Infiltrate

Lu Bai pressed the brim of his cap down a little, picked up the broom and placed it into the hand-pushed cleaning cart, then unhurriedly pushed the cart toward the Research Center building.

He wore an orange-and-white janitor uniform, along with a mask and gloves. Without needing to deliberately seek out blind spots in the surveillance along the way, he casually pushed the cleaning cart through the pathways between the tents.

The two soldiers at the entrance of the Research Center building merely glanced at him and made no move to stop him.

Lu Bai naturally pushed the cart into the building, passed through the lobby corridor, and stopped in front of the elevator doors.

It was ten o'clock at night. The warm-toned lighting illuminated the entire lobby brightly, but unfortunately, at this hour, there were hardly any people in the Research Center. The brighter it was, the more empty and silent it felt.

The elevator doors opened. Lu Bai calmly pushed the cart inside, swept his gaze over the surveillance camera in the upper-left corner of the elevator, then pressed the floor button without hesitation.

"Well done. Keep it up. Next, when the elevator doors open, there are two lab workers drinking coffee in the rest area on your left. Ignore them and keep going straight. You'll see a T-shaped corridor. Walk to the end, then turn right," Agu's voice came through the micro-earpiece.

Lu Bai's expression didn't change. He gave an almost imperceptible nod to show he understood.

Ding-dong~

With a pleasant chime, the elevator doors opened again.

"Watch out. Someone's about to come out of the lab on your left now."

Lu Bai dawdled out of the elevator, giving off the vibe of an office worker forced into overtime—daring to resent but not to complain, so he just slacked off.

The door to that lab was indeed pushed open. A Mediterranean Man in a lab coat yawned, and when he saw Lu Bai, he even said to him, "Thanks for the hard work."

Lu Bai nodded at the Mediterranean Man in acknowledgment. They silently passed each other, but after taking just two steps, Lu Bai suddenly turned his head back: "I don't think I've seen you before."

The Mediterranean Man was taken aback for a moment: "Maybe I spend most of my time inside the lab. It's pretty normal that you haven't seen me."

"You guys are the ones who really work hard." Lu Bai couldn't help but glance at the bald patch on the man's head.

After parting ways with the Mediterranean Man, the rest of Lu Bai's journey remained tense but uneventful.

Agu, directing remotely from inside the tent, was always able to give Lu Bai advance warnings, making one wonder just how he managed to pull all this off.

If it was some kind of Silver Ability, its intensity seemed a bit too absurd.

"Is that the place?"

Lu Bai stood in a surveillance blind spot, looking at a heavy isolation door not far away.

"Yeah. Next, I'll interfere with the two monitors in the Monitoring Room. That'll give us about a ten-second window. You'll have to move fast. You still remember the password, right?"

Lu Bai took the broom out of the cleaning cart, circled around to the corridor, and pretended to pass by this lab.

"Go."

As soon as the words fell, Lu Bai turned his head toward the keypad, his fingers flying across the keys. In less than three seconds, he entered the sixteen-digit password.

Zzzt—puff.

The lab's isolation door opened, then closed.

Lu Bai's entire set of movements was smooth and practiced, as if he had rehearsed it countless times in advance.

"Nice work!" Agu's voice was noticeably more excited.

"A janitor? What are you doing in here?"

A Glasses Man, about twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old, wearing a white lab coat, stared in shock at Lu Bai, who had suddenly opened the door and walked in.

Lu Bai: "..."

He set down the broom in his hand and let out a long sigh: "You're making this really hard for me."

"This lab coat of yours has pretty good quality."

Lu Bai tugged at it a couple of times, looking at the lab worker he had tied up like a dumpling, and expressed his satisfaction.

"You... what exactly do you want? I'm just an assistant. I don't know anything." The lab worker asked cautiously.

"Hmm... let me think about where to start."

Lu Bai rubbed his chin, then suddenly asked out of the blue: "This lab isn't for vaccine research, is it?"

Although it was a question, his tone sounded quite certain.

Seeming to sense that Lu Bai didn't intend to harm him, the lab worker with glasses relaxed a little.

His rationality returned, and his speech became more organized: "That's right. The vaccine research is led by Professor Jiang. Professor Jiang's lab isn't on this floor."

"Not going to say anything?" Lu Bai said softly.

In fact, ever since he entered this lab, the other end of the earpiece had gone silent, with no more sounds coming through.

Agu's voice rang out: "Ah, I'm listening. But I suggest you run now. The Rapid Response Force should already be at the Research Center building by this point."

"No rush."

Lu Bai wasn't flustered, and his tone didn't even speed up: "Have you already reached the lab where the vaccine is?"

"You caught on. A little slower than I expected."

Agu's voice came through the earpiece, inevitably sounding a bit distorted, but the smugness in it was unmistakable.

Hearing this, Lu Bai let out a soft laugh: "So you're actually a lab worker at the Research Center, aren't you?"

From Agu's perspective, since Lu Bai had given up his chance to escape, he didn't mind chatting a bit longer.

"Oh? Why would you think that?"

"I had my suspicions before. After all, if you were just secretly hiding a piece of Chewing Gum in the Monitoring Room and using the surveillance cameras to learn about this building, there would be plenty of blind spots. But you're very familiar with this building. With the strength of a Silver level ability, getting such detailed intel in just a few days is impossible. You couldn't just stick a piece of Chewing Gum on everyone you meet—that would be too disgusting. I'd rather believe you scouted the place in person. To do that without raising suspicion, you'd have to be a staff member who can freely enter and leave the Research Center. Oh, and one more thing—you might not have noticed. Although medical staff come to the shelter every day to disinfect, the smell of disinfectant on you is especially strong."

Lu Bai had long realized that a Deathmatch Participant's initial identity was randomly assigned. Compared to his High School Student start, a researcher's identity offered far more flexibility.

"You're sharper than I thought."

On the other end of the earpiece, Agu was silent for a few seconds before asking with some curiosity, "Then why did you still obediently follow my plan?"

Lu Bai removed the micro earpiece, pressing it between his thumb and forefinger until it crumbled. Only after doing this did he reveal a harmless smile, tinged with a hint of mockery. "Your plan?"

On the fifth floor of the Research Center, in a lab lined with a full row of test tubes, a white curtain was pushed aside. Zhou Zongming cursed as he squeezed his body out of a storage room cluttered with medical equipment, staring at Agu, who had broken in late at night. "This is insane. I actually listened to that kid and hid here for half a day. And damn it, the kid actually didn't lie to me."