MASG chapter 102

 

X-Series Research Lab.

Finally arrived. Mi Dou stepped inside in one stride, as if walking straight into his good friend’s childhood shadow.

“Xia Yu sometimes has nightmares,” Mi Dou muttered to himself. “He said he always dreams about the days in the institute and the day they escaped.”

“So you’ve memorized all his dreams?” Lao Gui scanned the room.

“Yes.” Mi Dou tapped his head. “Mo An used to be right there.”

He casually pointed to a shattered observation water tank. There had been no water inside for a long time; now, only broken glass and surveillance monitors with no images remained. He walked up to the monitors and wiped the dust off of them. Sealed memories were revealed one by one. When Mi Dou turned back around, it was as if he could see the entire process of that day unfold.

“Xia Yu should’ve been standing here back then.” He pointed to a spot on the floor. “Then a cleaning robot killed Professor Wang. Professor Wang might have fallen over there…” He took two steps forward. “In the end, he struggled and gave Xia Yu and Mo An a chance to escape.” All along, Mo An’s incubation place was this water tank. Humans kept conducting experiments.

“I don’t know if the experimental data was preserved.” Yan Xia walked to the front of the controller. “If we can activate it, we can get firsthand data on Mo An from back then.”

Silver Fang took advantage of this time to open the door to the sample room. “Let’s split up. Lao Gui, you stay here with Yan Xia to restart the controller. I’ll go with Mi Dou to get the blood samples.”

Lao Gui stayed right by Yan Xia’s side, afraid that something might change at the very last moment. Silver Fang led Mi Dou into the sample room. Just as in the blurry surveillance screenshots that Ling Shi had shown them, the room was filled with all kinds of organs and limbs.

Mi Dou walked up to the samples. The farther he looked, the colder his heart became.

“They’re all Xia Yu.” Mi Dou touched the glass, feeling the bleakness. “Below, there are time markings and surgery statuses. Look, this is the hand that was cut off when Xia Yu was two months old.”

A tiny infant palm was submerged in the solution, tender and fragile. It was so small that you couldn’t even make out the fingernails.

Silver Fang, who had fought across countless battlefields, turned his head away and adjusted his breathing several times. What was the difference between this and seeing an Infant’s corpse with his own eyes?

“This is the liver that was cut out when Xia Yu was six months old.” Mi Dou kept walking forward. He had only listened to Xia Yu talk about those experiments in the past, but seeing it with his own eyes was completely different. Here, it formed a very real, low-pressure atmosphere. “What exactly do they want to do? Why do they keep researching him?”

“No matter the reason, the people in the institute are too cold.” Silver Fang took another deep breath. Before Nuwa’s betrayal, pure humans were at the top of society. In their eyes, the genetically engineered were nothing more than experimental subjects. They wouldn’t listen to a subject’s cries of pain, much less care whether they felt fear while lying on the operating table.

“I will definitely find Xia Yu. I won’t let him become anyone’s test subject.” Mi Dou took one last look. Soaking in the solution was Xia Yu’s heart from when he was two years old. They removed his heart and replaced it with a mechanical one to briefly maintain his vital signs. Then, they watched as the small heart grew back.

Mi Dou turned around decisively and walked to the freezer without hesitation. The freezer was working normally in low-power mode, consuming the least amount of power. There was no password. Mi Dou shattered the password lock with a single shot. White liquid nitrogen vapor rolled out, and Silver Fang used his mechanical hand to take out a handful of test tubes.

Mi Dou opened the low-temperature container he had brought in with great difficulty and placed the test tubes inside one by one. Then, they left. As they walked out, Yan Xia happened to be coming over.

“Got them. We can retreat now.” Mi Dou patted the container. “What did you get on your side?”

“A little. The institute had been conducting electric shock experiments on fish eggs. But our top priority is getting out of here. We’ll talk after we get onto Talos’s ship.” Yan Xia glanced at the countdown on her wrist. Their operation was much faster than expected, as if an unseen hand was helping them.

“Ling Shi, we’re leaving now. The blood samples have been successfully obtained.” As they left the X-series research lab, Yan Xia reported their progress to Ling Shi.

Ling Shi: [Congratulations, everyone. We are now planning a brand-new evacuation route for you. You should arrive at the surface in two hours. Please be careful.]

“Let’s move quickly. I estimate Talos’s ship is already waiting for us.” Lao Gui urged.

However, Yan Xia did not move at all, as if something were off. She didn’t want to categorize these feelings as a “woman’s sixth sense,” but her sensitivity was indeed sometimes stronger than men’s. As if guided by some unseen force, she raised her head and glanced at the surveillance camera outside the X-series laboratory door.

Strange. Was the surveillance camera facing this direction just now?

The angle of the camera earlier seemed a bit lower than it was now.

Could Ling Shi have hacked into the camera? Yan Xia thought hard, but she couldn’t find any evidence of what was “wrong.” Before leaving, she discreetly observed the camera again. The blue light had completely disappeared, leaving only red. However, the red light flashed rhythmically a few times.

This time, before Yan Xia could see clearly, the red light disappeared as well.

According to Ling Shi’s plan, they spent an hour and forty minutes retreating, which was much faster than expected. The group was like people rushing back from a legendary hell. What they had just seen would be an unforgettable experience in their lifetime. No one had expected that there was such a massive research institute beneath the center of Qingyao City, nor that it had become a natural living environment for mutant species and parasites.

After leaving the city, an unmanned vehicle came to pick them up and took them straight to A Port without stopping. A Port was calm today. The lighthouse had lit its guiding light. Taking advantage of the night, they boarded Talos’s ship. Their destination was the boundless ocean beyond Nuwa’s reach.

Another week passed as everyone waited for another stretch of good weather.

“Did it work?” Lao Gui asked, standing on the deck.

“I only extracted a little. I’m not sure if it’s enough.” Mi Dou shook the test tube.

Inside was Xia Yu’s blood sample, which they had risked their lives to obtain a week earlier. The original plan was to search immediately for the Blue Jellyfish as soon as they reached the sea, extract venom from its poison gland, and drip it into the seawater as quickly as possible. However, the Blue Jellyfish proved to be far too difficult to catch. Talos had a vast intelligence network, along with help from all kinds of sirens, yet a whole month passed with no results.

In the end, they spent 3.4 million to buy one from a Black Sea hunter.

“Sigh. It’s because I once saw a huge group of them. I never thought this thing was that expensive.” Silver Fang thought again of the jellyfish forest on the day Xia Yu went missing.

“If Talos and Meng Qingqing didn’t know that person, it would be impossible for it to cost less than five million. That’s just how expensive this thing is. A lot of people smuggle hallucinogens made from it.” Yan Xia stood to the side, smoking an e-cigarette. “But I thought you’d kill the jellyfish directly. If so, it could have been synthesized days ago.”

“I just can’t bring myself to do it. Every time I see a jellyfish, I feel like it’s one of Xia Yu’s people,” Mi Dou said quietly.

Right next to them sat a square, transparent aquarium on the table. Inside floated a Blue Jellyfish, about the size of a fist. Its body looked like a small, mushroom-shaped umbrella, drifting up and down and occasionally flashing blue light.

“These past few days, I’ve watched it eat. I really don’t want to kill it.” Mi Dou walked up to the aquarium and knocked on the glass. The little jellyfish inside sensed him and swam toward the inner side of the glass, as if responding to his movement and sound he made.

“Do you think it could have voluntarily left its group? Like, just to find us?” Mi Dou let his imagination run wild once again. “I also discovered a key point recently. I originally thought that, after keeping it, I’d need to start cleaning the aquarium. Guess what? The water in the aquarium should’ve become murkier and murkier, but it actually became clearer and clearer.”

“Ocean janitor?” Lao Gui grinned. “Little researcher, don’t think about that so much for now. The important thing comes first.”

“Right, the important thing comes first.” Mi Dou touched the small jellyfish through the glass. He really wanted to touch it directly, but that was too risky. As he walked to the bow of the ship holding the test tube, Mi Dou felt as if he were holding up a belief, a major dream, personally. Facing the ocean, humans really were tiny.

“I don’t know if this will work, but if it does, please bring my friends back.” Mi Dou opened the test tube and poured the Xia Yu blood sample mixed with jellyfish toxin into the seawater, leaving not a single drop behind.

The ocean gave him no answer. The bow cut through the sea surface, rolling up churning white waves sharp as blades. The bright red blood disappeared the moment it fell in, as if nothing had happened.

One month later, Nixida woke up on the back of an Abyssal Beast.

The dark gray Abyssal Beast let out a low sound, communicating with the mermaid. After that, the other mermaids on the Abyssal Beast’s back also woke up, one by one. There was Aibaoyin, Aituoda, Kuni, and another Abyssal Beast. This Abyssal Beast was unique because it was in mermaid form.

“Finally here.” Hu Yu patted the Abyssal Beast beneath her. “Little Star, go play on your own. You’re tired from rushing all this way!”

The Abyssal Beast named Little Star circled them a few times. Nixida stroked its tail fin and helped it knock off a barnacle. “Thank you so much, you siblings. Otherwise, if I had to swim by myself, it would take another year.”

“What’s there to thank us for? Your story broke our hearts. Star cried several times.” Hu Yu shook her head. Since they were near an undersea whirlpool, her light gray hair floated around her face messily. “But you also have to be careful. Humans aren’t that friendly. Are you sure you really want to return to the land?”

Nixida nodded and touched the aquamarine crystal again. “Yes, no matter how cruel life on land is, I’ll go back. You seem to hate humans especially.”

“It’s not just me. Many branches don’t like humans.” Hu Yu looked at her younger brother’s figure in the distance and spoke softly. “Little Star was tricked by humans before. Otherwise, why do you think he has a human nickname?”

“No way?” Aituoda was dumbfounded.

“Yes. Back then, he had just differentiated. There was a human sailor who was very close to him and gave him this nice nickname. But when my brother transformed into a body as huge as a blue whale, the sailor got scared and ran away.” Hu Yu said indignantly. “Star cried for a long time on the way home. His tears were pink.”

“Ah… humans are really despicable.” Kuni couldn’t help but say. They all knew what pink diamond tears meant.

“If humans can’t love all of us, then they shouldn’t deceive our feelings.” Hu Yu clearly still hadn’t gotten over this. “Nixida, if you regain your memories and return to the land, I hope you won’t be deceived.”

“I…probably won’t?” Nixida wasn’t completely sure or confident. “But every time I dream, I see that figure. I feel like that person was deeply in love with me.”

“You’re really cheesy.” Aibaoyin couldn’t take it anymore. Male mermaids just like to put love and romance on their lips.

Nixida shrugged and admitted his cheesiness. But he truly felt that he had been deeply in love with someone.

“Don’t overthink it. Once you get your memories back, everything will be clear.” Hu Yu pointed toward the whirlpool ahead. “This is your first time here. We can’t accompany you. You must face Haisiruola with courage and faith and convince her to acknowledge your existence. Don’t be afraid. Swim bravely into the whirlpool. No matter what happens, don’t give up.”

Kuni really wanted to sing him a song. “You can do it!”

“Don’t be scared. Just swim over!” Aituoda said.

“Okay!” Nixida swam forward a bit, then turned his head back before truly accelerating. “Please wait for my good news!”