Awakening

Mountain Orange City, one thousand meters beneath the Northern Institute Research Center, lay a silent, deserted basement. In the brightly lit room stood five vertical incubation tanks, each containing a naked figure suspended within.

Suddenly, the naked male corpse in one of the tanks snapped his eyes open.

It felt as though he had been asleep for a very, very long time; his mind was a complete blank. It took a long while before his hollow eyes gradually regained their focus.

Who... am I?

The first question was one of self-inquiry.

I, I, I, I am, I am, I am, I am, I am Hong, I am Hong... I am Hong Mo. The answer surfaced in his mind, one character at a time.

As this question was resolved, it was as if a floodgate had been opened; countless memories surged forth, filling his entire consciousness.

Much like a computer that hadn't been used for years, the sudden influx of data caused Hong Mo's brain to crash. Though it had crashed, it hadn't completely failed; like an old machine, it continued to run slowly, digesting the once-familiar memories.

He didn't know how much time had passed, but eventually, Hong Mo opened his eyes again. His original memories had fully returned.

Although he had recovered his memories, they were still stuck at the moment before he had lost consciousness. As for why he was here, he had no information at all. However, it wasn't hard to guess; judging by his current environment, he had become the legendary lab rat.

The incubation tank was over four meters tall, connected to the ceiling, and filled with a pale green liquid that left no room for air. With his memories restored, his old habits returned as well. Hong Mo took a breath, and the liquid from the tank rushed into his lungs.

"Cough, cough!"

Hong Mo was, without a doubt, choked by a large mouthful. It was only then that he realized there was no air in the tank. That was to be expected—how could there be air in an incubation tank? But if there was no air, how had he survived? Could it be that his body no longer required respiration?

As thoughts raced through his mind, Hong Mo surveyed his surroundings. It was a spacious room, but it contained nothing extra, save for the other four incubation tanks. Hong Mo was currently suspended in one of them.

Where on earth was this place?

Hong Mo reached out his left hand to touch the glass wall in front of him, gauging its hardness. Suddenly, he felt a jolt in his heart and stared at his left hand.

It was completely intact!

Hong Mo looked at his left hand in bewilderment. At his mental command, his fingers flexed and curled with ease. He remembered clearly that Mao Shaohui had blown it to pieces with a gunshot. Hong Mo wanted to laugh; he didn't know why, but he just wanted to laugh. When his left hand had been destroyed, he hadn't said anything, but deep down, he had felt a great sense of loss.

Yet now, his left hand had grown back, though he didn't know how.

He suddenly clenched his fist and struck out hard. A dull thud echoed through the quiet room. Still a bit weak, he thought; it seemed his strength wasn't what it used to be. Hong Mo clenched and opened his fist several times. As he exerted force, veins bulged along his arm.

Well, that's not bad either.

Once he calmed down, the faint sound of trickling water reached his ears. His previous punch had cracked the glass wall of the tank, and now, the liquid inside was slowly leaking out.

So fragile!

The thought crossed his mind, but he didn't dwell on it. He followed up with another punch from his left hand. With a loud crash, glass shards scattered from the point of impact, falling to the floor with a crisp, tinkling sound.

Hong Mo climbed out of the tank, letting the unknown liquid slide off his body.

"Ah~~!" Hong Mo stretched, then suddenly tensed his entire body, causing the air around him to crackle as if under pressure.

Well, I don't know how much time has passed, but I hope it's not the end of the world or something. Hong Mo suddenly recalled plots from certain novels where the protagonist wakes up from an experiment to find the world has ended and a new era has begun.

It couldn't be that cliché, could it?

Hong Mo turned to look at the other four tanks. He still held a certain interest in these four "companions."

Two men and two women. The women had beautiful facial features and appeared to be twins. However, the twins were currently suspended in their tanks with pale faces, their hair drifting slightly, giving them an eerie appearance, like two floating corpses. No, they were literally floating corpses; there was no trace of life in them.

Of the two men, one had an incredibly robust build, standing a full three meters tall with sharply defined muscles that seemed packed with explosive power. The other was quite ordinary, looking just like any other person.

I don't recognize them, Hong Mo finally concluded. He had never seen these four before.

Four people, no breathing, no heartbeat. Hong Mo actually found a similar scenario in his memories: the zombies trapped in rooms in the Resident Evil movies.

It couldn't be, could it? And what would it be? Zombies, of course. Once the thought arose, it wasn't easily dismissed. Hong Mo even wondered if he was a zombie who had regained consciousness after a mutation. There couldn't be such a cliché plot, could there? Hong Mo pinched his body; although it was still a bit stiff, it couldn't be compared to the decaying body of a zombie.

I can't figure it out!

Hong Mo was too lazy to think about it. Even a genius with an IQ of 200 wouldn't be able to deduce anything with so little data. Besides, he didn't think his IQ was that high. Ignoring his four "companions," Hong Mo walked toward the door.

As for breaking their tanks and letting them out?

Please, Hong Mo didn't have the time for that. Curiosity killed the cat. If these things really were like the zombies in the movies, he couldn't be sure what his fate would be.

The door was made of alloy, seamless and flush with the wall. But that couldn't stump Hong Mo—after all, his superpower was electromagnetism.

He pressed his right hand against the alloy door, and as he willed it, electric current flowed into the gate, expanding his superpower field.

"Ugh~~~~!" Hong Mo clutched his forehead as a sharp pain radiated from between his brows. It took a long while for him to recover. What was going on? A sense of unease flashed through his heart. His body definitely had a problem, but what exactly was it?

Hong Mo tried to repeat the action. First, the current—no problem, his power was still there. Then, he expanded his superpower field to scan. Another sharp pain, though since he was prepared, it wasn't as unbearable as before.

The moment the superpower field expanded and extended less than ten meters from his body, it was as if it had been irritated; it immediately retracted, accompanied by that same sharp pain in his brow.

"Damn it!"

Hong Mo cursed inwardly. The "superpower field"—a name he and Mu Siyu had chosen—was an energy field that awakened some time after they gained their powers. Hong Mo and Mu Siyu had discovered that the function of the superpower field was to provide a boost, channeling their energy through it.

For example, for electricity to flow, it needed a conductor, like metal. To conduct through the air, it required an extremely high voltage—like lightning, which exceeded a billion volts. The current in Hong Mo's body certainly didn't have that kind of voltage, yet it could conduct through the air precisely because of the superpower field. Moreover, perhaps because his power was electromagnetic, his field was like an electromagnetic field, with a wide range sufficient for large-scale mapping.

However, it was clear that his superpower field was now malfunctioning.

Hong Mo rubbed his brow and slowly outputted the current again. This time, he didn't use the superpower field to assist, but as the current extended, the room's circuitry appeared in his mind.

Found it! The control switch for the metal door.

Hong Mo felt a surge of joy and fed an electric current into the mechanism. The heavy, solid alloy doors parted to both sides. What appeared before Hong Mo was another room, filled with rows of incubation tanks just like the one he had just left. The room was so vast that Hong Mo could not even see the far end, and inside the tanks, various creatures were suspended in fluid.

Or rather, the corpses of creatures, or at least parts of them.

Seeing such a sight, Hong Mo's heart gave a painful jolt, and his stomach tightened. There was no gore or blood to be seen, but the sterile, clean space exerted a silent, suffocating pressure. Hong Mo turned his head, and inside a tank beside him, a large-headed infant rotated to face him. Its body was deformed and underdeveloped; through the thin layer of skin, Hong Mo could almost see the complex structure of its brain.

The dead infant's lifeless eyes seemed to possess a magical power, locking onto Hong Mo's soul.

Ugh!

Hong Mo covered his mouth, suppressing his nausea, and slowly began to walk away. What the hell kind of place is this?

What Hong Mo did not know was that the moment he opened the doors, a piercing alarm began to blare throughout the entire Northern Institute Research Center. Although Hong Mo could control electricity to force the doors open, he had bypassed the step of entering the security code. To the defense system, his actions were a direct intrusion—and of the highest level, as this was the deepest underground level of the Northern Institute Research Center.

As the shrill alarm echoed through the facility, an old man with graying hair hurried anxiously toward the monitoring room.