Change

"In the face of life and death, intense pain can crush the will to survive. At such times, you might as well engage in deep self-hypnosis, paralyzing the nerves that transmit pain, and concentrating your energy to think in the shortest possible time..."

These were words Yuanye had spoken to Xilin, but Xilin had never truly put them into practice, because no situation had ever left him so utterly defenseless as this moment.

Hypnosis.

Self-hypnosis.

His entire body was convulsing. Xilin drew a ragged breath and closed his eyes.

Watching the waveform on the screen rise another segment, the Old Man's hand trembled. He removed his goggles and leaned closer to the screen, his deep-set eyes fixed on it as if trying to discern the truth of the matter.

The spiral knob had been turned two hundred and seventy degrees, and the chip was stimulated to seventy-five percent.

Without looking at Xilin on the experimental bench, the Old Man smiled, a twisted expression on his face. The life indicator was still beating strongly, meaning he could push it higher!

Two hundred and eighty degrees...

Two hundred and ninety degrees...

Three hundred degrees...

The instrument had already begun to issue warnings, but the crimson warning signs and piercing alarms did not shake the Old Man in the slightest.

The Old Man's eyes were now filled with madness.

Of the nearly a thousand test subjects before him, none had managed to endure three hundred degrees. But today...

"Heh... Heheheh... My name, Hou Lei, will also appear in Glory and Cipher!"

Xilin currently had no energy to pay attention to the Old Man's words. If he had heard them, he would have thought the Old Man was a lunatic! To actually dream of appearing in Glory and Cipher with such resource allocation!?

Glory and Cipher were the names of the most famous electronic publications in the galactic network, hailed as the "history books" of the Star Alliance. In front of these two electronic publications, countless other Star Alliance electronic publications were reduced to background noise. These two were also the only publications with a contribution score exceeding ninety out of a perfect one hundred in the Star Alliance's electronic publication contribution system. This meant that the deeds or research achievements published in these two electronic publications had a minimum contribution score of ninety.

Anyone or anything recorded in Glory and Cipher, be it a person, deed, or research, was enough to make the entire Star Alliance tremble. Glory featured generals and politicians, while Cipher featured academics and technicians.

Whether it was people or achievements recorded in these two behemoth magazines, they were the result of countless human, material, financial resources, and time. On Brown Earth Star, where Xilin was from, the highest reported contribution score was only a little over twenty, only enough to be recorded in magazines with limited influence. In fact, any contribution exceeding ten would be broadcast on the planet's television for more than ten days, let alone those with a contribution score above ninety.

Therefore, anyone normal would consider the Old Man's words to be delusional.

The Old Man turned the knob again.

Three hundred and ten degrees...

Three hundred and twenty degrees...

Beep--Beep--Beep--

The alarm grew more urgent, the fluctuations in the life curve becoming erratic. Several instruments began to smoke, vibrating with loud bangs as buttons exploded. The situation was escalating, and the tubes attached to Xilin were shaking, seemingly unable to withstand the strain.

Bang!

One of the handcuffs gripping Xilin's fingers was flung off by the immense pressure.

Bang!

Another one followed.

The Old Man was no longer paying attention to Xilin. His entire focus was absorbed by the data on the screen, his fingers hovering over a dial, eager to see the final results.

Buttons that had been blasted from the instruments littered the surroundings.

There was no more time. Xilin knew his limits.

His two freed fingers clamped onto a button that had flown off some instrument. This was a reaction born from the last shred of consciousness, a self-hypnosis induced by the pain, and Xilin's final chance.

This sliver of consciousness, however, performed an astonishingly precise analysis, more accurate than ever before, like the fine-tuning and error analysis of a sophisticated instrument. In less than a second, Xilin launched the button.

Pfft--

The flying button ricocheted off the floor, walls, and a baffle on an instrument. After three rebounds, it shot into the Old Man's left eye, piercing his brain and severing the central nervous system's neural network. He died instantly. At that very moment, the "madman's" fingers were on the dial, preparing for the final adjustment. The dial's display now pointed to 350 degrees. It was a hair's breadth away from disaster; if it had reached 360 degrees, Xilin would have died too...

Fortunately, the Old Man was truly human. Fortunately, he hadn't undergone extreme bodily modifications. The instantly deceased Old Man collapsed beside the instrument.

The moment the Old Man died, all the tubes binding Xilin retracted. An alert popped up on the instrument, and a synthesized voice announced, "Master deceased, initiating purge protocol."

Xilin ignored his still-numb body, rolling off the platform and onto the floor. Unable to stand, he could only look up at the screens, where images and data flashed by in an instant.

Every piece of information about to be purged flickered across the screens. It was hard to imagine the Old Man had set up such a purge system.

Even individuals with B-Class or A-Class Genotypes might not be able to capture all that data and imagery. Even if they could, they might not be able to memorize it all, especially when confined to a single screen. But Xilin had memorized the content on all ten-plus screens. This would have been absolutely impossible before. While his memory was strong, his capture speed had never been able to keep up, let alone memorize over ten screens simultaneously!

His body was rapidly adjusting. Xilin's eyes seemed unfocused, yet they deeply imprinted the information flashing across the screens into his mind. If he didn't understand this information, he wouldn't even know how he died. The substance the Old Man had injected into him was like an unknown bomb.

Five minutes later, the purge program completed. All information related to this experiment, including details about the Old Man, Hou Lei Hansen, that had flashed on the screens, was now stored in Xilin's memory.

"Purge protocol complete. Destruction program will commence in five minutes. Desiccation countdown..."

Damn it!

Xilin cursed inwardly. He moved his body, which was regaining some sensation, and struggled to stand, staggering towards the exit.

All the doors in the underground laboratory opened. The other rooms were for storage, containing "specimens," food, equipment, and medicine. The true core was the room Xilin had been in, so he had neither the inclination nor the time to concern himself with the contents of other rooms. Relying on his memory, he followed the route he had been brought in on.

The doors were all open, offering unobstructed passage, as if it had been deliberately arranged. The five minutes were just enough.

As Xilin reached a ventilation duct at the edge of the laboratory, the desiccation program activated. A quicksand-like depression appeared in the Central Laboratory and spread outwards. The ground, all the experimental instruments, and the dead Old Man all turned into quicksand as the desiccation spread. By the time Xilin climbed out of the ventilation duct and returned to the building, the desiccation had just reached the duct.

Xilin didn't have time to rest. He knew that what the Old Man called the "Destruction Program" was definitely more than just sandification. To prevent his research results from leaking, he had bound his own life force to all his programs. To be so resolute, the destruction would surely be more thorough.

Fortunately, it wasn't dawn yet, and there was no one on the streets. Under the cover of darkness, Xilin moved along, sticking close to high sheds and eaves. If he were discovered by the "Sky Eye," all his efforts would be in vain.

As expected, not long after Xilin left, a massive explosion woke the sleeping people. A mushroom cloud surged into the sky, dazzling flames, a large-scale crater on the ground, surrounding buildings collapsing from the blast wave, broken walls and ruins, a scene of devastation. The cries of awakened children and the curses of adults filled the air.

Before any curious onlookers could approach the explosion site, a white light descended from the sky, enveloping the explosion area in a cage of white light, isolating it from the outside world. The "Sky Eye" had already reacted, and it was believed that the Security Team's patrols would arrive soon to investigate.

However, these were not things Xilin needed to concern himself with. After slipping back into his ten-square-meter room in the slums, his highly strung nerves slowly relaxed, and he fell into a deep sleep.