Chapter 58: with translation of chapter title

Cold light seeped from the end of the maintenance ladder. Zhang Jun kicked open the deformed grating, and the freezer's white mist smeared his face. Twenty-eight culture tanks surrounded the central control console, the countdown on the operation screen frozen at 23:17:42.

"Damn!" The sword tip flicked up a half-pack of cigarettes beneath the control console; Zhang Jun's fingertips trembled—the twisted "Tiangang" characters on the cigarette pack were identical to the pack burned at Wang Jun's funeral.

Lin Xue suddenly lunged toward the culture tank in the southeast corner. Inside the bulletproof glass floated a suit of ice-crystal armor, with a jade pendant fragment set at the chest—exactly the piece that could seamlessly join with the one around her neck.

The control console suddenly flashed red. Amid the deafening crash of the modified person smashing through the freezer door, a voice with an eerie gentleness rose: "Xiao Xue, put the jade pendant into the slot—Mom will tell you the truth……"

Zhang Jun's sword hilt smashed the screen playing the hologram; flying glass shards reflected Lin Xue's deathly pale face. The ice-crystal patterns on her neck suddenly surged, climbing up her collarbone to her cheeks.

"Shut your fucking mouth!" Zhang Jun suddenly tore open his collar, and the barcode seeped blue light under the stimulation of Ice Soul Power. The freezer's metal floor suddenly collapsed, and twenty-seven acid tanks dropped from the ceiling.

The leading modified person's electronic eyes suddenly turned red, and its mechanical arm sprang out a chainsaw: "Error… purge…"

Lin Xue suddenly laughed, and ice crystals condensed in her palm into a shotgun: "Bet fifty cents, this tin can won't hold up at minus seventy degrees."

The acid tanks, shattered by freezing, emitted a brittle crack mixed with explosion that pierced the eardrums. Zhang Jun grabbed her and leapt into the suddenly appearing shaft; as they fell, he caught a glimpse of the freezer's monitor flickering—a figure in a white lab coat deleting data, the light refracted from their wristwatch forming the character "Wang".

Ice shards rattled down onto Zhang Jun's nape, nearly making him bite through the flashlight in his mouth. Lin Xue kicked open the vent duct's metal gap, and ice crystals burst into frost flowers under her combat boots.

"Turn left three meters?" Zhang Jun tapped the pipe wall with his sword hilt, "This sound is more like a con artist than Old Zhao's false teeth."

The squeaking of corrosive acid suddenly sounded right behind their backs. Lin Xue suddenly grabbed his tactical vest and yanked him to the right; as they slammed into the branch passage, a waterfall of purple liquid poured onto the spot they'd just occupied. Zhang Jun's tactical flashlight swept over scratches on the pipe wall, where mottled rust held half a bloodstained taiji pendant.

"The elevator shaft of Profound Heaven Tower last week." Lin Xue's fingernail dug into the metal seam, "Same batch part number."

The pipe's tremors suddenly became regular. Zhang Jun fished out the warming jade pendant from his pants pocket, casting a string of numbers as a blue reflection on the metal—identical down to the second to the surveillance timestamp they'd seen three days earlier at the convenience store checkout. From afar came a muffled gear-turning sound, as if someone were winding a spring.

"Southwest corner!" The hoarse voice suddenly exploded overhead. In the instant the ventilation grating burst apart, twenty-seven micro-drones buzzed in, their wings flashing the familiar spade emblem.

Lin Xue's flung ice blades pierced three of them, and purple arcs raced along the ice crystals up her forearms: "Zhao Wushuang's modification style."

Zhang Jun suddenly swung his sword sheath and struck a spot on the pipe wall, where a concealed launcher burst with electric sparks. The drone formation instantly arranged itself in the Big Dipper pattern in midair, and the intersecting projection beams wove into a phantom of Lin Zhen.

"Good girl, look at the third rivet on your left."

Lin Xue suddenly froze. The wear pattern on the rivet's edge matched exactly the gear of the music box she'd broken on her twelfth birthday. Zhang Jun's sword blade had already sheared off the phantom's right arm, and the erupting data stream contained a segment of encrypted coordinates.

"Damn! This isn't Dad's safe deposit box coordinates?"

The pipe suddenly plunged vertically at a ninety-degree angle. Zhang Jun's back scraped against the pipe wall, sending sparks flying, and his tactical glove wore down to a burnt smell. Lin Xue's flung ice spikes formed a grid beneath their feet; as they crashed into the safety net, a muffled clang came from overhead as the gate shut.

A stench of rot mixed with oil flooded their nostrils. Zhang Jun's flashlight beam swept over piles of mechanical wreckage, inside one shredder lodged half of a familiar combat uniform—the dragon-scale pattern on the cuff identical to the one he'd changed out of yesterday.

"A time-loop trap." Lin Xue suddenly pulled open her collar; the ice-crystal patterns beneath her collarbone were devouring metal shards, "Do you still remember the Möbius strip model from Xiao Lin's office?"

The jade pendant suddenly buzzed. An emergency lamp flickered on in the darkness, and a yellowed Home Appliance Repair Manual lay open on the control console, a reddish sugar paper tucked between its pages. The instant Zhang Jun's fingertip touched the paper's corner, a memory split into his temple.

Five-year-old me curled up inside a culture tank, the white lab coat's hem swaying outside the glass. A voice said: "The seventh-generation Primordial Bloodline compatibility rate is 0.7%……"

"Wake up!" Lin Xue's ice cone grazed his cheekbone and shot through the lunging mechanical spider. Purple fluid splattered onto the sugar paper, melting into the shape of the Big Dipper.

The hoarse voice sounded again, this time mixed with electrical static: "Load-bearing pillar…… gift……"

Zhang Jun suddenly kicked over the control console. A sandalwood box rolled out from a hidden compartment, the smell of Wang Jun's tobacco oil mingling with blood stench. As the lid sprang open, a hologram exploded in the smoke—twenty years ago, Lin Yuehua was destroying experimental data; behind her, a culture tank floated with an infant whose neck barcode matched Zhang Jun's exactly.

"The purification plan is reverse engineering!" Lin Xue suddenly snapped two data lines, "They're using Ice Soul Power to back-engineer the Primordial Bloodline……"

The entire pipe suddenly writhed like a living thing. Zhang Jun's sword jammed into a metal seam, and blood beads from the impact of his tiger's mouth flicked onto Lin Xue's tactical lens. The projection of the culture tank abruptly turned toward them, and the infant's pupils glowed with an eerie purple light.

"Left!" The hoarse voice nearly split their eardrums. Zhang Jun swung his sword and split the ventilation grating; salty sea wind rushed in. Under the moonlight, thirty meters away, the rusted fire ladder was oozing purple slime downward.

Lin Xue let out a muffled grunt. Her ice-crystal armor began to disintegrate from the shoulders, revealing silver patterns writhing beneath her skin. As Zhang Jun pulled her out of the pipe, a domino-like chorus of mechanical reassembly sounded behind them.

Waves crashed against the steel-reinforced skeleton of the abandoned dock. The hoarse voice suddenly laughed, its laughter mingling with the tide and echoing: "Check the base of the fire hydrant……"

Zhang Jun pried open the rusted lid with his sword tip; inside the yellowed waterproof bag lay a recorder. The instant he pressed play, Wang Jun's boozy voice exploded into the night: "Brat! The pickle jar on the third shelf of the fridge……"

Zhang Jun's tactical boot ground over the rusted fire ladder, iron filings pattering into the sea. Lin Xue suddenly pressed his wrist, and ice crystals condensed between them into a prism. Moonlight passed through the crystal, refracting into seven blue beams that struck precisely the electronic lock on the abandoned dock's container.

"The pickle jar Old Wang mentioned?" Zhang Jun tapped the electronic lock panel with his sword hilt; purple light swept across the LCD screen, revealing a trident symbol—"This thing is tougher to crack than Old Zhao's false teeth."