PDLP Chapter 290 Downward
Chapter 290 Downward
"Tick, tick."
After his teammates left, Wang Xiao stood there blankly for a while.
As the footsteps faded into the distance, the only sound in the silence was the dripping of water droplets.
He picked up the walkie-talkie from his chest, and tried to turn it on several times but stopped himself.
"Never mind," he thought.
Now that this decision has been made, there's no going back on it.
People die for wealth, birds die for food; in these degenerate times, who doesn't just want to stay alive?
Ultimately, wasn't his initial motivation for joining the army to find a way to make a living?
Having convinced himself of his own survival, he turned and walked back the way he came.
"Tick."
A drop of water landed on his mask, blurring his vision.
Wang Xiao raised his hand and wiped it, but just as he was about to put his hand down, he saw the color of his palm.
He stood frozen on the stairs, and when he shone his flashlight on himself, he realized that what appeared to be dripping on him was blood.
A sudden, inexplicable sense of crisis swept over him, and the thought that had arisen out of nowhere transformed into a chilling killing intent that gripped his throat.
His eyes darted to the lower right of the corridor, where there was a laundry room very close to him. He could easily estimate the distance and didn't need to worry about the teleportation failing.
"Drip." Another drop of blood hit his face.
Wang Xiao finally couldn't help but look up. Directly above him, less than ten meters away, a blood-soaked figure was hanging upside down, its exposed eyes staring intently at him.
The blood-covered man's lipless mouth was slightly open, and the liquid that couldn't be contained dripped down, landing right on his face.
A short scream caught in his throat, and Wang Xiao trembled as he activated his supernatural ability.
……
The three stood silently in the center of the gate, fearing that Miao Yin might actually try to steal the documents.
But then I thought, threats aside, at least these crystallizations of human wisdom can be taken out, even if the process of obtaining them is somewhat complicated.
Yang Jin hesitated for a moment before speaking, "Can you really take all these classified documents out of the country? These things are very important to the military. If you use them in exchange, the military should be willing to cooperate."
"You've figured it out?" Miao Yin looked up at her.
"Yang Jin?"
“I just thought that since we had a chance to take the documents out, it was better than letting them rot here,” she explained.
Miao Yin leaned against the door, her posture languid as if she were on vacation, completely devoid of the tension they all exuded.
"Too bad, I was just joking with you guys."
The matter of the weapons depot in her previous life caused quite a stir, and Miao Yin's informants had also heard some things about these classified documents.
Back then, Fang Ce led the team, doing the exact same thing as now, except that they were attacked by the mutants before they even got here, and more than half of them were killed or wounded.
In the end, not only was the mission not completed, but the slumbering Crimson Catastrophe was also awakened, destroying the entire arsenal.
After the Crimson Catastrophe left, Dream City Base once again assembled a team to come here, attempting to find something usable from this pile of ruins.
Obviously, they didn't find any of the files they were looking for.
These smart lockers on the 30th floor have a self-destruct function specifically designed to prevent theft.
These are all important classified documents concerning national and public security. If they were leaked, the consequences would be unimaginable. So the engineer from back then put forward a suggestion.
If something is lost, we can simply summarize the data and redo it. But if it's stolen, it's like giving the enemy a fatal handle, indirectly allowing them to grow stronger.
So they made a decision: let's create a self-destruct program.
When the smart safe is subjected to violent impact, the internal program will archive all the files together and take them to the bottom of the safe, waiting for the external interference to disappear.
If the violent assault continues and penetrates to the last layer of defense, the hidden bomb inside will detonate, destroying all the documents.
They truly achieved the goal of inflicting 800 damage on the enemy while losing 1000 damage themselves.
I've heard that some new managers in modern times have considered removing this self-destruct mechanism and instead strengthening external defenses.
But clearly, they lost their lives before they could fix the program.
Therefore, Miao Yin couldn't burn the cabinet open with the Mi Huo. From the moment the smart cabinet was damaged, the bomb inside would quietly light up, waiting for the right moment.
It was destined that the fruits of human wisdom would be lost here.
"No matter how much we planned, in the end we still managed to protect ourselves from our own people." Miao Yin said this with an ambiguous meaning.
Tu Hao shook his head, his tone somber but his expression showing little regret: "It seems we've missed out on a good deal."
Although it's unclear what happened, the two seemed to genuinely just be joking and didn't really mean to do it.
The three of them were somewhat relieved and sat down on the ground. They took out dry food and electrolyte water to replenish their strength, rested and adjusted their condition, and waited for Fang Ce to finish.
This wait lasted for almost two hours.
When Fang Ce finished typing the last character and the system displayed that the file had been retrieved, he almost collapsed to the ground.
Standing for two hours wasn't tiring for him; it just required him to maintain a high level of concentration and not make any mistakes. The immense pressure drained almost all of his strength.
He calmed himself down, completed the last few operations, shut down the system, and lay down on the ground when he returned to the door.
His clothes were soaked with sweat, sticking uncomfortably to his body, and the sudden relaxation had given him a throbbing headache.
Yu Feng quickly unscrewed the bottle cap and fed him water, while Yang Jin fanned him and wiped the sweat from his head.
He An organized all the documents and put them into the box. The number of documents they retrieved on this trip far exceeded their expectations, and the entire box was now full.
She closed the lid, unlocked the combination lock, sealed the box completely, and then zipped up her backpack.
Ten minutes later, Fang Ce sat up.
"I'm fine now. Everyone, take your equipment and let's go out."
He An asked with concern, "Why don't you rest a little longer? It's quite safe here, it's okay to stay a while longer."
Fang Ce shook his head and refused: "The sooner we get out, the sooner we can rest easy. The main force is still waiting for us outside."
"Ok."
So they took back all the protective gear they had removed during their rest and went back to being fully armed.
Miao Yin and Tu Hao also put their gas masks back on. She pressed a button on the wall, and the door slowly opened from both sides.
Yu Feng waved to He An: "Carry it for me."
The box itself was quite heavy, and Zhang Zhitong originally carried it on his back. Now that he was injured, it was his turn to help carry it.
"Here you go." He An didn't refuse and handed him the backpack, which was half his height.
They returned to the elevator, where the building manager's body lay still. They wondered what had driven him to choose suicide rather than try to escape.
The elevator button for going down was the top one. Fang Ce pressed the button, the elevator started, and they returned to the 27th floor.
After exiting the elevator, the egg-shaped protective shell remained outside. Fang Ce needed to enter another exit code on the original combination lock before he could leave.
Tu Hao stood silently at the front, waiting for the door to open.
"Beep, beep, beep." The password was entered one by one, a blue light lit up, and the protective case opened.
As the gap gradually widened, light rushed out eagerly.
Tu Hao blinked, and suddenly a human hand, its skin and flesh peeled away, reached in from the outside, its five fingers spread wide, attacking his heart.
His pupils contracted, and his body reacted faster than his brain, grabbing the hand and twisting it.
The sound of bones breaking sent chills down his spine, and the deformed, festering sores all over its body lunged at him, biting relentlessly.
Miao Yin raised her hand, palm facing outward, and a burst of scorching flames instantly sent it flying, crashing into the outer wall.
Tu Hao threw away the severed half of his hand and clutched his chest.
The mutant's attack caught him off guard; its claws pierced his skin, leaving five bloody holes.
If he hadn't reacted quickly enough, his heart would probably have been ripped out by now.
A burning pain shot through the wound, and Tu Hao frowned, his expression grim.
"Miao Yin, it's poisonous."
"It's obvious."
Large green patches appeared on the mutated human body burned by flames, and when they broke open, foul-smelling pus flowed out, which inevitably reminded people of rivers polluted by chemical plants.
"Move back, don't bump into it."