Chapter 2132: I Have a Question
The A-level personnel numbered 221 still lay unconscious on the bed. Xu Huo took his work badge, altered his appearance to match the man's features, then opened a teleportation channel and directly entered the interior of Kex Biology.
The teleportation channel led directly to this staff member's workspace. After entering, Xu Huo followed the man's previous actions, released the control panel, and pressed the button to descend to the first underground level. The entire room slowly sank under mechanical control, and when the door reopened, a brand-new corridor appeared before him.
This was the secret laboratory hidden beneath the Kex Biology building.
It wasn't yet work hours, and no one was stationed inside the company. Xu Huo walked along, rarely encountering surveillance instruments, only occasionally running into two armed robots responsible for security issues.
Stepping into a room beside the corridor to avoid a direct confrontation with them, he casually picked up some handwritten records left by the staff. The names of the experimental subjects in the content were all numbers, but from phrases like "chimeric failure" and "gene fusion," it was clear what kind of experiments these people were conducting.
Tossing the record book onto the floor, Xu Huo left the room and followed the corridor to the first room that 221 had inspected.
To be precise, this wasn't a room but a warehouse. When the door opened, the first thing visible was a narrow, downward staircase passage. Only after descending five meters did the true warehouse space appear.
Both sides of the warehouse were piled high with huge metal cages covered in black cloth. Some of them were also bound with chains, the other ends fastened to the walls. Even without looking, the overly thick and heavy breathing sounds made it clear that what was locked inside the cages were not humans.
The sound of shoes scraping against the floor echoed through the warehouse as Xu Huo slowly passed each cage before stopping in the middle of the space.
He pulled down the black cloth covering a cage. With a rustling sound as it fell, the person originally curled up inside pressed even harder into a corner of the cage. The human skin gradually became covered in a colorful hard carapace, and red hair rapidly grew from the bald scalp, bristling up in a stress response before quickly drooping under its own weight, covering the woman's bare back.
"Block Fairy Tale City," Xu Huo said. But the woman in the cage suddenly lifted her head. Her vertical pupils, similar to an animal's, contracted into slits. She opened her mouth full of sharp teeth and let out a heart-wrenching howl. As she screamed, she frantically tore at her own hair and ripped at the hard carapace on her body, constantly inflicting wounds on herself.
This person could no longer communicate. Xu Huo took a step back and called out to the other cages: "Who here is from Block Fairy Tale City? I'm looking for Granny Bai."
There were also some people locked in the cages behind him, but they were hard to identify. After a moment, someone spoke up: "I know about Fairy Tale City..."
Xu Huo moved in one step to that cage. When he lifted the black cloth, inside was a man who had just undergone surgery. He looked at the person outside the cage with fear and suspicion. "Are you here to rescue people?"
With two "crack" sounds, the metal cage was sliced into several pieces. The man, dragging his severely injured body, slowly crawled over. He tentatively stepped out of the cage, laughing and crying as he said, "I thought I'd be locked in this cage for the rest of my life..."
"Talk about Fairy Tale City," Xu Huo interrupted him.
"I'll tell you what I know, but you have to get me out of here!" the man emphasized.
"No problem," Xu Huo agreed without hesitation. The man seemed relieved at this and immediately said, "When I was captured, there were people from Fairy Tale City on the ship. I wasn't locked up with them, but when we disembarked, the number of Fairy Tale City people suddenly decreased by more than half. I heard that one of them went crazy—not only did they slaughter their own people, but they almost capsized the ship. I don't know if the person you're looking for has already been killed..."
"How were the bodies handled?" Xu Huo asked again.
The man didn't understand who he was asking about and didn't answer immediately. But an elderly man locked in a nearby cage said, "The usual way they handle bodies here is to put them in a dissolving agent. Soak them for two or three hours, and even the bones don't remain."
Xu Huo's eyes darkened. He turned and walked away.
"Wait for me!" the severely injured man quickly chased after him. Xu Huo kept his promise and first put him into a container item. Before leaving, he also sliced open all the other cages holding people.
Following the movement pattern of number 221, he went to the second underground level and easily found a room marked "Garbage Chamber." Inside were over twenty transparent containers filled with a brown liquid, each five meters tall. The corrosive liquid emitted faint sounds of reaction. A few were empty, but most containers still held bones that hadn't been completely dissolved.
Xu Huo looked up at the pipeline directly above the container openings. He casually sliced one open, and the corpse stored inside fell out... It could no longer be called a corpse—it was a disfigured mass of flesh. There were no ornaments, clothes, or any other identifying marks left on it. Just a pile of meat.
The laboratory's alarm had already sounded. Besides the experimental subjects that had escaped from the cages, armed robots and players were coming down from upstairs. Suddenly, noise was everywhere, a chaotic din.
Xu Huo didn't leave. Instead, he took a small bottle from the containers placed nearby, filled it with the brown liquid, and sealed it.
By the time he put the bottle away, players had already arrived.
"Come out!" a player shouted from outside the door.
Xu Huo turned around, slowly raising his eyes to look at the people in front of him. "I have a question I want to ask someone in the know."
Traits and a series of items were blocked at the doorway. The player in charge of security at Kex Biology's face changed slightly. While contacting others, he began sealing off the Garbage Chamber.
"Among the people you abducted from Block Fairy Tale City, there was an old lady with the surname Bai. I want to know how she died."
Even if the lab personnel didn't know Granny Bai, they knew about Block Fairy Tale City, because the batch just delivered came from there. But no one answered the question. The player outside the door only repeatedly ordered Xu Huo to leave the Garbage Chamber.
"It seems you don't know." The black blade appeared in his hand. The ring hanging from the hilt swung twice, and the entire ceiling of the underground laboratory was sliced open. Xu Huo walked to the gap and said to the people outside the door, "Then I'll go ask someone who should know."
As the words left his mouth, he vanished from the Garbage Chamber. The lab players thought he must have escaped, but the next second, they felt a tremor. It turned out that Kex Biology's protective barrier had been breached. By the time they emerged from underground, they saw a figure in a black cloak and black mask standing in the air above the building, repeating the same question to the surveillance instruments flying in from all directions: "Among the people you abducted from Block Fairy Tale City, there was an old lady with the surname Bai. I want to know exactly how she died?" (End of chapter)