Relying on a strong will and a vague memory of the terrain, Lu Cheneng trudged through the ruins. Every step strained his injured leg, and Wen Shifei's scalding breath burned the side of his neck like a brand. He avoided seemingly untouched areas—they were often death traps set by chaebols or the Black Snake Gang. The Silent Zone lived up to its name; apart from the wind and a faint, inhuman roar in the distance, no human voices could be heard.

"Left...left...the building...with the blue...mark..." Wen Shifei, who was on his back, had regained some consciousness at some point. His voice was barely audible, and he pointed feebly at a cluster of buildings half-hidden by a massive, collapsed concrete block. On the side of one of the unassuming low-rises, a faded, moss-covered blue hexagonal symbol could be vaguely discerned—an old-fashioned biohazard isolation symbol!

Lu Chenen's spirits perked up, and he cautiously approached his target. The closer he got, the heavier the oppressive atmosphere grew. The air seemed to carry a faint... mixed smell of formaldehyde and some kind of stale blood. The building's perimeter was covered in rusted barbed wire and warning signs, long since destroyed by violence. The ground was covered in messy tire tracks and... huge, inhuman claw marks!

Wen Shifei struggled down, leaning against the landing entropy, her face as pale as a ghost. She forced herself to pull out a modified signal sniffer from her tactical bag. "There's... there's a faint residual encrypted signal... and... a strong radiation warning... be careful..."

Lu Cheneng nodded, clenching his rusty knife tightly in his hand while charging his pulse pistol. Like explorers entering an ancient tomb, they pushed open the deformed alloy door, riddled with bullet holes and claw marks.

Creak——!

The teeth-grinding scraping sound was particularly piercing in the dead silence. Inside the door, there was absolute darkness and an even stronger stench of decay. The flashlight beam pierced the darkness, and the scene before him made Lu Cheneng, who was accustomed to life and death, shudder.

This is not an ordinary laboratory, it is more like a slaughterhouse and cemetery forgotten by time!

Broken incubators, like giant insect pupae, lay scattered about, stained with a sticky, long-dried, blackened organic solution. Broken pipes, like dying blood vessels, dangled from the ceiling. On the laboratory table, rusted surgical instruments and shredded protective clothing tangled together, thick, gruesome smears of dark brown blood clotted in them. The walls were covered in scratches and spurts of blood, some several centimeters deep—no human effort at all! Even more horrifying, scattered in some corners were massive, twisted, inhuman, and inanimate skeletal remains!

"This... is the entrance to hell..." Wen Shifei's voice trembled uncontrollably. The changes in her body seemed to be stimulated by this environment, and she felt a series of needle-like throbbing sensations.

The two men, enduring discomfort, began their search. Wen Shifei, enduring a headache and a churning sensation within her, used a sniffer to decipher the data fragments from the remaining terminal. Lu Cheneng, on the other hand, was wary of every shadowy corner. In front of an isolated area sealed off by an alloy gate, the sniffer emitted a strong signal.

"The core...isolation area...'first generation'...is inside..." Wen Shifei pointed to a dusty biometric lock next to the gate.

Lu Cheneng attempted to destroy it with his rusty knife, but to no avail. Wen Shifei took a deep breath, placed his hand on the cold identification screen, and concentrated on mobilizing the chaotic energy within him. A burst of sparks erupted from the identification screen, and the gate groaned heavily, slowly opening a crack!

A strong stench, a mixture of preservatives and extreme decay, hit them in the face! The two covered their mouths and noses as the flashlight swept in.

In the center of the isolation room stood a massive cylindrical incubator, over five meters in diameter. Its walls were thick, covered in scratches and dents. A murky, eerie, green liquid filled the chamber. And in the center of that liquid, suspended something... something indescribable!

It roughly retained a distorted humanoid form, but its body was covered in a shattered, insect-like chitinous carapace and thick, twisted, exposed, white bones. Its limbs had transformed into massive claws with sharp bone blades. The most terrifying part was its head—no skin, bare muscle and nerve bundles entwined around a half-melted metal skull, embedded with several electronic eyes that flickered faintly red! Its chest cavity had been ripped open, revealing not internal organs but a constantly wriggling mass of fleshy machinery emitting a faint blue glow, like a living circuit board! The monster's lower body merged with the thick, root-like biological pipelines that sprawled from the bottom of the cabin, as if it had become part of the incubator!

"'Zero'... the first generation fusion... the experimental logs... show... it's a fusion of humans, high-risk mutant biological samples... and an early... biochip prototype..." Wen Shifei's voice was filled with extreme fear and physical nausea. The abnormal fluctuations in her body and the faint blue light of the flesh-growing machine created an eerie resonance! She felt the remaining fragments of the monster's consciousness, filled with pain and madness, trying to flow into her mind along this resonance! She hugged her head in pain.

Lu Cheneng also felt a surge of mental discomfort and a tingling sensation in his chip. Was this the origin of Project Zero? A forbidden fusion using living people?!

Just then!

"High-energy reaction and unauthorized life signals detected! Clearance protocol activated!" A cold electronic voice suddenly exploded in the silent laboratory! The piercing alarm pierced the silence!

At the laboratory entrance, the heavy alloy door was violently blasted open! Several "Hive" task force members, clad in streamlined black armor, their helmets' irises gleaming crimson, rushed in first! Behind them, two tracked "Scavenger Kai" autonomous robots, equipped with multi-barrel pulse cannons and neural jammers, crushed the rubble and followed! Even more terrifying, the leading task force member was wielding a strangely shaped, long-barreled weapon with an unstable, dark blue muzzle—a neural pulse disruptor! Specifically designed to target the Awakened!

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