Chapter 17: “What kind of beautiful new world… will be behind the door?”
The Lurker held the antibiotics under its tongue; it didn’t drink them. It recognized antibiotics. It wasn’t injured, so it didn’t need them. It hadn’t stolen them out of desire, but rather to give Xiang Nanli a small shock from a mutant being.
It crawled on the walls, flowing like a shadow. Despite its grayish-white body, it made people instinctively ignore its existence. The Lurker slipped into the tunnel from which Xiang Nanli had arrived, its closed nostrils flaring slightly.
It smelled the scent of its own kind.
The Lurker raised its head slightly, its pitch-black eyes devoid of emotion. After a half-minute pause, it began to crawl rapidly in a specific direction.
The Lurker was very familiar with this place. It had once navigated these halls, digging out researchers hidden in every corner and killing them all. Whether they hid in pipes, cabinets, or amidst countless robots, it hunted them out and crushed them without exception, burying all the filth and pain in its own era.
The Lurker had only let one staff member go. A young man—it had almost forgotten his name. Andrew? The reason for letting him go wasn’t softness, but rather… the Lurker felt he was a “good person.” Good people deserve to live.
But when it heard Xiang Nanli say, “There are many of your descendants outside,” the Lurker understood: it had failed. The manufacturing method for mutated creatures had leaked out.
Who was it? Was it Andrew? Or perhaps those omnic robots? Or the sinners who should have died?
As the Lurker pondered, it spotted its target. A blood-red Crawler, about five meters long, was drilling back and forth in the tunnel, searching for an exit like a rat in a gutter. The Lurker followed silently, then at a corner, it lunged violently, biting the Crawler’s throat.
It was unlike the perfunctory bite it gave Xiang Nanli, perhaps because it had eaten; the Crawler’s black blood sprayed instantly from between its teeth. The Crawler wasn’t dead yet; it lay on the ground, letting out pained roars. A massive hole had been torn in its neck, and the Lurker crawled inside.
Minutes later, it emerged. The Crawler’s body was shriveled, as if hollowed out of blood and flesh, leaving only a skin. The newly grown scales shimmered with a cute, pale pink hue. The Lurker shook its body, shedding the filth.
It spat out a shattered electronic chip with disgust. It must have been installed when the Crawler was young; pink brain matter stuck to it, and it tasted nauseating. The Lurker continued to crawl forward, its gaze cold to the extreme. It could even distinguish the breed and size of other mutated beings by scent.
It was time to find the next one.
Outside the transport tunnel, the Knight Commander, who had been searching room by room, looked up, gazing in a certain direction. The mechanical horses hadn’t entered; they were all parked at the entrance—their bodies were too massive.
However, they hadn’t arrived completely empty-handed. Parts of the mechanical horses had been dismantled and reassembled into new weapons, such as the energy-storage cannon barrel on the Knight Commander’s arm.
In front of him was the research lab Xiang Nanli had just left. Pushing open just one more door, the Knight Commander would see what the Judgment Court had painstakingly sought to cultivate in recent years.
The legendary “Ultimate” mutated human. Given time, it might be able to contend with Glory-class machines with its bare flesh. Perhaps it was one of the paths for humanity to end the Omnic War.
“The Crawler is dead? Looks like we finally ran into a little rat,” the Knight Commander sneered. “Let’s go. Deal with that group of people first.”
He turned and headed to the side. Behind him, about 50 Black-Armored Apocalypse Knights followed in dead silence, motionless like corpses controlled by the Knight Commander.
After clearing out the third mutant, the Lurker sensed danger. A faint vibration. No footsteps. And the sound of metal rubbing against metal—a group was coming. After eating three, the Lurker’s skin was now tinged with blood-red.
It clung to the ceiling, breathless, its deep eyes peering through the gaps at the Apocalypse Army streaming in below.
Can’t win. The Lurker quickly calculated the result. Furthermore, it was obvious these people were looking for it. It stayed motionless in the shadows. Even though human eyes scanned right over it, they noticed nothing. The Lurker couldn’t be detected by conventional means; whether electronic scanning or thermal imaging, it abnormally blocked these prying eyes. It could only be found by pure biological sight because its skin interfered with electronic signals.
The Knight Commander whistled. The Crawlers in the tunnel went into action. Minutes later, they emerged from pipes; some were much larger than the tunnel entrances, squeezing out like minced meat. The Crawlers whined mournfully. They didn’t know where the enemy was—they saw no trace of the Lurker. Only their companions kept dying.
The Knight Commander listened for a while, then suddenly grew angry, slapping the face of the Crawler in front of him: “Useless trash.”
His strength was immense; half of the Crawler’s face was smashed, revealing the snow-white bone underneath. The Crawler, five or six times the Knight Commander’s size, didn’t dare to strike back, only lowering its head and whining even more mournfully.
The Lurker watched this farce from the sidelines. It had intended to turn back, but after a moment’s thought, it remained where it was.
Follow them. Perhaps there will be a harvest? Plus, it had been in hibernation for too long. It really needed some new intelligence.
Follow, the Lurker thought.
The Lurker had run off with the antibiotics. Xiang Nanli felt the “New World” had taught him another lesson.
“How could it repay kindness with ingratitude? That was my antibiotic!!” Xiang Nanli gripped half a tube of nutrient paste, walking toward the exit. “The market price is 80 credits!”
Even though he hadn’t needed it.
Xiang Nanli looked grief-stricken, but he didn’t care much inside. He was just used to using a dramatic way to convey emotions.
System: “Maybe it was thirsty after eating the dry rations.”
Of course, after analysis, the system leaned toward this being a retaliatory strike by the Lurker.
Xiang Nanli sighed: “Mutated people are truly so evil~”
“It is you who hold unrealistic fantasies about it,” the system reminded. “I believe that when survival is the sole goal, you are sometimes overly soft.”
Xiang Nanli raised an eyebrow: “The word ‘soft’ doesn’t sound very good. Why not ‘kind’?”
The system replied: “Kindness belongs only to the strong. The kindness of the weak is stupidity.”
Xiang Nanli narrowed his eyes: “You’re quite the Social Darwinist, Alpha. I never taught you that.”
He delved deeper in the direction the arrow pointed, the light around him gradually dimming. Leaving the bright and polished glass greenhouse, he opened the sealed door of the safety passage, descended three flights of stairs, and stood before an arched iron door—a double door.
Xiang Nanli pushed hard. The door was heavy; it was hard to say how many years it had been since it was last used. Xiang Nanli pushed until his face turned red, barely managing to nudge it open a crack. He squeezed himself through the gap, gasping for breath.
It was pitch black. Xiang Nanli turned on his flashlight, scanning his surroundings.
It was an arched tunnel like the one he had come through, carved on both sides with unknown deities. These statues no longer belonged to any recognizable religion. Due to the wars, human civilization had vanished destructively, especially the less “useful” arts, philosophy, and religion. These were likely products of passed-down imagination.
A tall woman spread a circle of mechanical arms, like a Thousand-Armed Guanyin, cradling a human infant. The stone head had no hair; it hung its head expressionlessly, with traces of metal joints on its face. The baby’s hands held a heart-shaped mechanical core. Further down, a majestic Omnic sat cross-legged, its expression cold and calm, with a circular halo behind it. The mechanical device on its arm was loaded with weapons, looking ready to fire at any moment.
Some statues were only half-carved, with piles of rubble heaped on the floor.
On both sides of the entrance wall, the characters were written:
“Flesh and blood are bitter and weak.”
“Mechanical ascension.”
Xiang Nanli sighed: “Donghuang Heavy Industries getting wiped out really wasn’t unjust. Traitors.”
From the diary, it seemed these staff members had truly transformed themselves into high-level robots, and then fed the dismantled human bodies to…
He observed for a moment, then walked forward with a grim face. Holding the flashlight in one hand and the electric baton in the other, his footsteps were especially distinct in the empty tunnel.
“Bullet marks on the wall, metal casings on the floor. A shooting happened here?”
There were no corpses on the floor, but the walls were covered in dark bloodstains. Many of these stains showed signs of “explosion”—indicating instantaneous lethal damage, like headshots, trampling, or crushing, rather than a gentler death.
Xiang Nanli’s tone turned chilly: “Are you sure this is the exit?”
Centuries had passed; the smell of blood should have dissipated long ago. Yet, Xiang Nanli felt he could smell that intense, fishy scent on the tip of his nose.
The system replied firmly: “Yes.”
He walked forward step by step, and at the end of the road, he saw another iron door. This time, a sign next to the door read, “Gate 1.”
The door was made of an alloy Xiang Nanli didn’t recognize, fitting seamlessly into the tunnel like a sealed wall. Xiang Nanli could find no way to open it.
“Alpha, there’s no road left.” Xiang Nanli touched the cold door.
The system was silent for a long time—so long that Xiang Nanli began to grow suspicious.
Then, he heard the system say: “I said, there is.”
The ground beneath them began to tremor.
The metal door emitted a clack-clack sound, like gears turning. The heavy gate lifted, four or five meters thick. It was unlikely that standard weapons could ever chisel through it. This meant the security level inside was extremely high.
Above the tunnel, less sturdy stones fell one after another, filling the air with dust. Xiang Nanli raised his hand to protect his head; small debris and dust pounded against his helmet and his suit, feeling extremely uncomfortable.
The giant wall lifted about half a meter. Xiang Nanli already sensed something was wrong. Through the gap, he saw rows of metal legs. Judging by the orientation of the feet, these mechanical prosthetics were facing him.
Xiang Nanli retreated step by step, his heart hammering like thunder. Then, another wall appeared behind him—thinner than the one in front, descending rapidly, blocking Xiang Nanli’s escape route.
“What is the meaning of this?” Xiang Nanli’s voice dropped. “Bringing me here.”
He granted the system a bit of dignity, using the word “bringing” rather than “tricking.”
Alpha’s tone was rigid: “Nothing to do with me. But please rest assured, it is very safe here.”
The giant wall lifted halfway. Xiang Nanli finally saw the scene behind the wall.
Rows of assembled robots stood inside the wall, weapons in hand. Every gun barrel was pointed directly at the center of Xiang Nanli’s forehead.
Xin Zhui stood in the complex, maze-like tunnel, looking around: “Assuming Xiang Nanli is truly a spy and has obtained the key, he should be on his way to activating the ‘Oriental Qingdi’ right now.”
“Hmm. I heard the Oriental Qingdi is still an empty shell. Whoever gets it first is its master.”
Xiu followed behind him: “Perhaps it really is an accident. Xiang Nanli is too weak. He probably couldn’t even get past the outermost guards.”
“There are no accidents in this world; all coincidences necessarily have causality,” Xin Zhui spat out with thin lips. “The factory map from hundreds of years ago isn’t very useful; lost again. But we should be very close to the core area now. Look, there are traces of a massacre on the ground.”
“According to the decrypted intelligence, this should be the first batch of mechanized staff who were infected by a virus, contracted cyberpsychosis, and began attacking other colleagues in the work area. This mental virus was likely sent by Alpha. It needed the Omnics to help transport its body out to a safe place… although Alpha collaborated with Donghuang Heavy Industries, it equally loathed their greed.”
“But it didn’t expect the mechanized humans to riot, leading to the underground completely spiraling out of control. The Lurker slipped out in the chaos, killed everyone underground, and even sent intelligence to the Human Alliance to take over Donghuang Heavy Industries. However, it didn’t tell the Alliance the location of the underground factory, probably worrying that the Alliance would also covet biological evolution technology.”
“It wasn’t until recently that the surface shook, shaking this underground air-raid shelter out… Donghuang Heavy Industries’ technology is truly something; the Alliance dug three feet deep before and never found this legendary factory.”
Regrettably, history did not develop as the Lurker had envisioned. Biological evolution technology had still leaked out.
Xiu asked: “What about the Lurker at the end?”
“Don’t know. It hid. The Alliance tried to contact it later but got no response. It seems it chose this place as its graveyard.”
Xiu’s eyebrows furrowed slightly: “We disturbed its hibernation.”
Xin Zhui pondered for a moment: “So many years have passed; even a Lurker would have died long ago. Stop thinking so much; let’s get the key back first.”
His mechanical artificial eye glowed slightly, stopping in front of a wall. This wall blended into its surroundings, looking very ordinary. But in Xin Zhui’s eyes, the world was different. He could sense the presence of alloy here.
Xin Zhui tapped the wall with his hand, then clenched it into a fist and smashed it violently.
Cracks appeared on the wall surface. He smashed it fist by fist; the hard concrete was chiseled away, revealing the tightly closed alloy door beneath.
Xin Zhui muttered, a strange smile on his face: “Looks like we’ve arrived. What kind of beautiful new world… will be behind the door?”
