Translator-Rhapsodite
Editor-Pierce, Proofreader-adjective
Ji Dong glanced down at his watch.
The progress bar on his watch had clearly slightly increased as Annie spoke about the vaccine and her adopted son.
What did this mean?
——According to Ji Dong’s experience, this meant that either the vaccine or the adopted son was a crucial clue that can directly affect the course of the [Film] and must not be neglected. There was also the possibility that both issues were important!
Moreover, he vaguely felt that there seemed to be inconsistencies in Annie’s confession just now.
The little boy named “Su Lin” was not Annie’s real son. To some extent, the existence of this child was a harsh drawback and burden for her, who was still at the prime of her life.
Ji Dong, a nineteen-year-old kid, couldn’t even contemplate starting a family and raising children. Since middle school, he had solely focused on archery. He hadn’t even touched the dainty hand of a girl.
He tried to put himself in the same situation and found himself troubled just imagining that if it were him, he would not be willing to raise a son born from her husband and his mistress. Not to mention that the child was seriously ill and crippled.
However, in Annie’s statement, she raised and took care of the child for seven or eight years, made considerable sacrifices for him, and the original intention of sending him to the Research Institute was to treat him.
But then again, Annie seemed to know that the experiments being done at the Research Institute were highly dangerous, otherwise, she would not have received the vaccine in advance, and if so, why would she send her partially paralyzed adopted son into such a dangerous situation?
Ji Dong admitted that with his current experience, it was difficult for him to understand Annie’s thought process. He could not assess whether the woman did this for the good of the child or not…
…
When Ji Dong was deeply engrossed in his thoughts, everyone’s conversation revolved back to the vaccine itself.
“The vaccine is a light blue substance. It was secretly taken out by the supervisor from a frozen suitcase and then hand-administered for me. The syringe did have a label printed on it, like a string of numbers, but I really didn’t pay attention to exactly what it was…”
In the face of the aggressive questioning from everyone, Annie struggled to remember while answering.
“The injection port has five needle-points embedded in it. The wound will be red and swollen after injection, and then leave a scar…”
She pointed to her arm. “As you can see.”
Everyone listened carefully and silently noted down the characteristics of the vaccine.
From this moment on, in order to survive in this [Film], the remaining survivors in this room have become competitors with each other concerning the vaccines.
——————–
After asking for the information she wanted, Rose brushed Annie aside and began to rummage through the data room.
She wanted to find the floor plan of the lab.
“You two, go check the computer.”
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.
She said to Ji Dong and Ren Jianmo.
“Ktf mbwqeafg gfdelgfr gfrfjgmtfg qglnlifufr, jcv bcis erlcu sbeg ‘lvfcalalfr’ mjc kf ygbkrf la.”
Vtf fwqtjrlhfv bc atf kbgv “lvfcalalfr”, jcv atfc aegcfv tfg tfjv jcv ibbxfv atgbeut atf olif mjylcfa.
Al Gbcu jcv Efc Aljcwb atfc kfca ab atf mbwqeafg jcv erfv atflg PG mjgvr ab rklqf bqfc atf mbwqeafg rsrafw.
He looked back at Annie while the computer began operating.
He saw that the chestnut-haired woman had been ordered by Rose not to go anywhere and touch anything in the room; she could only stand alone in the farthest corner.
Annie, who had once been quite beautiful, now had disheveled hair that covered her eyes, making it hard to see her expression. But her left thumb was stuffed in her mouth, and she kept biting her nails unconsciously, looking rather anxious.
——Wait a minute!
A thought suddenly flashed in Ji Dong’s mind, and he realized that there was something wrong from the beginning.
“Hey.”
He quietly leaned forward when turning on the computer, and gently tugged on Ren Jianmo’s sleeve.
“What do you think, she…”
Ji Xiao’niao glanced at Annie from the corner of his eyes. He then lowered his voice and whispered,
“Why did she want to come back to the Research Institute with us?”
Ren Jianmo glanced down at Ji Dong.
From his current angle, Ji Dong’s puppy-dog eyes were slightly drooping at the tail-end. Eyes wide and round, while his pupils were black and dilated. It looked enticing.
Ren Jianmo pursed his lips and rubbed his fingers subconsciously.
For a moment, he wanted to reach out and rub this child’s silly wool curls.
He hung his head. His gaze seemed to be focused on the computer screen yet his lips were pressed on Ji Dong’s head and softly replied in a couple of words, “Find someone.”
When he breathed out his response, a handful of hair on Ji Dong’s head was blown up.
“Yes!”
Ji Dong didn’t react to Ren Jianmo’s frisky act when his eyes suddenly lit up.
“That’s right. I thought so too!”
He recalled the argument between Annie and the priest that he heard late last night.
Now that he thought about it, the priest realized that Annie wanted to come to the Research Institute to search for her missing adopted son, but the priest believed that the child’s survival rate was bleak and that there was no reason to waste time on him. While Annie pointed out that the priest had the vaccine in his hand but kept it hidden and refused to take it out, which was not a good thing. There was no need to point fingers because they were both selfish.
After figuring out the whole trick, Ji Dong looked back at the chestnut-haired woman standing by the corner.
He wondered if Annie was just a simple cook, as she claimed, and had never entered the experimental area. However, if she wanted to find her adopted son, the mother had the right to be worried because if they had the floor plan of the Research Institute, they would no longer need her, and would probably go straight to the core area where the “Moon God Stone” was hidden. No one would waste time looking for her missing child.
Somehow, Ji Dong felt a meager and vague regret for Annie.
But reason immediately told him that the little boy could no longer be alive.
Or rather, could no longer be “alive” in a human form.
There were wandering monsters everywhere. Even researchers who have been vaccinated in advance could hardly escape the fate of dying in the mouth of those monsters.
If this was the case for healthy adults, a seven-or-eight-year-old child with a paralyzed physique had no chance of surviving for half a month in a research institute where a biochemical crisis broke out.
“Look.”
At this time, Ren Jianmo suddenly said, “I found it.”
He clicked on the computer screen.
Ji Dong’s eyes lit up and rushed over at once.
Sure enough, he saw the floor plan of the Research Institute displayed on the computer screen.
“With this, it’s much more convenient.”
As Ren Jianmo said, he raised his hand and stroked Ji Dong’s head, as if inadvertently wiping down the short curls he had just blown.
———————
With the layout of the Research Institute, they quickly decided on the next course of action.
The Research Institute had two floors in total, namely A1 and A2 in the upper layer and B1 and B2 in the lower layer. They were respectively responsible for the physiological experiments and biochemical experiments. In addition, there were the logistics areas such as the experimental animal center and computer center.
Of course, the floor plan did not indicate which area was doing what experiments. Furthermore, there was no way to know where the researchers had kept the “Moon God Stone” hidden.
But knowing the interior of the building was better than barging in with their eyes closed.
The area they were in now was the B2 section, but there was still some distance from the core labs. There were even countless monsters prowling outside the door, so it was quite risky to make a breakthrough into it.
At this time, Teacher Dagen, who had stayed in a laboratory before, first thought of a solution.
“What if we don’t go through the door?”
Mo Tiangen suddenly reached out and tapped on the screen, then raised his hand and pointed toward the ceiling.
“How about we go through the ventilation pipe?”
“Ventilation pipe?”
Rose raised her head, following his finger, then her eyes lit up and turned her head to look at the computer screen, exclaiming enthusiastically, “Yes!”
“Right! The ventilation duct system is interconnected with each other. So it’s indeed much safer for us than walking around in the open!”
Ji Dong and the remaining soldier also thought that this plan was feasible.
Ren Jianmo did not acquiesce at first.
After he studied the map carefully, he finally nodded his head as well.
Thus Teacher Dagen pulled the table under the vent, climbed up, and dismantled the baffle quickly and efficiently. With vigor, he used his biceps to smoothly lift himself up and climb over.
The crowd imitated his actions one by one, entering the vent and climbing forward along the pipe.
On this floor, there was an animal center.
Hearing the name, one could guess that this place must be the spot for breeding and raising experimental animals.
For individuals who have watched sci-fi movies and played apocalyptic-themed video games, it’s common knowledge that laboratories with experimental animals when contaminated from a bio hazard outbreak was unquestionably a high-risk environment.
Unlike humans, in the case that these small creatures were also infected by the virus, their mutated attacks may not be as powerful as the human monsters, but they were small, fast, and pervasive.
In the absence of a vaccine, being bitten by them would only lead to their demise. It was as dangerous as it could be.
They would rather take a detour than travel directly to the central experimental area, avoiding the animal center and Skeleton Monsters that awaited them.
The floor plan was logged in the computer and couldn’t be taken away. They could only memorize it.
The good thing was that Mo Tiangen, who crawled in the forefront and led the way, was not the kind of man who was big and dim-witted with developed limbs.
He had a good memory and a good sense of direction.
The group squeezed through the ventilation ducts that barely allowed one person to creep through. On their hands and knees, they carefully crawled forward, as far as possible without making any noise—to avoid alerting the monsters roaming around somewhere.
In such a narrow place, the people felt suppressed and smothered, and their sense of time became distorted and unreal.
In the beginning, Ji Dong was still counting silently in his heart.
But soon, his elbows and knees hurt badly, and the numbers in his head were in disarray. He gave up this useless effort to distract his mind and just gritted his teeth and concentrated, allowing himself to follow Mo Tiangen, moving forward step by step…
……
“It should be around here.”
After a while, Teacher Dagen stopped, squeezed into a small passage, and reluctantly looked back, “If I’m not mistaken, it’s probably here…”
Ji Dong wanted to ask, “How are you able to determine that?”
But he was already quite tired and he felt stuffy in his chest even when gasping for air. He could only weakly say:
“Then, open it… And take a look.”
Mo Tiangen swallowed a mouthful of saliva, then slowly and carefully removed the baffle in front of him.
—————————-
The author has something to say,
Ren Xiansen: Hoo, wool rolls are so fun!
Ji Xiao’niao: ???
Rub his head!
Thank you for the update ❤️💯