Burning, Cover

Stone Eye's band of apes had actually trained their own hunting dogs to track enemies!

Shen Feng and Kuafu had originally thought it would take the enemy at least half a day to search every room where they might be hiding. They had not expected them to arrive so soon.

Kuafu rushed to the doorway, lifted several tables and stone statues, and piled them together to block the door.

Meanwhile, as the Skinning Agent entered his body and was carried throughout him by the beating of his heart, Shen Feng immediately felt a searing heat rise from deep within!

The heat was like a furnace hidden inside his body, rapidly softening his steadily hardening joints and skin.

Because he was at the brink of a Stone Statue Virus outbreak, the Skinning Agent and the Stone Statue Virus battled each other within him, causing an extremely violent reaction and generating tremendous heat.

First came sweat, followed by steam rising directly from his body!

Shen Feng's eyes flew open. They were bloodshot, and an increasingly intense burning sensation filled his eyeballs.

Fortunately, perhaps because of the Pangu Virus, his mind remained clear.

He moved his joints. The strange noises caused by Stone Statue Disease quickly vanished, and his joints became supple and... agonizingly hot!

His muscles burned as well, yet endless strength flowed through them, as though his muscle cells were continuously dividing. The exhaustion from before had been completely swept away.

But Shen Feng knew it was only temporary. Before long, his skin would melt and peel away, his muscles would be extensively broken down, and he would become a skinless monster.

He had to hurry!

"Go up!"

Shen Feng let out a low roar, slung his backpack over his shoulders, and rushed to the window. Using both hands and feet, he gripped the protrusions on the windowsill and the pipes outside, climbing toward the upper floor.

Driven by the drug's side effects, he moved even more nimbly than an ape.

Kuafu glanced at the door, which was about to be smashed open, then followed closely behind Shen Feng and climbed out through the window.

Boom! With a deafening crash, over a dozen apes smashed through the clutter blocking the door. The apes, armed with guns and clad in body armor, rushed inside and immediately spotted the open window.

"They climbed out through the window!"

Several apes charged to the window at once and craned their heads upward.

Three dark gun barrels were aimed at them from the floor above.

Shen Feng and Kuafu fired at the same time, instantly killing the apes who had poked their heads out. They turned and rushed out of the room they were in, sprinting along the corridor toward the stairwell and continuing upward.

Stone Eye had great faith in his hunting dogs. Most of the pursuers were on the floor below, so Shen Feng and Kuafu encountered few enemies instead.

"Chase! Now, catch them! They're, heading for the top floor!" Stone Eye shouted as he looked at several of his men who had been shot in the head.

He had already seen the empty vial of Skinning Agent on the ground and instantly understood that the human had been infected with the Stone Statue Virus and would soon suffer a complete outbreak!

Though he did not know why Kuafu had reconciled with that human, without the human, Kuafu alone would be trapped prey.

His target was only Kuafu. The human was of no importance to him.

On the stairs, Shen Feng moved at incredible speed. Like Kuafu, he grabbed the handrail and leaped directly up to the next flight.

Under the searing effects of the Skinning Agent, he hardly moved like a human at all.

After shooting through one pursuer, Shen Feng clenched his pistol between his teeth and kept moving.

Bang! With a muffled thud, Kuafu raised his hand and shot down an ape blocking the way. He gave the human youth before him a deep look, utterly shaken.

He had once studied vast amounts of material related to Stone Statue Disease, so he naturally understood what it meant for the youth to inject the Skinning Agent.

If they failed to obtain the vaccine before the drug took effect, every inch of the youth's skin would peel away, turning him into one of those miserable, horrifying Skinners.

The resilience humans could unleash in the face of survival was truly something apes feared!

Looking at the youth's nearly emotionless gaze, Kuafu vaguely recalled the fear of once being ruled by humans.

Dogs barked from below the stairwell. The pursuers were also rapidly climbing upward.

Boom! Shen Feng flipped through the air and crashed onto the ground. Steam enveloped his entire body. Under the strain of operating at such a high load, the moisture in his body was rapidly evaporating.

Kuafu steadied himself as he panted and looked at the number written on the wall of the stairwell landing:

50.

They had reached the top floor!

Shen Feng took out his last bottle of water and drained it in one gulp. Tossing away his empty backpack, he said, "Lead the way."

Perhaps something had gone wrong with the Skinning Agent, or perhaps it was because he had previously been in the final stage of Stone Statue Disease. In any case, the changes in his body after the injection were far faster than anything recorded in those diaries and experimental materials.

In just a few minutes, his skin had turned crimson, as though it were on fire.

Kuafu immediately blasted open the corridor door, which had been locked with chains, and led Shen Feng toward the end of the hallway.

There stood the National Academy of Sciences' highest-level virus research laboratory!

Hundreds of human stone statues stood along the long corridor. They all wore white lab coats, and joyful smiles still lingered on their faces, as though they had been leaving their respective posts to celebrate something just before being petrified.

The top floor's solar power system was still operating. As their footsteps echoed, the remaining sound-activated lights flickered on one after another, brightly illuminating the dark corridor.

The man and ape had no time to think. They dashed to the virus laboratory's entrance, only to find the door tightly shut and still locked.

"Were all the Skinners here cleared out?" Shen Feng asked with a frown.

Kuafu's expression was equally grim. He nodded and said:

"Yes... We could get in by forcibly breaking through the wall, but that would take at least several days."

He had never imagined there would come a day when he needed to enter the laboratory in an emergency.

Now, not only did Shen Feng need the medicine inside, but Kuafu also needed this shelter to fend off Stone Eye's attack.

The heavy alloy walls of this top-tier laboratory could withstand even missiles. It would be enough for him to wait safely inside for Wuzhiqi and his subordinates to arrive.

Shen Feng's entire body burned as his mind began racing. The architectural plans of the Epidemic Prevention Center he had seen before flashed through his thoughts, as though he were personally reviewing those documents again, before suddenly freezing on a particular blueprint.

Qi City Epidemic Prevention Center Access Control System Structure Diagram!

The structures of these Epidemic Prevention Centers were all quite similar. Their access control systems should be similar as well.

Shen Feng took a deep breath, walked to a corner beside the alloy door, pressed his gun barrel against the wall, and fired four shots in succession.

His strength was immense at this moment. He held the barrel firmly against the wall, preventing ricochets.

Bang... crash... A palm-sized metal panel was shot off the seemingly seamless alloy door, exposing the complex wiring inside.

The distant barking of dogs rang out. The pursuers had reached the top floor!

"Hold them off for a while. I need to focus on cracking the wiring!" Shen Feng said to Kuafu without turning around. "Use the stone statues to build cover!"

Kuafu understood that this was a matter of life and death. He immediately dragged over more than a dozen nearby human stone statues and stacked them together, forming a barricade before the door. Even then, he did not forget to tease him.

"As for you being from another world, I now believe it ninety percent. You really don't treat old humans as people at all."

As Shen Feng rapidly examined the wiring, he answered without the slightest emotion:

"They're already gone. They're a group of stone corpses. Even if they truly became silicon-based life-forms, they would be an entirely different species from the original humans. Besides... I'm no saint. I only want to survive! Only if I survive can I keep my own world from becoming this miserable hell!"

Behind Shen Feng, Kuafu finished building a barricade from several stone statues. Armed with their remaining guns and ammunition, he lay prone behind his cover and stared toward the other end of the corridor, nodding as he said:

"True. I once read records of several human wars. During the Battle of Stalingrad, the two human sides slaughtering each other even used the frozen corpses of their comrades as cover. I still remember the shudder that description gave me... They're here!"

Chaotic footsteps mingled with the roars of apes and the barking of hunting dogs as dozens of pursuers charged in from the other end of the corridor!