The Nest

"Earlier than us? What do you mean? Are you talking about some kind of substance in your body? Could it have existed even before the Progenitor Virus we first discovered?"

Now that the other party had spoken, Spencer sounded somewhat excited.

The fact that they could communicate meant there was a chance to negotiate.

And all the abilities this young man had displayed were exactly the perfect form Spencer had dreamed of ever since founding his company!

He retained a human appearance and reason, yet possessed godlike abilities.

Immortal, indestructible, ageless, invincible—that was a true ultimate life-form!

And Spencer, who had spent years confined to a wheelchair as his body gradually deteriorated, desperately needed to merge with this kind of power!

But Xia Tianming fell silent again. He stopped in front of a room at the end of the corridor.

There was a living presence inside.

Wesker and the shareholders had never entered this place, judging from their memories. They all seemed to find it repulsive.

So Xia Tianming turned around, pushed open the door, and went inside. The air was thick with the mingled smells of disinfectant and blood. The walls looked pure white, but on closer inspection, they were covered in faint, dried bloodstains.

No matter how many times they scrubbed and rinsed them, they couldn't wash away the stains that had seeped into the walls.

All kinds of surgical instruments lay on the medical tables in the room, almost enough to cover the needs of every department.

This must have been the "hell's kitchen" where they had created the monsters displayed in the corridor's glass cabinets.

Xia Tianming noticed another door in the lab. A great many faint signs of life came from beyond it, so he walked over and pushed it open. An even more overpowering stench poured out, making him frown.

Beyond the door was a more spacious area, but it was packed with a hundred or so hospital beds. Someone lay on every one of them, hooked up to an IV drip.

No—perhaps they could no longer be called people. They were living test subjects being injected with biological viruses!

Their bodies hadn't yet mutated to the extent of the monsters displayed in the cabinets outside, but it was only a matter of time before they became just like them.

Those lying in the beds were either captured members of the resistance or survivors seized from the wasteland.

They had survived the harsh conditions of the apocalypse and the hideous bio-monsters, but not the treachery of their fellow humans...

Disgusting, enormous pustules covered their bodies. Tissue of various colors oozed out, staining the sheets until their original color was unrecognizable.

The overpowering stench came from them!

On top of that, the people subjected to these biological experiments were groaning in agony, their cries echoing beneath the ceiling of the huge ward and filling it with despair...

"Uncle... did you come to treat me too...?"

A weak, childish voice reached Xia Tianming's ears.

He turned to look. On a nearby bed lay a little girl of about ten.

Her once-lovely hair had become a mass of sores. A swollen viral tumor had forced her right eye out of its socket, and her head had grown abnormally large, while her body was so thin and frail it seemed ready to break at a touch.

Pale green liquid was flowing from the IV bottle beside her bed. Xia Tianming could sense biological toxins mixed into it.

Even so, she struggled to stretch her cracked lips, most of whose teeth had fallen out, into a smile.

From what she'd said, the researchers must have tricked her into undergoing biological experiments by claiming they were treating her illness...

"Yes. I'm here to treat you."

Xia Tianming lowered his dark eyes and looked at the girl, speaking calmly.

The other people being used as test subjects noticed someone was there and cried out in hoarse voices:

"Please... kill me..."

"I don't want to... live anymore..."

"I'm in so much pain... Waaaah..."

Like maggots, they writhed on their filthy beds, their bodies grotesquely deformed. But every movement only brought them more pain.

The little girl struggled to raise her right hand and extend a finger. The coldness in her body made her long to feel the warmth of a normal person.

Xia Tianming looked at her, raised his own hand, and extended his index finger to touch hers.

The instant their fingertips met!

A black-and-red tentacle burrowed from Xia Tianming's finger into the little girl's index finger!

Then the Blacklight Tentacle surged through her like an unstoppable bolt of lightning, shattering and devouring the biological viruses responsible for her condition. It rapidly split and multiplied, instantly filling every blood vessel in her body!

The tumors on her face vanished at a visible speed, and her beautiful blue eyes reappeared.

The Blacklight Tentacles filled in for her damaged internal organs, taking over their missing functions and restoring them to normal.

Even the teeth that had fallen out of her mouth grew back!

In less than three seconds, the little girl's barely surviving body had almost miraculously returned to normal. Her complexion improved in an instant, and her tender cheeks regained their healthy color!

The IV bottle beside her bed was still pumping biological-virus solution into her, but as soon as it entered her body, the Blacklight Virus filling her blood vessels devoured it instantly. It was no different from an injection of glucose.

"Uncle, you're much better than those doctors in white..." The girl felt her pain disappear all at once and smiled innocently.

In the apocalypse, where education was scarce, a girl her age couldn't have known how strange it was for all her ailments to be cured in an instant.

But the "patients" in the beds beside her witnessed the bizarre scene and stared in shock. "Y-you... who are you...?"

"Your savior."

Xia Tianming replied calmly. Then he suddenly stretched out both arms like Jesus. Countless black-and-red tentacles surged from his fingertips, darting across every bed in the room like server cables and burrowing into every patient!

In less than five seconds, the Blacklight Virus had spread across and connected all the beds in the room, forming a massive sheet of black-and-red Virus Biomass!

The biological viruses inside the patients were all wiped out and converted into the Blacklight Virus!

But it didn't stop there. The Virus Biomass continued spreading rapidly across the floor, walls, and ceiling. Countless writhing tendrils extended from its surface, making anyone's SAN value plummet!

Before long, the entire spacious ward had been completely enveloped, transformed into a terrifying scene resembling a nest!

Nearly all the hundreds of patients were "healed" at the same time. They sat up in shock, staring at their restored bodies in disbelief, as if they were dreaming.

After creating all this, Xia Tianming severed the tentacle connection between his fingers and the Creep. But on a perceptual level, he had formed a kind of psychic connection with the entire nest!

Xia Tianming was like a central server, with every sub-server here connected to him.

Every person in the nest, every breath of life, was synchronized in his mind in real time. Even their thoughts flowed into his own!

Was this the legendary psychic connection...?

But Xia Tianming could choose which information was useful and filter out the rest.

Like the few bugs currently hiding in a medical cabinet.

At a mere thought from Xia Tianming, the Creep's tendrils near the cabinet lashed out, tipping the large cabinet over and spilling several researchers in white coats onto the floor.

They had heard the commotion outside and hurriedly hidden in a cabinet.

Now that they'd been discovered—and saw the ward transformed into a scene of hellish terror—they scrambled to their feet and tried to run.

But their hands and feet were caught in the writhing Creep, leaving them completely unable to move!

"D-don't kill us... we were only following orders from our superiors when we conducted these experiments..." The researchers saw the man coming toward them and were so terrified that tears and snot streamed down their faces as they begged for mercy.

But Xia Tianming didn't even glance at them. He simply walked past and left the ward, now transformed into a Blacklight Nest.

W-what was going on? Had he spared their lives?

Suddenly, the researchers sensed someone approaching.

They looked up, and the sight before them made their eyes nearly bulge from their sockets!

The test subjects on the beds had all sat up at some point, staring at them with eyes as black as the Abyss!

"I'm so hungry..."

The little girl Xia Tianming had "healed" first had already climbed out of bed. With eyes devoid of even a trace of white, she walked toward the researchers.

She wore a sweet smile, but several black tentacles stretched from the corners of her slightly parted mouth, writhing like snake tongues...

Researchers...

"Ah!!!!!"