Chapter 611: Living Brain Cells (Thirteen)

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 intently to the broadcast.

“One hour and one minute remain until deadline. Twenty minutes ago, I was randomly paired with the Jester. He requested we go first to the middle level’s Management Room, claiming he needed to inspect the room for traces to confirm whether the previous maintenance crew, Edith and Zhongli Mie Ming, were Space Yizhong .”

We arrived at the Management Room. He claimed he was reviewing the previous flight logs of the New Hope spaceship, then suddenly bolted out the door and used his Armed Hand to destroy the door handle, locking me inside.”

Dir’s voice trembled with resentment and fear as he spoke quickly: “My left arm isn’t an Engineering Hand. Fortunately, in the last round, that bizarre creature infected by Space Yizhong damaged the ventilation grille. I exerted tremendous effort to crawl out through the ducts, then rushed to the Security Room on the same level, repaired the broadcast system, and sent this message.”

The Jester’s mental state is extremely unstable, and he’s equipped with an Armed Hand. If you encounter him, be extremely careful.”

The Jester… went mad?

The three in the Recreation Room exchanged glances. Without the opaque visor layer, their eyes would have betrayed shared shock and disbelief.

Li Cheng considered himself emotionally numb enough—he’d laugh while casually brushing off a teammate’s capture—but the Jester, by his own account, comes from a family of ultimate geniuses, the kind who’d post on Red Note: “I want to escape my birth family.” Yet he still smiled through life.

His stress resistance is god-tier. Even Sisyphus would seem 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 we can be certain neither the Jester nor Dir is dead.”

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

Space Yizhong can freely alter their body structure, including vocal cords—in other words, they can 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 Jester’s footsteps heading toward the Oxygen Room…”

Dir’s voice in the broadcast suddenly sharpened—because Li Cheng, Hydra, and Su Nisheng’s smart watches all flashed red alarm lights, and on the 3D map, a massive exclamation mark hovered above the Oxygen Room, signaling a critical incident.

Oxygen pipes run throughout the entire Xinxiang Base. If oxygen levels rise 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 Xinxiang Base into the sky.

“Did the Jester 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 through the ducts straight to the Oxygen Room.”

Li Cheng spoke rapidly. Though in countless horror 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 teammates and insisting on solitude (“The killer’s among us—I don’t trust you, I’m going back to my room to sleep”)—

they had no choice but to separate now.

“Wait, are you sure?!” Hydra exclaimed. “The Jester has an Armed Hand!”

The high-velocity Gauss bullets fired by an Armed Hand are devastating. One trigger pull can instantly kill any living thing, including Space Yizhong .

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

“Relax. A few Gauss bullets? They won’t even scratch my well-trained body.”

Li Cheng kicked open the ventilation grille and grinned cheerfully: “Watch me catch the bullet with my biceps and triceps like it’s nothing.”

…Unless your nickname is Gene Origin, using muscles to block Gauss bullets is pretty impossible…

Before Hydra or Su Nisheng could respond, Li Cheng flicked his left hand, deploying a magnetic wheel. Using leg propulsion and magnetic pull, he slipped smoothly into the ventilation duct.

Hum!

The motor in his left functional hand whirred as the magnetic wheel clung to the metal duct wall, spinning like an F1 race car, propelling Li Cheng in a serpentine drift.

“Come to think of it, this view really does feel like being inside a pipe full of shit.”

Li Cheng felt the fluctuating G-forces of high-speed movement, yet his mind remained strangely calm—even allowing room for philosophical thought.

“The towering skyscrapers modern humans inhabit are merely steel cages. Day after day, year after year, people endlessly circle within them.”

“But the waste flowing through pipes, merging into rivers—having detached from the human body—can actually see the true sea, sky, and stars…”

Hmm. As toilet literature, this feels no worse than some literary doctor’s work.

Crash!

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

This was the middle level of Xinxiang 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 filled the room completely—but the Jester was nowhere to be seen.

Two types of equipment: electrolysis oxygen storage tanks, storing oxygen and hydrogen;

and oxygen recycling purification units, shaped like water towers.

The valves on the parallel storage tanks had been opened, and 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 under extreme pressure.

As the hissing of escaping gas rose all around the large Oxygen Room, urgent footsteps approached from afar.

Hydra, Su Nisheng, and Dir in his yellow space suit ran into the Oxygen Room. Following their smart watch directions, they each tightened valves in sequence, finally halting the gas leak.

“Why are you here?”

Li Cheng shook his numb legs and asked in surprise: “And you didn’t press the button in the Central Control Hall?”

“We couldn’t get in,” Hydra said bitterly. “The blast door handle in the Central Control Hall was also destroyed by an Armed Hand. It won’t open.”

“So we brought Dir along—he’s also on the middle level.”

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

He’d suspected Dir might be lying—that the Jester had discovered she was a Space Yizhong and deliberately sabotaged the Management Room’s blast door.

But now it seemed unlikely. Otherwise, how to explain the Central Control Hall’s blast door being destroyed? If the Jester 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 floor.

The front, once covered in dense handwriting, had been violently scratched over into the shape of a clown’s grin.

On the back, a crude, uneven line had been carved with a sharp tool.

“Are you ready? Flight is about to begin.”

The instant they read the words, Xinxiang Base shuddered violently. All four people present lost contact with the ground, floating helplessly in midair.