Chapter 17: Behind the door… what kind of beautiful…
The Lurker held the antibiotics under its tongue without swallowing. It knew what antibiotics were, and since it wasn’t injured, it had no use for them. Snatching them away wasn’t necessarily because it wanted them; it was mostly to give Xiang Nanli a little shock, a small reminder of what a mutant can do.
It crawled along the wall, moving like a shadow. Even though its body was a grayish-white, it made people subconsciously overlook its existence. The Lurker slipped into the passageway Xiang Nanli had used to arrive.
Then, its closed nostrils flared slightly. It smelled the scent of its own kind.
The Lurker lifted its head slightly, its pitch-black eyes devoid of any emotion. After a half-minute pause, it began to crawl rapidly in a certain direction.
The Lurker knew this place well. It had once roamed here, rooting out the researchers hiding in every corner, one by one, and slaughtering them all. Whether they hid in the pipes, inside cabinets, or among countless robots, it had hunted them out, crushing every last one of them without mercy. It had buried all the filth and pain in its own era.
The Lurker had only let one employee go. A young man whose name was starting to forget. Andrew, it seemed? It hadn’t let him go out of softness, but rather… the Lurker felt he was a good person. Good people deserved to keep living.
But when it heard Xiang Nanli say, “There are many descendants of yours outside,” the Lurker understood that it had failed. The methods to create mutant creatures had leaked out after all.
Who was it? Was it Andrew? Or those Omnics? Or perhaps those sinners who should have been dead?
As the Lurker pondered, it spotted the target of its journey: a blood-red Crawler, about five meters long, burrowing back and forth in the tunnel, looking for a way out like a rat in a sewer.
The Lurker followed it silently, then, at a corner, suddenly exploded into motion and bit into the Crawler’s throat. Unlike the “tasting” bite it had given Xiang Nanli, perhaps because it had finished its meal, the Crawler’s black blood sprayed instantly from between the Lurker’s teeth. The Crawler wasn’t dead yet; it lay on the ground, letting out a painful hiss. Its neck had been torn wide open, and the Lurker crawled inside through the hole.
A few minutes later, it climbed out. The Crawler’s body had shriveled up as if its blood and flesh had been hollowed out, leaving behind only a husk of skin. The newly grown scales on the Lurker shimmered with a cute, powdery white hue. The Lurker shook its body to shed the filth. It spat out a crushed electronic chip from its mouth with a look of annoyance; it must have been installed when the Crawler was young, and the pink brain matter stuck to it tasted disgusting.
The Lurker continued to crawl forward, its gaze cold to the extreme. It could even discern the species and size of other mutants just from their scent. It was time to find the next one.
Outside the transmission tunnel, the Knight Commander, who was searching room by room, looked up and glanced in a certain direction. The mechanical horses hadn’t entered; they were all parked at the entrance because they were too tall. But they weren’t entirely excluded. Parts of the mechanical horses had been dismantled and reassembled into new weapons, such as the cannon-like charging barrel on the Knight Commander’s arm.
Before him stood the very laboratory Xiang Nanli had just left. He was only one door away from seeing what the Inquisition had been struggling to cultivate for years. The legendary ultimate-form mutant—given time, it might be able to contend with Glory-level machines with its bare body. It was perhaps one of the paths for humanity to end the Omnic war.
“The Crawler is dead? Looks like we’ve finally encountered a little mouse,” the Knight Commander said sinisterly. “Let’s go. Deal with that group of people first.”
He turned and headed toward the side. Behind him, about fifty Black-Armored Apocalypse Knights followed in silence, motionless, just like corpses controlled by the Captain.
After clearing the third mutant, the Lurker sensed danger approaching. Very slight vibrations. No footsteps. And the sound of metal friction—a group of people was coming.
Having eaten three, the Lurker’s skin was now tinged with a layer of blood-red. It clung to the ceiling, holding its breath entirely, its deep eyes peering through a gap at the Apocalypse Army as they filed in below.
Cannot win.
The Lurker quickly assessed the outcome. Moreover, these people were clearly looking for it. It hid in the shadows, not moving a muscle. Even though some people’s eyes had scanned directly over it, they remained oblivious. The Lurker couldn’t be detected by conventional means; it strangely blocked both electronic scans and thermal imaging. Only a pure biological eye could see it. This was because its skin could interfere with electronic signals.
The Knight Commander whistled.
The Crawlers in the tunnel began to act, emerging from the pipes a few minutes later. Some were much larger than the tunnel entrances, squeezing through like minced meat. The Crawlers wailed mournfully. They didn’t know where the enemy was, let alone see the Lurker’s trail; they only knew their companions kept dying.
The Knight Commander listened for a moment, suddenly becoming enraged, and slapped the face of the Crawler in front of him: “Useless trash.”
His force was immense, tearing half of the Crawler’s face off and exposing the white bone beneath. The Crawler was five or six times the size of the Captain, but it dared not fight back, only lowering its head and wailing more mournfully.
The Lurker watched this farce. It had intended to turn and leave, but after a moment of thought, it paused in place.
Follow them. Perhaps there will be a harvest? And it had truly hibernated for too long. It really needed to know some new information.
The Lurker thought.
The Lurker ran off with the antibiotics. Xiang Nanli felt the new world had taught him another lesson.
“How could it return evil for good? Those were my antibiotics!” Xiang Nanli walked toward the exit, holding a half-tube of nutritional paste. “They cost 80 credits at market price!”
Even though he hadn’t used them either.
Xiang Nanli looked grief-stricken, but he didn’t care too much inside. He was just used to expressing his emotions in a theatrical way.
System: “Perhaps it was thirsty after eating dry rations.”
Of course, the System’s analysis leaned toward this being the Lurker’s retaliation.
Xiang Nanli sighed: “Mutants are truly too bad~”
“You hold unrealistic fantasies about it,” the System reminded him. “If survival is the sole goal, I believe you are at times overly soft-hearted.”
Xiang Nanli raised his brows: “That word ‘soft-hearted’ doesn’t sound very nice. 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 ventured deeper in the direction indicated by the arrow. The light around him grew dim. Leaving the bright, beautiful glass conservatory, he opened the security door of the passage, went down three flights of stairs, and arrived before a curved iron door. A double door at that.
Xiang Nanli pushed it hard. The iron door was heavy; it was unknown how many years it had been since it was last used. He pushed until his face turned red, barely managing to pry open a crack. He squeezed himself through the gap, gasping for air.
It was pitch black. Xiang Nanli turned on his flashlight and shone it around. It was an arched tunnel like the one he had come through, with unknown gods and Buddhas carved on both sides. These statues were no longer identifiable by religion. Due to the wars, human civilization had undergone a destructive disappearance, especially the less “useful” categories like art, philosophy, and religion. These were likely products of word-of-mouth imagination.
A tall woman spread a circle of mechanical arms, like a Thousand-Armed Guanyin, holding a human infant in her arms. The stone-carved head had no hair, and it lowered its head expressionlessly; there were traces of metal assembly on its face. The baby held a heart-shaped mechanical core in its hands. Further down, a majestic Omnic sat cross-legged on the ground, its expression cold and calm, with a circular halo behind it. The mechanical device on its arm was loaded with weapons, looking as if it could fire at any moment.
Some statues were only half-carved, with piles of rubble on the floor. On both sides of the entrance wall, four characters were written:
“Flesh is weak.”
“Mechanical Ascension.”
Xiang Nanli sighed: “It’s no wonder this Donghuang Heavy Industry was wiped out. Traitors to humanity.”
Moreover, looking at the diary contents later, these employees seemed to have really transformed themselves into high-level robots, even taking their dismantled human bodies to feed…
He observed for a moment, then walked forward with a heavy face. One hand held the flashlight, the other a stun baton. His own footsteps were exceptionally loud in the empty tunnel.
“There are bullet holes on the wall, and metal shells on the ground. A gunfight happened here?”
There were no corpses to be seen on the ground, but there were many dark bloodstains on the walls. Many of these stains appeared in an “explosive” pattern. This indicated that they had suffered instantaneous lethal damage, such as headshots, trampling, or crushing, rather than a gentler death.
Xiang Nanli’s tone turned slightly chilly: “Are you sure this is the exit?”
Centuries had passed; the smell of blood should have long since dissipated. Yet, Xiang Nanli felt he could smell that intense, fishy stench at the tip of his nose.
The System answered firmly: “Yes.”
He walked forward step by step, and at the end of the road, he saw another iron door. This time, there was a sign next to it: “Door No. 1.”
The door was made of an alloy Xiang Nanli didn’t recognize. It fit perfectly with the tunnel, like a sealed wall. Xiang Nanli could not find any way to open it.
“Alpha, there’s no way forward,” Xiang Nanli said, touching the cold door.
The System remained silent for a long time. Long enough for Xiang Nanli to start feeling suspicious. Then, he heard the System say: “I said, there is.”
The ground beneath them began to tremble.
The metal door made a “clacking” sound, like gears turning. The heavy door rose upward, and it was four or five meters thick. It was unlikely that ordinary weapons could have breached it. This also meant that the security level inside was very high.
Stones in the tunnel ceiling, not very stable to begin with, began to fall, filling the air with dust. Xiang Nanli raised his hand to protect his head; tiny debris and dust pounded against his suit’s helmet and his body, making him feel very uncomfortable.
The giant wall lifted about half a meter, and Xiang Nanli already sensed something was wrong. Through the gap, he saw rows of metal legs. Judging by the direction of the feet, these mechanical prosthetics were pointed directly at him.
Xiang Nanli backed away, his heart beating like thunder. Then, a wall appeared behind him as well—thinner than the one in front, descending rapidly, blocking his escape.
“What is the meaning of this?” Xiang Nanli’s voice deepened. “Bringing me here.”
He kept a shred of decency for the System, using the word “brought” instead of “tricked.”
Alpha’s tone was rigid: “None of my concern. But rest assured, it is very safe here.”
The giant wall lifted halfway. Xiang Nanli was finally able to see the scene behind the wall. Rows of assembled robots stood inside, weapons in hand. Every muzzle was pointed at the center of Xiang Nanli’s forehead.
Xin Zhui stood in the complex, maze-like tunnel, looking back and forth: “Assuming Xiang Nanli is truly a spy; he has the key. Then he should be on his way to activate the ‘Eastern Azure Emperor’.”
“Hmm, I heard the Eastern Azure Emperor is still just 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. I’m afraid he couldn’t even pass the outermost guards.”
“There are no accidents in the world; all coincidences necessarily have cause and effect,” Xin Zhui said with his thin lips. “The factory map from hundreds of years ago isn’t very easy to use; we’re lost again. But we must be very close to the core area now. Look, there are signs of a massacre on the ground.”
“According to the intelligence decrypted earlier, this should be the first batch of mechanized employees, infected by a virus. Then they contracted Cyber-Psychosis 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 cooperated with Donghuang Heavy Industry, it also despised their greed.”
“But it didn’t expect the mechanized humans to riot, leading to the complete loss of control underground. The Lurker slipped out during the chaos and killed everyone underground. It even sent information to the Human Alliance, letting them come to take over Donghuang Heavy Industry. However, it didn’t tell the Alliance the location of the underground factory, probably worrying that the Alliance would also covet the biological evolution technology.”
“It wasn’t until the recent surface tremors that this underground air-raid shelter was shaken out… Donghuang Heavy Industry’s technology was indeed capable. The Human Alliance had dug three feet deep in the past and never found this legendary factory.”
Unfortunately, history did not develop the way the Lurker had hoped. Biological evolution technology had leaked out anyway.
Xiu asked: “What about that final Lurker?”
“Don’t know. It hid. The Human Alliance tried to contact it later but received no response. It seems to have chosen this place as its grave.”
Xiu’s brows furrowed slightly: “We have disturbed its hibernation.”
Xin Zhui thought for a moment: “After so many years, even the Lurker must have died long ago. Don’t think so much, let’s get the key back first.”
His mechanical eye glowed faintly, stopping in front of a wall. This wall blended into its surroundings and looked very ordinary. But in Xin Zhui’s eyes, the world was quite different. He felt the presence of alloy here.
Xin Zhui knocked on the wall with his hand, then balled it into a fist and smashed it hard.
Cracks appeared on the wall’s surface. He smashed it punch by punch; the hard concrete was chiseled away, revealing the tightly sealed alloy door beneath.
Xin Zhui muttered to himself, a strange smile on his face: “Looks like we’ve arrived. Behind the door… what kind of beautiful new world will it be?”
