The Descent of a God, the Lord's Divine Kingdom

Inside the Hive, the lights were deathly pale, and the air was thick with the strange mingled smell of disinfectant and blood.

Everyone held their guns and advanced step by step.

The laboratories along the way were all separated by sealed glass, with corpses floating inside them.

At first, some in the group had thought the rumors about Umbrella were merely exaggerated, but when they truly saw the scenes behind the glass, everyone's faces changed.

The corpses were not only adult men and women.

There were children, elderly people, even animals.

This was a slaughterhouse that used living people as raw material.

No one in the group spoke again. Even their breathing grew much quieter.

The leader at the very front suddenly raised a hand.

"Stop."

Everyone immediately halted.

He stared at the narrow corridor ahead, his voice lowered.

"Something's wrong here. There may be traps."

After saying that, he checked his weapon first before cautiously moving forward to probe the way.

The next instant, a piercing hum suddenly rang out in the corridor.

Bzz!

An infrared laser swept across almost level with his waist at terrifying speed. It had come within a hair's breadth of slicing him cleanly in two.

The leader clearly was not dealing with such a situation for the first time. He instantly dropped flat to the ground, narrowly avoiding the strike.

Then came a second beam, then a third.

He kept rolling, crouching, and sidestepping, finally making it through the laser zone without mishap and reaching the other side.

"See that?" He turned and shouted to the others. "There's a pattern. Remember the rhythm. It's not that—"

Before he could finish, he noticed that everyone's expressions had changed.

Alice's face went pale, and she suddenly roared at him:

"Watch out!"

The leader instinctively turned back.

This time, the entire corridor lit up.

Dense lasers crisscrossed like a net of light suddenly drawing shut, sealing off every direction without leaving the slightest path to survival.

The leader stood where he was, looking at the red curtain of light bearing down on him. His face first stiffened, then he gave a helpless smile.

"Oh, hell..."

The next second, the lasers passed through his body.

In the blink of an eye, his body was cut into several pieces. Flesh, blood, and fragments scattered across the floor, a ghastly sight that made everyone's scalps prickle.

The people behind him were all stunned.

In that brief instant, a living person had simply vanished.

The rest no longer dared let down their guard in the slightest. They could only grit their teeth and press onward. Along the way, they lost several more people before finally reaching the Red Queen's main control terminal.

Inside the control room, the screens flickered unsteadily.

After several crackles of static, a virtual projection in the form of a little girl slowly appeared.

She wore a red dress. Her face was pale, but her expression was cold and utterly unmoved.

"You should not have come here."

Her voice was mechanical and calm, devoid of emotion.

"According to protocol, I have already eliminated all life-forms in the laboratory."

"You're malfunctioning!" someone shouted at her. "We'll forcibly shut you down and find out exactly what happened."

Holding her gun, Alice observed the surroundings of the control room as she slowly approached the central device.

The Red Queen was only an artificial intelligence. She would not leap at them and bite them herself, but no one could guarantee she could not control something else.

As the control program activated, mechanisms throughout the control room began shutting down, while the Red Queen's image flickered violently.

"Stop." The Red Queen stared at them, and for the first time, her voice fluctuated. "You are causing a disaster."

"You're the one causing a disaster!"

Almost at that moment, a muffled bang suddenly came from nearby.

A figure lunged out of the shadows and slammed straight into the nearest team member.

When the lights shone over, everyone clearly saw what that thing looked like.

Half its head had caved in. One eyeball hung alone from the side of its face, its mouth was torn open at the corners, and its other eye had long since vanished somewhere.

It still wore a laboratory worker's clothes, but its chest had rotted beyond recognition.

The nearest team member froze in terror, his finger on the trigger as he forgot to fire.

Bang!

Someone beside him fired first.

The bullet blasted into the monster's chest, exploding flesh and blood. The tremendous impact sent its entire body flying.

But an even more horrifying sight followed immediately.

That thing was not dead at all.

It fell to the ground, yet its hands still clawed desperately forward, dragging its bloody body toward them as it let out a beast-like growl.

Bang! Bang!

Alice reacted the fastest, firing twice in rapid succession.

This time, she shattered its head directly, and the monster finally stopped moving.

Before the group could catch their breath, an even more piercing howl came from the far end of the corridor.

Wuu!

Several humanoid monsters on all fours charged out.

They had no skin, their bodies entirely exposed red muscle. Their brain tissue and hearts lay bare on the surface, their claws were long and sharp, and yet they moved absurdly fast.

Most horrifying of all were their outrageously long, slender tongues. When they lashed out, they tore through the air like iron hooks ready to pierce through a person's chest.

"Open fire!"

This time, no one stood frozen.

Gunfire instantly erupted outside the control room.

Having learned from what had happened before, everyone frantically aimed for their heads and chests. Yet these monsters possessed far greater vitality than those earlier "corpses."

Unless a bullet struck a vital point, it could not stop them at all.

Even more terrifyingly, there were not merely a few of them.

From the corridor, from around the corners, from the passage behind them, they crawled over one after another. From afar, they formed a vast black mass, like a swarm of flesh-and-blood spiders swooping low across the ground.

"Close the door! Close it now!"

Everyone threw their strength into pulling down the heavy alloy door.

Bang!

The door finally shut, temporarily sealing the monsters outside.

But that did not mean they were safe.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Continuous impacts came from outside. The Lickers crazily hammered the alloy door and glass observation window with their bodies, claws, and tongues, making the entire control room tremble.

Blood and chunks of flesh continuously smeared across the glass, churning their stomachs.

Cracks had already begun to creep faintly across the glass.

They were blocked in from every side. This place had become a true isolated island.

Despair slowly washed over everyone's hearts like a rising tide.

Alice leaned against the wall as memories began surging back into her mind bit by bit.

She finally remembered.

She was not Umbrella's loyal servant at all, but one of those opposed to Umbrella. She also remembered that someone in the group was the true culprit behind this virus leak.

But at this moment, none of that mattered anymore.

The Lickers outside were still battering the door.

Bang bang bang bang!

The cracks multiplied.

With the firepower they currently had, they simply could not hold back so many monsters. Once the door broke, they would soon be torn to pieces by those things.

Alice raised her head and looked at the Red Queen.

"So this is why you sealed the base?"

The Red Queen resumed that cold, calm appearance.

"Yes."

"After the virus leaked in the laboratory, protocol required me to seal the Hive and release nerve gas, eliminating all living organisms to prevent the virus from spreading."

"You interrupted all of that."

Another team member asked in a hoarse voice:

"Is there a way for us to get out alive?"

"Yes."

The Red Queen answered without the slightest pause.

The next second, line after line of data began appearing on the screens.

"Test subject designation: Licker."

"Height: two meters. Weight: one hundred and twenty kilograms. Vision completely lost. Hearing highly enhanced. Tongue capable of piercing the human body. Claws capable of leaving visible marks on concrete surfaces."

She spoke as calmly as if reporting the weather.

"Strength assessment: five to ten tons."

Everyone in the control room fell silent.

The Red Queen added:

"With your current firepower, you are insufficient to deal with the present number of Lickers. With the strength of ordinary humans, you also cannot withstand them head-on."

"Overall survival probability: 0.0000001."

Hearing this, Alice gave a wryly amused smile.

"There's actually that much? I thought it would be zero."

The Red Queen looked at her, her tone still completely emotionless.

"That is a miracle."

"If you wish, you may begin praying to God now."

As soon as she finished speaking, the glass finally gave out.

Bang!

The entire pane exploded into shards.

The Lickers rushed in by the pack. Their howls, the crash of shattering glass, and the wet sounds of flesh being trampled all flooded the control room at once. Death was within reach.

For some reason, a voice suddenly flashed through Alice's mind.

"The apocalypse is coming. The dead shall rise."

That was what Huang Bai had said on television.

She lowered her head and saw the two talismans she had casually stuffed into her pocket. Could lucky talismans truly bring luck?

Someone beside her had already completely broken down, their lips trembling as they began praying incoherently.

"God... if You truly exist, save us..."

"Please... save us..."

Perhaps despair forced people to seize every possibility.

Perhaps there truly was a sliver of miracle.

The next moment, golden light suddenly flared across one wall of the control room.

Then came the most unbelievable sight.

A figure glowing with golden light forcibly passed through the wall.

It did not look like a person moving at all. It looked more like some existence beyond reality barging in directly from another layer of space.

Several streaks of golden radiance followed close behind him, but most terrifying of all was the sudden burst of thunder.

Boom!!

Golden light and azure lightning descended at once. Several Lickers rushing in did not even have time to scream before their bodies exploded on the spot, flesh and chunks scattering everywhere as even the ground was blasted black.

The lightning had yet to fade, and the thunder still echoed through the control room.

Everyone stared blankly ahead, almost forgetting to breathe.

The newcomer's long hair moved without wind. A faint jade green glimmered in the depths of his eyes, like cold jade beneath a deep lake, like an unextinguished cold flame in the night.

That power, that bearing, that entrance wholly beyond the bounds of reason had completely shattered everything they thought they knew.

At that moment, only one thought remained in everyone's minds.

A god had descended, bringing His kingdom of heaven.