Offending Certain People

The smoke was visibly thinning; there was no time to waste.

Tu Ran grabbed its swaying tail.

The tail was as thick as a wrist, covered in needle-like fur that pierced through her glove with a sharp sting.

Startled by the sudden grip on its tail, the monkey jerked, yanked its tail free, and whipped its head around to bare its teeth at Tu Ran's position in a threatening display.

It pulled away too fast—Tu Ran's palm burned with pain.

She clenched her jaw and didn't make a sound.

The smoke was thick, and the monkey blinked a couple of times, seeing nothing.

It was wary. It stretched out an arm, probing toward where Tu Ran had been standing, trying to touch something.

It touched nothing.

Tu Ran was pressed flat against the metal door like a gecko, just out of reach of its arm.

Seizing the moment, she pressed both palms against the door.

"Landslide."

A deafening boom.

It was as if a dragon beneath the earth was roaring; the dull rumble echoed through the narrow corridor, the ground and walls trembling with it.

Cracks spread rapidly outward from Tu Ran's palms on the heavy metal door. When she judged the spread had reached far enough, she withdrew her hands in time.

The door shattered into pieces, fragments clattering to the ground one after another.

The monkey flinched again, stepped back two paces, and stared warily at the metal door, scratching its head with a claw.

The He Luo creature guarding the outer layer drew in all its tentacles, leaned toward the monkey, and let out a few strange sounds—"Woo woo, chirp chirp."

The monkey chattered back a few syllables.

Min Tao and Shen Yunhe, only a dozen centimeters from the two aberrations, pressed their bodies flat against the wall, hardly daring to breathe.

They heard the aberrations' voices and guessed they were communicating, but couldn't understand what they meant.

Tu Ran had the "Language Talent" ability; she understood easily.

The He Luo creature asked: Did you open the door? Can we get out?

The monkey's voice was full of self-doubt: I opened it? A little piece of metal can really pry a door open?

It, too, knew that using a small metal shard to pry open the door was utterly impractical, but the door was now genuinely open, and its brain capacity wasn't enough to consider whether some other creature had given it a hand.

The He Luo creature didn't care about that: "Woohoo! Run!"

It shoved the monkey, and the two aberrations squeezed out through the broken metal door one after another.

The three of them didn't exchange a word, but by unspoken agreement, they stayed pressed against the wall and didn't move.

As the ape aberration and the He Luo creature ran out, the other aberrations crowded around also rushed into the passageway, shoving and squeezing to get out.

In the corner formed by the doorframe and the wall, Tu Ran hugged her knees, curled into a tiny ball.

She was smaller than one giant aberration's foot.

The entire passageway vibrated with the aberrations' running, and through the thinning smoke, Tu Ran could see all kinds of feet.

Two-toed feet, chicken-claw feet, human-palm feet... cat, dog, pig—every kind of paw imaginable.

Five minutes later, all the aberrations had passed through, and the passageway fell quiet.

The smoke had fully dispersed. Tu Ran saw Shen Yunhe and Min Tao, also covered in dust and crouched against the wall, barely daring to breathe, and she struggled to hold back a laugh.

Min Tao: "..."

Shen Yunhe: "..."

The two ignored her, stood up, and brushed the dust off their clothes.

Tu Ran took a couple of steps, looked at the situation outside, and saw a mess—layers of aberration corpses lying on the ground, most killed by the poison gas, some not yet dead, struggling to get up. The base's ceiling guns immediately locked onto them, swiveled, aimed, and fired a burst of bullets.

Tu Ran could clearly hear them crying out in pain as they died, along with a string of curses full of resentment. She averted her gaze. "Let's go."

The three of them passed through the broken door.

They stepped over the fragments of the metal door, nearly twenty centimeters thick. Shen Yunhe gasped. "How did that monkey manage that?"

Tu Ran walked on as if nothing had happened, not bothering to respond.

Min Tao, bringing up the rear, said casually, "Aberrations always have some unexpected abilities. Only your imagination can limit them."

Tu Ran nodded in agreement. "Brother Min is right."

The passage leading underground was like a spiral slide, sloping down the whole way. After more than a dozen twists and turns, they finally reached the underground space.

The underground space was the true research area of Songwu Base, consisting of row after row of laboratories. The researchers of Songwu Experimental Base worked here; after the self-destruct sequence was initiated above, they had all evacuated, and the place was empty.

When the three arrived, what met their eyes was another expanse of white.

Amidst it, they could see aberrations thrashing and struggling.

The underground area had also activated its automatic poison gas dispersal system. Compared to the vast space above with its thinner gas, the underground labs were narrow and cramped, with a higher concentration of poison. Some aberrations had already succumbed and were collapsing one by one.

A map appeared before Tu Ran's visor—sent by Xie Xu. It showed the escape route of the underground labs, clearly marking where the escape elevator was, and automatically plotted the best escape path for her.

Tu Ran followed the direction indicated on her visor.

During this time, Xie Xu had fully taken over her helmet.

They could converse more easily, without Min Tao or Shen Yunhe overhearing.

"Why did the anesthetic spray system inside the aberration glass enclosures suddenly shut down?"

She hadn't forgotten—it was because the anesthetic had suddenly stopped spraying that those aberrations had woken up, broken out of the glass, and set off the self-destruct sequence, sealing the base's exits and forcing them to find another way out.

She'd previously thought it was Diao Hongzhi's doing, revenge against her, but on second thought, given Diao Hongzhi's level, he couldn't have pulled that off.

Songwu Experimental Base ranked in the top ten among all Federation bases. Though not a large-scale base and modest in size, it was the laboratory where parasitic aberrations had first been discovered and where parasitic aberrations had first been isolated from human bodies. It had made great contributions to research on aberrations within the Threshold and was one of the Federation's more cutting-edge research institutions.

Such a base gathered top talent from all forty-two states of the Federation. Diao Hongzhi couldn't have bribed anyone here to do something so dangerous for him.

To pull that off, the only ones Tu Ran could think of were the Wells family, who wanted to get rid of her.

"Who have you offended recently?" Xie Xu's voice came through.

"Certain people in the Wells family. They want me dead."

"Why?"

Tu Ran pursed her lips, pondering whether to tell him.

It didn't seem like telling him would do any harm.

"Xi Chunzhi once had an inner core. The Wells family dug it out. They also wanted to take Xi Chunzhi away for experiments. Since they figured I might cause trouble, they decided to eliminate me first while I was coming back from the Threshold." Tu Ran kept it brief.

"Xi Chunzhi's coma is because her inner core was dug out?"