Eastern Talismans, Changes in the Hive

Alice and Lisa were quietly discussing their next move in the room.

The two had already made up their minds to steal virus samples from Umbrella Corporation, then blow the whole matter wide open and let the entire world see what they were really doing.

Lisa was with an international environmental organization.

The two had run into each other by chance before. After exchanging a few words, they discovered that neither of them could stand Umbrella Corporation's shady practices.

One was an internal security officer, the other an outside investigator. Their positions differed, but their thoughts had collided.

"Let's do it." Lisa lowered her voice. "We can't drag this out any longer. If they keep pursuing this research, something terrible will happen sooner or later."

Alice nodded.

"Once this begins, there's no turning back."

They both understood that this was no game.

Umbrella Corporation was no ordinary company. It was a true multinational behemoth, with its shadow in biology, pharmaceuticals, national defense, and arms manufacturing.

It had too many subsidiaries in the open to count, and in the shadows, no one knew how many political and business figures it was tied to.

Going against a behemoth like that, losing their lives would not be surprising.

Precisely because of that, they felt even more strongly that someone had to step forward and expose the truth.

"Let's go for a walk," Alice said to Lisa.

"Okay."

The two left their residence and slowly walked toward the church.

The distant tolling of bells and the lingering sacred music, along with the church's solemn and holy atmosphere, somewhat soothed the unease in their hearts.

Lisa hesitated where she stood for a while, but ultimately could not help walking toward the confessional.

She was a believer.

At a time like this, she instinctively wanted to come here for an answer.

The confessional was dimly lit.

After sitting down, Lisa fell silent for a moment. She vaguely expressed her unease, then asked:

"If what we're doing is right, God will bless us and see justice done, won't He?"

The other side of the partition remained quiet for several breaths.

Then Huang Bai's voice came through.

"The justice you believe in may not be anything more than the default rules in certain people's eyes."

"Besides, judging by your faces, this trip will probably not go smoothly."

Lisa froze.

"Faces? What are you talking about?"

Alice frowned as well, a strange and indescribable feeling rising in her heart.

Was this Eastern mysticism?

Or was this priest spouting some new brand of nonsense again?

The next moment, the small door of the confessional was suddenly pushed open.

Sure enough, Huang Bai's face appeared outside, wearing a thoroughly serious expression. Between his fingers were two crookedly drawn yellow talismans.

"Would you ladies like to buy talismans?"

"Authentic Eastern luck magic. One hundred dollars each."

He held the talismans out before them, his tone as natural as if he were selling holy water.

Lisa's expression changed on the spot.

"You fraud!"

"You're a priest, yet you're selling this kind of thing in a church. You're desecrating the gods!"

She had always been a devout believer and could not stand such things the most. In her eyes, Huang Bai was not honestly serving God, but instead bringing all that Eastern ghost-and-spirit nonsense into a church. It was simply outrageous.

Huang Bai did not get angry. He merely held the talismans a little closer.

"Buy them or don't. I'm not the one who'll lose out."

Alice stared at the two talismans, inexplicably drifting off for a moment.

She could not say why. She clearly thought the things were absurd, yet when she considered what she was about to do, she somehow reached out her hand as though bewitched.

"Give me two."

Lisa looked at her in disbelief.

"You're really buying them?"

Alice lowered her head and handed over the money, finding herself a little amused too.

"Think of it as buying peace of mind."

Huang Bai gave her the two talismans, and a hint of a smile finally appeared on his face.

"You have a good eye."

"These two lucky talismans will bring you at least a little good fortune."

Having said that, he gave them no chance to change their minds and shut the door with a snap.

Alice looked at the talismans in her hands, unable for a moment to say what she was thinking.

On the other side of the door, Huang Bai turned and walked deeper into the church, but his gaze gradually darkened.

"It's about time to begin."

Over the next few days, Huang Bai simply stopped pretending altogether.

He visited several casinos in succession. He did not go alone—he brought bodyguards and a large crowd of sturdy believers with him, creating a spectacle like some cult leader making an inspection tour.

"Hit! Six points!"

"Three of a kind!"

"Another hit!!"

The believers shouted themselves nearly hoarse beside the gambling tables.

They followed Huang Bai's bets, and almost everything they wagered on won. Their stakes multiplied several times over. By the end, everyone's gaze toward Huang Bai had changed.

Before, they had believed in him more or less because of his identity as a priest.

Now, it was completely different.

Now they truly regarded Huang Bai as a prophet.

"One hundred million dollars."

Huang Bai looked at the piled-up chips, his expression calm.

"Not bad."

In the surveillance room on the casino's second floor, a blond middle-aged man stared blankly at the screens, his hair as disheveled as though someone had just yanked it.

He was Donald, the casino's owner.

At that very moment, Huang Bai had emptied the casino's cash reserves in one sweep.

In other words, the casino was about to be won into bankruptcy.

"A casino... can go bankrupt too?"

Donald muttered to himself, his whole body nearly numb.

At that moment, his secretary hurried in with some documents.

"Mr. Donald, are we still publishing The Art of the Deal?"

The moment Donald heard that, he seemed to snap awake instead.

"Yes, of course we are."

"If we don't make one last haul now, we really won't get another chance."

After getting that money, Huang Bai did not sit idle. He immediately began purchasing supplies on a massive scale—guns, water—and also took the opportunity to push the entire community to dig basements.

Gradually, an atmosphere of apocalypse began to spread through the community.

Most outsiders treated it as a joke, but Huang Bai's people grew more and more serious, making it seem as though a natural disaster truly was about to crash down upon them.

The apocalypse was coming.

At least, that was what they believed.

Before long, things indeed developed in their original direction.

Alice and Lisa's plan was accidentally exposed. Someone infiltrated the Hive ahead of time in an attempt to steal virus samples. During the process, a virus vial shattered. Hive's central system, the "Red Queen," immediately activated emergency protocols, releasing neurotoxic gas and killing every researcher in the laboratory.

Amid that chain of chaos, Alice accidentally inhaled the virus as well.

By the time she woke again, she was already lying in a villa on the outskirts of Raccoon City, with her memories almost completely blank.

Inside the room, Alice slowly opened her eyes and looked around blankly.

"Where... is this?"

She could not remember anything.

A wedding photograph of her and another man hung on the wall, with two crooked yellow talismans pasted beside it.

Alice stared at the talismans and froze for a moment.

"What are these?"

Before she could think any further, the front door outside was violently smashed open.

Bang!

A group of heavily armed people rushed in.

"Alice, I need you to cooperate with our operation."

The leader spoke quickly. As he led her outside, he briefly explained the situation.

Something had happened at the Hive. The Red Queen had shut down the system and killed everyone inside. They now had to enter the Hive, forcibly shut down the Red Queen, and find out exactly what had caused the malfunction.

Alice's mind was still foggy, but she could only follow them.

Soon, the group set out for the base.

What awaited them was a disaster no one had anticipated.

The first underground level of the villa.

A ritual altar stood high, sandalwood incense curling through the air as blue smoke coiled and drifted. A black altar jar on the incense table had its mouth sealed with a white talisman. The offering table held nuts and fine wine, along with sacrificial offerings such as a bull's head, a sheep's head, and a pig's head.

Huang Bai sat cross-legged before the altar, his fingers forming a hand seal as he softly recited scriptures for raising ghosts.

Yin energy from within several hundred meters was continuously drawn over, gradually gathering into a cloud of blue mist above the altar.

The yin energy was swallowed bit by bit by the altar. Even the offerings on the table rapidly shriveled and decayed along with it, finally turning to ash.

The entire basement looked gloomy and bizarre, almost like a different world from the nearby church where sacred music drifted melodiously.

Whoosh!

The altar trembled slightly, and five figures flew out.

At their head was Yaksha, with red hair and a blue-green face, shackles in hand and heavy ghostly energy surrounding his body.

The other four were ordinary vicious ghosts gathered recently. Though they could not compare to Yaksha's ferocity, standing together, their Sha Qi was still frightening enough.

"Greetings, Master."

Huang Bai did not speak immediately. Instead, he closed his eyes and used his spiritual sense to perceive the locations of those two talismans in the distance.

The talismans he had sold Alice earlier were naturally not lucky talismans in any real sense. A faint thread of yin energy had been attached to them, specifically for tracking.

At this moment, the two talismans were moving rapidly.

And judging from their route, they were clearly already heading deeper underground.

"They're almost there."

Huang Bai opened his eyes, his gaze falling on the ghosts before the altar.

"Let's go."

"Snatch them."

The most important thing about this move was not how many zombies they killed, nor how many monsters they cleared out. It was the T-virus's core data and the artificial intelligence Red Queen.

As long as he got those two things, many things could be done afterward.

At a thought from Huang Bai, his soul immediately left his body.

A gust of yin wind swept through, and the people and ghosts before the altar vanished together.

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