Chapter 591

Li Cheng nodded thoughtfully and said, "Oh, so this is the legendary ventriloquism? I didn't know you could do that, Hydra."

Ventriloquism your head, ventriloquism.

Hydra suppressed the urge to retort and listened carefully to the broadcast.

"One hour and one minute remain until the deadline. Twenty minutes ago, I was randomly paired with the Laughing God; he insisted we first go to the middle level of the New Village Base's 【Management Room】, claiming he needed to inspect the room's traces to confirm whether the previous maintenance crew, Edith and Zhongli Mieming, were Space Aberrants."

"We arrived at the Management Room. He claimed he was reviewing the previous 【New Hope spaceship】 flight logs, then suddenly bolted out the door while I wasn't looking, and used his Armed Hand to destroy the blast door's handle, locking me inside the Management Room."

Dir's voice, thick with resentment and fear, rushed on: "My left arm isn't an Engineering Hand, but luckily, in the last round, that strange creature infected by Space Aberrants damaged the ventilation grille—I barely managed to crawl out through the ducts after tremendous effort, then rushed straight to the Security Room on the same level, repaired the broadcast system, and sent this message."

"The Laughing God's mental state is extremely unstable, and he's equipped with an Armed Hand. If you encounter him, be extremely careful."

The Laughing God… went insane?

The three in the Recreation Room exchanged glances; without the opaque visor layer, their mutual shock and confusion would have been plainly visible.

Li Cheng considered himself sufficiently heartless—he'd laugh and scroll while his teammate got captured—but the Laughing God, according to his own account, came from a family of ultimate gods, the kind who could post on Xiaohongshu: "I want to escape my birth family," yet still smiled through life.

His stress resistance was god among gods; even Sisyphus looked mentally fragile beside him.

How could such a legendary stress-resistant god suddenly snap and betray his teammate for no reason?

"Could he be lying?" Li Cheng asked Su Nisheng.

"Hard to say, but it's certain neither the Laughing God nor Dir is dead."

Su Nisheng glanced at the Life Monitor on her left arm: eight healthy, pulsing heart rate graphs meant the Laughing God was still alive.

Space Aberrants could freely alter their bodily structures, including vocal cords—in other words, they could mimic any voice.

The voice in the Security Room broadcast might not be Dir's.

"Before I crawled out of the 【Management Room】 through the ventilation ducts, I faintly heard the Laughing God's footsteps heading toward the Oxygen Room…"

Dir's voice in the broadcast suddenly sharpened—simply because Li Cheng, Hydra, and Su Nisheng's smart wristwatches all flashed red alarm lights; on the 3D map, a massive exclamation mark hovered over the Oxygen Room, signaling a major incident.

Oxygen pipes ran throughout the entire New Village Base; if oxygen levels rose too high, even a tiny spark from tightening a screw or the shockwave from an Armed Hand's kinetic bullet could trigger a detonation and blow the entire New Village Base into the sky.

"Did the Laughing God sabotage the Oxygen Room?!"

Hydra gasped in alarm, "We need to go to the Central Control Hall and trigger the alarm!"

"No time. Split up—you two head to the Central Control Hall and press the button, I'll go ahead through the ducts to the Oxygen Room."

Li Cheng spoke rapidly: though in countless horror and thriller films, protagonists splitting up was as suicidal as gazing lovingly at family photos, confessing in a crisis, ignoring warnings to enter dangerous areas, failing to finish off enemies,

or suspecting a teammate and insisting on isolation ("The killer's among us—I don't trust you, I'm going back to my room alone"),

they had no choice but to split now.

"Wait, are you sure?!" Hydra exclaimed. "The Laughing God has an Armed Hand!"

The Gao Si bullets fired by an Armed Hand travel at extreme speed with immense power—once the trigger is pulled, they can instantly kill any living thing, including Space Aberrants.

Even with sentry robots nearby, the best you could do is trade your life for his.

"Relax—it's just Gao Si bullets. How could they possibly injure my well-trained body?"

Li Cheng kicked open the ventilation grille and grinned cheerfully: "Watch me catch the bullet effortlessly with my biceps and triceps."

…Unless your nickname is Gene Origin, it's pretty hard to block Gao Si bullets with muscle alone…

Before Hydra or Su Nisheng could respond, Li Cheng flicked his left hand, deploying a magnetic pulley; using his leg's spring and the pulley's magnetic pull, he slipped nimbly into the ventilation duct.

Zzzzz!

The motor in his left functional hand hummed as the magnetic pulley clung tightly to the metal inner wall of the duct, spinning at F1-race speed, propelling Li Cheng in a winding drift.

"Come to think of it, this viewpoint really does feel like being inside a pipe full of shit."

Feeling the erratic G-forces of high-speed movement, Li Cheng's mind remained strangely calm—even idle enough to ponder philosophy.

"The towering skyscrapers modern humans inhabit are merely steel cages. People turn in circles day after day, year after year, trapped inside."

"But the shit and urine flowing through pipes, as parts of the body shed, are the only things that can truly see the sea, the sky, and the stars…"

Hmm, as shit-and-urine literature, this feels no worse than some literary doctor's work.

CLANG!

He plummeted suddenly from the duct, landing firmly on his feet.

This was the middle level of the New Village Base, outside the Oxygen Room.

The oval blast door stood open; several sheets of carbon fiber paper stolen from the Management Room lay scattered on the floor. Inside, the oxygen-generating equipment was fully stocked, but the Laughing God was nowhere to be seen.

There were two types of equipment: electrolytic oxygen storage tanks, storing oxygen and hydrogen,

and oxygen recycling purification units, shaped like water towers.

The valves of the connected storage tanks had been opened; the pressure gauges steadily crept toward the red warning line.

Li Cheng rushed forward to tighten the valves, but as he tightened one, another loosened.

Just as he used both hands to secure the valves, the airlock behind him began to loosen—he kicked out, using the textured edge of his shoe sole to hold it in place.

Like Tom from Tom and Jerry playing every instrument alone at the limit.

As the oxygen room filled with hissing leaks, urgent footsteps approached from afar.

Hydra, Su Nisheng, and Dir in his yellow space suit ran into the Oxygen Room, following their smart wristwatch directions to tighten the valves one by one, finally halting the gas leak.

"Why are you here?"

Li Cheng shook his numb legs and exclaimed, "And you didn't even press the button in the Central Control Hall?"

"We couldn't get in," Hydra chuckled bitterly. "The blast door handle in the Central Control Hall was also destroyed by an Armed Hand—we couldn't open it."

"So we picked up Dir, who was also on the middle level, and came here together."

Li Cheng paused. The only people currently carrying Armed Hands were Edith and the potential Laughing God.

He'd suspected Dir might be lying—that the Laughing God had discovered she was suspicious, suspected her of being a Space Aberrant, and deliberately sabotaged the Management Room's blast door.

But now it seemed unlikely—if the Laughing God suspected Dir, he could've simply run straight to the Central Control Hall after locking her in the Management Room and pressed the button.

He and Su Nisheng turned their heads simultaneously toward the scattered carbon fiber papers on the oxygen room floor.

The front, originally covered in dense, tiny characters, had been violently scratched over, forming the pattern of a clown's smile.

On the reverse side, a sharp tool had scrawled a single line of uneven characters.

"Are you ready? Flight is about to begin."

Almost the instant the characters came into view, the entire Xinxiang Base shuddered violently; the four people present felt their feet involuntarily leave the ground, floating in midair.