Wisdom Ultimately Cannot Defeat Destiny

Ba Wang, that Russian mercenary, truly had a stubborn, reckless streak!

So what if I can't beat you?

I can still drag you down to hell with me!

The thing was, this "true professional" team consisted of only three people: Zero, Ba Wang, and Chu Xuan.

But now, Zero had been killed by a headshot from the second Xenomorph, which had ambushed him through a wall. Although Ba Wang had managed to blow three holes into the Xenomorph blocking the door using a custom KS-23 shotgun he'd scavenged, he was immediately run through by the frenzied creature's tail. The Russian giant had then dragged the Xenomorph down with him in a mutual destruction.

Thus, the only person left in the room was Chu Xuan, the Colonel with world-shaking intellect, often revered as the "Living Zhuge Liang." As the second Xenomorph lunged into the room, Chu Xuan's eyes—usually clear as water and cold as ice—instantly turned hollow and deathly still. Though he continued to fire his assault rifle in three-round bursts, the rhythm and placement of his shots became eerily precise, targeting toes, joints, eyes, or the creature's gaping maw.

What was most shocking was that these bullets, which didn't seem particularly fast, had a hit rate of at least sixty percent. While his previous accuracy had been higher, those shots had struck the largest parts of the torso, which were far less effective than these precise strikes. Since these areas either had thin armor or none at all, a single man firing a dozen rounds had managed to inflict massive damage on the second Xenomorph.

If Zhang Jie, Zheng Zha, and Wang Zhen were here, they would likely shout, "Damn it, that's impossible!"

Indeed!

It was truly impossible!

Zheng Zha needed to face a life-or-death crisis where he was about to be skewered by a Xenomorph to unlock the first stage of the Gene Lock. This allowed the combat and killing techniques accumulated deep within his genes—honed since the dawn of humanity through countless battles against prehistoric beasts, monsters, and his own kind—to flood his consciousness. These techniques, forged over eons, became his instinct, allowing them to take control of his body to fight and kill. It was precisely because of this that Zheng Zha could pull off a desperate counter-kill; one second he was pushed into a hopeless death trap, and the next, he unlocked the Gene Lock, letting those ancient instincts take over and effortlessly slaughter the Xenomorph right there on the spot.

According to Zhang Jie, this method of unlocking the Gene Lock was the mainstream path, as Infinite Space never lacked life-threatening situations. When you encountered such a crisis, there were only two roads: either unlock the Gene Lock, kill your enemy, and have your strength skyrocket, or take the simpler path—fail to unlock it and get hacked to death by the enemy.

But Chu Xuan's situation was different, a path unique to geniuses: he was actively opening the Gene Lock himself!

With Zero and Ba Wang dead and the last Xenomorph having charged into the room, standing less than seven paces away, the brilliant Chu Xuan stood at the edge of a bottomless abyss, with half a foot already dangling over the void.

And so, this peerless prodigy with an IQ of 220 opened the Gene Lock of his own volition. The combat and killing techniques of his human ancestors from eons past surged forth from the depths of his genes like a tidal wave. While Zheng Zha chose to hide in his own consciousness and let these surging instincts take over his body, Chu Xuan did not. He chose to guide, divert, and store them, integrating the vast, chaotic ocean of combat techniques into himself in an orderly fashion, using his brain—which rivaled a supercomputer—to command them.

In just a few seconds and a few dozen rounds, the second Xenomorph was more severely wounded than the first. The grievous injuries sent the creature into a frenzy, and Chu Xuan's body began to sprout wounds of all sizes, his blood quickly soaking his uniform. Yet, the death crisis had not passed; it had drawn even closer. Because Colonel Chu continued to maintain the Gene Lock state, frantically squeezing every last drop of potential from his body, just as the Xenomorph's eye was blinded and its inner jaw—capable of piercing most materials—was shattered at the root, the creature entered a near-death state. But then, the Colonel's gun... ran out of ammo.

That's right!

Colonel Chu's gun was empty!

It was at the moment this small but fatal flaw was exposed that one of Chu Xuan's arms was torn off. In the agony that followed, he dropped out of the Gene Lock state, and with it came the intense pain surging from every muscle, bone, organ, and cell in his body.

Even as a man devoid of emotion and pain, he was racked with full-body spasms, as if every cell were twitching in a frenzy. Having lost an arm, Chu Xuan collapsed to the floor like a heap of cotton, unable to move—not even a finger or an eyelid.

Chu Xuan could only watch helplessly as the Xenomorph, covered in its own viscous, corrosive bodily fluids, inched toward him step by step. The creature's hatred for Chu Xuan was so great that it abandoned the idea of tearing him apart with its claws or skewering him with its tail. It wanted to take this two-legged creature that had inflicted such massive damage and nearly killed it, and chew him up bit by bit, starting from his feet, until it finally swallowed his head whole.

Though Chu Xuan's entire body was convulsing, his mind remained clear. He could see exactly what this near-death Xenomorph, which he had beaten to its last breath, intended to do, but he was powerless to stop it. There was no sign of a miraculous reversal of fate, and at this moment, his heart was strangely calm.

As an artificially cultivated human, Chu Xuan possessed world-shaking intellect but lacked emotions, much like a flesh-and-blood robot. As the lead researcher at the secret base, he was, in truth, also a subject of study for others. With his immense intelligence, he knew how others in the base whispered about him behind his back, and he knew exactly what kind of existence he was in their eyes. Therefore, when he saw the dying Xenomorph approaching to slowly devour him, he accepted this impending cruel fate with a calm heart.

Or perhaps, for Chu Xuan, his life had always been cruel, and this was simply the end of that cruel destiny. Thus, he felt a profound peace; even the discomfort of his muscles, bones, and organs twitching in agony could not disturb this final tranquility.

Just as the Xenomorph began to leisurely chew its way toward Chu Xuan's waist, the entire room suddenly came to life, and metallic strips began to fly through the air from all directions...