrogated all said they were only responsible for the experiments and knew nothing else. As for Zhang Yunxia, who had committed suicide eight years ago, Yi Ke said, “Her reputation at the research institute was very bad.”
Zhuang Ningyu had also glanced at the news eight years ago but hadn’t paid special attention. Therefore, his only two impressions of the case were “the deceased committed suicide in the third-floor break room due to excessive work pressure,” and after the incident, Xinyin Biological sent two employee representatives to attend her memorial service. The two “employee representatives” in the news photo at the time—one was relatively old and should be a leader, the other was clearly an intern who had been sent at random. His face was full of rawness and immaturity, and he was wearing an ill-fitting black suit, standing a little nervously in the empty memorial hall.
At the time, the main discussion in the comment section was cursing the capitalists for being heartless, for not even allowing employees to see her off on her final journey in order to suppress the news. But in fact, that wasn’t the case. Yi Ke said, “Zhang Yunxia had no friends at Xinyin Biological, so no one was willing to attend her memorial service. I read the interrogation records. In the colleagues’ descriptions, her personality was actually a bit like Ni Ruiling’s. They both prided themselves on their outstanding talent and never looked down on others. But the difference is, in the field of manipulating people’s hearts, Ni Ruiling indeed had few rivals, while in the field of genetic experiments, Zhang Yunxia, after leaving school, could at best only be considered one of the excellent ones.”
Without enough talent to convince the masses, and with her social skills having degenerated, Zhang Yunxia went from being “unfeeling and very popular” in the eyes of her classmates to “unfeeling and friendless.” She was always alone, spending day and night in the laboratory, almost crazily trying to produce results. Once, she even injected herself with a syringe of unknown ingredients.
Her colleagues thought she was crazy, but Shi Cheng quite admired this “craziness.” He even made an exception and took her on as a student, giving her the authority to freely enter and exit Laboratory Nine. Mentioning this, Zhuang Ningyu suddenly remembered, “If Zhang Yunxia is the main character of this rule zone, and she hasn’t appeared yet, could it be because she’s in Laboratory Nine with Shi Cheng?”
Yi Ke said, “mhm,” “It’s possible.”
As if to confirm their speculation, the moment he finished speaking, with a “ding”, the door to Laboratory Nine across from them slowly opened. A tall woman walked out from inside—it was Zhang Yunxia. Her expression was a little tired. When she saw Zhuang Ningyu in front of her, she was first stunned, then, like the other employees, she bowed slightly and greeted him mechanically and politely, “Hello, esteemed Administrator 002.”
“How’s the experiment going?” Zhuang Ningyu asked.
“Very smoothly,” Zhang Yunxia answered in a soft voice. The long period of intense focus had made her vision go black, and she was unsteady on her feet, stumbling forward a couple of steps. Zhuang Ningyu promptly grabbed her arm and helped her sit down on a nearby chair. Most of the experimenters here were like the three from the third basement level, with pale, slender bodies, shrill voices, and round black eyes. Only Zhang Yunxia still maintained her original appearance. Just as Zhuang Ningyu had said, she was most likely the “main character” of this rule.
Zhuang Ningyu placed a peeled soft candy in her hand. “Eat something. You look a little hypoglycemic.”
“Thank you,” Zhang Yunxia said, putting the candy in her mouth and chewing slowly. Compared to the professional photo in the news, she actually didn’t look that radiant. Her overly thin body made her look a little top-heavy, and her back was slightly hunched. Only her large, dark eyes still held a trace of the “favored child of heaven” she had been in school.
“Is it good?” Zhuang Ningyu asked.
Zhang Yunxia was a little stunned, as if she didn’t understand how a piece of candy could be good or bad.
Zhuang Ningyu introduced, “My boyfriend made it himself.”
It was indeed made by Yi Ke. The cause was that Zhuang Ningyu had been bored a couple of days ago and had followed a trend on a live stream, buying a bag of what looked like very tempting traditional handmade soft candies. But after opening it, before he could even eat it, a live worm had crawled out, which had startled him so much he had almost jumped off the sofa.
Yi Ke had wiped his hands with disinfectant wipes. “Don’t buy these unlicensed products anymore!”
Zhuang Ningyu: “Mmm.”
But his wife still had to eat soft candies. Zhuang Ningyu wasn’t interested in the common cola-flavored gummy bears and rubber candies in the supermarket, so Yi Ke, not sleeping on a big weekend, drove to the supermarket to buy several large bags of fruit, cornstarch, and white sugar, and went home to study how to make a new era’s sorghum candy from an app.
The finished product was a little sticky, but the fruit juice flavor was very strong and refreshing. Zhang Yunxia was not interested in this topic. She just gave a perfunctory “mhm,” folded the candy wrapper and threw it in the trash, and walked straight to the elevator. Zhuang Ningyu also followed her in. They went down to the third basement level together. Zhang Yunxia skillfully pulled a wheeled stretcher from the side, opened the cold storage door, and moved Wang Daqiang’s already stiff corpse onto the stretcher.
“Who is he?” Zhuang Ningyu asked.
“An intruder,” Zhang Yunxia’s answer was no different from the secretary’s.
Not an ordinary intruder, but an A-level evolved intruder, so there was still research value. Wang Daqiang’s corpse was pushed into Laboratory Fourteen across from the cold storage. Zhang Yunxia skillfully opened the dissection chamber and activated the mechanical arm located above the chamber. The stiff muscles were cut open, and the fully exposed human tissues made Zhuang Ningyu a little uncomfortable, but Zhang Yunxia’s expression was very calm, as if she had seen it all before.
This laboratory had more than one dissection chamber. Zhuang Ningyu looked around. A young boy, a young girl, an old man, a young woman… all the opened bodies were covered with a special biological gel, which looked exceptionally sticky and smooth. He then turned his gaze back to Zhang Yunxia. She was still staring at Wang Daqiang, leisurely chewing on a candy. As she chewed, she suddenly stopped, abruptly raised her head, her fingers gripping the edge of the table. From Zhuang Ningyu’s angle, he could clearly see the hairs on her face stand on end with a “whoosh”!
“You didn’t—”
Before Zhuang Ningyu could finish, Zhang Yunxia had already slammed the “pause” button on the dissection chamber and ran out with messy steps. She covered her ears tightly with both hands, as if she had heard some terrifying sound. She didn’t even want to wait for the elevator doors to open, directly squeezing through a gap, and her trembling right hand frantically pressed the number “2.”
On the second floor, besides the regular laboratories and offices, there was also a “purification room.” Zhuang Ningyu hadn’t known its function before, but now he did. After Zhang Yunxia entered, a line of red words immediately appeared on the electronic screen at the door—”If you hear crying, it means your mind has been severely polluted. Please come to the purification room for treatment as soon as possible.”
Zhang Yunxia had just heard crying. But a person with extremely low empathy, no family, no friends, who could eat soft candies while looking at a dissected corpse without expression, why would she have such a big reaction to “crying”?
Zhuang Ningyu frowned slightly. Crying represented mental contamination, but in this terrifying research institute that was like a demon’s den, shouldn’t crying be the most common and insignificant thing?
“How is it?” a soft voice suddenly came from the earpiece. Zhuang Ningyu was startled and only then realized he hadn’t cut off the call. He composed himself and said, “It’s fine. Zhang Yunxia suddenly heard crying while dissecting Wang Daqiang. Her mind was thus polluted, and she is currently receiving treatment in the purification room.”
“What crying?”
“I can’t hear it.”
The electronic screen showed that Zhang Yunxia’s mental contamination was “severe,” and the purification time was three hours.
Yi Ke paused for a moment, then said, “I just contacted Fu Han.”
Zhuang Ningyu’s hand froze. His phone’s contact list also happened to show “Fu Han” at that moment. The young couple were once again on the same wavelength, but this kind of telepathy wasn’t absolutely necessary. In order to show his innocence, he calmly closed the contact list and then asked with a slightly dazed expression, “Why did you contact him?”
“Don’t you think this rule zone is related to him?” Yi Ke said, leaning against the wall.
Zhuang Ningyu analyzed truthfully, “Theoretically, since Xinyin Biological is working for the Invisible Giant, the one related to it should be Fu Dong, not Fu Han.”
Indeed, that was the theory. But theory was theory, and reality was reality. And the current reality was that Zhuang Ningyu was being well “cared for” in the rule zone. This artificially intervened rule zone knew him very well, to the point of being almost meticulous.
“What did Fu Han say?” Zhuang Ningyu asked.
“No one answered the phone,” Yi Ke said with a frown. “I asked a friend. They said he’s on a cruise ship at sea, so he might not have a signal.”
“Is he really on a cruise?”
“He’s really on a cruise.”
Yi Ke hadn’t believed it at first either. What kind of stupid cruise? He was probably hiding in the rule zone, secretly spying, and would pop out any second to harass his fragrant wife. At the thought of this, he immediately became furious. His friend on the phone frantically tried to appease him. “Really, he’s really on a cruise!” He then sent a large pile of evidence. The cruise ship wasn’t without a signal the entire time. There was a signal yesterday, and one of the guests had even posted a photo of a party. Fu Han was indeed in it.
Zhuang Ningyu: “Send me the photo to see.”
Yi Ke: “You’re not allowed to see it.”
Zhuang Ningyu: “…From a professional standpoint.”
Yi Ke: “From any standpoint, you’re not allowed to see it.”
But despite his tough words, the next second, Zhuang Ningyu still received the photo. Fu Han was holding a glass of red wine, looking calm, sitting on a sofa with his legs crossed, his head turned, casually talking to the person next to him.
Although Zhuang Ningyu was not an extremely narcissistic person, he did feel that if this rule zone was specially designed for him by Fu Han, then he shouldn’t be on a cruise ship right now, but in Jincheng, or more accurately, in the rule zone.
Yi Ke: “What are you thinking about?”
Zhuang Ningyu: “I’m not thinking about anything.”
After saying that, he felt his answer was still lacking, so he added with a coaxing kiss, “Only thinking of you.”
