Chapter 587

Current execution countdown: 1 hour 38 minutes.

Repair progress: 21%.

In the central control hall, the eight surviving repairers stood in a circle, the center of which held the corpse of Valkyrie—her chest caved in, neck twisted backward—and a wrapped parcel of plastic sheeting containing the remains of a humanoid entity.

Creak—creak—

Amid the group's strange stares, Li Cheng dragged over a magnetic levitation chair, sat down, and held a recyclable dining knife taken from the mess hall, patiently slicing through half of the humanoid's corpse.

After a moment, he set down the knife and murmured: "Autopsy results are in—the cause of death was dissection."

"?? Who asked you that? And this is clearly a gunshot wound."

Zhongli Mie Ming suppressed the urge to retort and said sternly: "We're asking what this thing is."

"Half-human."

Li Cheng, seated upright on the magnetic levitation chair, dragged his toe across the floor and said casually: "The uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes—all organs have matured to the size and functional level of an adult female. But the epiphyseal lines of the long bones are far from closed."

The degree of epiphyseal line closure is a key standard for assessing sexual development and age.

Zhongli Mie Ming blinked in surprise. "Space anomaly?"

"No. According to the noisy kid's description, true space anomalies have extraordinarily vigorous cell vitality—ordinary physical damage like blade cuts or sword stabs struggles to kill them."

"But this half-human's cell vitality vanished too cleanly. And..."

Li Cheng pried up a piece of organ with the knife. "Human uteri are inverted pear-shaped. This one consists of two elongated uterine horns and a short uterine body—it's a bicornuate uterus."

Considering the curvature of the uterine horns, it more closely resembles even-toed ungulates—cows, sheep, pigs, deer."

In the embryo storage room, there were thirty-nine intact embryo incubators, each containing specialized biomaterial bags designed to hatch human embryos."

Only one was already damaged."

Edith hesitated. "You mean..."

Li Cheng nodded. "This humanoid isn't a true space anomaly."

"It's more like a biomaterial embryo incubator, originally fused with a small portion of cow and sheep genes and mostly human genes, contaminated by a space anomaly—grew a body from nothing, and acted on primal instinct: nurturing offspring. That's why it abducted Edith."

Laughing God reacted instantly. "The noisy kid said there was another group of repairers who infiltrated before us."

"Exactly. Probably due to insufficient exposure time, this humanoid lacks the original space anomaly's infection capability. But for safety, I still recommend launching it into deep space."

Li Cheng said casually, picked up a wet wipe he'd taken from the restroom, and meticulously wiped the blood off his hands.

The Xinxiang Base has separate male and female restrooms; the smart toilets there come with control panels that, when pressed, extend from the wall the same footrests, handholds, and thigh restraints used aboard the space station to assist astronauts.

Press another button, and it switches to airflow suction to remove waste.

That's still odd—flush toilets are a hundred times more effective than air-suction ones. Was this designed for astronauts? Afraid they'd grow too accustomed to the closed ship and couldn't adapt to surface life?

Or did the base designer read too many Yi Lin and Reader magazines, fearing some Japanese craftsman might steal a sip from the toilet?

Li Cheng fell into deep thought, muttering involuntarily: "Even a simple biomaterial incubation bag could be infected and grow a humanoid body from nothing."

"The aggressiveness of space anomaly cells is too extreme—no wonder the noisy kid was so alarmed..."

Lost Control paused, then suddenly turned and asked: "So Valkyrie was killed by this humanoid?"

This question seemed to flip a switch—Edith, Zhongli Mie Ming, Midnight Dad, and Lost Control all fell silent.

"Heh heh heh."

Li Cheng let out a soft, eerie laugh, lifted the humanoid's thigh slightly. "This humanoid was already dead before Valkyrie's cervical vertebrae snapped."

In other words, Valkyrie was murdered by someone inside the embryo storage room during the dim lighting.

Time was short—from the moment the white lights went out, to the dim red emergency lights flickering on, to Dir and Su Nisheng triggering the emergency button in the mid-level central control hall and restoring normal white lighting—less than thirty seconds.

Strength—space suits offer protection comparable to military-civilian riot gear. To kill Valkyrie with a single blow through the suit, you'd need strength far beyond human norms.

"Same method as the Blood Lion's roar."

Hydra murmured to himself—he and Laughing God had stayed behind in the dome shield control room to continue repairs and hadn't witnessed the scene firsthand.

But after a moment's thought: the only threatening humanoid in the embryo room was first killed by Edith's armed hand, then Valkyrie—unaware—had her neck broken in the dark...

Didn't that mean the space anomaly was among the people present when the lights went out?!

Lost Control raised his hands. "Don't look at me—when Edith fired, she hit wiring inside the wall, triggering the blast door to shut automatically. I was locked outside and saw nothing."

"Don't look at me either."

Li Cheng raised his hands too. "When it happened, I was still moving through the pipes with my engineering hand. I only arrived when the lights turned white again."

He had searched the embryo storage room—the only exit was the main blast door (a complete violation of fire codes), and there was no second humanoid present.

Everyone fell silent, turning their gazes to Edith, Zhongli Mie Ming, and Midnight Dad.

"Not me!" Edith exploded in fury. "Valkyrie saved my life! How could I kill her?"

"'Saved' only applies if the person truly needed saving."

Dir paused, then suddenly said: "According to your accounts and the 3D map reconstruction, when Valkyrie died, Edith was standing right beside her..."

"What are you barking? If I were the space anomaly, would I be stupid enough to personally kill Valkyrie—the person closest to me?"

Edith laughed bitterly, and amid the gasps of those around her, suddenly raised her left armed hand and pointed it at Dir. "Try me—I'll blow your head off right now."

"Calm down!" Lost Control shouted.

"Don't start a fight!" Li Cheng quickly drifted backward on his magnetic levitation chair.

"I love watching women fight!" Laughing God was delighted—if his helmet wouldn't open, he'd have smashed open a vending machine and eaten popcorn right there.

"Go ahead and try."

Dir wasn't intimidated—he pointed upward at the ceiling-mounted sentry armed robots, whose electromagnetic rods had already extended. If Edith fired in the central control hall, she'd be electrocuted instantly.

"I'm not the space anomaly."

After several seconds of standoff, Edith kept her armed hand raised and said coldly: "As for the killer—I glimpsed a black space suit flash past me during the dim red light."

"It vanished instantly—almost no footsteps."

Black... wasn't that Midnight Dad?

Everyone's gaze snapped to Midnight Daddy, who sprang up on the spot as if triggered, "You Mo—Fcker are talking nonsense! When I heard the commotion, I rushed over with Out-of-Control the first chance I got, and you actually repay kindness with ingratitude?!"

Midnight Daddy was super furious, spitting out a barrage of Black slang insults from his mouth, with a built-in rap rhythm, yet at the same time, his words were not lacking in meticulous logic.

"Where's your brain?! If I were the space alien, why would I kill Valkyrie and not kill you? You had already shown your hand at the time — you yourself possess the weapon that poses the greatest threat to the space alien!"

Edith refused to be outdone and likewise shouted: "Precisely because you are the space alien, smart enough to fear being counter-killed by me — a single armed hand leaving even the slightest wound on your body, even if it's just a kinetic bullet grazing the spacesuit, and once the martial-law alarm sounds, the other repair workers can vote to exile you to outer space!"

The two sides were at a deadlock, neither yielding an inch. At the critical moment, Zhongli Mienming was silent for a long time, then said faintly: "When Valkyrie was killed, I also vaguely saw it — a black spacesuit moving..."