Chapter 155 Rebooter Base - 12 The two quickly left...
The two quickly left the cell. Anderson stumbled as he walked out the door; his feet were chained and he could hardly move, making it very easy for him to fall.
By this time, the water on this floor had risen to the back of their knees. Tang Bufan frowned and waded forward, discovering that the water was rising much faster than he had imagined.
"Did you block the water?" Anderson asked, following behind him, his eyes fixed on Tang Bufan's short hair that barely reached his neck in the darkness.
“Yes.” Tang Bufan only then felt a headache coming on: “I poured a whole bag of quick-drying cement down the drain. I thought it would only clog the toilet, but now it seems… I’ve ruined the research institute’s drainage system.”
The entire research institute is located underground. The drainage failure means that the water cannot get out and keeps flowing into this "deep pit". Even if the main water pipe is turned off, the surrounding seawater will continue to seep in from the soil, which is why the research institute is always damp.
“The water has already reached this level on our floor; the floors below are probably already flooded.” After saying this, Anderson asked Tang Bufan, “Can you swim?”
"...Not really." Tang Bufan controlled his pace so Anderson could keep up with him, then asked Anderson, "Can you?"
“Of course I can, the problem is…” Anderson smiled wryly and looked down at his feet, which were not in the water: “My feet are tied up, how am I supposed to swim?”
"..." Tang Bufan stopped, his head throbbing terribly.
Not far from them was a spacious stairwell, which was now very quiet, but every now and then one or two people would rush up there. Tang Bufan thought for a moment and gestured for Anderson to hide in a corner.
“I remember there’s a metal synthesis lab downstairs. They should have the tools to cut your shackles. I’ll go check there. You wait here for me,” Tang Bufan said, raising his hand to smooth his wet hair from his forehead to cover his face.
“I’ll go with you.” Anderson didn’t really want to be separated from him.
“You can’t move your feet properly. What if you run into someone with a gun? You’ll become a sitting duck!” Tang Bufan insisted, casually coaxing, “Be good, just wait for me here.”
"..." Anderson rolled his eyes and retorted, "Don't try to use the same tricks you used on little Louis on me."
"Then you'd better listen to me and not make me coax you," Tang Bufan retorted, then put on the white coat he had taken from someone else and pretended to enter the stairwell.
Anderson watched him leave, then leaned against the corner of the wall in despair.
The stairwell was flooded, with water rushing down the steps like a waterfall. Tang Bufan hurried down the stairs, and sure enough, the water on the next floor was up to his waist.
Tang Bufan quickly circled around downstairs, but couldn't find the metal synthesis lab he remembered. He had to go down further down, where he encountered a person who was climbing a ladder while coughing violently.
"Brother...cough cough!" The man kindly called out to Tang Bufan, "The whole area downstairs is flooded...cough cough cough! Don't go down...ugh! I almost couldn't get out of the water..."
Tang Bufan recognized this person; he had seen him while eating in the cafeteria. Fortunately, the stairwell was almost completely dark now, so everyone was just a blurry black shadow, which is why the person didn't recognize Tang Bufan.
Tang Bufan, fearing his glowing eyes would betray him, closed his eyes, touched the escalator with his hands, and continued down, hastily replying, "Mm."
Seeing that Tang Bufan wouldn't listen to reason, the man was about to speak again when a faint air raid siren suddenly sounded above their heads.
Both of them were startled, then the man seemed to realize something, quickened his pace upstairs, and stopped paying attention to Tang Bufan, while shouting in panic, "The orcs are coming! The orcs are coming!"
Tang Bufan was overjoyed. He only opened his eyes, which were glowing with an eerie light, after confirming that the person had run far away. He listened carefully and confirmed that it was indeed an air raid siren, but it had become very faint underground.
If the research institute hadn't lost power, the internal loudspeakers would probably be blaring right now.
Lu Yizhen is here? Tang Bufan couldn't contain his excitement. He didn't expect that the rumor he spread to lure Zero away would actually come true. No wonder Zero hadn't come back for so long.
Despite his joy, Tang Bufan wasn't going to just stand there waiting for Lu Yi's rescue. He continued down to the next level, struggling to wade through the chest-deep water in search of the metal synthesis laboratory he remembered.
Fortunately, he found it successfully this time. However, the laboratory door was closed. Tang Bufan was already an expert at climbing through ventilation shafts, so he immediately found the pipe entrance in the corridor and crawled inside.
The laboratory had been flooded, making it even more difficult for Tang Bufan to find tools. Many things were submerged in water and were so dark that it was impossible to see what they were. As the water level rose higher and higher, Tang Bufan could only grab something heavy and stick it out of the water.
No, we can't get off the island like this. Tang Bufan crawled through the pipes, soaking wet. Even if he could swim, given the depth of the research institute and the current flooding, he and Anderson wouldn't be able to dive to the bottom in one go.
"I should have known better than to pour cement into the water pipes." Tang Bufan jumped down from the ventilation duct, feeling quite regretful. He should have just used his orcish brute strength to rampage through the research institute.
In short, let's remove Anderson's shackles first, and then we'll talk about the rest.
Tang Bufan struggled to grasp the instrument in his hand, which he didn't know what it was, and walked towards the waterlogged stairwell. By this time, his feet could barely touch the ground, and he had to stand on tiptoe to peek out.
Before even getting close to the stairwell, a faint sound of water caught Tang Bufan's attention.
The sound of water wasn't produced by natural fluctuations, but rather by the rustling of something moving. Tang Bufan immediately stopped what he was doing to avoid the sound carrying over to his side. He leaned quietly against the wall, sensing that the source of the noise wasn't a researcher from the institute.
If they were researchers trying to escape, they wouldn't have hidden themselves so quietly.
Tang Bufan stopped, and the commotion on the other side subsided. Tang Bufan felt inexplicably uneasy while soaking in the water. His intuition told him that the other party had probably noticed him as well.
Faced with the pressure of rising water levels, Tang Bufan could only pretend and ask, "Is anyone there? I just came out of the lab, shall we go up together?"
The stairwell was quiet, and there was no response from the other party. Tang Bufan waited a few more seconds before continuing to walk up the stairwell with the instrument in his hand. As soon as he reached the door, he saw a green face with its head above water staring straight at him with blood-red eyes.
"..." Tang Bufan was slightly startled, but he had prepared himself in advance, so he quickly calmed down.
He was a poisoner who escaped like him. Judging from his appearance, he was an adult. Generally, the adult poisoners who remained in the research institute were selected, either because they had exceptional intelligence or because they were special mutants.
Tang Bufan didn't know what kind of poisonous person this was. The two stared at each other from a distance. Tang Bufan was probing it, and it seemed to be probing Tang Bufan as well.
"Human...? Orc?" it asked Tang Bufan in a slightly hoarse voice.
"Human, huh?" Tang Bufan gave it a gentle smile. He knew that he looked no different from a human, except that his eyes glowed.
The poisoner was so wary of Tang Bufan precisely because of his eyes.
"It's dangerous here, let's find a safe place quickly." Tang Bufan said with his bright eyes, and calmly swam towards the poisonous man on tiptoe. However, after taking only two steps, he encountered a cold and slightly hard body on the bottom of the water.
Someone reached down and touched him underwater. Tang Bufan glanced down and met several pairs of red eyes lurking beneath the surface.
"..." Tang Bufan swallowed slightly, then reached back to touch the head of the poisonous man whose appearance was obscured at the bottom of the water.
The other's hair was sticky and didn't feel like human hair; it was more like seaweed soaking in water. Tang Bufan felt a chill run down his spine when he touched it, but instead of pulling his hand back, he used his incredibly soft hand, compared to the poisonous creature, to stroke its face before continuing forward.
The poisonous man hidden underwater was completely bewildered by Tang Bufan's actions.
Tang Bufan calmly stepped onto the steps in front of the dozen or so poisoners and slowly walked away.
"He looks like an orc..."
“He is human, and he is dressed in the clothes of wise men.”
"But his eyes light up..."
"He seems to be that mother! He just touched me, hehehe."
"Hurry up, we're going down there, the orcs are coming."
"The orcs are coming, the orcs are coming, those damned orcs..."
Tang Bufan glanced down and saw a dozen... no, dozens or even hundreds of poisoners appearing one after another from the lower floors and then slithering into the dark depths of the research institute.
Tang Bufan's heart tightened, and he quickened his pace upstairs.
When they returned to their original floor, Anderson was still obediently staying in the corner. He clearly breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Tang Bufan appear from the stairwell.
"I just encountered a lot of poisoners downstairs," Tang Bufan said to Anderson with concern. "I originally thought they were escaped like me, but judging from their conversation... it seems Zero deliberately released them to deal with the orcs. I wonder how Lu Yi is doing."
"Thinking too much is useless; we're still trapped here." Anderson reached out to Tang Bufan: "Give me the equipment."
Tang Bufan handed over the heavy instrument in his hand and joined him in studying it.
"How do I unlock this?" Anderson flipped it over a few times, looking at it like a microscope, wondering how Tang Bufan had found this thing.
“The entire metal synthesis lab was flooded. I couldn’t find anything underwater, so I brought this back,” Tang Bufan said. “But at the time, my fingertip touched something very sharp on this instrument.”
This caused him to prick his finger.
Anderson looked down and took a closer look, and found the sharp corner, located at what looked like the bottom of a mirror tube.
“It should work.” Anderson started fiddling with the device, disassembling it with brute force: “This thing looks like it’s for engraving metal.”
“Yes.” Tang Bufan helped him figure out how to disassemble it: “Take off this pointed end, then hit it a couple of times with the instrument, and the lock will break.”
Anderson forcefully twisted the knob on the instrument with his fingers and successfully removed the pointed tip, which was a steel needle as long as a toothpick. He immediately squatted down in the water and, as Tang Bufan had instructed, aimed the steel needle at the iron chain on his foot and began to smash it with the instrument in his hand.
The water splashed up as he slapped it, and Tang Bufan stepped back a few paces, cautiously peering towards the stairwell, afraid that their commotion might attract someone's attention.
However, the researchers should have all evacuated, but the number of poisonous people is unknown.
As if what he feared most had come to pass, Tang Bufan suddenly heard a faint sound of water coming from the stairwell. Anderson obviously heard it too, and his action of smashing the chain stopped abruptly.
"Hurry up," Tang Bufan said quickly to Anderson, and strode towards the stairwell. "I'll go hold them off."
Anderson wanted to stop him but couldn't. He could barely walk, so how could he help Tang Bufan? He could only grit his teeth and continue chiseling the chain.
Damn, the shackles Zero put on him are way too sturdy. He really thinks highly of him.
The sound of the instrument hitting the steel needle was particularly loud. In order to buy Anderson time to chisel the lock, Tang Bufan quickly walked into the stairwell. As soon as he got there, he bumped into an extremely tall person.
The other person was soaking wet, just like him, but their body was hot and had a strong fishy smell. Tang Bufan felt a chill and quickly took a step back, but the person in front of him grabbed his shoulders.
"Teacher?" The person in front of him called out uncertainly to Tang Bufan in the darkness.
Tang Bufan was stunned. Hearing that familiar yet youthful voice, tears almost welled up in his eyes.
He quickly looked up, and the other person also raised their hand to lift the wet short hair he was using to cover his face. When their eyes met those golden and green beast eyes, Tang Bufan hugged him back tightly.
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