Chapter 927: Chapter 927: The Nineteenth Layer of Hell Connects to the Mortal World
The bloodwater and nutrient solution submerged the eighteenth underground floor, with the water level still rising, and the air was filled with a stench.
“A laboratory aiming for Eternal Life has become so filthy; is this the consequence of desecrating life?”
Han Fei stood atop the dormant chamber, looking at the absurd world before him. Reality wasn’t much brighter than the Deep World.
A slight strange noise came from afar. Han Fei leaped across the large dormant chambers, heading to the southeast corner of the eighteenth underground floor.
The peculiar sound emanated from the dormant chamber beneath his feet. The bloodwater backflowed, and it seemed something alive might be hiding within.
Using the Rebirth Saber to pry open the chamber door, Anian, donned in a research suit, crawled out. He disregarded the filth, lying atop the bloodwater, gasping for breath.
“Brother Nian? You’ve been hiding here all along?” Han Fei hadn’t expected to encounter Anian here.
“What took you so long? I thought you saw my memories and knew the Disaster happened on this lowest level, choosing this place to meet.” Anian kept coughing, spitting out some bloodwater, his complexion looking poor.
“I ran into some issues.” Han Fei used the secret of touching the soul’s depths. Only after confirming the person before him was indeed Anian did he relax: “Why were you in the dormant chamber?”
“Don’t mention it. If I hadn’t reacted quickly, you’d never have seen me again.” Anian spoke with a lingering fear: “After awakening inside the building, I headed directly to Cabin No.4. My son was still in the dormant chamber, but before I could find my child, some Madmen with strange masks showed up. They tampered with the dormant chambers, using all the living ones here as Sacrificial Offerings.”
“Sacrificial Offerings?”
“Beneath the bloodwater, they constructed an altar. All the shells neither dead nor alive were exploited by them, aiming to usher the Will of Ghosts and Monsters into the Mortal World!” Anian climbed from the bloodwater, pointing at the adjacent dormant chamber: “The experiment subjects inside these dormant chambers act like coordinates. As they guide their own Will back, they’ll also draw those Ghosts and Monsters along.”
A sea lay stretched between the world where the Ghost and Monsters resided and the real world, with the living inside the dormant chambers resembling the shoreside trackers, soon to be towing the ghost ship to shore.
“How do we go about stopping them?” Puzzled, Han Fei gazed at the dormant chamber: “Are those guys not completely dead? Do we have to act personally?”
“It’s unrelated to biological death. As long as their consciousness hasn’t perished, they’ll seek to return, inadvertently guiding the Ghosts and Monsters.” Anian shook his head: “There’s but one thing we can do—destroy the bridge connecting both worlds to prevent a stable passage from forming.”
Anian laboriously climbed atop the dormant chamber, sketching with bloodwater: “The bridge between the world of Ghosts and Monsters and reality comprises four parts: the bridgehead on the Ghosts and Monsters’ side, the bridge tail on our side in reality, the bridge body formed by the Perfect Life game, and the bridge pillars formed by the black square box. Among these, the pillars are the easiest to destroy, which is the core secret of Eternal Life Pharmaceutical—the black square box.”
“I understand your point, but where do we find the black square box?”
“Others may not know the box’s position, but as a participant and later the sole executor of the Eternal Life plan, I’ll never forget that thing.” Anian’s body appeared weak, his tottering gaze directed at the hall’s center: “The black square box is right in the central position, buried beneath all the dormant chambers.”
The three of them searched in the bloodwater, finally locating the activation device at the center of the laboratory.
All the dormant chambers connected there, if one likens Cabin No.4 to a tree canopy, with countless experimenters as flowers, then the spot housing the black box would be the main trunk of this towering tree.
With a loud bang, the door to the nineteenth underground floor was opened.
Bloodwater poured down like a torrential rain, and Han Fei witnessed an unforgettable scene.
The nineteenth floor beneath the Eternal Life Building did exist, where brains, still alive, lined up densely, filling the floors. Emotion-capturing devices channeled all the information produced by the brains into black pipelines, and at the ends of all these pipelines rested an enormous two-story-high black box.
“Is this the Smart Brain from Perfect Life?” Han Fei gazed at the “Brain Area” occupying the entire floor, finding the world before him vastly different from what he knew.
“Strictly speaking, the seventh-generation Smart Brain in Perfect Life was constructed modeled after this.” Anian sighed, “Every time I witness this scene, it feels incredibly awe-inspiring. Undoubtedly, all who participated in this plan were the most genius of madmen.”
The operational method of the black box was unclear to Han Fei. He merely observed it continuously absorbing the information transmitted by those brains, letting the brains’ owners live in the world they constructed.
“Should we destroy it?” The surviving staff member asked uncertainly, “This can be considered the peak of human science and art, the right seized from Divine Spirits; it’s too beautiful.”
Anian too hesitated, as both his sons’ consciousness resided within the black box. Should the plan fail, the reunion would become farewell.
“Perhaps in reality, we might find a better solution, but here, we must destroy it.” Ever since he saw the black box, a sense of urgency seemed to spur Han Fei from the back of his mind, urging him to destroy the black box.
Holding the Rebirth Slaughter Saber, Han Fei jumped atop the black box: “In all of Gao Xing’s plans, this black box is the most critical component; usually, shrines hide in places most crucial to Divine Spirits.”
Raising the Slaughter Saber high, Han Fei aimed at the massive black box and slashed down with all his might!
Light on the saber’s blade pierced into the black box, creating cracks on its night-like surface. The Rebirth Slaughter Saber’s strike disturbed the balance within the black box, emitting a pungent stench from inside.
“Is this piled with dead bodies?”
The black box, considered by Eternal Life Pharmaceutical as a beacon of hope, emitted a foul fermentation smell, nauseating to the extent that mere proximity caused dizziness.
A stronger pain emanated from Han Fei’s back of the head, a feeling of powerlessness and despair seemed to bind his body like shackles. He gripped the Rebirth Slaughter Saber to prevent from collapsing, yet a force compelled him to sink, originating from the black box!
Kneeling, Han Fei leaned atop the black box, the human light on the Rebirth Slaughter Saber shone into its interior. His gaze peered through the cracks, seeing a child’s face.
The black box was filled with many, many children, their numbered bodies entwined, faces stacked together. As a beam of light shone in, they lifted their heads in darkness for the first time.
“The black box is full of numbered children? The first group of children was slaughtered by Kuangxiao, the second group left the laboratory alive, so which group are these?”
The desperate scene shook Han Fei. If his saber continued downward, he would cut into those children, yet without moving them aside, he couldn’t see inside the black box. The choice presented to Kuangxiao now seemed to be Han Fei’s.
Hidden beneath the countless despairing children lay something—that was what he truly sought.