Translator-Rhapsodite
Editor-Abo Dammen, Proofreader-adjective
With a “click”, the crack of the door was blocked by the bone claws.
It would have been extremely painful for a regular body of flesh and blood to be smashed so forcefully by a three-centimeter-thick metal plate.
These Skeleton Monsters, on the other hand, felt no such “pain.” It not only didn’t care, but part of its arm was constantly twisting and scraping at the door, attempting to reopen it.
When Mo Tiangen saw this, he simply pulled out his military knife from his waist and slashed it several times on the skeleton monster’s hand like chopping wood.
Although these Skeleton Monsters’ bones were strong, they were not invulnerable, and the two bones in its forearm did not grow to an unusually great extent. After seven or eight successive slashes from the already-enhanced Teacher Dagen, the arm eventually snapped and dropped to the ground.
The Skeleton Monster who scratched the door finally retracted his hand.
The steel gate which was finally free of obstacles immediately closed.
Only then did the crowd breathe a sigh of relief.
“Hoo, Hoo…”
Ji Dong put his hand against the door and gasped.
At this moment, he really felt that [Peach Blossom Spring] was too difficult to get along with!
Even an F-level [Film] was this difficult, so what the hell would a B-level, A-level, or even S-level look like?
As for the legendary SS-level [Film] that no one had broken through thus far, it was unimaginable. Just thinking about it gave him the chills.
No wonder no one had been able to break through the difficulty of SS-level and be able to return to the original world so far.
Even the legendary big boss who had occupied the top of the Obelisk for a long time also failed
——No, no, no, now wasn’t the time to be thinking nonsense!
Ji Dong shook his head vigorously and threw out all the untimely thoughts from his mind.
He had to carefully observe the environment he was in.
The first thing Ji Dong noticed was a revolting stench in the air.
The smell was so unique that he remembered a rat that had once died under the dormitory closet last summer. When people noticed it, they smelled a stench of rotting meat.
Unlike the other labs they had passed before, this room did not have bright and spacious windows or a U-shaped arrangement of fume hoods, operating tables, medicine cabinets, and all sorts of lab equipment.
There wasn’t even a single window here.
There were only filing cabinets taller than people, as well as the two tables placed against the wall of the door, and the computer that went with it.
——It looks like an archive room!
Ji Dong’s heart thumped twice and finally realized what “there is no way to end the world“ meant.
But anyone who had ever played a game like Resident Evil knew that the most vital factor in order to successfully pass the level was…
Of course, it was to gather clues!
And where could you find the most clues?
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
—— Of course, by rummaging through boxes in the archive room!
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Only two steps closer, the stench of rot that permeated the air became even stronger.
He could tell that the person had been dead for some time by the very symbolic smell.
It was a woman.
She was wearing a blood-stained white coat and was lying face down on the ground, revealing only the back of her head in a loose bun and two arms covered with scars; without turning her body or seeing her face, it was difficult to determine the age of the deceased.
But the cause of her death was very clear.
The white coat on the side waist of the body was torn, revealing a shirt with a big hole within. The waist was missing a portion of skin slightly larger than the size of a bowl, exposing the inner flesh and the blood organs, it was a mix of black and red causing people to be unable to see exactly what was what.
At first inspection, such a wound appeared to be bitten out.
——This is the second one.
Ji Dong thought to himself.
The female corpse in front of him was the second corpse he had seen after entering the Research Institute that had died from a monster attack but had not changed.
“Ugh, seeing this person, I know what’s going on.”
Mo Tiangen, who was standing behind Ji Dong, rubbed his chin and pretended to be Sherlock Holmes solving a case.
“I just saw this door open, and a monster rushed out from inside…”
He pointed to the corpse on the ground. “So, it seems that this big sister was too late to close the door and was bitten to death by the monster, right?”
With that, Teacher Dagen’s expression was austere, and seemed to have thought of the point of the question.
“Then again, why hasn’t she mutated?”
Just as they were conversing, the sound of a bullet being loaded suddenly came from behind them.
The two of them turned around in a hurry and saw Rose with her gun, which was pointed straight at a soldier.
“You, just now, you got bitten, right?”
The red-haired beauty’s expression was as cold as ice, and her tone was even more unusually harsh.
The crowd coincidentally focused their eyes on the soldier’s body, and indeed they saw that he was covering his left arm with his right hand, and the camouflage uniform had been dyed dark brown by some kind of liquid at the location where he was holding it down.
“I-It’s just… It’s just a graze…”
The soldier’s lips mumbled twice, barely squeezed out a defense.
Ji Dong recognized that this man was the soldier brother who was in the same car with them on the way here.
At that time, he was chewing gum while joking with them, exuding a fearless demeanor reminiscent of American Army ruffians.
But now, the original gangly soldier was turning blue and cold sweating, and when he spoke, not only his voice but also his lips trembled.
Rose didn’t listen to his explanation. “Roll up your sleeves and let me see the wound!”
The man tightened the palm covering the wound, raised his head, and looked at Rose with a pleading face. “Captain, captain…”
Rose sternly shouted, “Pull up your sleeves!”
The soldier grimaced, little by little, slowly rolled up his sleeves inch by inch.
Even if his movements were slow when rolled up to the elbow, everyone still saw a wound on his forearm—it was indeed a tooth mark!
Bang, bang, bang!
Rose fired without hesitation.
The bullets hit the soldier’s head one after another at such a close distance, immediately shattering his entire skull.
The blood that spurted out of the broken cavity splattered on the wall, and that image, made the throat of Ji Xiao’niao, who grew up in the era of peace, contract, almost couldn’t control his desire to vomit.
“He was bitten. If not killed, he will turn into a monster, I’m trying to protect everyone.”
Rose retrieved her gun, turned her head to look at the last surviving soldier, and coldly explained.
That big soldier brother’s face was white and he couldn’t say a word, he couldn’t even nod his head.
The red-haired beauty turned her head again to look at Ji Dong.
Her lips moved gently twice, and her voice was very light, “It’s just ‘locals’…”
——It’s just “Locals”.
At this point, Ji Dong finally knew. Rose, this girl, was really ruthless!
Perhaps it should be said that until now, he suddenly found that he had never really understood how cruel the [Film] created by the [Peach Blossom Spring] was.
He thought that if he changed himself, even if he noticed the wound on the soldier’s arm, he would never be able to kill so simply.
Even though Ji Dong intellectually understood that Rose’s decision was the most correct, he still knew that he couldn’t do it.
If it was just because the person about to face the mutation was a “local,” then their lives were irrelevant, and if necessary, they could deprive them of their lives without hesitation for their own safety, but what if it wasn’t the soldier who was bitten by the monster just now, but he, Mo Tiangen, or… Ren Jianmo?
If Rose also used “this is to protect everyone” as the reason and raised her gun towards them, then… What would he do?
At this time, witnessing all this, Ji Dong’s thoughts turned a thousand times.
He and Ren Jianmo suspected that these [Films] they experienced, was not a nihilistic space created by data or other virtual programs, but a “reality” that existed in a certain plane.
Rather than saying that these people were the “locals”, it would be better to say that they, the participants, were the real “outsiders”.
Back to the question just now, Ji Dong asked himself that he really could not do what Rose did, reason over emotion, but since he and his companions had come to this [Film], he had only one choice, and that was to do his best with Ren Jianmo and Mo Tiangen so that all three would get out alive…
……
While Ji Dong was deep in thought, a hand was unexpectedly placed on his shoulder.
He looked back and was facing a pair of pupils with different colors.
Those eyes looked at him indifferently and calmly.
“Don’t think so much.”
Ren Jianmo’s palm slightly increased in strength. “You just have to make the choice you think is right.”
After speaking, Ren Jianmo raised his delicate eyebrows towards Ji Dong, revealing a faint smile.
Ji Dong, “!!!”
His heart jumped several times involuntarily.
——What the fuck! what the fuck!
Ji Xiao’niao’s ears turned red uncontrollably.
——So, is he comforting me?!
——My God, Ren Jianmo would comfort me so tenderly!!
“Yes, yes!”
While trying to calm his heart, Ji Dong reached out and grabbed Ren Jianmo’s hand and felt the temperature in the palm of his hand.
“You, your hands are so cold, this…”
He stuttered and said nervously, “Are you not feeling well? Do you want to take a rest?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Ren Jianmo patted the back of Ji Xiaoniao’s hand soothingly, then drew back the hand he was holding.
“There is a much more important matter at hand.”
He said, squinting his eyes, crossed Ji Dong, took a few steps forward, squatted in front of the corpse lying on the back of the cabinet, and then stretched out his hand to roll the sleeve of the dead woman’s white coat all the way to her shoulder.
While doing all this, Ren Jianmo’s expression remained calm as usual, as if he wasn’t facing a rotten and swollen body, but just a plastic dummy model lying on the ground.
“Sure enough.”
Ren Jianmo stood up. “There is a needle hole mark left by a syringe on her arm.”
“A needle mark?”
Hearing him say so, the crowd all hardened their heads and came forward to carefully observe the corpse on the ground.
Despite being kept at a constant temperature of 18 degrees in a laboratory, the body looked to be decomposing after a few days.
The female corpse’s exposed arm had swollen to more than double its original size. The gray skin was covered in bruises and had a purple entangled vine vascular network, and several wounds of varying lengths and depths. The flesh had turned black and red.
Even with the body in such bad shape, they found a spot on her arm with five circular crimson scarring marks arranged in the shape of a plum blossom.
“What is this?”
Rose pressed her nose a little closer and asked in a low voice.
Mo Tiangen, a biology teacher, was at least somewhat involved in the profession, so he was the fastest one to react.
“Could this be… a vaccine?!”
He slapped his thigh. “She’s not mutated because of this! So there is a vaccine in this Research Institute that can ward off mutations?!”
“Well, maybe.”
Ren Jianmo nodded gently, then uttered another piece of even more startling information, “I found such plum-shaped traces on the priest’s arm earlier as well.”
Hearing this, Ji Dong then suddenly realized—no wonder he tripped over his feet when shaking hands with the priest, so he was taking this opportunity to examine the injection marks on the old man!
“Also…”
Ren Jianmo suddenly reached out without warning, twisted Annie’s arm, then tugged up her sleeve despite her screaming struggle—
“On your arm, you also have the exact same injection marks, right?”
Thank you for the chapter！
Ohhhh that’s a cruical thing to conceal sneaky bastards