Chapter 88: The First Death
The death certificate plastered on the wall had been crumpled many times, covered in creases, its corners torn, yet it had been smoothed out and stuck back onto the wall.
"Stellar Corporation..." Xu Huo opened the game interface and clicked on the White Note. The note below read:
【The chairman of Stellar Corporation is undoubtedly the most popular man.】
The portrait on the White Note was of this company's chairman. He had initially thought Stellar Corporation was a game development company, or a special company set up by the game. But now that he had confirmed the game itself existed in the real world, this Stellar Corporation, which could put a person's head on the White Note, was very likely the developer or participant of the Dimension Rift game. What exactly its affiliated medical research group did went without saying.
He found some academic certificates and medals belonging to Logan Nesser and Molly Ye from the cabinet. Both held doctoral degrees, were employed at Stellar Pharmaceutical Research Group, had received several medical contribution awards, and had published award-winning papers that mentioned the dangers of gene-improvement agents to humans.
He read through these papers carefully. They mentioned at least a dozen drugs he had never heard of, but all targeted congenital genetic defects. These drugs could be used during fetal development to reduce the chances of the child developing hereditary diseases and to avoid certain physiological defects.
However, the couple was not optimistic about gene-improvement agents. The paper they published listed over sixty suspected new side effects caused by the drugs, which had also received authoritative recognition.
There was no information about evolution agents.
Xu Huo put the materials back in their original places, took two steps back, and surveyed the room's layout.
After Master Nesser's death, many of his personal belongings had been taken away. If it were just for money, the clocks Master Nesser had made during his lifetime were far more valuable. The fact that even the clocks in his residence hadn't been taken suggested there were other secrets involved.
Nothing left out in the open could be truly important.
Finding no clues in this room, he went to the adjacent children's room.
As soon as he stepped inside, he couldn't help but frown. This was not a room fit for a normal person to live in.
Several windows in the room were fitted with grilles identical to those on the cellar. The spacious room contained a toy train track, a small cart piled high with plush toys, a small hut specifically for drawing, and picture books scattered all over the bed and floor. The walls, the ceiling, even the mirrors were covered in graffiti... In short, every possible space was crammed full, bloated and cumbersome.
Looking at the chaotic, disorderly graffiti on the walls, Xu Huo instinctively took one down. Unexpectedly, a piece of paper fell from behind it.
Picking it up, he saw it was a newspaper clipping, the content roughly being about frequent accidents at Stellar Pharmaceutical Research Group and senior management coming forward to clarify.
He then tore down a second piece of graffiti. Behind it was another clipping, also a report on an accident at Stellar Pharmaceutical Research Group.
Then a third, a fourth. Behind every piece of graffiti was a piece of paper tucked away—some were clippings, some were fragmentary notes. Most recorded the addresses of individuals suspected to be victims of medical accidents, and some described the symptoms of drug side effects, including but not limited to full-body pustules, muscle atrophy, and organ failure.
Xu Huo was all too familiar with the words pustules, atrophy, and failure. The stranded player he had encountered in the Headchopper Instance and Professor Han, who was still undergoing treatment, had all shown these symptoms.
The difference was that the stranded player's condition was due to stopping the medication, while Professor Han's was caused by being scratched by a Xenomorph outside the train.
Xenomorphs were once Evolvers too. Logically, without taking evolution agents, they should also exhibit symptoms of organ failure. But not only did they not show these symptoms, they carried toxins that could cause ordinary Evolvers to prematurely enter a state of lacking the agent.
Xenomorphs might be a special mutation, but the symptoms appearing in ordinary Evolvers seemed to be universal. According to these clippings and notes, although the types of drugs varied, the symptoms of the side effects shared some commonalities.
"It's not a problem with the drugs, but a flaw in the Evolvers themselves."
"Evolution itself is a scam!"
"Isn't there any drug that can stop evolution?"
"I'm going to kill those people at Stellar Corporation!"
The wording in the later notes became increasingly intense, but Xu Huo suddenly spotted one among the slips of paper:
"I was wrong. True evolution does exist. Unfortunately, it's too late."
He abruptly stood up, unable to hide his excitement as he paced back and forth a few times, then forced himself to calm down.
From the room's layout and the town's facilities, it wasn't hard to deduce that Master Nesser's granddaughter had a problem. His son and daughter-in-law had originally worked at Stellar Pharmaceutical Research Group and died in an accident—perhaps not an accident. But Master Nesser's investigation, from believing evolution itself was flawed to concluding that true evolution existed, indicated that he must have discovered the method for Perfect Evolution!
The residents of the town were not Master Nesser's relatives or friends, nor were they enthusiasts of precise decibels. They were there to monitor Master Nesser, and even took away his personal belongings after his death.
That was why Xenomorphs appeared in the town and strict travel conditions were imposed.
The question now was whether he could still find the answers he sought in this town.
Turning back to look at the intact slips of paper on the floor, Xu Huo pocketed the last one and went downstairs.
The most common items in Master Nesser's residence were clocks. He could hide things behind graffiti, and he could do the same with these clocks.
For the next period of time, he didn't leave the small building. He searched through almost every clock, even the broken ones in the storage room, but found nothing.
He checked his phone. It was almost time for them to meet and return.
Xu Huo put away the Dual-Color Cube and began placing the clocks back on the shelves one by one. Suddenly, a stopwatch dial fell out of a large clock. He reached out and caught it, and the game interface popped up:
【Three Seconds of Life: Legend has it that a person sees their life flash before their eyes in the final moment before death, containing the deepest memories of the dying. But how long is this time? According to experiments by authoritative figures, its limit is between 1 and 10 seconds.】
【Clock Master Nesser believed it was only three seconds, and thus this Super Item, imbued with the craftsman's heart's blood and the master's soul, was born.】
【Although it has sixty second-markers, only the last three can be used. As long as the user wears it, their life will automatically rewind to the third second before death. Each rewind consumes three of its markers. When the hand completes one full rotation, it will lose its soul.】
He hadn't expected that while using the Dual-Color Cube to search for evolution-related information, he would accidentally obtain a Super Item—a dial with the ability to rewind time. Although it only went back three seconds, this stopwatch dial effectively gave him twenty chances to be reborn after death!
Time Rewind! This was a concept completely beyond three-dimensional space, yet it was realized through a dial. Super Items like the Painting Woman were already shocking enough, but this kind of magical item that seemed to control the order of time and space could actually be crafted by a person, and it seemed to have formed imperceptibly.
"Can Hyperdimensional Space produce items with special properties?" Xu Huo muttered to himself. Then he found a pocket watch case, placed the dial inside, and grabbed another watch with the same casing before leaving the storage room.
As he was about to go out, he glanced at the wall clock to check the time. With one hand pulling the door open, a black arrow, flying from nowhere, pierced through his heart!