CH 56

“Do not engage in cross fire with them until necessary.” Lu Shangjin stuffed him with a tube of injection, rolled up his sleeve and gave him a shot. “Hurry up.”

“What is this?”

“My dad’s blood serum.”

A chameleon omega gland serum. After injecting this, thermal sensation, gait detection and monitors can be shielded, but not the human eye.

Xia Jingtian was stunned for a moment before sharply giving himself a shot.

“The effect can only last for an hour, so you must pass through the three probe doors leading to the underground freezer within half an hour.” Lu Shangjin put on the finger-piercing gloves with the anaesthesia needles attached and effortlessly flipped down the stairs, “Go and turn the patrol away towards the left, I’ll open the door.”

“Copy that~” Xia Jingtian pursed his lips and tapped his headset before flipping down the steps of the high platform from the other direction and landed silently, like a big cat foraging for food.

Lu Shangjin pressed his temples and raced closer to the heat-sensitive detection door.

To avoid the patrol attracted by Xia Jingtian’s movement, Lu Shangjin pried the front cover of the access combination lock open and gently opened the line of route. He enabled his J1 ability “extreme vision” so that the pupil of his right eye will be concentrated, and then he used the precision microneedle to remove several tiny contacts.

The detection door slowly rose to the top before closing immediately. Lu Shangjin closed the cover of the access lock and walked in. 

As the probe door became less than half a meter close to the ground, Xia Jingtian rolled in. He got up and adjusted his body armor, “Hey, were you gonna shut me out?”

“It’s really dangerous inside.” Lu Shangjin frowned, and continued to walk on.

On the right was a whole row of sealed laboratories, and on the left was a neatly organized line of open grids with about a dozen turns. 

A foul smell permeated the corridor. 

Xia Jingtian swept a glance behind them as Lu Shangjin crouched down to solve the second combination lock.

A sound of metal scraping the ground was slowly approaching. Suddenly alert, Xia Jingtian turned around immediately and picked up the loaded M16 before squatting down, but there wasn’t a person to be seen in all four directions.

“Hurry up, I think someone’s coming.” The tips of Xia Jingtian’s fingers began to sweat.

Lu Shangjin’s right eye glowed with a translucent blue transient film from frequent use, his fingertips delicately picked at the fine needle reaching inside the line, whispering, “I’m already going really fast.”

The sound of scraping metal disappeared, but the sense of danger nearby did not. Xia Jingtian relaxed his breath, put his finger on the trigger and licked his lips, “If we have a crossfire with PBB, then what?”

“Your glandular pheromone DNA will be blacklisted and glandular hunters around the world will be able to get your bounty notice, and until death is confirmed you will have to run in every corner.”

Lu Shangjin was still focused on unlocking the combination, “Do you regret this?”

“As my ge said, death under the peony.” Xia Jingtian let out a breath of air, carefully listening for any noise around them. 

Lu Shangjin didn’t reply.

But he felt that his brother didn’t mean it like that.

The slight metal dragging across the ground began to slowly approach again.

Tap, tap.

Sometimes fast, sometimes slow, like a dormant approaching beast, wandering beyond the sight of its prey.

Lu Shangjin also picked up on the sound, a layer of sweat forming on the tip of his fingers. He couldn’t go any faster with his unlocking actions as the slightest carelessness will set off the alarm.

“He’s here.” Xia Jingtian clenched his jaw, his T-shirt that clung to the body armor was soaked in cold sweat and stuck to his spine.

Something in the shadows at the end of the corridor approached the two, and suddenly, a steel claw was exposed to the light.

Immediately afterwards, it stepped out and let out a low growl.

It was a semi-mechanical dog wearing a tempered glass sheath on the back of its neck, half-German Shepherd, with specially made mechanical limbs and jaws.

The tempered glass shield at the back of its neck was filled with culture fluid in which an individually isolated human gland was slowly pulsating.

“Fuck me.” Xia Jingtian froze for a moment, “A dog, Lu Shangjin, a dog Lu Shangjin.”

Opening its sharp steel teeth, the mechanical dog lunged over, right as the detection door finally started to slowly rise. Lu Shangjin dragged Xia Jingtian while opening a narrow crack and rolled in. Using ten times the pull of gravity with his hands, Xia Jingtian pressed down hard on the detection door and it made a muffled thud against the wall, followed by the click of the dog’s paws scratching the door right as it clicked shut.

“…” Xia Jingtian’s heart was racing, he let out a breath of relief and turned around.

Lu Shangjin pulled out silenced pistols from his tactical belt and tossed them a few times in his palms. He held them against his shoulder straps and pointed his hands straight ahead.

A dozen of the same mechanical dogs approached, drooling.

“????” Xia Jingtian’s back was pressed up hard against the wall. 

“Have you ever fought in real life?” Lu Shangjin asked with a frown.

“Of course.” Xia Jingtian swallowed hard. He raised his M16 and leaned against Lu Shangjin’s side. “The most recent was last month at an Internet cafe double-booking with my roommate.”

Listening to that made Lu Shangjin have a headache..

The human gland mounted at the nape of each mechanical dog and mechanical linkage served as the driving force, and their powerful hind legs pounced with violent stomps. The meat grinder-like steel teeth lined up in their mouths were capable of crushing a human thigh with a single bite.

Lu Shangjin raised his hand and shot point-blank, the vicious dog that pounced on him was hit squarely in the forehead by a bullet and fell in the opposite direction.

Xia Jingtian’s gun was equipped with a special gravity projectile which fired at a low speed and was silent. The projectile was infused with the mountain lion’s characteristic J1 energy. Upon entering his gun, it immediately intensified the force of gravity by 100 times, leaving the mechanical dog forcibly sucked down against the ground and unable to get up.

The broken head of the mechanical dog slowly stood up.

Lu Shangjin took a step back, surprised to see the resurrection of a dozen dogs on the ground.

“…”

The human glands in the bullet-proof culture shielded behind their necks pulsated, and then one of the dogs suddenly pounced out violently. Lu Shangjin turned to avoid it, his forearm catching and strangling its neck.

“Ugh.” Lu Shangjin let out a low painful growl.

A bloody thorn was stabbed out of his forearm. The mechanical dog was covered in exploding sharp spines, and the mounted culture shield was actually filled with J1 porcupine alpha glands, the biological characteristics of which were grafted onto the experimental German Shepherd.

Lu Shangjin struggled to feel out for his pistol, aiming at the culture shield and fired five times. The glands were broken into pieces and the dog fell off of him.

Lu Shangjin bit down on the bandage and bound up the wound skillfully, “The main driving force is the gland.”

At the same time, Xia Jingtian shook off the two semi-mechanical dogs clinging onto his body, before rolling over and jumping on the experimental cabinet. He turned back to let out a burst of bullets, aiming at the artificial glands on the back of the neck.

Lu Shangjin threw away his handguns, stepped alongside on the wall, climbed with one hand on the steel ceiling diffuser and removed the AWM from his back. He carried the heavy gun and aimed narrowly at the artificial glands on the back of the necks of several vicious mechanical dogs.

With each burst, one of the training enclosures broke, incapacitating the mechanical dogs as the primary driving force was destroyed.

Lu Shangjin loosened his hand and landed on the ground, taking in a breath.

He then crouched down to examine the disjointed bodies.

“A new type of weapon…?” Xia Jingtian flipped over the carcass to examine further. Broken human glands fell to the ground, both alpha and omega, at the J1 grade.

“The missing higher-grade omega must have been brought here to be tested.” Xia Jingtian pressed on his suffocating chest, nausea rushing up from his feet to his throat.

Lu Shangjin used the muzzle of his gun to move the head of one of the mechanical dogs’ closed cover and found that the eyes were replaced with artificial eyes. The pupils were still flashing a monitor electronic shimmer.

“We’ve been found.” Lu Shangjin’s heart dropped.

They were already at the last door, how could they willingly give up now? If they missed this opportunity, even if they wanted to get the stem cell sample, it would be as hard as climbing to heaven.

Right now it was a bet between whether Lu Lin’s security forces would get here first or if he would get in first.

At the same time, the whereabouts of the pair have been installed on the mechanical dog’s monitor back to Lu Lin’s monitoring platform.

From a swivel chair in the master control room, Lu Lin watched the footage from the monitors.

He mused a little and pushed a few buttons.

“You’re here. He’ll be very happy now that we’ve reunited as a family.”

Passing through the third detection door into the underground space of PBB, the huge dome was full of tunnels. Lu Shangjin received the pointing signal from Bi Ruijing and found a relatively safe path to the freezer.

Xia Jingtian followed behind with his hands in his pockets. Every so often, he would glance at Lu Shangjin’s forearm pierced by the spikes, hastily holding it with a hemostatic bandage to keep the dripping blood from leaving traces on the ground.

Lu Shangjin was expressionless, occasionally reminding Xia Jingtian to watch his step and not trigger any anti-intrusion lazers.

“It will sever your foot in 0.01 seconds.”

“I don’t have your eyes, how am I supposed to see.” With difficulty, Xia Jingtian lifted his feet and followed Lu Shangjin wherever he placed his feet.

Unexpectedly, and without triggering the security system, the door of the freezer was opened easily.

Lu Shangjin did a quick scan of the interior of the room and the chilly air hit them.

An endless array of tens of thousands of battery-shaped insulated tubes were evenly distributed on the freezer table, densely but evenly spaced, each tube of stem cells labeled with glandular type and rank.

As soon as the pair stepped into the freezer, the secret door behind them automatically closed.

Xia Jingtian turned around and pulled at the handle, his heart went cold, “It’s bolted shut.”

Lu Shangjin took a hold onto the control panel and searched for A3 lop-eared rabbit stem cell samples.

The control panel continuously prompted him to insert a permission card.

“Fuck.” Lu Shangjin hissed through his teeth. He forcefully grabbed a console and went to manually search through each of the insulated tubes. 

“Yan Yan… hurry up and come out.” Lu Shangjin muttered. After searching over a few thousand, his stressed out eyes burned and he rubbed them. The tears in his eyes were mixed with streaks of blood.

Xia Jingtian was searching on the other side. Without the extreme vision that Lu Shangjin had, he had to go through the names one by one.

The only misstep was that not only were there M2 and higher grade of stem cells in there, but there were a lot of J1 mixed in there as well; there were a hundred thousand tubes in total.

An A3 flashed in front of his eyes, and Xia Jingtian immediately looked closer at the label, then the surprise in his eyes went cold again.

“Hamster A3…” Xia Jingtian’s mind flashed a few vague memory fragments, whispering almost silently, “Name… Pale little ears…”

He suddenly whipped his head back and found Lu Shangjin standing in front of a testing stand, speechless.

“Found him?” Xia Jingtian ran over. Lu Shangjin stooped down and lifted out a child from under the test stand.

It was a grey omega bunny, very young, but was dying of hunger and dehydration.

At the sight of Lu Shangjin, he shrank into a ball of fear, his little grey ears quivering.

Lu Shangjin held him in his arms, quietly coaxing him while also releasing soothing pheromones to help him calm down.

The file he had grabbed from the glandular hunter had a picture of this kid on it.

“Where are the other people?” Lu Shangjin asked patiently, brushing the little bunny’s hair.

The little grey bunny was comforted by the pets but still shrank into Lu Shangjin’s arms in fear. In a small voice, he said, “They were killed. Glands… taken out.”

The child wore a profile bracelet on his wrist with his name and gland type written on it.

Lop-eared rabbit glandular type, differentiation awakened, differentiation potential: A3.

Both men looked at each other in astonishment.

While A3 potential doesn’t mean you’ll ever get to A3, it’s definitely a god-given opportunity.

But taking stem cells from glands was much more damaging than taking from the bone marrow. Taking stem cells from glands at such a young age was the equivalent of taking away half of a child’s life, which was now destined to leave a residue after being offered as a sacrifice.  

But this was the best option at the moment. It would take more time to find Yan Yi from a sample of a hundred thousand than the time it would take to preserve the troops to annihilate the invaders. 

Apparently, Xia Jingtian had the same thought, or perhaps not even thinking that much at all, but he took the loaded M16 and loaded it, “Take him away.”

An unfamiliar child in Lu Shangjin’s heart did not excite any ripples of good thoughts.

But the little grey bunny raised his frightened face and hugged Lu Shangjin’s neck. He cried and hiccupped, whispering, “Thank you, gege.”

Lu Shangjin suddenly stopped in his steps, a tight and hard string on his heart was plucked, and it hurt like hell.

…

“Keep looking.”