Chapter 283

"Ten minutes, no more. Anything useful in this ghost place?"

Xuanyuan Qing leaned against the cold wall, her voice drifting, carrying a chill. She fumbled in her pocket and pulled out a pitch-black little thing, the size of a fingernail, its surface engraved with fine, hair-like runes.

"Dismantled from a patrol robot… its brain," she said, her voice drifting, every word squeezed through her teeth. "Xu Jianhua's notes mentioned… this thing is alive… organic content nearly half."

Lin Yu's brow furrowed tightly: "Bio-chip?"

"More evil than that," Xuanyuan Qing shook her head, her lips white without a trace of blood. "It's alive… neural network fragments, cut directly from a human brain, made into an interface…"

Before she could finish, her body swayed violently, and she collapsed to the ground.

Lin Yu was quick, catching her before she hit the floor. She was cold to the touch, her pulse fast and weak, chaotic and terrifying.

"No, blood loss is too severe," Lin Yu said in a low voice. "Any longer, and we won't reach B3."

Xuanyuan Qing struggled away from him, pulling out an object from another pocket—the last adrenaline injection, scavenged from the medical kit.

"Enough."

She didn't even look, bit off the needle cap, and jammed it hard into her outer thigh.

The medicine was pushed into her blood vessels.

Xuanyuan Qing's pupils contracted and then dilated violently, an abnormal flush appearing on her face, her breathing becoming coarse and rapid.

"Thirty minutes," her voice was hard as iron. "Go."

The two of them didn't delay, charging out of the equipment room and turning into the narrow passage marked 'Secondary Power Room'.

The walls were covered in old cables and pipes, like a massive spider web. Cold condensation dripped from overhead from time to time, hitting the rusted metal floor with a 'drip, drip', making one's heart panic.

"Corner ahead," Xuanyuan Qing stopped, her breathing carrying the hot smell of medicine, her voice extremely light. "Someone."

Lin Yu immediately raised his gun, hunched over, and pressed against the cold wall like a leopard, creeping toward the corner.

A back wearing a white coat was hunched over, tinkering with the control panel on the wall.

Before Lin Yu could speak, the person turned around as if he had eyes on the back of his head.

"Don't move!" Lin Yu's gun was aimed steadily at his brow.

It was a middle-aged man, his face pale, eyes sunken, so thin he looked like a skeleton. He wore an ill-fitting white coat that hung loosely on him.

But there was no fear on his face at being held at gunpoint, only a kind of indescribable exhaustion, or even… relief?

He slowly raised his hands, his movements somewhat stiff, a strange arc pulling at the corners of his mouth.

"Finally here," the man's voice was dry, carrying a strange mechanical quality, not quite like a normal person speaking. "I'm Xiao Chengzhou, person in charge of District B. Also… the last caretaker here."

——

In the laboratory.

Xu Xiaochuan was soaked as if fished out of water, cold sweat soaking his tattered school uniform, sticking to his body, wet and cold.

His hand was still pressed hard against the pale blue glowing sensor board on the control panel, the burning pain from his fingertips growing stronger, the current drilling up his arm, as if trying to drill into his bones and burn him to ash.

"Seventeen seconds…" Xiao Ya's voice drifted in his brain, growing weaker, like a kite with a broken string, ready to disconnect at any moment. "Authority… disappearing…"

Xu Xiaochuan gritted his teeth until his gums bled, his eyes fixed on the complex 3D structure map on the control panel. The red dot representing Lin Yu and Xuanyuan Qing was stopped in a flickering area.

"Where are Uncle Lin and the others?"

"B2 floor… secondary power room…" Xiao Ya's virtual image twisted violently, as if torn by invisible force, her voice intermittent. "Someone… is approaching them… very dangerous…"

A bone-chilling current, far stronger than before, surged from Xu Xiaochuan's fingertips, violently tearing at his nerves.

He felt his consciousness split in two—one half painfully trapped in this sweat-soaked, trembling body; the other half uncontrollably seeping into the massive, cold electronic veins of the observatory through that blue sensor board, like a ghost.

Through this eerie and intense connection, he vaguely 'saw' the scene in the B2 power room—not with his eyes, but through fragmented information streams fed back by countless sensors in the building.

He 'felt' Lin Yu's cold gun barrel aimed at a stranger, and Xuanyuan Qing's fading life signs, like a flickering candle in the wind, struggling in the complex data stream.

"Who… can be trusted?" Xiao Ya's voice carried unprecedented urgency.

"What do you 'see'? What the hell is that person?" Xu Xiaochuan's veins bulged on his forehead, cold sweat rolling down his cheeks and dripping onto the cold floor.

"He has authority… B3 floor… biological lock…" Xiao Ya responded intermittently, her voice struggling through the chaotic electronic noise. "But he… isn't entirely human… body… deeply modified…"

The timer in the corner of the control panel ticked mercilessly—eight seconds left before the temporary authority vanished completely!

"Quick! Tell them, don't trust that Xiao guy! Make him get lost!" Xu Xiaochuan gritted his teeth, his voice hoarse.

Xiao Ya's virtual image flickered to the point of being unrecognizable, her voice like broken glass: "Cannot… contact directly… need… more energy…"

Xu Xiaochuan's bloodshot eyes swept the control room, his gaze locking onto a row of power distribution panels on the right wall with blinking indicator lights.

"That! Can that provide more energy?" he pointed with his chin.

Xiao Ya's image paused for a moment, as if performing rapid calculations. "Dangerous… high-energy access will trigger… main system multi-layer… defense alarms… even… self-destruct sequence…"

"Screw the self-destruct!" Xu Xiaochuan let out a beast-like roar from his throat, his lungs nearly bursting. "I promised to take you out! Can't watch Uncle Lin and the others die!"

He waved his hand, ignoring the intense pain in his hand still pressed against the sensor board, grabbed a heavy metal instrument stand, and smashed it with all his might against the locked power distribution panel!

"Clang—!" A deafening roar, the metal lock shattering, sparks flying.

Xu Xiaochuan didn't care about his arm, which was numb and possibly fractured from the recoil, and ripped open the twisted panel door, revealing the dense, spider-web-like complex circuits and rows of red and green switches.

"Which one? Quick!"

Xiao Ya's virtual image was already too chaotic to identify, her voice like broken glass: "Red… main power access… third from the left… but will… immediately trigger highest… alarm…"

Xu Xiaochuan's fingers hovered without hesitation over that eye-catching red switch. Just before Xiao Ya's image vanished completely due to energy fluctuations, he used his last bit of strength to press it down hard!

"Click!"

The lights in the entire room flashed crazily, alternating between light and dark, and a sharp, piercing alarm sound, far sharper than any before, swept through the entire space like a tsunami, making his eardrums ache!

The pale blue liquid in the life support pod surged violently, as if boiling, and inside the pod, Xiao Ya's withered, thin real body twitched a finger—a tiny movement, but real.