booktalesy Chapter 147 Signals from Underground
Chapter 147 Signals from Underground
The memory card Qin Xue brought was hot to the touch, like a branding iron just pulled from a furnace, making Wang Minyu's fingertips tingle slightly.
This is not just about the heat of electronic components, but also the weight of a human life risked to deliver.
The air in the store seemed to freeze.
Wang Minyu didn't check immediately, but looked at Su Qing with unusual caution in his eyes: "Let's 'sift' them first. At this critical juncture, any slight oversight could leave us with nothing but bones."
Su Qing nodded without saying anything.
She put on anti-static gloves and inserted the memory card into an "island" laptop that had been physically modified and had all wireless modules disconnected.
As the progress bar loaded, her expression grew increasingly serious, and even fine beads of sweat appeared on the tip of her nose.
"No tracker, no self-destruct logic bomb, just an encrypted video file." Su Qing took a deep breath and pressed Enter. "Decrypted."
The screen flickered twice, and a violently shaking, dimly lit scene appeared.
The only sounds were rapid breathing and the scraping of shoes against the ground.
The photographer was clearly in a state of extreme tension; the camera was tilted, suggesting it was some kind of hidden pinhole device concealed in a button or collar.
The video begins with a long, seemingly endless metal corridor, cold and pale.
Through the thick bulletproof glass on both sides, one could vaguely see researchers wearing fully enclosed biohazard suits, busy around some strange-looking instruments.
The red lights flickering on those instruments were particularly glaring deep underground.
This is the hidden abscess beneath the glamorous facade of Changxiang City—the underground laboratory of the "S" organization.
The camera shakiened as the person filming ran, like a dizzying nightmare.
The photographer seemed to be evading patrols, winding his way through several turns before finally disappearing into a ventilation duct, where the viewpoint became narrow and oppressive.
A few minutes later, the camera suddenly opened up, focusing on a huge space that looked like a prehistoric cave.
"vomit……"
The moment Zhao Na saw what was in the center of the cave, she covered her mouth tightly and forced back the acidic water that had risen to her throat.
Li Siyuan's face turned deathly pale, and he subconsciously shrank back behind Wang Minyu.
That was a scene that could shatter the rationality of any normal person.
In the center of the cave stands a giant cylindrical culture chamber, ten meters high, filled with a murky, pale green nutrient solution.
Within the liquid, a huge, slowly pulsating mass of flesh floated.
No, it's not just chunks of meat.
It was a "living tumor" composed of countless slippery granulation tissues, thick blood vessels, and tangled nerve fibers.
Its surface is covered with dense, pus-like red spots.
Every few seconds, these spots would open up in unison—and they turned out to be red eyes without eyelids!
Hundreds and thousands of eyes darted erratically in the nutrient solution, radiating a malice that blasphemed life.
At the very core of the sarcoma, a "seed" emitting an eerie red light is contracting and expanding like a heart. With each beat, it causes visible ripples in the surrounding space.
"What the hell is that?!" Li Siyuan's voice trembled like a leaf in the wind.
What's even more chilling is yet to come.
Several transparent tubes, about the thickness of a wrist, extended from the base of the sarcoma like blood-sucking leeches, connecting to several metal platforms outside the culture chamber.
There are people lying on the platform.
Those were several "patients" whose heads had been shaved, who were completely naked, and who were covered in tubes.
Wang Minyu recognized it at a glance; it was an A-level experimental subject who had been "selected" and secretly transferred from the mental hospital.
At this moment, their eyes were closed, their skin was as dry and withered like tree bark, and their faces were ashen.
And inside that conduit, some kind of luminous substance was flowing—it was their life energy, their essence and spirit as human beings, being continuously drawn out and transported to that enormous monster.
With each throbbing of the sarcoma, the bodies of those "patients" visibly wither away.
"They are...feeding it." Su Qing's voice trembled for the first time. As a biologist, what she saw overturned all her understanding. "That's the life of a living person. They are using their lives to fill this bottomless pit."
At the end of the video, the camera suddenly pans to a large electronic display screen on the control panel.
The blood-red countdown ticked like a death knell.
[Project "Divinity", Phase Two: Symbiote Incubation.]
[Incubation progress: 98%]
Estimated completion time: 72 hours.
The video abruptly stopped, the screen went dark again, leaving only the whirring sound of the laptop's cooling fan, which sounded particularly jarring in the deathly quiet pharmacy.
"Project Godhood..." Wang Minyu stared at the blacked-out screen, his knuckles white from gripping the corner of the table so tightly that they made a soft cracking sound.
He finally understood what the "S" organization was trying to do.
They're not doing anything about genetic mutations, nor are they creating a new human species.
This group of lunatics is trying to create a "god".
An evil god, fed by the resentment, lives, and souls of countless people, possessing absolute power...
The "seed" implanted in the core of the tumor is the "divinity" of this evil god.
Once hatched, this creature will emerge from its shell, and the entire Changxiang City, and even further afield, will become its hunting ground.
"Boss, what... what should we do? Call the police? Call the army?" Li Siyuan grabbed Wang Minyu's sleeve as if he were grasping at the only straw.
"Call the police?" Wang Minyu turned around, his eyes filled with a chilling coldness. "It's too late. Besides, to be able to dig such a large base underground in Changxiang City and continuously transport living people in, do you think they don't have a 'protective umbrella' up there? If we call the police now, it's like walking into a trap. The person who receives the call might just turn around and sell us out."
"Then...then we can't just watch it hatch, can we? There are still three days left!" Zhao Na was so anxious that tears welled up in her eyes.
"Of course not."
Wang Minyu stood up and paced back and forth behind the narrow counter.
His brain was working at lightning speed, with countless plans emerging and being rejected.
Force your way in? Impossible.
Since the other side is creating a god, their security forces are definitely armed to the teeth. Guan Shan and Pierre alone would be sending themselves to their deaths if they went in.
Call for help? Although Captain Zhou is upright, the resources he can mobilize are limited, and conventional weapons may not be effective against this kind of supernatural biological crisis.
We must find its weaknesses.
"Su Qing," Wang Minyu suddenly stopped, his gaze sharp as a knife, "you just said that 'monster' was absorbing energy?"
"Yes." Su Qing quickly composed herself. Despite her fear, her professionalism remained. "Judging from the equipment in the video, its energy requirements are terrifying. It's not only absorbing the bioelectricity of those experimental subjects, but also extracting geothermal energy and surplus electricity from the city's power grid through a giant converter at the bottom. Simply put, it's a bottomless pit of energy consumption; it can only hatch when it's filled with energy."
"A bottomless pit..."
Wang Minyu's lips suddenly curled into an extremely crazy, even somewhat ferocious, arc.
"Since it's a bottomless pit and loves to consume energy, what if... we feed it something it 'can't digest'?"
"What is that?" Everyone was taken aback.
Wang Minyu did not answer, but slowly turned his head, his gaze passing through the back door of the pharmacy and landing on the dark corner of the backyard.
There lies a large vat that Old Cai used to pickle vegetables.
At the very bottom of the large tank was a specially made biosafety box wrapped in layers of lead plates.
Inside the box was the very "energy-devouring spore" that had been forcibly sealed with liquid nitrogen and had once caused a power outage on the entire street.
"A living 'black hole' that can devour everything is going to devour another 'god' that is growing." The light in Wang Minyu's eyes was so dangerous that people dared not look directly at him. "I want to see whether the 'abyss' will blow us away first or the so-called 'god' will be sucked into jerky when the 'abyss' meets the 'godhood'."
This plan is like throwing a bomb into a volcano.
Everyone present was terrified, and they even forgot to breathe.
"Boss, this is too dangerous! That's suicide!" Li Siyuan was the first to jump up and object. "We can't even control those energy-devouring spores; we have to suppress them with liquid nitrogen at all times. If we bring them into that high-energy underground lab, their growth rate will explode exponentially if they get out of control! We might end up unleashing a monster even more terrifying than that tumor!"
"Therefore, we cannot force them to give it away."
Wang Minyu looked out at the pitch-black night, his voice lowering, "We need to disguise this 'black hole' to make it appear harmless, even... alluring. We need a 'messenger,' someone who can deliver this 'gift' to that monster's mouth without anyone noticing."
"Who could do that? Not even a fly could get in!"
"Someone...who was the last person we expected."
Wang Minyu picked up the phone and quickly dialed a number.
The owner of that number is probably lost in a sweet dream about vanilla and musk right now.
"Beep...beep..."
The call connected, and an extremely impatient, grumpy voice came from the other end: "Hey? Who is it? In the middle of the night, don't you know that disturbing someone's sleep will ruin their inspiration?"
"Mr. Lin Xiang?" Wang Minyu's voice turned unusually calm, carrying an undeniable command. "I am Wang Minyu. Wake up. Now, I need your priceless 'golden nose' to help me do something... a great thing that could save the world."
"Huh? Save the world?" Lin Xiang was clearly still half asleep, mumbling incoherently, "Dr. Wang, are you drunk? I'm just a perfumer. If you want to save the world, go find Ultraman..."
"No, Ultraman can't get in there." Wang Minyu looked out the window at the brightly lit landmark in the distance and said slowly, "Only you, and all your bottles and jars, can knock open the gates of hell."