Chapter 174 Bloodbath
Krasnoyarsk Krai.
A010 Deep Infection Zone.
At the time of the incident, they had not yet reached another infected area hidden within the fragments of the 'Rules of Fate'.
He Yu slammed on the brakes, staring at the dead end ahead. As a spread point that had been overrun for a long time, almost all the lights on the ceiling were broken, and the entire street was shrouded in darkness. They hadn't encountered any garrison soldiers or people from other nodes for a while, and they hadn't even seen any corpses.
Pandora regained some consciousness and opened her eyes to see the familiar surroundings. Then, while checking if she was still asleep in her seat, she reached out to touch the special weapon.
During this process, she touched many strange things—human cheekbones, teeth, empty soda cans, two half-used bandages, an open bottle of suppressant, and a half-bag of potato chips.
Finally, after fully regaining her senses, she grabbed her pistol, hugged it to her chest, and asked groggily, "What's wrong?"
"Something's not right." He Yu tossed her a handful of mints and then fed one to himself.
He pointed to the blocked fork in the road ahead and said, "According to those people's memories, this used to be a main road that led directly to the next core area."
Upon hearing this, Pandora looked at the situation with a strange expression, cleared her throat, and said, "Maybe it has undergone another spatial change."
He Yu thought for a while, then turned the car around and drove back, choosing a street heading south.
But after driving a short distance, the road turned right on its own. He ignored it and continued to speed up, only to find the road gradually sloping northwards again.
“It’s obvious we’ve come full circle.” Pandora stuffed a few grenades into her pocket, straightened the gun, and said with interest, showing no fear whatsoever.
He Yu didn't reply. The two remained silent for a while. In an instant, the only sound in the entire street was the sound of car engines. Above, there was still a cold and huge gray sky. There were no soldiers, no corpses, no other traces, only an ominous atmosphere.
When they circled back to the sealed area for the third time, He Yu simply stepped on the brakes, rolled down the window, stuck his head out, and sniffed around a few times.
"You still have the abilities of a dog?" Pandora asked with a hint of a joke. "Speaking of which, I kind of miss that mutated dog I kept in Jerusalem back then."
The place was basically the same as when they left, but only "basically." After a few more seconds of silence, Pandora said, "Stop smelling. Something else is approaching. It feels just like in Weeks's lab, and there's an extra path leading east here compared to when we came in."
That's right, the dark alleys and signal towers on the east side have disappeared, and now it has become a narrow, irregular road. It's impossible for an off-road vehicle to drive in, and you can't see inside. No normal person would want to go in.
“We can’t really go over there, can we?” Pandora saw He Yu turn back and nudged him, continuing, “What’s with that look on your face like your whole family died? Tell me what’s bothering you, let me see what’s wrong.”
Beside her, He Yu tossed her a split-screen view and explained in a helpless voice, "We've been targeted. It's 083—you'll know once you see the data."
Pandora stared at the holographic screen for a short while, then her whole demeanor turned sour. She said fiercely, "I order you to find that idiot who planted the bugs in the back right now and give him a good beating. That thing is disgusting."
Silence reigned all around. 083 was a new life form that Eoubs had deployed in the massacre operation. It resembled a frog egg in appearance and was among the top ten deformed and mutated branches in the research department's records. When 'Blood of All Things' affected the entire coastal city, the East Xia branch had used this thing in the annihilation operation. It was an unimaginably highly corrosive weapon.
These creatures operate similarly to ant colonies, taking large-scale actions in any environment and possessing exceptional survivability and camouflage capabilities—they can mimic houses, walls, or movable 'living bodies', and have extraordinary parasitic reproductive abilities.
Once you see this thing, you simply can't imagine that it's a living organism... or what kind of experimental basis allowed it to mutate into that form.
Pandora felt nauseous looking at it. She glanced at the bottom of the record and noticed a note—it stated that this thing was very famous in South Africa. Apparently, the local Eoubs, due to the huge investment in shredders, opted to mass-produce 083s—and it was damn useful, an excellent choice for destroying corpses, tactical camouflage, and large-scale raids. The higher-ups even gave the research department a three-day holiday because of it; damn, that was something to celebrate.
He Yu looked up to the east and, without realizing it, the outline of a repair shop appeared in the distance.
The surrounding area was just a cluster of dilapidated buildings that were indistinguishable from ruins, low, dark, and bare—it was hard not to wonder if it was also a facade created by 083.
He turned the steering wheel and drove straight towards that place.
As it continued forward, 083 seemed to sense that its prey had discovered the trap and instantly surrounded it, making a slight rustling sound along its path.
Pandora grabbed a grenade, rolled down the car window, removed the fuse, and threw it over. She glanced back instinctively—the towering, sequential buildings were "melting," turning into countless deformed, writhing egg-shaped particles that were approaching them.
"Damn...that's disgusting."
She kept firing behind her, and in the flashes of fire, she could see the mangled corpses among the intertwined creatures—all of them human—and there seemed to be a few familiar faces, but they were moving too fast to make out their features.
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