Chapter 157: Escaping the Research Institute 02

Chapter 157: Escaping the Research Institute 02

Qin Fei recalled what his fellow "cellmate" looked like outside the instance.

He was a young man who wore a gray hooded sweater and had curly light chestnut hair.

When he was hiding in the corridor behind Black Feather, watching him with a wide grin that showed off his white teeth, he exuded a sunny and cheerful aura.

But now, his appearance was vastly different from how he looked outside the instance.

Like all the other players in the water cell, this top player of Black Feather was dressed in tattered clothes and covered in stains.

It was clear that he wasn't there to just mess around and leech points; he was going all out.

Qin Fei vaguely remembered that earlier, when he was searching for clues in his water cell, he had submerged himself entirely into the filthy water. Now, only his teeth remained white, while the rest of him was a mess.

"Do you remember me? We met once, at Black Feather Guild. My name is Lu Cheng."

The voice coming through the air continued, and the person on the other side didn't hide their identity, revealing it right away.

Qin Fei raised his eyes to look at him.

Then Qin Fei saw the player named Lu Cheng reach out of the water, holding something dusty between two fingers. "Do you want to exchange information?"

He chuckled. "I found a clue too."

The other players around them were still flailing about in the water, but these two, who had already made discoveries, began talking as if no one else was there.

There was an indescribable arrogance to the scene.

Qin Fei glanced around and, seeing that no one was paying attention to them, nodded without drawing any attention to himself.

He had planned to have the ghost infant sneak over to fetch the clue.

But before the ghost infant could move, the water between the two water cells rippled slightly, and then something emerged from beneath the surface.

With a "plop," a thin, pale green vine carrying the note Lu Cheng had found surfaced.

Qin Fei's gaze flickered.

Was this Lu Cheng's special ability?

Both he and Lu Cheng could manipulate vines, but theirs were very different.

The vines of the pollution source were deep black with thorns, with blood-colored roses blooming on them, looking incredibly lethal. On the other hand, Lu Cheng's vines were a very life-affirming light green, making people feel good just by looking at them.

"Woah!!"

In the chat, some viewers exclaimed in amazement, but most of the spirits didn't react much.

Lu Cheng's position within Black Feather wasn't as high as Cen San Ya's or Vice President Gala's, but he was still a named player, and most of the audience knew him to some extent.

Especially his extremely unique weapon talent, which combined with natural elements, allowed him to conjure plants as whips during battles.

Qin Fei lowered his gaze, his expression calm, as if he wasn't surprised by Lu Cheng's talent at all.

He took the note from the tip of the vine and inserted the one he had found.

The slender green thread retreated underwater, and the two completed their exchange of information without drawing any attention.

"Do not trust humans."

This was written on the note Lu Cheng had.

Qin Fei's gaze lingered on the word "humans." The cloth below the words was grooved and scarred, as if someone had scratched it repeatedly with their fingernails.

More than twenty minutes had passed since the start of the instance, and the players still had no idea how to escape the water cells.

The number of players online in the attribute panel kept dropping, turning into a bright red "186."

This indicated that the remaining 150 players were in an even more dangerous situation than the water cells.

In comparison, the players in the water cells became increasingly anxious.

Their current safety didn't guarantee their safety forever, and the thirty-minute deadline hung over everyone's heads like a guillotine.

The atmosphere was tense and oppressive, with an invisible alarm buzzing silently in the air, ready to scream at any moment.

Qin Fei leaned against one side of the water cell wall.

He didn't continue searching for clues. There should only be one rule per water cell, or possibly even fewer, but not more.

Otherwise, under circumstances where players couldn't move freely, finding rules would become purely a matter of luck, disrupting the balance of the instance.

From the two rules he had collected so far, the content of the rules found in the water cells seemed to have little relation to whether the players could escape smoothly.

The breakthrough probably wasn't here but somewhere else.

Time ticked by, and there were only two minutes left until the thirty-minute limit.

Footsteps could be heard faintly outside the water cells again.

Tap, tap-tap.

Someone was walking briskly toward them.

In various corners of the cell, players paused their actions and turned to look at the entrance. After a familiar sound of a card being swiped, an NPC dressed in protective gear walked in. Unlike last time, this time only one person entered, hurriedly stepping through the water while lifting his hand to check his wrist. Keen-eyed players noticed that the NPC wore a watch over his protective suit. He was checking the time. "A 30-minute exit limit, it's indeed the first screening phase." In the A-class hall, spiritual spectators stood before the light screens with interest, commenting. "This NPC coming now must be planning something. Once the 30-minute limit is up, new plot points will appear." There were two possible directions for these new plot points. One was a normal progression where the NPC would guide the players into a new stage of the instance, similar to how the boar-man Hadsay led 200 players into the game area in the Genesis Ship instance. The other possibility was worse. What awaited the players could be a punishment phase. "I think it's highly likely that they'll go straight into the punishment phase," the commentator spirit concluded. Dying right at the start wasn't uncommon in live broadcasts. Compared to the other three groups of 150 players, these 50 players in the water cell had experienced an unusually peaceful and comfortable first 30 minutes. This meant that after the 30 minutes were up, they would face an even more intense challenge than the other groups. Furthermore, based on the instance's setup, these players' current identities were the lowest of the low: "prisoners." What good could possibly await a group of prisoners? Perhaps some outdoor time? But they didn't seem like well-treated prisoners with regular schedules. Instead, they appeared to be treated like trash, without any dignity. The spectators rubbed their hands together in excitement. How invigorating! Could these poor birds trapped in their cages seize their final chance to escape and soar towards a wider sky? Or would they be buried within the instance? In less than 30 seconds, the button to leave the instance would turn gray and become unusable. Two more beams of light lit up in the corner of the water cell as more players chose to retreat. Silence filled the water cell, occasionally broken by players exchanging glances. The NPC had reached a spot closer to the center. Players could analyze the situation just as the spectators did. Apart from a few who were still confused, all the others focused their attention on the NPC. The NPC walked to the end of the water cell and lightly touched the dirty wall. In the next moment, a blue glow with a strong sci-fi vibe, completely out of place in the water cell, emerged from under his hand. A section of the wall lifted, and the bricks behind automatically moved forward, revealing a red button the size of a palm on the wall. The button featured a white skull with a cross over it. It was clear that this couldn't be a switch to release all the players. They couldn't let the NPC press that button! All the players who could see this scene thought the same thing. Playing it safe wouldn't work anymore, and several players intended to take action. However, two people moved faster than them. Qin Fei and Lu Cheng were positioned on either side of the NPC. The moment the red button appeared, a tiny figure visible only to the spectators shot out from Qin Fei's cell compartment. The NPC's hand reaching for the button suddenly seemed to be struck by a heavy hammer, causing him to cry out in pain. His movement froze, and he clutched his wrist with his other hand. Then, in the next second, he inexplicably slipped, hitting his forehead hard against the wall. The NPC flailed about, trying to steady himself, but lost his balance and fell backward into the sewage with a thud. Even players far away heard the sound. Although the NPC wore a thick protective suit, it didn't seem very durable. The NPC appeared to have been knocked unconscious and lay motionless in the water. Several green, thread-like plant vines emerged from the water, weaving skillfully between the NPC's wrists like human fingers and quickly removing his watch. When the previous three NPCs came, they had opened the cell doors, and Lu Cheng remembered clearly that there were no preset operations; they simply held their watches up to the door. Next to each cell door was a gray square screen, roughly 5x5 centimeters in size. Lu Cheng controlled the vines to raise the watch into the air. Instead of scanning it on the screen beside his own door, he took it to the scanner next to another player's door.

Qin Fei saw very clearly from the opposite cell that the player next to him had his eyes suddenly widen.

Thankfully, the trial-and-error action didn't cause any adverse effects. The metal door at the bottom of the water cell made a ringing sound, then the iron bars slowly rose, and the cell door actually opened.

The player glared fiercely at Lu Cheng.

He didn't dare run out immediately but stood warily at the edge of the cell.

Lu Cheng put the wristwatch back into his compartment. He seemed to have discovered something, lowered his head, and tapped on the watch face with his fingers.

A few seconds later, all the cell doors in the water prison were opened.

The initial 30-minute duration had passed, and the players could no longer exit the instance voluntarily.

As the first player tentatively stepped out of the cell, the remaining forty or so players in the water prison soon rushed out.

It wasn't safe in the water prison now; other NPCs might come over at any time. Saving their lives was the priority, so everyone rushed towards the prison entrance.

Only a few players closest to the NPC came over.

Qin Fei had the positional advantage and arrived beside the NPC first.

Before others came, he had already quickly searched the NPC's body.

The players who arrived later stared suspiciously at Qin Fei, but Qin Fei remained expressionless.

The NPC on the ground seemed to be the same as before.

A bold player reached out to touch the mask on the NPC's face. When the mask was removed, it revealed an ordinary human male face, slightly tanned, and stubbled.

He was still unconscious, his eyes tightly closed, his eyelids occasionally twitching.

Not daring to waste too much time, these people quickly ran out.

The water prison was emptied within a minute, leaving only the unconscious NPC.

When the players left the water prison and looked back, they found that there was a line of red spray-painted words above the gate of the water prison.

"Low-Quality Specimen Disposal Room"

The players who saw this instantly broke out in cold sweat.

If they hadn't stopped the NPC from pressing the red button earlier, their fate would have been unimaginable.

Outside the water prison, the gate led directly to an upward staircase.

When Qin Fei went out, the short staircase was already crowded with players. The corridor was pitch black, leading to an unknown destination. The players at the front moved cautiously, step by step, with great care.

Qin Fei and Lu Cheng came out late and were squeezed at the back of the crowd.

Lu Cheng was a natural conversationalist. As he climbed the stairs, his gaze met Qin Fei's, and he suddenly started talking to him.

"Tsk." The young man raised his hand to touch his dirty curly hair. "That NPC, before I took off the mask, I thought I'd see some strange face."

Almost all the players had gathered information prompts before the instance began.

Radiation, parasitism, evolution, research.

It always gave the impression of biological mutation in a sci-fi movie.

But the NPC in the instance turned out to look exactly like a human.

Although this seemed like a good thing, for the players whose hearts were always hanging in mid-air, seeing an ordinary human face instead made them feel strangely empty.

Qin Fei glanced at the troublemaker and looked at the dark heads ahead.

"No," the young man suddenly spoke.

This was the first time Lu Cheng heard Qin Fei speak.

The young man's voice was warm and soft, like a clear spring flowing through his ears.

In the dim light, Lu Cheng noticed that Qin Fei looked much cleaner than the other players.

Even though everyone had just crawled out of the smelly sewage, Qin Fei didn't seem to have gotten much dirt on him. The strands of hair falling by his ears were still fresh, only the ends of his tied-up hair were slightly damp.

His exposed skin was a cool white. Although the sack-like prisoner's clothes clung loosely to his body, the gray-black color made the young man's skin appear even whiter, giving him a sense of purity and nobility, like a lotus that emerges from the mud unsoiled.

Lu Cheng stared at Qin Fei for a moment, then pulled out a transparent ball from his personal space and offered it to him.

About the size of a ping-pong ball, its surface was semi-soft, containing what seemed like a pouch of water, somewhat like a giant laundry detergent pod.

"A cleaning ball, want one?"

Actually, Lu Cheng rarely used cleaning balls.

After all, being a bit dirty or smelly didn't matter, but the young man in front of him always gave Lu Cheng the feeling that he should remain clean and shouldn't get stained in the slightest.

As Lu Cheng spoke, he threw one at himself. His sticky hair immediately became dry and fluffy, and the traces of the sewage-soaked clothes disappeared instantly.

Cleaning balls weren't special items, but they weren't available in the ordinary mall in Central City. Instead, they were exclusive to the internal malls of major guilds, so Qin Fei had never used them before.

Good things shouldn't be wasted.

Qin Fei reached out to take it, and Lu Cheng casually asked about his earlier words: "What did you say wasn't right?"

"The NPC," Qin Fei's voice was calm, as if he was talking about something very ordinary, not a clue that only he had discovered. "He wasn't human."

The NPC did indeed have a human face, no doubt about that. But when Qin Fei got closer, he accidentally kicked off the rubber shoe on his foot. Rubber shoes. The three NPCs who came in before were also wearing rubber shoes. Yellow rubber boots that covered the outer layer of their protective suits, directly obscuring most of their calves. A shoe like this would only come off so easily if it was big enough to fit two feet in one. Qin Fei kept his wits about him and, through the murky water, he saw, to his surprise, that after the NPC took off the waterproof rubber shoes, what appeared from under the protective suit was not a human foot. It was a kind of dark purple, very soft, tentacle-like thing with suction cups on the bottom. "Tentacles?" Lu Cheng was taken aback by the description. While they were talking, the first player had already reached the end of the stairs. At the end of the stairs was a very wide safety door. The door wasn't locked from the outside; all you had to do was open the inner latch to push it open. The player at the front stood on the stairs, staring at the slivers of light spilling out from the crack in the door, his heart pounding nervously. The players at the back all crowded around the door. As someone reached out and pushed the door open, the scene outside slowly came into the players' field of vision. It was an extremely large, almost boundless, spacious building. Walls, ceilings, floors were all made of metal, crisscrossed with various pipes, presenting a deep silver-gray color that felt cold and devoid of warmth. The building was extremely high, looking like some kind of factory, inside which various jars and glass vessels were neatly stacked. Some of the vessels were extremely large, seemingly two or three meters tall, hanging halfway up in the air, supported by steel bars and pipes, requiring the players to look up to see them clearly. Some were slightly smaller, neatly arranged on the ground, forming a square formation like dominoes. Different vessels matched each other, creating different modular groups, with some flat, straight areas interspersed between different modules, serving as corridors. The corridors were equipped with tracks, and unmanned carts slid past automatically from time to time. In the center of the factory, far from the safety door, a huge gray boiler was working, emitting a continuous stream of steam. The boiler was connected to a network of pipes. Some of them were transparent, allowing the players to see strange-colored liquids flowing through them. Around the boiler, there was a circular workbench, with many NPCs in protective suits walking around or operating some equipment. Lu Cheng stood at the back of the crowd, staring at the nearest suspended glass vessel, his mouth agape in surprise. The vessel was filled with clear liquid, and in the middle of the liquid, there was a huge, fleshy red object floating. The fist-shaped object was divided into two halves, with a groove in the middle and ravines on both sides. Because it was so huge, the players could clearly see the blood vessels and fine hairs covering its surface. "What the hell is this?" Lu Cheng couldn't hold back his quiet complaint. "A mutated hairy brain??" How big would a person need to be to have such a large brain? Titans? The objects contained in the other vessels weren't much better than this brain. Most were blackish-red masses of flesh, tangled together and twisted, covered with membranes, making it hard to discern their original appearance. There were also some more distinct shapes, such as eyeballs or humanoid creatures with multiple limbs. In short, none of them looked particularly pleasant. Lu Cheng patted his chest and muttered to himself, "Good, good, monsters are better than ghosts, I'm most afraid of ghosts." Qin Fei: "..." It's not like you're showing any fearlessness towards the monsters either. It was clear that this was the main space of the Research Institute. The safety door was pushed open just wide enough for one person to pass through, and the players filed out one by one. There weren't many NPCs nearby, so it wasn't too difficult to avoid their line of sight. The players crouched down, each looking for a nearby cover, and dashed behind it as soon as they stepped outside. This was not the time for politeness and humility. Qin Fei wore a cold expression and, taking advantage of the moment, subtly moved his elbows, sliding through the gaps between people to get to the front. Lu Cheng followed suit. He found it even easier to make space for himself by manipulating vines. The other players were worried about making too much noise, but they glared at the two bullies in silent anger. The live chat was flooded with laughter. "Hilarious. My wife has such low manners, I love it." "These elbows of the streamer's would be great for squeezing onto a bus." "Don't mention it, seriously, don't mention it. NPCs are coming over. I think those still dawdling should hurry up, or they might be done for soon."

The players behind the safety door also realized this, and they became even more eager to run out. However, this only caused them to accidentally push the door axis, emitting an ear-piercing creak.

There was an NPC wearing a white lab coat over protective gear and holding a registration board, who looked like a scientific researcher.

Hearing the noise, he turned around and walked towards the door.

Only one player remained behind the door now.

His situation had become quite awkward, as advancing or retreating was no longer an option.

To leave the safety door would surely result in being discovered by the NPC, and returning to the water cell was not feasible either.

The player could only move his feet, hiding most of his body behind the door panel.

The NPC approached, and Qin Fei, staring at the NPC, felt an ominous premonition welling up within him.

This NPC's steps were too resolute, and his target was too clear.

He must have already seen someone on this side of the door.

The player who didn't manage to escape in time was likely in for bad luck.

The NPC soon strode briskly to the safety door.

With a creak, he pushed the door open.

Behind it was a dark staircase.

The NPC entered the staircase and descended halfway, finding nothing unusual, then turned back.

The player hiding in the crease between the door and the wall let out a quiet sigh of relief upon seeing this.

Through the crack in the door, he stared intently at the NPC's figure.

Hurry, faster!

Get out quickly!!

The player's breathing nearly stopped.

Yet often, the more one doesn't want something to happen, the more likely it is to occur.

Just as the NPC reached the door and was about to leave the safety passage and close the door, he suddenly froze in place.

He sniffed behind his mask, and the player, separated by the door, heard his inhalation clearly.

Then, the NPC let out a soft hum from deep within his nostrils.

He lowered his head.

Between the NPC's shiny and clean leather shoes, there was a murky puddle, emitting a faint stench.