One person: Starting with the Snow Drinking Blade

Chapter 204 The Forgotten Sample

Without further hesitation, the two quickened their pace and moved towards the elevator at the end of the left corridor. This time, they paid closer attention to their surroundings, especially the walls and ceiling, searching for possible ventilation openings, maintenance hatches, or other hidden passages.

They quickly arrived at the elevator. The elevator doors were tightly closed, and the control panel next to them also required authorization. Nie Lingfeng tried to use the same method he had used to crack the lock before (using pure energy to damage the internal circuitry), but this time the panel only flashed an error message a few times and did not open. It seemed that the elevator had a higher level of security.

"Take the stairs." Nie Lingfeng's gaze swept to the side of the elevator, where there was indeed an inconspicuous gray fire door with a "Safety Passage" sign on it. These kinds of doors usually don't have sophisticated electronic locks; they are mainly physically locked.

He stepped forward and inspected it. It was indeed a simple mechanical lock, which could be forced open from the inside or pried open with tools. He gestured for Chen Duo to step back a little, then reached out and placed his hand on the lock, releasing a slight burst of dark golden energy.

"Click".

With a soft click, the bolt inside the door lock snapped precisely. Nie Lingfeng gave it a gentle push, and the fire door slid open inward, revealing a dimly lit concrete stairwell extending upwards and downwards behind it. A more stifling air, carrying dust and a faint musty smell, rushed out, creating a stark contrast to the sterile atmosphere of the outside corridor.

The stairwell was spacious but poorly lit, with only emergency indicator lights in the corners emitting a ghostly green glow. There was no end in sight, only cold concrete steps and rusty metal handrails, which appeared somewhat eerie in the green light.

"Up or down?" Chen Duo asked softly. The roar seemed to be coming from below, but important laboratories and control centers are usually not located deep underground, right?

Nie Lingfeng was also weighing his options. The roar just now clearly came from below, meaning the important "samples" or "experimental subjects" were likely being held underground. However, the core research data, the control center, and the place where the "seed" project-related materials might be stored were more likely on the upper level. Moreover, the researchers in the laboratory on the right should also have come down from the upper level.

"Let's go up and take a look at the structure above," Nie Lingfeng decided. They needed to first understand the general layout of the base before deciding on their next move.

The two entered the stairwell, carefully closed the door (the lock was broken and it didn't close properly, but it could be left ajar), and then quietly and quickly climbed the stairs upwards.

The stairwell seemed to be rarely used; a thin layer of dust had accumulated on the steps, and the handrails were covered in rust. They climbed up about seven or eight floors in one go (there were no floor signs), estimating that they had already far exceeded the height of the building above ground, but the staircase continued to rise as if there was no end in sight.

Just as they climbed two more floors and arrived at a relatively spacious landing at the top of the stairs, Nie Lingfeng, who was walking in front, suddenly stopped and raised his hand to signal Chen Duo to stop.

Chen Duo stopped immediately and held her breath. She followed Nie Lingfeng's gaze and saw that the stairs ahead continued upwards, but on their floor, the fire door to the stairwell... was ajar. Moreover, a bright, normal white light shone through the crack in the door, completely different from the dim green emergency lights in the stairwell.

More importantly, wafted from the slightly ajar door a... indescribable, complex odor, a mixture of formaldehyde, blood, and a nauseatingly sweet smell reminiscent of highly rotten flesh that had undergone special treatment. The smell was extremely strong, even overpowering the dusty odor of the stairwell.

At the same time, Nie Lingfeng's suppressed senses also caught the extremely faint, intermittent, unstable life fluctuations, similar to disordered bioelectric signals, coming from behind the door, as well as... the chilling "drip-drop" sound of some kind of liquid slowly dripping.

This... doesn't seem to be a typical laboratory or office area.

Nie Lingfeng's eyes were serious. He made a "highly vigilant" gesture to Chen Duo, and then, like the most experienced hunter, he silently moved to the half-open fire door, peered through the crack in the door.

Behind the door was a vast, much older, and more… “primitive” space, a stark contrast to the silvery-white, sterile corridor below. It looked like an abandoned or repurposed old warehouse or large workshop. The ceiling was high, riddled with rusted pipes and dim, old-fashioned sodium lamps. The floor was rough cement, with dark brown, indelible stains in some places.

The space was divided into many cubicles of varying sizes, roughly separated by translucent, grimy plastic sheets or rusty wire mesh. Most of the cubicles were empty or piled with dusty old equipment and miscellaneous items.

But in the few cubicles near the door... there are "things".

They were enormous, cylindrical, transparent glass culture jars, about three meters high and two meters in diameter. The jars were thick and heavy, with water droplets and a dark green, moss-like or fungal carpet-like substance condensing on their inner walls. Inside, the jars were filled with a turbid, dark green nutrient solution that was slightly bubbling.

And soaking in that murky liquid are... indescribable "creatures".

In the most recent jar was a creature that barely retained its human form, but whose skin was an abnormal dark green, covered with pustules and proliferating tumors, its limbs twisted in the opposite direction, its head abnormally swollen, and its facial features indistinct. It floated motionless in the liquid, with only its chest rising and falling slightly with the injection of nutrient solution, proving that it was still "alive." On its surface, on some of the proliferating tumors, one could vaguely see fine, dark red, slowly writhing patterns—somewhat similar to the patterns on the hearts of the villagers of Luodong Village who had been "blessed," but even more twisted and complex.

In the jar beside it was a monster that resembled a "synthetic beast." It had a wolf-like torso and limbs, but was covered in incomplete, reptilian scales. Its head was a hybrid of some kind of bird and insect, with a sharp beak and compound eyes, and a bony tail covered in barbs and forked at the end dragged behind it. It seemed to retain some vitality, occasionally twitching unconsciously in the murky liquid, and the bony tail brushed against the inner wall of the glass, making a teeth-grinding scraping sound.

In the jars further away, the scene was even more bizarre. Some contained only a mass of dark red flesh that constantly writhe and change shape, with organs resembling eyes and mouths appearing on its surface before quickly disappearing. Others contained countless tiny, nematode-like or tentacle-like black creatures, intertwined and slowly floating in the liquid…

All the "samples" exuded an extremely unsettling, blasphemous aura, a mixture of death, pain, madness, and the forced distortion of life forms. The strong formalin and cloyingly rotten smell emanated from these culture tanks and from them.

This place resembles a forgotten, failed "sample" storage room, or... a "waste" disposal area for some kind of forbidden biological modification and pollution experiment.

Nie Lingfeng could even see that on the ground beneath some of the culture tanks, there were dark brown, dried stains, which seemed to be traces left when the liquid had leaked or when the "samples" were removed.

"Tick-tock...tick-tock..."

The sound of dripping liquid came from deeper within the room, from a dark corner devoid of light. One could vaguely see a broken culture tank there, murky liquid slowly seeping from the cracks, dripping onto the concrete floor below, forming a small puddle that reflected a ghostly green light.

The faint, chaotic life force I just sensed seemed to originate from that corner...

Just as Nie Lingfeng was concentrating his observation, trying to see what was happening in the dark corner—

"Click...click click..."

A faint, discordant sound, like the turning of rusty gears or the grinding of bones, suddenly came from that dark corner!

Immediately afterwards, a blurry, hunched shadow, seemingly pieced together from several incomplete "sample" torsos, barely recognizable as a "human" shape, slowly and stiffly "stood up" from the darkness.

It seemed to sense the "gaze" from outside the door crack, and that part that could barely be called a "head" slowly, haltingly, turned towards the fire door.

Despite the dim light and the presence of a semi-transparent, filthy plastic sheet, Nie Lingfeng could still clearly "feel" that two "gazes," filled with endless pain, confusion, hunger, and a pure malice as if they had spotted fresh prey, were locked onto him!

The shadow in the dark corner, like a clumsy creation crawling out of a nightmare, shakily "stood up." Its body was forcibly pieced together from the broken torsos of at least three different "samples," the joints made of thick, twisted, dark green tendons like tree roots and exposed, slimy metal fasteners. One leg resembled a wolf's hind limb, but the foot was twisted in the opposite direction; the other leg looked more like the limb of some reptile, covered in broken scales. The torso barely resembled a human outline, but the ribs were flared out, and the abdominal cavity was a huge hole constantly oozing dark green pus, inside which some kind of inhuman, pulsating organ could be vaguely seen. One arm was as thick as an ape's, ending in sharp bone claws; the other was as thin as a tentacle, its end splitting into several constantly writhing, dripping, corrosive slime-like black tendrils.

Its "head" was a terrifying entity that barely retained the shape of a human skull, but lacked a chin, had empty eye sockets, and had its scalp peeled off, replaced by a dark green membrane that constantly secreted mucus. Embedded in this membrane were several compound eyes of varying sizes, constantly rotating, flashing with a red light of madness and pain. It had no lips, and its exposed teeth were jagged, like those of a wild beast.

At this moment, this terrifying composite was staring intently at Nie Lingfeng behind the crack in the fire door with its compound eyes. Despite the distance and the filthy plastic sheet separating them, the pure malice, chaotic hunger, and an extremely faint, indescribable sense of "searching" in that gaze, like a drowning person grasping at a straw, still pierced through the barrier like a cold, tangible substance, nailing itself to Nie Lingfeng.

"Hiss... Ugh... Meat... Fresh... Meat..."