Liu Yueqi gripped the hilt of her saber and walked into the observation room.
Her shoulders trembled slightly as she ground her teeth, the fury in her eyes so palpable it turned them blood-red.
Even though the man had completely transformed into a monstrous Zerg Person, the young woman could recognize him by his eyes. He was one of the very outlaws who had destroyed her family.
With a sharp SCHIING, the blade of the Thousand Slash Saber caught the dim light, casting a chilling reflection.
What followed was a crisp sound of cracking and splintering, mixed with hoarse wails, that went on for several dozen seconds.
When Liu Yueqi flicked the blood from her blade, sheathed her saber, and turned to leave...
...the deformed Zerg Person on the wooden plank behind her had been reduced to dozens of pieces.
The young woman didn’t look back, her voice calm as she looked at Director Ling.
"Are there more?"
Ling Shuyan frowned slightly.
"There’s one more next door. That’s all."
Less than three minutes later, when Liu Yueqi emerged from the second observation room, her face showed no sign of relief. Despite having avenged herself, she instead revealed a faint trace of disappointment.
This was despite the fact that slaying these two enemies had allowed her to accumulate enough Life Energy for an Upgrade.
Lin Feng asked,
"What is it? Were the ringleaders—their leaders—not here?"
Liu Yueqi nodded.
"The three most important ones aren’t here."
Lin Feng looked at Ling Shuyan, then had Liu Yueqi briefly describe the three individuals’ names, nicknames, and physical appearances.
After listening, Ling Shuyan’s eyes narrowed slightly, and she shook her head.
"I’m sorry, but all three of them died on the operating table. Rest assured, though, the agonizing mutation brought on by the gene implantation surgery is beyond what any normal person can endure. Their deaths were agonizing; they didn’t go easy."
Her words obviously offered little comfort.
An enemy is an enemy because you must be the one to deliver vengeance personally; only by seeing them die, unable to rest in peace, can the rage in one’s heart be truly quelled.
The young woman merely gave a slight nod and prepared to leave.
"Wait!"
A voice called out from behind them.
Ling Shuyan, who had already started to walk away, visibly paused. A flicker of displeasure crossed her face before she turned back with a smile.
"Is there something else, Miss Lin? Or could it be that you’re also interested in this underground laboratory?"
Ling Yi, the one who had interrupted them, smiled.
"That’s right. However, I imagine there are more test subjects here than just these."
Ling Shuyan’s pupils contracted. Her mind raced, considering various possibilities and how to handle the woman’s questioning.
Countless excuses and cover-up lies began to take shape in Ling Shuyan’s mind...
But her reaction was swift.
She quickly realized that when facing two Tier Two Peak Awakeners, once suspicion took root, there was no room left for lies.
Not to mention, out of the corner of her eye, she had already caught Lin Feng’s suspicious gaze.
He had clearly sensed something was off as well.
In a split second, after a great deal of internal struggle, Ling Shuyan chose to nod and confess.
"Yes. The ones in the observation rooms are test subjects who still retain a sliver of self-awareness and maintain a complete human form. As for the other mutated bodies that have undergone excessive Assimilation, they’re completely inhuman. That’s why I didn’t take you all to see them..."
"Those test subjects have lost all reason and consciousness. They can only be treated as insects, or a pile of twitching flesh."
Ling Shuyan then looked at the young woman, who had turned back.
"I imagine Miss Liu has no desire to see such grotesque and horrifying sights. It could easily leave psychological scars..."
Liu Yueqi took a deep breath.
"And those... those monsters... are any of them from the same group as these fugitives?"
Ling Shuyan nodded, then shook her head.
"Yes. Some of them."
Liu Yueqi didn’t quite understand, so Lin Feng asked,
"’Some of them’? What do you mean?"
Ling Shuyan glanced at a subordinate who had brought a pushcart and was preparing to clean the observation room.
"It’s not something I can explain in a few words. If you really want to see, we can all go take a look. But you’ll have to put on hazmat suits first to avoid biological contamination."
Lin Feng frowned, a bad feeling creeping into his heart.
"Is it that serious? We’re Awakeners. Surely we have some resistance to it?"
Ling Shuyan shook her head without offering an explanation.
"You’ll see when we get there."
After the staff had cleaned up the remains of the man Liu Yueqi had killed, they pushed the fully loaded cart toward a different section of the underground laboratory, and the group followed.
At a fork in the corridor, they changed into yellow hazmat suits. The conspicuous skull-and-crossbones warning labels only deepened the doubts in the minds of Lin Feng and the others.
Soon, after passing several large laboratories, they arrived in a cavernous, dimly lit space.
A staff member switched on the lights. Bathed in an eerie red and green glow, they saw rows of cages holding several horrifying, completely mutated insectoid monsters.
They had completely lost any semblance of a human form. Some were covered in the segmented limbs of the Zerg Race, while others had a solid plate of Zerg Armor fused to their backs. One creature’s legs had even merged into a new abdomen, while a pair of wings sprouted from its back.
Although these monsters were only at the Tier One Early Stage in terms of power, the aura they exuded far surpassed that of the partially mutated test subjects from the observation rooms.
The staff member tossed the chunks of flesh from the cart to them.
The insectoid monsters, starved for days, began to ravenously devour the offering with their sharp fangs and teeth.
That alone would have been bad enough, but as the group ventured deeper, the cages grew larger, and the monsters within became increasingly grotesque and bizarre.
Their main characteristic was the chaotic, random mutations that covered their entire bodies.
Some monsters had even sprouted three or four heads, their limbs jutting out at random, as if they were chaotically sculpted statues of living flesh and blood.