Chapter 53

【Team Member: Young Master Atobe, deceased.】

【Team Member: Hard to Name, deceased.】

The system notification sounded in his ear, and Wang Tanzhi quickly opened the game menu to check. Indeed, the names of those two were marked as "deceased." After a moment's thought, Xiao Tan said, "Big brothers, could it be that they died in the underground laboratory of this building?"

"Oh? Why do you think so?" Pan Feng continued walking without turning back, his tone indicating that he wasn't really concerned about the two's deaths. It seemed like... whether they were dead or alive didn't matter much to his progress. Of course, with the combined strength of him and Hua Xiong, they had every reason to be confident.

"Think about it, one of them is level 14, the other is level 12, they're at least a bit stronger than me. I'm not afraid of the blood wolves on the street, so they definitely wouldn't die to those monsters. But if they also came to this Alib Building, saw the basement layout, and went to the underground laboratory..." He paused, then continued, "We haven't cleared that area yet, so it might be dangerous, or even have a boss. If they encountered a zombie werewolf..."

"Hmm... that makes sense," Hua Xiong said, but his tone suggested he had already thought of this. Saying "that makes sense" was just to humor Xiao Tan. "However, since they're already dead, there's nothing we can do by going back now. Besides, we're already very close to the top floor. Let's just clear the way to the top and then..."

"Or how about this," Xiao Tan interrupted. "Big brothers, you continue to the top floor, and I'll go back to the ground floor alone." He took the bat out of his backpack (since he hadn't had a chance to fight, he had put away his weapon). "The remaining player is my friend. He might not have come to the building yet, but I'm sure he will. I'll go to the ground floor to wait for him and tell him not to go underground, and to meet up with you first before taking any action."

Pan Feng and Hua Xiong stopped, turned to look at him, and exchanged glances. Hua Xiong shrugged and replied, "Alright, little brother, be careful. We'll go ahead."

Xiao Tan acknowledged and turned to go back the way he came. After turning down a corridor, he rushed into the fire escape. At this moment, he didn't know that Feng Jue was already in the underground laboratory, nor did he realize that his judgment about the death locations of Young Master Atobe and Hard to Name was incorrect. He was simply acting based on his own deductions.

After he had walked far enough away, Pan Feng suddenly spoke in a very serious tone, "Those two players were in the same location for a long time before they died, and that place is quite far from this building."

Hua Xiong responded, "Yeah, I noticed that too. There wouldn't be any mini-bosses in such a place. Before nightfall, there would only be a few stray blood wolves in the city. And... their deaths were only a few seconds apart. Haha... unless they jumped off the building together, otherwise..."

"Indeed, it must have been the 'Derivatives'..." Pan Feng mused. "They've already started attacking players... We need to speed up and prevent the other two from coming into contact with the Derivatives."

"It's better that the little brother left. We can act more freely now. The return path is relatively safe, and most of the monsters have been cleared, so he should be fine for a while," Hua Xiong added. "The player named 'Feng Jue' is in a bad situation. His survival rate is still at 73%, but the problem is that he's already infected. Once he mutates, he'll be considered dead. We need to resolve this before that happens." He took a deep breath. "Only four players were selected to enter, and the two who died are already gone. But if three or even all of them die before we complete the mission, our work will be a complete failure."

Pan Feng nodded, "Yeah... you're right. We need to quickly 'kill' Ashford. Once we enter 'that' storyline, we can complete the mission quickly. No matter what... we need to get the players out of the script first, and then we can focus on dealing with the 'Derivatives'."

...

Feng Jue walked down the corridor of the laboratory with his Winchester. The lighting here was functioning normally, and the number of zombies wasn't too high. Apart from the group he encountered by the elevator, the frequency of encountering monsters was similar to that on the ground. He passed through several corridors and only encountered one or two zombies at most.

The shotgun in Feng Jue's hands was very useful in the narrow corridors. He just needed to wait for the monsters to get a bit closer before firing. Even without precise aim, he could definitely resolve the fight. After all, hitting a limb would result in immediate dismemberment and a fall, and hitting the torso would either send the zombie flying or cause it to disintegrate on the spot.

He searched a large area, and most of the electronic doors could be opened. Many rooms contained only a few rows of metal racks, with paper boxes filled with documents and file folders. Feng Jue read some of the documents, but their content was largely meaningless, with many being identical experimental reports and key information blacked out.

Some rooms contained large computers, with monitors and mysterious control rods and buttons covering the walls and tables. All of these devices were damaged and couldn't even be turned on. These rooms were easy to deal with; he just needed to open the door, take a look, and leave.

After some effort, Feng Jue finally found a high-security electronic door. This door required both iris and fingerprint scans to open, and the game conveniently placed a zombie in a white lab coat a few meters away from the door...

Feng Jue shot the zombie in the waist, causing it to fall to the ground, its intestines spilling out. He took the bat from his backpack and smashed the bones in the zombie's arms and knees. After that, he switched to a kitchen knife, pressed the zombie's face, and cut off its head and one hand. He also searched the zombie's clothes, confirming that there was nothing in the pockets.

After the scan was complete, the electronic door opened. Feng Jue casually threw the head and hand to the side and stepped into the room.

This was clearly a room related to the plot. Directly opposite the door was a large metal gate, similar to the ones in bank vaults. On the left wall, there was a row of glass cylinders, about one meter high and thirty centimeters in diameter. They were originally filled with liquid, but now the glass was broken, and the contents had mostly spilled onto the floor. The liquid was a pale green, and a large pool of green residue remained on the floor in that area.

The computers in the room were also out of order, with black screens that wouldn't turn on. By a control panel, there were two bodies in white lab coats. Feng Jue approached cautiously, observing to confirm that they were just ordinary corpses and not dormant zombies.

Both victims were male. One looked to be in his fifties, balding, and wearing glasses. The other had gray hair, a mustache, and was a few years older. The balding man had been shot in the head, and the mustachioed man had two gunshot wounds, one in the chest and one in the abdomen. It seemed they hadn't been moved after death, as their positions and postures indicated this.

Feng Jue reconstructed the scene of the shooting in his mind... The killer was likely someone they knew. He entered the laboratory through the electronic door, suddenly drew his gun, and shot the balding man, who was sitting at the control panel, at close range. The bullet entered his head, killing him instantly. The balding man's body slid off the chair and fell to the ground.

At the sound of the gunshot, the mustachioed man, who was a few steps away from the control panel and facing away from the door, turned around in shock. Unfortunately, the killer didn't give him a chance to react, immediately firing two more shots and killing him. The mustachioed man fell forward, grabbing the edge of the control panel to cushion his fall slightly before collapsing to the side.

Looking at the positions of the bodies, the bloodstains, and their expressions, Feng Jue made the above deductions. As a mystery novelist, deducing the sequence of events from a crime scene was second nature to him. He had mentally reconstructed similar scenarios countless times, sometimes even conducting experiments to create "ingenious" locked-room murders. It sounded complicated, but it was necessary to ensure that the contrivances he thought of were feasible in reality.

"Haha..." Feng Jue laughed as he looked at the two bodies. "If they weren't infected, they must have been injected with the serum..." He spoke to the dead bodies, "In this base, only the core researchers who deal directly with the virus would have this treatment."

He reconstructed the sequence of events in his mind, thinking: Regardless of the killer's motives, let's assume he was also a researcher who had been injected with the serum. He killed these two, broke the container holding the virus, and then carried a small amount of the liquid out of the room. He returned to the corridor, killed more people, and used the virus to mutate the bodies... Then he escaped the laboratory, spreading the infection to the surface, but for some reason, the people on the surface turned into a different type of zombie.

Or... the killer might not have escaped the laboratory and was instead subdued or killed by the guards. The virus that created the blood wolves on the surface might be unrelated to the one here, being a completely different strain.

Thinking about this, Feng Jue remembered another issue, muttering, "The guy at the door also had access to this room. He must have been a researcher and should have been injected with the serum, so why did he turn into a zombie..."

Feng Jue needed more information and clues to understand the situation, so he examined the two bodies again. He found a key in the mustachioed man's pocket.

A few meters away was a desk. Feng Jue walked over without hesitation, opening the drawers one by one. He found two syringes, a stack of white paper, some stationery, a stapler, pins, and sticky notes... Only the bottom drawer was locked. He tried the key he had just found, and it opened.

{Piaotian Literature}