Chapter 174

"Let me!" Kou Lin activated her mechanical arm, the raised tip releasing purple lasers.

Several beams targeted the blood storage tanks at the waists of the nearest spray-gun infected. The tanks exploded instantly, sending the players scrambling to dodge.

"No!" Liu Sheng looked like he was about to cry. His physical conditioning was the lowest, and his evasion ability was lacking.

Even as he spoke, two more spray-gun infected lunged over, raising their sprayers and blasting blood at the players. Kou Lin switched to shooting the infected in the head, but even after their skulls were pierced, they didn't fall. Instead, like decapitated snakes, they stiffened and kept firing their sprayers.

Attacking them was completely useless!

"Shields up, move!" At the critical moment, Lin Tu slapped a shield on herself, successfully blocking the blood that, while harmless in damage, was extremely contagious.

The other players followed suit. Under the protection of their shields, they vaulted over the spray-gun infected and sprinted down the passage.

—Why was this place so big! Why were there so many cleaners here!

As more spray-gun infected appeared on both sides, the players silently cursed. Their shields were practically turning into blood shields!

"Lin Jie! Where does this lead?" Yi Ying asked, panting.

"If I'm right, it should be the transit rest area!" The person in front replied unhurriedly, as if the frantic running hadn't affected her at all.

Yi Ying looked up and heard two "bang bang" sounds. Lin Tu, with spare capacity, raised her gun and shot through two head-shaped surveillance monitors on the ceiling ahead that were about to turn toward them.

Yi Ying: Should she work on her physical conditioning too?

Just as she was thinking this, she saw Lin Tu ahead suddenly stop.

"What's wrong? Lin Jie!" Yi Ying wanted to slow down too, but the spray-gun infected chasing her made her dare not.

"We've reached the exit, but the stairs ahead are cut off..." Lin Tu looked up at the rest area. Dozens of people sat or lay scattered about, listless but seemingly healthy. Around them, infected in what looked like patrol gear moved about. She hesitated for a moment, then decided to jump. They had spray-gun infected on their tails with no way out anyway. "About one and a half stories down—everyone, get ready!"

With that, Lin Tu leaped forward and landed steadily on her feet.

One and a half stories was about three meters. For the players, that distance posed no challenge, though for the spray-gun infected, it might. So after landing, Lin Tu didn't look back. Instead, she scanned the rest area, where infected in security uniforms seemed to be patrolling.

Sure enough, these security infected, upon spotting the strangers, charged at Lin Tu like an antivirus system suddenly activated on a computer.

Wait... Lin Tu looked at the other ordinary people in the rest area, who were listless but left alone by the security infected. Not one of them had wounds or blood. They were clearly normal people. How were they staying here unharmed?

A sudden idea struck her. She removed her shield and tossed the blood-stained shield to a distance.

Without the stench of blood to guide them, the security infected seemed to lose their target. They halted, looking around in confusion.

The teammates behind her dropped down one after another like dumplings into a pot, re-triggering the security infected. Lin Tu quickly told them to toss their shields far away too. Sure enough, the security infected again looked lost.

One spray-gun infected tumbled down from the passage.

"Careful!" Lin Tu and the others had barely sidestepped when several security infected charged over furiously. Ignoring the blood that splattered across their faces, they beat the spray-gun infected into pulp with their batons.

The other spray-gun infected, standing high on the passage, glanced down a few times before scattering in twos and threes.

The scene sparked a strange thought in the players' minds: it seemed they had stumbled into an area specifically designed to protect ordinary people.

Indeed, after dealing with the spray-gun infected, the security infected didn't even glance at the players. They returned to their "posts."

The rest area, briefly stirred, fell silent again.

"So what do we do now?" Yi Ying looked at the crowd, who seemed as good as dead. If she still hadn't figured it out by now, she'd be hopeless.

These infected weren't protecting them. So this wasn't a "safe zone"—it served some other purpose.

Were the infected locking people up to torment them one by one? Yi Ying thought. That sounded like something the infected would do. But in a disaster like this, anything was possible, so while the guess was reasonable, it wasn't particularly useful.

"I'll go ask around." Yi Ying decided to put her social skills to work. She picked a middle-aged woman who looked approachable, went over to chat, and came back. "She won't say a word. No luck. Luo-ge, give me a trust candy, and I'll try again."

Luo Yongzhi scratched his head and handed her a few.

Moments later, Yi Ying returned, defeated again.

"Strange. No matter what, she won't talk. Even after eating the trust candy and treating me like one of her own, she still won't say anything." Yi Ying frowned. She felt something was off about this place, and being shut out of the secret didn't sit well with her.

"Let me try?" Lin Tu reached out and took the last trust candy from Yi Ying's hand.

"Lin Jie... you?" Yi Ying paused, then handed over the candy.

It wasn't that she didn't trust Lin Tu, but in her Lin Jie's persona, did "eloquent" even exist?

But when Yi Ying saw Lin Tu's face break into a completely unfamiliar yet strangely warm smile, her worldview began to crumble.

And when she watched Lin Tu sit down beside that middle-aged woman, murmur a few words—without even feeding her the trust candy—and the woman burst into tears, pulling a photo from her wallet to show Lin Tu, her worldview shattered entirely.

Was this right?

"Lin Jie..." Seeing Lin Tu return with the trust candy in hand, the middle-aged woman trailing hesitantly behind her, Yi Ying couldn't help but ask, "How did you get her to talk?"

"Professional skill." Lin Tu said.

She really wasn't good with people—that was because she often didn't know how to face the complex emotions of others. But when she had a concrete goal, who said she couldn't? After working in finance for so long, selling had become second nature to her.

"It's not that I wouldn't tell you, it's that I didn't see the point," the woman sighed, looking at Yi Ying. "Don't bother asking the others. Everyone here is just a test subject being fattened up. We're going to die sooner or later. All we can do now is wait."

Her gaze returned to Lin Tu. "Can you really take care of Little White? If you can, I'll tell you everything and try to get you out!"

She pulled out her wallet again and opened it. Only then did the group see a photo tucked inside—a little white cat.

"Really, I can." Lin Tu assured her repeatedly.

To earn the woman's trust, she went to the restroom and brought out Xiao Huang.

Xiao Huang, who hadn't seen his owner in a long time, eagerly tried to lick Lin Tu's hand. But since she'd just come from the infected crowd, Lin Tu held his muzzle, let everyone pet his fluffy tail, then tossed him back into the Back Mountain.

"You really can take care of her... I don't know how you did it, but please, I'm begging you!" The woman covered her mouth, tears spilling over. "She was a gift from my parents. She's been with me all these years. Dying doesn't matter to me, but she's my worry, my comfort. I want her to live a good life..."

Lin Tu silently handed her a tissue. After she wiped her tears, the woman finally got to the point—

"Do you know Chris?"

Seeing the group's blank looks, the woman asked in surprise, "Little Chris? You don't know her either?"

"We've all lost our memories." Lin Tu's bizarre explanation didn't elicit even a flicker of surprise from the woman. Clearly, in the face of death, she only cared about her cat.

"It's understandable you don't know. Ordinary people don't know either." The woman organized her thoughts. "This infection plague isn't the first. Decades ago, Earth also experienced a similar plague. But back then, the infected weren't as aggressive. They just ran high fevers, then died."

"Chris was a member of Doctors Without Borders. She traveled the world treating patients and collected tens of thousands of cases. Eventually, working with other doctors, she developed a drug to suppress the plague."

"Isn't that a good thing?" Liu Sheng couldn't help asking. With the drug, the plague would be solved soon, right?

"That was actually the start of the real plague," the woman sighed. "Because Chris's country, to secure the drug formula, threatened her family—and succeeded. To hoard wealth, they created artificial scarcity and inflated drug prices. Even their own citizens got no discounts."

"Can you imagine that scene? Watching yourself and your loved ones die, searching everywhere for the drug, spending a fortune, and getting counterfeit medicine instead. To justify their actions, that country even passed laws declaring the sale of fake drugs a crime... Those who bought fakes not only had no hope of a cure but also faced prison time."

"And Chris—she went from a revered angel in white to the knife in a demon's hand. Everyone was grateful to her, yet everyone resented her, hated that in the end, she chose herself over all of humanity, handing the formula to her country."

"It's said Chris's father died of illness because they couldn't afford the medicine. Under such circumstances, Chris killed herself."

"Not long after, the plague virus evolved. The mortality rate shot up, and even the drug Chris developed stopped working." The woman let out a long sigh. "They say the evolution can be blamed on Chris. Before she died, she was trying to develop a new drug, but in her desperation to break through, she ended up evolving the plague virus itself... Of course, that might be mud slung on her after her death. We'll never know. All we know is that the name Chris became a name many in medicine both loved and hated."

"The name even ended up in the dictionary, defined as: a terrifying study that destroyed human civilization."

Her story seemed to end there.

Lin Tu looked at her questioningly, prompting her to continue: "A few days ago, there was a virus leak on the ship. We thought it would be resolved quickly, but then the Medical Research Institute produced a renamed Chris—we call her Little Chris. Her underlings, see, the ones you saw, quickly took control of the ship and locked us in here, saying they wanted to keep some alive for experiments."

"I saw her once, when she came to give a motivational speech. She said this time the antidote would be different from last time. This time, people would achieve complete evolution. We wouldn't have to struggle for medicine anymore. All our needs would be fully met. We'd become self-sufficient people..."

"She described the virus as an antidote."

Lin Tu exchanged glances with the other players. From the woman's words—"this time and last time"—it wasn't hard to infer that this Little Chris seemed inextricably linked to the Chris from decades ago.

"Every day, people get taken away and never come back. Those who try to escape die even worse deaths. Some barged in like you, saying they'd get us out, but in the end, they all died. So everyone just lies flat and waits to die."

The woman turned to look at the passive, listless crowd in the rest area and shrugged.

"What's your way out?" Lin Tu asked her.

"Simple. Why do I know so much about Chris? Because my parents used to sell drugs." The woman sighed deeply. "I have a diarrhea medicine that can make us look less healthy, so we can get transferred to the area for the nearly dead, where the defenses are weaker."

"Let's discuss it." Lin Tu nodded to her, then turned to the players.

"Yu Liu messaged too—he found some strange clues. This disaster's threat level is beyond imagination. We need to unite as soon as possible, so he shared the info with us to see what we think." Lin Tu skimmed her phone and briefly told them how Yu Liu's squad had been ambushed. "After fleeing for a while, they ran into their own former soldiers. These infected soldiers showed no signs of madness. They were neatly lined up, marching to the farm on the second floor of the Ring Building."

"Yu Liu and his team followed and tried to get in. They found the animal pens had been emptied. Now there were only bugs... segmented worms. The soldiers kept throwing human corpses in, then stood guard, as if waiting for the bugs to eat their fill."

"Eww..." The group pictured the scene and got goosebumps all over.

After finishing, Lin Tu relayed the information they'd gathered at the other "human farm" back to Yu Liu. When she looked up, everyone was rubbing their arms.

"If this is Chris's doing," Kou Lin mused, "could it be another of her creations? Like worm-infected?" As a player whose profession was Mechanic, she was already treating Chris as a "colleague" whose creativity rivaled her own.

"Unknown for now. We'll wait for Yu Liu's report." Lin Tu said. "Now we know who we're dealing with. Let's raise her threat level and be even more careful."

Lin Tu was grateful she'd shot out the cameras earlier. At least Chris couldn't pinpoint their location directly.

The spray-gun infected and security infected, though clever, were still slightly below ordinary humans in intelligence. Lin Tu didn't think they could recognize faces—

She'd just layered a blood shield on herself, and the security infected couldn't even tell if she was human or monster... Wait!

Lin Tu's eyes lit up. She suddenly had a way to leave here openly.

Ten minutes later, Lin Tu led the woman up to a security infected, draped the blood shield over both of them, and casually walked around it, heading outside.

The security infected first glared at her angrily, thinking she was trying to escape. But when its scent changed from normal human to infected, its expression shifted to confusion. Then, helplessly, it watched Lin Tu lead the woman away, its face growing increasingly puzzled.

Searching its short-term memory, such bizarre cases had already occurred no fewer than four times in quick succession.

Lin Tu led the tense-faced woman to the corner, where the others already stood. Without removing their shields, the group continued in the direction the woman indicated, still covered.

Fortunately, they didn't encounter any infected along the way. After about twenty minutes, they reached the main entrance to the Main Ship.

"This is it," the woman said, pulling out her wallet and reluctantly extracting Little White's photo, handing it to Lin Tu. "My room is 1325 on the first floor. There's enough cat food in the room. Little White won't starve. I don't know who you are, but I think you'll come back. Little White is in your hands."

Lin Tu took the photo of Little White and nodded. "I'll go find her. What about you?"

Lin Tu had only expected the woman to point the way and then hide somewhere safe. She hadn't expected her to insist on escorting them to the elevator.

"I'll find a place to hide. Don't worry about me," the woman said with a bitter smile. "But no matter what, I doubt I'll survive. Lend me a small knife. Don't bother with me anymore."

Lin Tu left her the blood shield, pressed a dagger and two wire meshes into her hands, explained how to use them, and told her not to clash head-on with the infected. Then they parted ways.

Getting through the passage to the Main Ship meant the woman had already passed security and other checks. She could enter the Main Ship directly. Chris had placed her "masterpieces" guarding the passage but hadn't arranged patrol monsters here.

The Main Ship was in zero gravity. Before entering, the players all changed into anti-gravity suits—also called penguin suits—which used elastic bands to keep muscles tense, preventing atrophy from prolonged weightlessness.

The sudden transition to zero gravity caught the players off guard. They nearly lost their backpacks, hurriedly strapping them to their waists with tight knots.

Lin Tu, however, moved as if she were home, exuding the ease of someone on solid ground. She destroyed a distant camera within seconds and even "swam" to the wall at speed to inspect a simple map posted there.

The other players: "..." What went wrong? Why did your world and my world seem so different?

The players naturally didn't know that Lin Tu had received special training from the National Team before entering. This bit of weightlessness was nothing compared to the rigors of that training.

"The Medical Research Institute is... here." Lin Tu memorized the map at incredible speed. To be precise, she also took a photo with her phone. "If we're quick, we can make it in half an hour."

Kou Lin pulled out her tablet and began hacking into the ship's cameras, marking the ones that might capture the group.

Thanks to the zero-gravity space, Yi Ying had no trouble carrying Kou Lin with one hand. After spending a few minutes adjusting to the weightless environment, they "swam" rapidly forward.

Meanwhile.

In front of the elevator door leading into the Main Ship.

The woman looked at her now-empty wallet, yet felt a strange sense of fulfillment.

People can't become slaves of desire, probably because before desire stands the very thing that makes us human.

"Aaaah~" Just then, a skin-peeling infected approached the woman with painful yet delighted steps.

"Hah," the woman spat contemptuously onto the ground. She recognized this person—the CEO of a competing company, someone in the same profession as her.

She'd noticed earlier that when people became infected, they were influenced by their former professions. She'd been curious what someone like her—whose job was moving capital—would turn into. Now she knew.

"Aren't you disgusting!" Grabbing a nearby chair, the woman hurled it at the skin-peeling infected.

This infected, who wore a peeling machine and relied on it to move, was knocked off the device in an instant. Wearing not a stitch of clothing, it sprawled beside the peeling machine like a fat worm, making "whoosh whoosh" sounds.

"Damn, thinking about turning into something like you makes me sick." The woman retched, then put on the shield and walked straight ahead.

Surprisingly, no infected tried to stop her. The skin-peeling infected earlier had only approached to peel her skin.

Soon, the woman reached her original lounge.

Expressionless, she walked into the bathroom. Facing the mirror, she realized her "expressionless" face didn't quite look right anymore. When that evil, disgusting smile spread across her own face, she hadn't even noticed.

She didn't want this... this fulfillment of desire.

The woman took out the dagger Lin Tu had given her and slit her own throat without hesitation. At the peak of her excitement, she also threw the wire mesh at her feet. The mesh immediately began absorbing her blood, growing continuously.

If she could help it, she didn't want a single shred of this foul, desire-reeking corpse left in this world.

None of these desires were what she wanted. The only thing she wanted... was for the one she loved to live happily, even if all that person had left her was a cat.

.

The mass destruction of cameras also drew Chris's attention.

She wasn't a fool like the ordinary infected. In fact, she was even smarter than the cleverest of humans.

"Someone's getting close." Chris quickly reached this conclusion.

But she wasn't sure who they were, because there were still uninfected people on the ship, some of whom even controlled part of the military.

But none of that was a problem for Chris, because she was absolutely thrilled about the enemies approaching.

.

As Lin Tu and the others swam rapidly toward the Medical Research Institute, she suddenly felt her breath stop.

To be precise, it wasn't that their breathing stopped—it was that she gradually couldn't breathe anymore.

Lin Tu: "???"

"What's happening?" Lin Tu was certain her body wasn't tired, but she felt her breathing grow harder and harder, like the feeling of running five kilometers in school and not getting enough oxygen.

"Wait! Something's off with my body too." Luo Yongzhi also stopped. This reaction wasn't common for him—he'd only experienced it once, in a high-altitude disaster. So in a normal environment, it definitely wasn't his body failing.

"I'm dizzy too." Liu Sheng quickly pulled a pulse oximeter from his backpack, clipped the probe to his finger, and measured. Moments later, he got a hypoxia warning. "There's no oxygen here."

As soon as he spoke, the doors at both ends of the corridor slammed shut with a "click."

A speaker overhead crackled. "Oops, we ran out of oxygen. What now?" one voice said playfully.

"I guess you'll just suffocate in there~" another voice replied, giggling.

"The Demon's Suffocating Ship..." Yi Ying murmured. Finally, she understood the meaning of this disaster's name.

Disaster names generally relate to the disaster itself. From this, it was clear that [Infinite Calamity] had some scientific basis when capturing and naming them.

Yi Ying looked at Lin Tu, only to find that she wasn't panicked at all—not even a little. If anything, she looked almost calm.

Then Yi Ying remembered—the person in front of her... was more of a demon than the demon itself.

Not long ago, Doomsday Town had seen a surge of hoarding when the disaster difficulty increased.

All commodity prices were soaring. Even Yi Ying's friends at the Black Factory, with their various supply channels, were frantically stockpiling—food, clothing, vehicles—driving prices higher and higher.

Yi Ying was no exception, though she had barely started before Dong Huadan forcibly stopped her.

Soon, Yi Ying noticed that market prices had dropped again, and the variety of goods had even expanded. Whatever you wanted, they had it: twenty-four flavors of instant noodles, twelve flavors of instant rice to choose from; gasoline, diesel, batteries, even generators all for sale; tissues, shampoo, insecticide... all sorts of supplies that had never existed in Doomsday Town before, now appearing in a flood.

The town that had been on the brink of a storm was like a naughty child fed a piece of cake—it stopped crying all at once.

Dong Huadan's business boomed. Her shop was constantly packed, so she took over a larger storefront, hired a bunch of people, and even diverted some business elsewhere.

Many were curious about the source of the supplies, Yi Ying included, but Dong Huadan wouldn't say, probably to protect the player providing them.

Yi Ying hadn't planned to ask, but being sharp, she noticed that several of the instant noodle brands were identical to ones Lin Tu had brought out before.

So Yi Ying poked Lin Tu, asking if she had any info. To her surprise, Lin Tu admitted it outright: yes, she'd sourced the goods through her channels from some world.

Thinking about how Lin Tu's backpack was like a treasure bag stuffed with endless items, Yi Ying suddenly understood. Lin Jie had never hidden it from her. It was so obvious—how stupid was she?! The source of the goods had been right in front of her, and she'd even gone and asked Lin Jie about it!

Then Lin Tu told her she could get some goods for her at lower prices. For example, their next disaster was [The Demon's Suffocating Ship], which would likely involve oxygen deprivation, so it was best to stock up on enough oxygen.

Yi Ying had initially thought it unnecessary. Oxygen was expensive! Sure, it was everywhere, but to stockpile it took more than just a plastic bottle.

Then Lin Tu showed her the price of oxygen tanks.

Yi Ying: "..." Stockpile.

So this was what it meant for a billionaire to casually toss a few bucks.

Looking back, Lin Tu really was the ultimate demon.

What did this demon's suffocation matter? As long as they had enough oxygen, it could try to choke them for three whole months, and they wouldn't even complain—they'd cheer it on and root for it to break a Guinness record.

Not just Yi Ying—the other players quietly pulled oxygen masks from their backpacks and put them on.

"Say... the monsters wouldn't expect us to carry this much oxygen, right?"

Lin Tu shook her head. No normal person would expect that.

"So can we just stay here? They'll eventually open the door to check if we're dead."

Before that, the players first checked on Guan Suixing's condition.

Her poisoning was getting worse, but she could still hold on for a while. The only issue was that even inside the book, she was still in a state of oxygen deprivation, which was quite baffling.

The players fitted her with an oxygen mask, sent her back into the book, and then simply waited.

And so, two whole days passed.

During that time, Yu Liu sent word that the farmed worms hadn't moved. As more corpses were thrown in, the swarm kept growing. The terrifying thing was, these worms seemed to reproduce endlessly—more and more, more and more... Sooner or later, Yu Liu predicted, they'd fill the entire farming area.

"Stay safe, and don't get noticed," Lin Tu warned.

If they got noticed and Yu Liu accidentally died, where would she go for information then?

"You all be careful too. You're close to the truth now. We'll wait for your news." Yu Liu said.

He pulled his teammates into a temporary group chat too, and they all prayed for each other's safety.

Finally, the players heard rustling sounds outside the door.

Everyone gripped their weapons tightly.

Moments later, the door clicked open.

On the other side stood several white-coated researchers, clearly infected. Lin Tu, her broken blade already primed, swung at the nearest one.

The researcher was intelligent, and though its physique had been enhanced by the infection, it was still slightly below the players. It had no chance to dodge. Baring its teeth, it was cleaved in two by Lin Tu's broken blade.

"Lin Jie! Don't be so violent!"

The players yelped and scrambled back, terrified of getting splattered with blood.

Lin Tu used her Lighthouse to dodge, tossing out a wire mesh as well. The mesh instantly absorbed the blood, filling the entire corridor and enveloping two other researchers.

Lin Tu ducked into the mesh. Outside it, two more researchers remained. Liu Sheng pulled out restraint straps and quickly bound them, and with Kou Lin's mechanical arm lasers and items from Yi Ying and Luo Yongzhi, the two researchers were quickly dealt with.

Once the mesh dissipated, Lin Tu emerged too.

Without hesitation, the group moved toward Chris's location.

With the cameras destroyed, Chris had set up more infected heads along the corridor as new surveillance. Lin Tu, revolver in hand, shot each one she saw. Following the corridor, they soon reached Chris's research institute.

Calling it a research institute was generous—it was really just an operating room.

The players quickly dealt with the researchers outside and strode into the operating room with overwhelming force.

It was an abominably foul room, the floor nearly soaked in blood. Inside the sterile glass partition sat an operating table. The person standing before it, white coat stained crimson, hands as red as if they'd been soaked in a vat of blood for days, was a sight that chilled the heart.

"So it's you lot. You're still alive." Seeing them, Chris showed no panic, calmly setting down her scissors. Before her lay a grown man, his body utterly destroyed, as if she'd been conducting experiments to turn him into a "snake-man" or "metal-man."

Chris regarded Lin Tu and the others appreciatively. "Formidable physiques, resistant to 48 hours of oxygen deprivation... I can already imagine what perfect works of art you'd make."

"Was the plague on this ship your doing?" Lin Tu asked.

Looking at Chris before her, for some reason, she couldn't muster any fear or disgust.

The players behind her felt the same—especially Yi Ying, who stepped forward, all the way to the glass. If Lin Tu hadn't grabbed her, she'd have walked right into Chris's attack range.

"If you like, then yes." Chris smiled. Her smile was eerily normal, like a doctor who truly healed. "So, would you like to help me?"

"As if that's possible." A faint, inexplicable elation stirred in Lin Tu's heart. She sneered. There was absolutely no way she'd answer such an absurd question.

That inexplicable feeling only made Lin Tu more agitated. She felt she needed to kill Chris quickly, or something unimaginable might happen. "Give me my friend's antidote."

"Ah, right, your friend's antidote." Chris immediately turned and took a small vial from a shelf.

Noticing Lin Tu's extreme caution, she shook the vial but made no extra moves. Instead, she crouched, set it on the floor, and kicked it out.

Lin Tu quickly pulled out her liquid storage, dousing the area with nearly a bucket of water, then spraying alcohol until every trace of blood was gone. Only then did she use tweezers to pick up the vial and hand it to Liu Sheng.

"Take a look?"

Liu Sheng crouched and pulled out his tools. He'd previously tried to study the poison inside Guan Suixing, so he had samples. Taking out a pill, he quickly ran a reaction test, then nodded at Lin Tu.

"It's the real antidote."

Lin Tu shook out one pill and placed it, along with Guan Suixing's keepsake, into the book.

Chris watched, raising her hands innocently. "See? I'm very willing to help you. Maybe we're not enemies at all. We're friends. Or perhaps, on a deeper level, I'm here to help you. Aren't you curious who I am?"

Lin Tu gripped her broken blade, staring coldly at her.

"I'm Chris! The Dr. Chris who developed the antidote for all humanity! I didn't die! I've lived to this day. My God, I finally got to say it." Chris smiled, looking up at the sky. "I've been fighting for all humanity all along. Can't you see?"

"Can't you see the countless poor, unable to afford medicine, forced to lie in cold alleys or prisons, waiting to die in despair? Can't you see how many families shattered, warm embraces turned to cold profit, turning blades on each other? Can't you see how many people just want to live, yet have to watch others live while they die—isn't that unfair?"

Her words seemed to carry a magical force, stirring something inside Lin Tu and the others.

This force wasn't the intangible kind from textbooks—it was tangible.

Kou Lin reacted the most visibly. A piercing scream seemed embedded in Chris's grating voice, destroying all her mechanical gear. Her mechanical arm, her mechanical earpiece, even the internal mechanical aids that helped her move—all failed in an instant.

"Damn..." Kou Lin's face went pale as she clutched Lin Tu and Luo Yongzhi's arms on either side.

"You have to die." Lin Tu raised her revolver, aiming at Chris's head.

"Then kill me. But killing me won't end this disaster. Because our desires can no longer be suppressed!"

The moment she said that, three "bang bang bang" shots rang out. Golden patterns flashed across the black wall. Xiao Hei pierced through the glass, then through Chris's head.

Was it over?

Lin Tu stared nervously at Chris's fallen body—no mutation.

It seemed over, yet also not. The players hadn't received the notification that the disaster had ended.

The next second, alarms blared across the entire ship. Lin Tu, who'd just removed her oxygen mask, felt another wave of suffocation hit.

The players hurriedly put their masks back on, breathing easier.

"Damn..." Only Kou Lin was struggling. Her body depended too much on machinery to function well, and the temporary failure made her deeply uncomfortable. "Guess I rely on machines too much..."

"Let's move. See what's happening on the ship!" Lin Tu had a bad feeling.

She quickly searched her memory of the map and found the Control Console's location.

The players swam swiftly toward it.

Meanwhile, Yu Liu messaged—"The Ring Building's alarms are going off too! What's happening?!"

This time, Yi Ying was carrying Kou Lin with her left hand and Lin Tu with her right. The latter rapidly typed on her phone, filling Yu Liu in on what they'd just experienced.

"The Ring Building is massive; it should hold out a while. We need to hurry and find oxygen tanks!" Yu Liu replied quickly.

Most oxygen tanks were stored in the Main Ship, but many workstations on the first and second floors also had tanks, so Yu Liu and his team should manage to find a few for temporary support.

That was why Yu Liu wasn't too anxious to leave: "When the alarms went off, these worms started getting restless. They don't seem to want to eat corpses anymore—they're all swimming out!"

Lin Tu quickly asked, "Swimming where?"

"No idea, but it seems like they're heading outside. I mean, outside the ship... outer space. I don't know if I'm hallucinating, but I think I saw a worm clinging to the window outside?"

Lin Tu: "???"

Come to think of it, before entering the Main Ship, she'd never had a real sense that this was a ship sailing through space. She'd literally never seen a single window, so she had no idea what the outside looked like.

So when she heard Yu Liu say that, her first thought was... so this ship actually has windows that show outer space.

But wait—these worms could survive in outer space?

What were they? Did they have anything to do with the disaster on this ship?

Lin Tu racked her brain but came up empty.

"Don't worry about that for now. Go find oxygen tanks."

"Already on it." Yu Liu replied. "The oxygen depletion is hitting fast. We're already starting to feel breathless. Good news is, these monsters are affected by the lack of oxygen too—they seem unable to move either."

Yi Ying reminded Lin Tu they'd reached the Control Console, so Lin Tu turned off her phone.

There were still a few monsters in the Control Console, but as Yu Liu had said, they seemed unable to see Lin Tu and the others, going about their own business.

Lin Tu didn't bother with the monsters. She rushed to the console at once.

The screen displayed a detailed schematic of the ship. Parts of it were flashing red, indicating problem areas.

Lin Tu didn't know this ship well, but that didn't stop her from quickly finding the annotations on the schematic—

The farming area.

The oxygen leak was coming from the farming area!

More precisely, from the shell outside the farming area.

"Escape the Ring Building's second floor!" Lin Tu grabbed the loudspeaker used for all-crew emergency broadcasts. Just as she was about to speak, she froze.

On the schematic, nearly every part of the ship was turning red—the entire ship was in distress!