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Chapter 57: He actually thinks Shen Ti is cute
“I knew it.”
Facing such a horrifying scene, An Wujiu was not surprised at all. With lightning-fast reflexes, he retrieved his weapon and swiftly hit several monsters climbing up. His movements were seamless.
In fact, when Shen Ti saw these clones, a certain speculation crossed his mind. However, despite the imagination, there was still a sense of shock in Shen Ti’s heart as he personally killed creatures that looked exactly like An Wujiu.
At the moment of the headshot, two small objects appeared in front of him, right at the severed wounds of the monsters. Shen Ti, enduring discomfort, reached out to take them.
They were two mini hard drives with the employee numbers of Wu You and Yang Erci imprinted on them.
Their clues appeared here, indicating that so far, besides A01 and A02, everyone else had corresponding hard drives. Opening the hard drives would undoubtedly reveal clues.
Without much thought, Shen Ti directly retrieved the unused incendiary grenade from before and threw it toward the remaining group of monsters.
This was the third time he was forced to kill creatures that looked exactly like An Wujiu.
The sadistic taste of the holy altar was truly extraordinary.
“Close the door!”
The two retreated into the door and then closed the two doors together, using their shoulders and arms to brace them shut.
“I think I’m going to have psychological trauma.” Shen Ti complained to An Wujiu, then sighed deeply, “This is definitely the most terrifying scene in this instance.”
His sighing gesture made An Wujiu inexplicably find it cute, but the next second, he felt strange about why he used the word “cute” to describe Shen Ti, a tall giant of 1.9 meters.
“Aren’t you scared at all?” Shen Ti couldn’t understand An Wujiu. He had just seen monsters with the same face being shot, and yet he smiled.
An Wujiu immediately nodded, then emphasized with some exaggeration, “It’s quite scary.”
“Maybe… each one of them has my face.”
He told Shen Ti, “Do you remember the puzzle we encountered with the password prompt when the magma appeared before?”
Shen Ti thought for a moment and suddenly realized something.
“Clone Child.”
Everything had been foreshadowed.
An Wujiu speculated that A02 might also be a victim of this containment center, involved in cloning experiments.
But why could he become the manager at the top of the containment center? According to the structure of this building, the higher up, the higher the technical content of the staff’s roles. From the lower-level guards to the clown representing entertainment, and then gradually becoming the managers of the surrogacy institution and the engineers of embryo experiments.
A01 and A02, positioned at the top, should be the leaders of the containment center.
And these two leaders also had an unusual relationship.
Everything happening here seemed to connect to a complete story, but the clues were not enough. Any possibility could be endlessly extended, such as A02 being a cloned experimental subject and substitute. After learning the truth, he was killed by everyone and replaced by a second A02…
Thinking about this, An Wujiu felt a tingling sensation on his back.
The monsters erupted into desperate screams and roars as they burned, and the lullaby on the fourth floor did not continue playing on the fifth floor.
The successful entry of the two caused the fifth-floor gate to close completely, and the door disappeared, turning into an ordinary wall.
The fifth floor was quiet, with a corridor in the shape of a square. There were bloodstains on the floor, extending all the way to the corner. An Wujiu lowered his head to inspect the bloodstains and found that the blood was fresh, but as soon as he touched it, the blood disappeared.
The bloodstains along the entire corridor vanished.
“Where are they?” Shen Ti looked around on both sides.
“Probably hiding in a safe place.” An Wujiu tentatively shouted, “Wu You?”
“We’re here.” Wu You’s voice came from afar.
“Good, we’re coming over.” The voice came from the right, so An Wujiu and Shen Ti walked in that direction. The corridor’s lights were a bit dazzling, and An Wujiu subconsciously looked up, noticing some small black holes at the edge of the ceiling.
“What are you looking at?” Shen Ti asked.
An Wujiu pointed to the ceiling and asked, “Do you see that?” He didn’t look at Shen Ti, kept looking up, and squinted his eyes, “I don’t know what it is; it’s a bit unclear.”
In the next moment after he finished speaking, his body swayed, and his feet left the ground. An Wujiu lowered his head in fear, “Ah…”
Shen Ti actually lifted him up.
“Can you see it better this way?” Shen Ti tilted his head below and blinked his eyes, “Do you want to go higher?”
“N-no need.” An Wujiu hurriedly raised his head, nervously looking for the black spot he had seen earlier. Then, belatedly, he realized that he should have asked Shen Ti to put him down first.
Forget it.
He reached out to touch the so-called black spot. In fact, it wasn’t a flat point; it was a bean-sized hole.
“What is it?” Shen Ti asked from below.
It was strange; it wasn’t empty inside, like there was a layer of reflective glass.
An Wujiu looked elsewhere; not only the ceiling but also the gaps and corners of the floor seemed to have such small black holes.
“Put me down.” An Wujiu touched Shen Ti’s shoulder with his hand. This position made him feel an inexplicable sense of shame, but his curiosity kept generating strange thoughts in his mind, such as how Shen Ti could have such great strength.
Shen Ti complied, putting him down. The two went from the embraced position to facing each other suddenly, and An Wujiu’s chin brushed against Shen Ti’s nose, their eyes meeting.
The exchanged gaze didn’t last long. An Wujiu quickly turned his head and coughed to cover up his unusual behavior.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Out of guilt, An Wujiu responded indifferently to Shen Ti’s concern, steering the topic back to the earlier black spot, “It seems to be a camera.”
“I guess so.” Shen Ti said, “But don’t ordinary office buildings have many cameras?”
An Wujiu turned around, walking toward the direction where Wu You and the others were. “The weird thing is why it’s not an ordinary camera.”
Doing it so discreetly, as if not wanting to be discovered. If it were just normal surveillance, why go to such lengths?
Walking behind, Shen Ti’s eyes were fixed on An Wujiu’s reddened ears, and he belatedly remembered something, touching his own nose.
When they turned the corner, An Wujiu saw a safety evacuation map fixed on the wall, similar to the one on the first floor, displaying the layout of the entire floor.
Shen Ti also noticed, and the directional markings on this floor were different from the fourth floor.
To be precise, it was only different from the fourth floor, and it was in a completely opposite state from the other four floors.
An Wujiu didn’t say anything; he walked quietly past the corner and saw an open door in the corridor. He heard Wu You’s voice, so he went straight over and caught them opening the hard drives of Zhong Yirou and Nan Shan.
“Doesn’t this door require authorization?”
Wu You glanced at him and said, “No, the door is open, but you might need to unlock the mainframe.” Probably because of the previous electric shock, Wu You’s face looked especially unpleasant, and his voice sounded weak.
An Wujiu walked over, and the recognizer quickly captured his face, displaying a line of text on the screen.
[No authorization.]
“How is that possible?” Wu You was puzzled, “Isn’t this floor supposed to be your floor?”
Shen Ti brushed past him and An Wujiu, “Let me handle this.”
As he approached, the screen unlocked.
[Welcome back, A01!]
It really was his authorization.
Soon, an unread message popped up on the screen, with the sender being A02.
[Ge, I still feel a bit strange, always forgetting what happened and then suddenly remembering. Am I sick? Sometimes when I look at you, I can’t recall what you looked like when you were a child, but didn’t we grow up together?]
Were A02’s memories confused?
Shen Ti thought for a moment, but first inserted the two mini hard drives he had just obtained into the device connector of the mainframe, including those of Nan Shan and Zhong Yirou.
A line of text appeared on the screen again.
[Do you want to view the logs submitted to you now?]
Shen Ti chose yes.
An Wujiu turned his head to look at other areas in the room. The edge of the ceiling here also seemed to have cameras. If the placement in the corridor was for normal surveillance, it probably wasn’t the case here.
Next to the wall was a single bed for resting, and there was a small desk with three metal frames on it. One of the photos showed two children sitting side by side on the grass, possibly due to game settings, and these two children were almost modeled exactly after An Wujiu and Shen Ti.
Especially Shen Ti’s green eyes.
But these two children seemed to be about the same age, and it was hard to tell who was the older brother and who was the younger brother.
Another photo showed them grown up, with A02, who looked exactly like himself, playing a building block game with a group of children. A01 was standing by the door, and the scene was very heartwarming.
In the last photo, the protagonist was a middle-aged man holding a young boy in both of his hands, who were A01 and A02, respectively.
Was this their father?
An Wujiu touched the photo with his fingers, and the holographic text suddenly appeared in front of him.
[This is the former owner of the containment center, as well as A01’s father, your adoptive father. He adopted you twenty years ago. So you and A01 became brothers. After your father’s death, you have been assisting A01 in managing the containment center. However, you suffer from congenital atrial septal defect, a genetic condition causing heart development abnormalities.]
A02 was adopted…
Despite having a congenital condition, they still chose to treat him as their own child and younger brother.
So A02 had truly fallen in love with his brother, even if only nominally.
After Shen Ti made his choice, the logs inside popped up directly. The first one was Zhong Yirou’s, and its content was concise.
[Work Log – October 7:
Liquid nitrogen cryo-pod temperature: -196 degrees Celsius
Total number of clone bodies: 245
Cryo-pod anomalies: None; everything is functioning normally.
Note: A temporary authorization malfunction occurred on the E floor, but the system quickly self-repaired.
Recorded time: 23:34.]
Wu You then understood, “So the cryo-pods that appeared on the fourth floor just now should actually belong to the first floor.”
Nan Shan, sitting beside them, whispered, “The content of this log is highly consistent with what Miss Zhong mentioned in her dreams. She said she did something wrong in her dream, watching many identical frozen bodies of adults in cryopods.”
After they finished reading it, the log was automatically deleted and destroyed.
An Wujiu felt puzzled by the high level of secrecy.
“What’s the use of those clones?” Josh asked in a low voice, “Why clone so many A02s?”
An Wujiu gave him a glance.
“Let’s read the others first.” Wu You nudged Shen Ti’s arm with his elbow, “Hurry up.”
Shen Ti, acting like a grown-up, didn’t hold a grudge against him and proceeded to open the second log.
This one belonged to Nan Shan.
[Work Log – October 7:
Handling of corpses and experimental waste: 6 cases
Failed resuscitation of clone bodies: 0 cases
23:45.]
It also involved clones.
An Wujiu frowned and suddenly heard Wu You exclaiming Josh’s name in surprise.
“What happened to your back?”
Josh was bewildered, not knowing what happened, but suddenly, a large spread of bloodstains appeared on his back. The fabric at the center of the bloodstain inexplicably tore open.
An Wujiu immediately moved aside his clown suit to inspect.
“You have a knife wound on your back.”
The wound looked deep, perfectly situated behind the heart. Logically, it should be a fatal injury. Moreover, the large bloodstain wasn’t fresh; its color suggested it wasn’t from the initial stabbing.
Not only that, but Yang Erci also noticed that the strangulation marks on Zhong Yirou and Nanshan’s necks had reappeared, as if the disappearance on the fourth floor was just a dream.
“Do you feel pain?” An Wujiu pressed on Josh’s back wound.
Josh shook his head, “I don’t feel anything…”
A new speculation arose in An Wujiu’s mind.
“Cough…” Wu You suddenly coughed, leaning against the wall, covering his mouth with his hand, and coughing out some liquid, initially thought to be blood.
But upon inspection, it was water.
He couldn’t understand why he suddenly felt a sensation of drowning and coughed up so much water.
“What’s happening to you?” Hearing Nan Shan’s voice, An Wujiu only then noticed that, in the blink of an eye, Wu You’s hair and upper clothes were soaked, and the lower part of his knees was wet.
“What’s going on?” Josh felt something was off, “Could it be A02’s ghost seeking revenge on us?”
Everyone had unexpected changes, but none were life-threatening. In fact, each person’s condition seemed to be okay.
Shen Ti was alone, checking the remaining logs. Josh’s log also appeared.
[Work Log – October 7:
Today, my friend had difficulty completing the mission. A02’s condition is not good, and he seems to be in a bad mood. I am concerned about his condition, but he hasn’t told me the reason.
Growth Show: Operation normal.
23:56.]
Then came Wu You’s.
[Work Log – October 7:
Surrogacy factory operations are normal.
All aspects of the surrogate mother who gave birth to the clones are normal.
I talked with A02 32 times today.]
Seeing this, An Wujiu frowned.
Why wasn’t it completed?
This work log also automatically self-destructed, making An Wujiu suspect if it was also automatically uploaded to A01.
Finally, there was Yang Erci’s log report, which was longer than the previous ones.
[Work Log – October 7:
Continued observation of the follow-up results of genetically edited experimental subjects. The combination of growth factors and nutrients in the cultivation pool works well. It can compress the growth period of cloned embryos to adulthood to six months, achieved through multiple experiments and parameter adjustments. However, the corresponding side effects are evident, primarily in shortened lifespan.]
Her log also abruptly stopped.
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