Chapter 63 A Deadly Trap Set Up for You!
After suffering serious injuries to the monkeys, the team temporarily shook off the horde of zombies and retreated to a relatively open riverbank to rest.
Exhaustion and lingering fear were etched on everyone's faces.
After the ammunition was counted, the atmosphere became even more tense.
The initial skirmishes alone cost them nearly a third of their ammunition and all their grenades.
Lu Zhanting ordered the squad to remain in place, care for the wounded, and maintain the highest level of alert.
He decided to go with Su Wanqing to infiltrate the base first for reconnaissance.
"It's too dangerous, Captain!" Lynx immediately objected. "Let's go together; at least we can look out for each other."
"Too many people, too much noise."
Lu Zhanting's voice was devoid of warmth, yet carried an undeniable weight.
"We know nothing about the base's internal structure. Two people can move around more flexibly."
He glanced at the exhausted team members.
"Your mission is to guard this place, to be our eyes and our backup."
His gaze finally landed on Su Wanqing: "Bluebird, is there a problem?"
Su Wanqing shook her head, her clear black and white eyes reflecting a resolute determination.
Her medical skills and spatial abilities are most effective during small-scale infiltrations.
The two quickly unloaded their bulky equipment, carrying only the bare minimum of weapons, communicators, and medical kits. In a flash, they disappeared into the thick darkness at the end of the riverbank.
Under the cover of night, the base resembled a crouching steel behemoth, exuding an aura of death.
The searchlight's power supply system was extremely unstable; each time the beam swept across the empty park, it was like a giant beast taking a weak breath.
Lu Zhanting, with Su Wanqing by his side, used the brief moment of darkness when the beam swept across the building to silently cut through the outer electric fence and slip into the shadows of the main research building.
Upon entering the building, an overwhelming odor assaulted the nostrils.
The stench of blood, decay, and disinfectant mingled together in a distorted way, making one's stomach churn.
The emergency lights in the corridor cast a ghastly green light, flickering on and off, making the dark red bloodstains and long scratch marks on the walls look gruesome and terrifying.
It's so quiet here that you can hear your own heartbeat.
Apart from the faint sound of their footsteps, all that could be heard was the mournful whistling of the wind passing through the broken window.
"Split up and stay alert," Lu Zhanting said in a low voice, making a tactical hand gesture.
He was in charge of guarding the area and inspecting the surroundings, while Su Wanqing was responsible for examining the corpses and medical traces.
Lu Zhanting's brows furrowed more and more tightly.
He discovered that many of the defensive fortifications had fatal flaws.
Some makeshift roadblocks made of tables and chairs were clearly pushed down from the inside, i.e., from the defending side.
Several critical fire doors had their latches tampered with, making them impossible to lock from the inside.
This doesn't look like resisting an external enemy.
It's more like opening the door for the enemy.
On the other hand, Su Wanqing's discovery was even more shocking.
She examined several researchers' bodies lying in the corridor. They all had bite marks, but without exception, the fatal wounds were all gunshot wounds to the back of the head or heart.
The bullets came from behind them.
The two met at the end of the corridor and exchanged a glance.
“There’s a mole.” Su Wanqing said in a whisper, her voice carrying a hint of coldness. “When the virus broke out, someone shot their own comrade in the back.”
“It’s not resistance, it’s massacre.” Lu Zhanting’s voice was as cold as ice. “The mole’s goal was clear: to silence witnesses, create chaos, and delay the outside world’s reaction time.”
They didn't linger and quickly moved towards the core area of the base—the monitoring center.
The door to the monitoring center was forcibly broken open, and the inside was in a mess.
More than a dozen screens were shattered, the control panel was smashed to pieces, and the most important hard drive enclosure was completely pried open, with all the hard drives inside gone.
"The method is very professional." Lu Zhanting examined the signs of damage. "They came here to destroy all the video footage."
Su Wanqing didn't speak; her gaze swept quickly across the cluttered server racks.
Suddenly, she pointed to a server in a corner connected to a backup power supply: "There, the log cache server. If they left in a hurry, there might be some residual data."
She immediately stepped forward, took out a small, modified handheld computer from her backpack, and connected it to the server port.
On the screen, countless green codes cascaded down like a waterfall.
A few minutes later, Su Wan-qing's eyes lit up.
"Found it! The main hard drive data was formatted, but I found a deleted audio file in the cache area and am repairing it."
Two tense minutes followed.
A recording filled with loud noise came from the handheld computer's miniature speaker.
"...Chen Huanzhi! You're insane! Do you know who you're working with? They're devils!" a male voice roared, filled with anger and fear.
"...I had no choice...my family..."
That was Professor Chen Huanzhi's voice, weary and desperate.
"For that money in an overseas account? You've betrayed everyone! You've betrayed your country!"
"...'Scorpion' promised that he would let us go once we got the item..."
"...He won't! What he wants is the 'Heart of Immortality,' and... the 'key' to unlock it..."
The recording abruptly stopped there, leaving only a jarring static tone.
“Scorpion?” Lu Zhanting repeated the code name, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the gunstock.
“‘The Immortal Heart’ should be the original sample of the virus,” Su Wanqing analyzed. “But what is the ‘key’?”
The two looked at each other, both sensing the seriousness of the situation.
This was not an accident.
This was a long-planned conspiracy.
They rushed to Chen Huanzhi's office immediately.
The office was also in a mess, with all the documents and materials burned.
But based on clues in the recording, they began searching for a possible secret room.
Lu Zhanting tapped on the wall, listening carefully to the echo.
Finally, his gaze settled on a row of huge bookshelves.
There were several almost imperceptible scratches on the floor at the bottom of the bookcase.
He stepped forward and, in a particular order, pushed several heavy hardcover books forward.
“Clatter.”
With a soft click, the entire bookcase slowly slid open to one side, revealing a heavy alloy door.
The door was unlocked.
Behind the door was a small, secret laboratory.
Unlike the chaos outside, this place was almost too tidy, as if the owner had just left.
On the table in the center of the laboratory, various instruments are neatly arranged, and next to it, there is an open leather notebook.
Professor Chen Huanzhi's research log.
Su Wanqing quickly stepped forward and opened the diary.
The handwriting inside was neat and strong at first, but it became more and more messy and chaotic as it went on, and the paper was soaked with despair and regret.
"I was wrong...I let the wolf into the house..."
"The security chief, codenamed 'Scorpion,' was a member of the overseas force 'Ouroboros' from the very beginning. He took advantage of my longing for my family and coerced me into cooperating with him, claiming that if I helped him obtain the research results, he would send my wife and children abroad to reunite with me."
“He deceived me. His target wasn’t ordinary data at all, but the original virus sample we found deep within the ruins—that self-regenerating ‘flesh and blood stone,’ which we call the ‘Heart of Immortality.’”
"He used me to create an 'accident' in the virus catalysis experiment, causing the mutated virus to leak. Then, he led his people to carry out a massacre inside the base, silencing all the researchers who knew of the existence of the 'Heart of Immortality'."
Su Wanqing's breathing became more and more rapid as she turned to the last page of the diary.
The handwriting on it was so illegible it looked like scribbles.
"The 'Scorpion's' ultimate goal is to seize the 'Heart of Immortality' and merge with it to become so-called immortal. And from his communications with his superior, I overheard a most terrifying secret..."
"Their real goal is not just the 'heart of immortality'."
"Their real target is Lu Zhanting... his blood!"
According to a fragmented ancient text obtained by the "Ouroboros," only the bloodline of soldiers with the most yang and masculine qualities can serve as a "key" to truly activate and perfectly fuse the full power of the "Immortal Heart" in a specific ritual.
"And Lu Zhanting is the perfect 'key' they chose."
Upon seeing the last line of text, Su Wanqing suddenly raised her head and looked at Lu Zhanting.
Lu Zhanting's face was completely devoid of color.
Instead, there was a terrifying, frozen silence, as if a storm had been compressed to its limit, about to tear everything apart.
He finally understood why the emergency transfer order specifically named him and sent him to southern Xinjiang.
This was not a rescue mission at all.
This was a trap that had been meticulously set up for him from the very beginning.
The air inside the sealed room was so heavy that it was hard to breathe.
“There are too many zombies outside, we can’t get out for now.” Lu Zhanting quickly broke the silence. He checked the alloy door of the secret room and the only ventilation opening, his voice hoarse. “It’s relatively safe here, let’s rest here for now.”
"Okay." Su Wanqing nodded.
She needed time to quickly process the massive amount of information in the logs and identify the virus's weaknesses.
Lu Zhanting leaned against the door, his military knife resting on his lap, and closed his eyes.
His hearing was heightened to its limit, alert to every sound around him.
Su Wanqing carefully read the log page by page by the light of the emergency lamp on the lab bench.
Chen Huanzhi truly lived up to his reputation as a top biologist; his log not only recorded the conspiracy but also detailed the various characteristics of the virus.
"...The virus is essentially an ancient subspecies of Tai Sui, which has undergone unknown mutations after combining with high-energy minerals... Its energy fluctuations are greatly enhanced at night, and its activity is three to five times that of the daytime..."
"Infected organisms lose their sanity, but retain some biological instincts. They are extremely sensitive to sound and the heat of living things, and... emit a special sound wave that our current equipment cannot detect, in order to attract and gather their kind..."
Upon seeing this, Su Wanqing's heart skipped a beat.
Almost at the same time, Lu Zhanting, who was on guard duty, twitched his ears slightly and suddenly opened his eyes.
"Something's coming." He lowered his voice, his gaze shooting like an arrow towards the ventilation duct at the top of the secret room.
"Rusting..."
A chilling sound, like fingernails scraping against metal, came from deep within the ventilation duct and was rapidly approaching!
"Bang!"
A metal mesh grille of a ventilation vent was violently smashed open from the inside and landed on the ground.
Immediately afterwards, a dark figure shot out from the cave entrance and rushed straight at Su Wanqing, who was looking down at the logbook!
It was a small monster, resembling a skinned monkey, its muscles bulging and its skin a strange bluish-gray. Its speed and agility far surpassed any zombie it had encountered before.
"careful!"
Lu Zhanting's gunshot was his warning.
The moment he shouted, the gun was already raised and the trigger was pulled.
"Bang!"
The gunshots were deafening in the small, confined room.
But the monster was too fast; the bullet only grazed its hind leg, leaving a trail of black blood droplets.
It let out a sharp screech, defying the laws of physics in mid-air to avoid a fatal blow, its sharp claws still reaching for Su Wanqing's throat!
Su Wanqing suddenly fell backward, rolling on the ground as her sharp claws whistled past her nose, a near miss.
The monster missed its attack, then pushed off the wall with its limbs and clung to it like a gecko, its scarlet eyes fixed on the two of them, and it let out a threatening growl.
Lu Zhanting immediately stood in front of Su Wanqing, his gun firmly locked onto the monster.
But in the laboratory filled with sophisticated instruments, the opponent was too small and his movements were unpredictable, so he dared not fire a second shot.
Just as tensions were about to rise, Su Wanqing's gaze fell on an overturned medicine shelf next to the wall the monster was clinging to.
Several bottles of chemicals were smashed on the ground, and the spilled liquid was emitting white smoke.
She noticed that although the monster was ferocious, its body subconsciously moved away from the smell of the evaporating chemicals.
It's afraid of this!
A thought flashed through Su Wanqing's mind.
She quickly scanned the lab bench, grabbed a glass bottle labeled "High Concentration Formaldehyde," and without thinking, smashed it with all her might at the monster on the wall!
The monster seemed to sense the danger and tried to jump off the wall.
It's too late.
The glass bottle shattered against the wall next to it, splashing acrid liquid all over it.
"squeak--!"
The monster let out a shrill, distorted scream, its body convulsing violently as if doused with strong acid, and its movements became fatally slowed.
Now!
A cold glint flashed in Lu Zhanting's eyes, and his body shot out like a cannonball, the military knife in his hand drawing a chilling arc of death.
"Pfft!"
The saber pierced the monster's eye socket with precision, penetrating its entire skull and pinning it firmly to the wall with tremendous force!
The monster twitched a few times, then fell completely silent.
With the crisis averted, both of them breathed a sigh of relief.
Lu Zhanting drew his military knife, staring at the mutated experimental animal on the wall, his expression extremely grave.
“What’s recorded in the log,” he said in a hoarse voice, “is probably just the tip of the iceberg.”
He hadn't finished speaking.
At the same time, the two heard more and more intense scraping sounds coming from deep inside the ventilation ducts above their heads, coming from all directions.
The sound was like hundreds or thousands of monsters surging towards them from every corner of the pipe.
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