The commotion behind him left Chi Yao no time to think about why this voice was trembling.

With his body held by Jing Xi, he raised his leg to kick the door shut, taking advantage of the momentum to grab the person and pounce toward the ground beside them.

At the same time, the explosion sounded again.

The metal door finally couldn’t bear the load and was completely blown away.

In an instant, metal fragments and toxic gas overran this space.

Jing Xi came to his senses and was planning to find a place to hide when he was pressed down by Chi Yao.

“Wait, it’s not over yet.” Chi Yao said in a low voice.

As if confirming his words, explosions continued endlessly, the space violently shaking.

Jing Xi: “What did you do?”

He heard Chi Yao chuckle softly in his ear.

“Use the enemy’s weapons against the enemy.”

Jing Xi: “Make them kill each other?”

This batch of AIs didn’t have a high intelligence level. The specimen room had a large area. If running laps around the entire space, it was indeed possible to make them attack themselves.

“Are you hurt?”

Chi Yao paid attention to the situation outside. Hearing this, he said casually: “Don’t worry, I still need to keep your body to repay debts.”

Jing Xi: “…”

After the explosion sounds subsided, the two waited another moment before standing up.

The thick smoke had been mostly purified by the ventilation system. All the lighting equipment in the specimen room was destroyed—pitch black.

Jing Xi stood at the doorway and scanned with a glance.

The nearby patrol AIs had all been blown into ruins. At the door where they’d entered, there were still two or three AIs wandering.

The countless displayed specimens were without exception destroyed. Probably many beast legs had already been cooked. A nauseating smell of roasted meat could be detected in the air.

Jing Xi: “Now it’s no longer just a matter of alerting the enemy.”

Chi Yao: “Mm, so might as well make it bigger. Why make yourself suffer?”

Jing Xi: “…”

And you say “mm.”

“Stop looking. Let’s go.”

As Chi Yao spoke, he walked toward the depths of this space.

Because of the explosion, the area near the door here was severely damaged.

Chi Yao roughly scanned through the night vision glasses. Here were rows and rows of lab benches, but there was nothing on the surfaces—like a vacant laboratory.

Going inside was a deep corridor.

The slight sound of shoe heels stepping on the ground stimulated the eardrums. Chi Yao’s mood gradually became irritable.

He hated this kind of place most.

A notification suddenly sounded in his ear, and a window popped up in his vision.

Xiao Hong: [Code has been decrypted, but the data is encrypted.]

Chi Yao: [Can you infiltrate the server?]

Xiao Hong: [Can try, but—]

Chi Yao: [But?]

Xiao Hong: [I still want to play that game from earlier.]

Chi Yao: “…”

“Yaoyao!”

Jing Xi’s voice suddenly rang out. Chi Yao looked over—the other was waving for him to come over.

“Calling so affectionately?” Chi Yao walked over, saying lazily, “My face is even turning red.”

Jing Xi looked at him: “I don’t mind calling you by your full name, but are you sure you want that?”

This kind of place probably had listening devices installed somewhere. Calling his real name would be announcing himself.

Chi Yao was about to tease when his gaze swept over the lab bench in front of Jing Xi. His expression changed.

On the bench’s instrument sat a very small piece of beast tissue—only two claws could vaguely be seen.

But at the other end of the claws grew a human eye.

This kind of thing would probably only appear in horror films.

But Chi Yao didn’t feel the slightest bit of horror right now—only anger.

“At first glance it’s beast tissue, but look carefully—this should be a human eye that was gouged out.” Seeing his expression was off, Jing Xi kept his voice very low. “The circle of flesh around it is clearly different from what’s around the eye, and the claws growing from the other end are also very deformed.”

Chi Yao’s face was cold. His gaze swept over the entire bench surface—apart from mechanical equipment, there were no other suspicious items.

The two searched nearby and finally found an already-used reagent bottle in a recycling robot’s pouch.

This bottle was only half the size of a pinky finger. The liquid inside had only a tiny residue left on the walls. The bottle body was engraved with a number—X7628.

Chi Yao put it in his jacket pocket. Xiao Hong’s metal shell immediately wrapped around it, forming an enclosed space.

“Shouldn’t we still put it in a sealed bag?” Seeing his action, Jing Xi couldn’t help but ask worriedly.

Chi Yao said coldly: “No need.”

Seeing Jing Xi’s worried gaze with his peripheral vision, his mood lightened a bit. He added: “You have so little confidence in the protective armor you made?”

Jing Xi said with a wooden face: “After all, it hasn’t been tested and inspected by national authoritative institutions. It’s an unbranded product with no guarantees. Being worried is appropriate.”

Chi Yao: “…”

Sounds came from behind again—those patrol AIs had found them again.

The two stopped bickering and quickly walked inside along the corridor.

After entering the metal door, there was no lighting at all, as if they were in an abyss.

Jing Xi keenly noticed the change in Chi Yao’s breathing. He reached over and held his hand.

“The night vision glasses have limited visibility. Follow me.”

Before Chi Yao could speak, Jing Xi explained first.

Chi Yao looked at the incredibly spacious corridor in his vision and glanced down at their clasped hands.

“Are we elementary school students? Still holding hands.”

“Elementary school students only hold hands with people they like.” Jing Xi calmly retorted.

Chi Yao sneered: “Oh, so you like me?”

Jing Xi: “I do. Who told you to be the substitute?”

Chi Yao: “…”

Won’t argue with someone whose childhood friend died.

After walking for more than ten minutes, passing through ten special glass sliding doors, each compartment contained similar instruments and equipment, but there were very few items. Apart from the reagent bottle found in the recycling robot, they found nothing.

Passing through the last sliding door, the road surface began to slope downward. The air emitted a bloody smell—very faint, making Chi Yao uncomfortable.

They should be reaching the next functional area.

Chi Yao gripped Jing Xi’s hand tighter in return, pulling him behind: “Protect my body well.”

After walking for about five minutes, Chi Yao stepped out—the road surface finally stopped going down.

Whoosh!

A very light sound of cutting through air reached his ears.

Chi Yao quickly dodged sideways. A steel needle more than ten centimeters long embedded itself in the ground behind him.

Whoosh!

Sound came from another direction.

Chi Yao dodged again, squinting slightly.

After the third steel needle flew past, he pulled the person and quickly ran inside, taking off the ring with one hand and throwing it out.

The ring transformed into a steel hoop flying through the air, making clanging sounds as it hit the steel needles.

Jing Xi had been paying attention to the direction the steel needles were coming from.

Calculating the time in his mind, he pulled the person toward his side, raised his gun, and fired at a certain direction.

The bullet deflected the steel needle and hit the launcher.

“Good marksmanship.” Chi Yao whistled like a proper hooligan, teasing, “Want to compete who can shoot down more?”

Jing Xi: “The stakes?”

Chi Yao: “If I win, you give up searching for that person. If I lose, I’ll eat sour things for a month.”

Jing Xi: “…”

As the two spoke, their movements never stopped.

On the ground they’d run across, hundreds of steel needles were embedded haphazardly.

While running, Jing Xi swept his gaze over the steel needles that had penetrated the metal walls, puzzled: “Why would they use such an ancient defense method?”

This method seemed to only appear in period dramas.

“This method causes minimal damage to bodies.” Chi Yao sneered coldly. “How arrogant.”

Without further explanation, Jing Xi already understood what he meant.

The purpose of using this defense method wasn’t just to resist external invaders but also to use the invaders’ bodies for experiments.

No wonder the defenses they’d passed along the way were so lax.

Even if ordinary people could evade the AI patrols’ search, they couldn’t get through this dense rain of steel needles.

It seemed the people here were very confident in their defense system and didn’t take potential invaders seriously at all.

In their eyes, invaders might just be prey delivered to their doorstep.

“Indeed arrogant.” Jing Xi frowned slightly.

After running about a hundred meters, the surroundings stopped firing steel needles.

The corridor was like a maze, constantly winding around.

Reaching a fork in the road, they saw there were actually eight branches.

If they tried each one, they might not get out even by daybreak.

Chi Yao: “Xiao Hong, have your brother feed back the scan information.”

In just a moment, a floor plan scan of this level appeared in his vision.

The scan map was still being continuously improved—it looked like Xiao Hei hadn’t finished running the map yet.

At the same time, Jing Xi’s terminal also received the scan map fed back by Xiao Hei.

Without connecting to a brain chip, it really wasn’t very convenient to use.

Jing Xi checked the scan map, thinking whether after returning he should integrate Xiao Hei into Chi Yao’s brain chip.

But on second thought, the other was an unregistered person. Who knew where he’d gotten his terminal from—it wasn’t even certain if he had a brain chip.

With the map in hand, the two quickly found the shortest route.

“This is already the second level.” Jing Xi said in a low voice.

Chi Yao walked in front, responding casually.

The further inside they went, the stronger his bad premonition became.

Here, there was definitely something he didn’t want to see.

Passing through the winding corridor, dim light appeared before their eyes again.

The space before them was painted with white paint. Combined with the cold-toned lighting, it appeared especially gloomy and cold.

The left and right sides were divided into two large areas, with many rooms lined up in a row.

Chi Yao walked to the first room’s doorway. The door had a very ordinary sensor lock.

After the two exchanged glances, he had Xiao Hong open it. Both simultaneously dodged to the sides of the door.

As the door opened, a beast’s howl came out.

The two exchanged looks and walked in one after another.

The room was about sixty square meters. In the center sat a square metal cage about five meters across. Inside the cage was a second-level hunting dog—missing one ear, one eye, one front limb, and one hind limb.

The air was filled with an unpleasant odor. The inside of the cage also looked filthy beyond measure.

Jing Xi couldn’t believe it.

This hunting dog was most likely an experimental subject that had been captured.

In general laboratories, even if they couldn’t treat experimental subjects humanely, they would at least keep the environment clean to ensure experimental data.

But this experimental subject seemed to have received no gentle treatment at all, apart from having some parts of its body removed.

His gaze swept over the cross-sections of these wounds in sequence.

The cross-sections were uneven—they looked like they’d been violently torn off.

After seeing them, the hunting dog’s first reaction wasn’t to roar at them but to quickly hide in the corner farthest from them and cower. The look it gave them was filled with incomparable fear.

A scene flashed through Jing Xi’s mind—something flitted by extremely quickly.

Vaguely, he seemed to see a child in tattered clothes, sitting in the corner of a cage hugging their knees, pitch-black eyes on a dirty face glaring at the approaching person, extreme disgust and hatred surging in their heart.

Jing Xi was stunned.

Was this Chi Yao’s memory?