The floor indicator lights at the bottom of the elevator car flashed wildly.
Sub-level 160.
Sub-level 170.
Three seconds to impact.
Qin Hongyi stopped convulsing.
She stood up slowly from the floor.
She lifted her bloodstained face.
Deep in her originally clear black-and-white eyes now glowed a mesmerizing dark golden halo—the exclusive mark left by Subject 001’s divine blood.
She looked down at her own hands.
Her muscle fibers brimmed with terrifying explosive power capable of tearing armor apart with bare hands.
With every breath, the lethal gas became nothing more than a gentle breeze against her face, filtered and expelled by her brand-new lungs.
First-stage evolution.
She was no longer a mere mortal body. She had truly stepped into the ranks of the apex predators—a new human.
“Tastes awful,” Qin Hongyi said. Her voice had lost its rasp and now carried a metallic edge.
She took one step forward and stood directly in front of Gu Chen.
The arrogant young master of Beijing’s elite circles was leaning against the wall, breathing hard from overexpending his origin blood.
Qin Hongyi bent down without hesitation and scooped him up in her arms. It was a textbook princess carry.
Gu Chen’s brows furrowed.
The moment he tried to struggle, her arms tightened around him.
The weight of over a hundred pounds felt as light as a sheet of paper in her hands now.
“Save your energy,” Qin Hongyi murmured, lowering her head to nuzzle the blood on the side of his neck.
She greedily inhaled the scent of what belonged to her.
“The toy I bought with my life—no one is taking it away.”
Clang!
The elevator slammed into the bottom level.
The brakes locked.
The car shook violently.
Beyond the doors lay the Mo family’s true underground core zone.
The two blast doors that should have opened were now sealed shut by the gas defense mechanism, fitting together without a single gap.
Qin Hongyi glanced at Su Rou beside her.
The S-rank monster had been cowering in the corner pretending to be dead.
Now, sensing the high-tier pressure radiating from Qin Hongyi, she shrank back even more fearfully than she did around Gu Chen.
“Step back.”
Qin Hongyi didn’t issue an order to smash the door.
Still carrying Gu Chen, she planted herself squarely in front of the metal doors.
She drew her right leg back half a step, then twisted her hips and waist.
Bang!
The blast door—thick enough to withstand armor-piercing rounds—caved inward with a horrifying crater at its center.
The muscle groups in her leg transmitted the inhuman force granted by the divine blood, concentrating it all into her heel.
Rivets snapped one after another.
The ninety-ton alloy door let out a mournful groan, tore free of its tracks, and flew outward, slamming heavily onto the stone tiles of the plaza beyond.
Outside was a hexagonal underground square.
Directly ahead stood a stepped altar built from black obsidian.
Hundreds of Mo family deathsworn in black robes and featureless white masks stood in tight formation around the altar.
They weren’t holding ordinary firearms.
Instead, they wielded bizarre bio-electromagnetic rifles.
At the far end of the deathsworn army, seated high upon a stone throne, was a grotesquely obese monster covered in tumors.
Countless neural interface boards were embedded in its abdomen, with cables stretching deep underground to connect with the so-called Subject 000.
They had been waiting for the gas to dissolve Qin Hongyi, waiting for Gu Chen to lose his key and turn into a walking corpse they could drag into a cage as rations.
The sound of the blast door flying out shattered every assumption.
The smoke cleared.
Qin Hongyi stepped out of the elevator still carrying Gu Chen.
Gu Chen rested against the crook of her neck.
His golden vertical pupils were half-lidded as he looked down arrogantly at the so-called hidden clan before him, as if staring at corpses.
She could clearly hear the deathsworn swallowing nervously a hundred meters away, even the faint charging frequency of their bio-electromagnetic rifles.
“These are the trash that wanted your life?” Qin Hongyi swept her gaze across the entire plaza.
The feeling of evolution was more addictive than controlling a trillion-yuan consortium.
Even though Gu Chen was weak, his tone remained vicious. “They’re nothing but feeders serving their master. No point leaving any alive—they’re too filthy.”
“Understood.”
Qin Hongyi gently set Gu Chen down behind a clean section of broken wall.
She straightened up and rolled her neck.
Her cervical vertebrae produced a series of crisp cracking sounds.
The Mo family deathsworn snapped out of their daze.
Their commanding officer gave a hoarse order.
Hundreds of bio-electromagnetic rifles lit up with eerie blue light at once.
High-frequency sound waves mixed with electromagnetic pulses swept toward the altar entrance like a tidal wave.
Half an hour ago, that attack would have turned Qin Hongyi’s internal organs into bloody pulp on contact.
Now, she walked straight into the pulse net.
The invisible sound waves merely fluttered the hem of her coat.
The lethality aimed at soft human tissue was completely useless against her new high-density muscle fibers.
The commander’s eyes widened in terror.
His finger stayed glued to the trigger, unable to comprehend why the target hadn’t fallen.
Qin Hongyi kicked off the ground.
In less than a second, she turned into a black shadow.
The air exploded with a sonic boom as she broke the sound barrier.
The bluestone tiles beneath her feet shattered into powder.
She cut straight into the center of the deathsworn formation.
She didn’t use her gun.
She didn’t use a bayonet.
She simply grabbed the commander’s skull with one hand and squeezed.
The man and his skull burst apart.
With their orders gone, the deathsworn fell into chaos.
The slaughter became a one-sided massacre.
Su Rou caught the scent of blood and let out an excited roar as she dove into the fray.
Two figures—one black, one white—unleashed a brutal, inhuman slaughter inside the army of hundreds.
Gu Chen leaned against the broken wall, watching Qin Hongyi weave through the flying blood and flesh.
A trace of satisfaction appeared on his originally pale face.
This deal had been worth every penny.
Only by forging the genetic lock into a blade did they qualify to sit at the table with the monster lurking deep underground.
Gu Chen pulled a flattened cigarette from his pocket and brought it to his fingertips.
The high temperature from unlocking the genetic lock hadn’t faded yet.
A spark from his fingertip instantly lit the cigarette.
He took a deep drag. Gray-blue smoke mixed with the smell of blood as he exhaled.
Through the bloody haze, he stared into the absolute darkness at the deepest part of the underground space—where even light could not penetrate.
The second half of the match. A life-or-death game.
The skull of the last Mo family deathsworn shattered in Qin Hongyi’s grip.
The hard dish that had been delivered straight to their door was now fully prepared.
It was time to see whether the old dog of the Mo family could swallow it.
Qin Hongyi flicked the sticky red-and-white filth from her fingers and kicked the corpse off the altar.
The heavy-firepower formation of several hundred men hadn’t lasted five minutes before being completely slaughtered.
Su Rou squatted in the pile of bodies like a beast guarding its food, stuffing energy cores into her mouth with both hands.
Blood covered her face.
Occasionally she lifted her turbid gray-white eyes and stole a fearful glance at Qin Hongyi.
The plaza fell silent.
The air stopped moving.
The cold intent rising from underground multiplied.
It wasn’t a physical drop in temperature.
It was a massive, twisted, higher-dimensional will that surpassed carbon-based life, forcing its way into the space through the black obsidian altar.
Gu Chen leaned against the broken wall.
The penetrating wound on his left chest was healing extremely slowly.
The price of forcibly stripping away his origin divine blood was finally beginning to backlash.
His heartbeat dropped from two hundred beats per minute to fifty. Snow-like static flickered at the edges of his vision.
For a top predator, that kind of sluggishness was the same as washing your neck clean and offering it to the reaper.
Deep within the altar, the obese, tumor-covered monster connected by countless cables suddenly convulsed violently, as if struck by high-voltage electricity.
The neural interface boards embedded in its abdomen exploded with blinding blue light.
An extremely faint sound of air being sliced cut through the silence.
Nothing was visible to the naked eye, but in Gu Chen’s infrared thermal vision, the surrounding space had been churned into mush.
Hundreds of semi-transparent spiritual tentacles erupted from the bottom of the abyss.
They ignored gravity, ignored physical defense, and came hurtling over in a overwhelming barrage.
Gu Chen crushed the cigarette pack in his hand.
He tilted his head.
One invisible spike brushed past his earlobe and embedded itself in the broken wall behind him.
No hole was left. The several-ton load-bearing wall simply turned into a pile of powder.
Direct annihilation on the spiritual level.
Their escape route was sealed.
Thirty tentacles folded into an extremely cunning angle in mid-air, bypassing Qin Hongyi on the perimeter and shooting straight toward Gu Chen’s forehead from a blind spot.
Subject 000’s hunting logic was brutally simple: strike while the enemy is weak!
Devour this weakened, blood-loss perfect vessel first. The rest could be crushed at leisure.
Gu Chen raised his hand to block.
His movement was a tenth of a second too slow.
At that exact moment, a fierce wind carrying the scent of blood and cold fragrance slammed heavily into his chest.
Qin Hongyi, relying on her first-stage evolved beast instinct, didn’t waste a single word.
She exploded through the air and crashed straight into Gu Chen.
She spun around, locking her hands tightly onto his shoulders and turning her back completely toward the spiritual tentacles.
Squish!
Flesh was forcibly pierced.
There were no sparks. There was no collision.
Two tentacles as thick as an adult’s arm punched straight through Qin Hongyi’s abdomen, emerging from her chest as a large, blood-soaked phantom.
Qin Hongyi’s entire body stiffened violently.
Her ten fingers dug deep into Gu Chen’s suit, tearing the shoulder pads to shreds.
Dark red blood trickled down the tip of the illusory tentacle.
Premium Chapter
Login to buy access to this Chapter.