Outwitting Blood Axe

Darkness rushed in.

Lin Xiao slammed the iron door at the pipe entrance shut behind him. Its hinges screeched harshly. Darkness instantly swallowed everything, with only the firelight from the distant Maintenance Workshop seeping through the cracks and casting wavering dark-red shadows across the damp walls. Grey Falcon sat slumped against the wall, breathing heavily and unevenly as blood loss rapidly drained his body heat. A soldier fumbled out a tactical flashlight. Its beam cut through the darkness, revealing droplets condensed along the pipe walls and spreading patches of mold. In the distance, heavy blows rang out from the other side of the iron door—the pursuers had arrived.

"Captain..." Grey Falcon's voice was so weak it was nearly inaudible.

Lin Xiao crouched down, tore open the blood-soaked temporary bandage around Grey Falcon's arm, and pulled a first-aid kit from his tactical vest. "Hang on." His voice echoed through the sealed pipe. "We're not done yet."

Under the flashlight, the wound was horrifying. The bullet had grazed the outside of his left arm, tearing open a gash deep enough to expose bone. The artery had miraculously remained intact, but the blood loss had already reached a critical point. Lin Xiao sprinkled hemostatic powder over it. The powder hissed faintly on contact with the wound. Grey Falcon's body suddenly tensed, his teeth grinding together.

"Bear with it."

Lin Xiao dressed the wound quickly, his movements precise and swift. The first-aid experience he had accumulated on battlefields in his previous life finally proved useful. He knew that if Grey Falcon was not taken somewhere with medical facilities within ten minutes, shock would claim his life.

But Blood Axe's men were outside.

The impacts grew heavier. The iron door trembled, dust sifting down from the frame. It would not hold much longer.

"Captain, what do we do?" a soldier asked quietly, despair in his voice. His name was Crow, the youngest member under Grey Falcon's command. The childishness had not yet faded from his face, though it was now covered in blood and ash.

Lin Xiao did not answer immediately. He rose to his feet, sweeping the flashlight through the pipe. This was an old main conduit, roughly two meters in diameter, stretching ahead into bottomless darkness. The air carried a pungent, stifling blend of rust, mold, and some chemical residue. Emergency lights were mounted along the ceiling every ten meters or so, but most had failed. Only a scattered few still flickered, casting faint yellow light.

He closed his eyes, his mind racing.

Forcing their way out would be suicide. Blood Axe had brought at least fifteen men, and they should all be blocking the door now. They were well-equipped and carried heavy weapons, while his side—six people, four wounded, one severely injured, and nearly out of ammunition.

He needed to create chaos and an opening.

Lin Xiao opened his eyes and removed the Purge Squad's encrypted Communicator he had seized from his waist. Its black casing gleamed coldly in the dim light. He pressed the power button, and the screen lit up with a channel list—seven encrypted channels used internally by the Radical Faction, each assigned a codename.

Back at the Maintenance Workshop, he had heard Blood Axe communicating with his men. One was a rough male voice, codenamed Iron Hammer, one of Blood Axe's minor commanders responsible for the outer perimeter.

Lin Xiao adjusted his breathing, recalling the voice's tone, rhythm, and accent.

He switched to Channel Three—the channel Iron Hammer had used earlier.

Then he pressed the transmit button.

"Captain Blood Axe!" Lin Xiao mimicked that rough voice, making it urgent and terrified. He even deliberately added panting, as if calling while running. "Fletcher has led people in a surprise attack on the underground laboratory entrance! They're taking the samples! Requesting immediate support!"

The Communicator fell silent for several seconds.

Only Grey Falcon's heavy breathing and the distant pounding on the iron door remained in the pipe. Crow and the other three soldiers held their breath, their eyes locked on the Communicator in Lin Xiao's hand. Dust drifted slowly through the flashlight beam.

Then a response came through the Communicator.

"What?!" It was Blood Axe's voice, irritable and furious, laced with incredulous shock. "That old fox Fletcher! How dare he—"

"Captain, there are too many of them!" Lin Xiao continued the imitation, his voice carrying just the right amount of panic. "At least twenty! We can't hold them! If they take the samples—"

"Damn it!" Blood Axe's roar nearly blew out the speaker. "Finish this place immediately! Leave two people to watch these crippled leftovers! Everyone else, follow me to the laboratory!"

The transmission cut off.

The pipe fell deathly silent.

Then the pounding on the other side of the iron door stopped.

Heavy footsteps sounded, rapidly fading away. Someone shouted, "The captain said leave two people! Move!"

"Who's staying?"

"You and me! The rest, follow them!"

The footsteps split into two groups. One hurried away into the distance, at least ten people strong. The other—only two people—remained outside the door.

Lin Xiao slowly let out a breath. His palms were drenched in sweat.

It had worked.

Lure the tiger away from the mountain.

"Captain..." Grey Falcon weakly lifted his head, his eyes full of shock and admiration. "How did you...?"

"I'll explain later." Lin Xiao tucked the Communicator back at his waist. "Now, we deal with the two outside."

He signaled Crow and the other three soldiers to stay quiet, then moved soundlessly to the iron door. He pressed his ear against the cold metal and listened carefully.

Outside, the two guards were talking.

"Damn it, why do we have to stay?" a young voice complained.

"Cut the crap." The other voice was steadier. "The captain said guard the place, so guard it. Those crippled leftovers inside aren't going anywhere."

"But the laboratory—"

"What the hell does that have to do with us? Whether they get the sample or not is the captain's problem."

A brief silence followed. Then the younger guard said, "Do you think Fletcher really dared to take the sample? That's Asset K..."

"Who knows? That old bastard is slippery as hell. Maybe he's had his eye on it for a long time."

Lin Xiao listened, analyzing the information. Fletcher—one of the Conservative Faction's upper echelon, responsible for logistics and material allocation. If Blood Axe believed Fletcher was taking the sample, then whatever was in the laboratory was valuable enough to make the factions tear each other apart.

But the question was—was Fletcher really in the laboratory?

Or had his fake message accidentally struck at some hidden truth?

Lin Xiao shook his head and temporarily shoved those thoughts aside. This was not the time to think about that.

He stepped back two paces and gestured to Crow. Crow nodded and raised his submachine gun—it had been picked up from a Purge Squad corpse, and its magazine was still half full.

Lin Xiao pointed at the iron door, then held up three fingers.

Three.

Two.

One.

He yanked the iron door open!

The hinges gave a sharp screech. Outside, the two guards turned at the same time, their guns rising—

Crow fired.

The submachine gun sprayed bullets across the doorway, not at the men, but at the ground before their feet. The concrete exploded, sending fragments flying. Both guards instinctively jumped back, their gun barrels dropping without thought.

At that instant, Lin Xiao moved.

He burst out from behind the door like a hunting cheetah. His first target—the younger guard. Lin Xiao grabbed the man's barrel with his left hand and forced it upward. His Right Hand knife had already struck. The blade pierced precisely into the side of the neck, avoiding the artery but severing enough nerve transmission. The younger guard's body froze, his eyes widening as a rattling sound escaped his throat. Then he collapsed limply to the ground.

The second guard reacted faster. He sprang backward, raising his gun at Lin Xiao. But Lin Xiao had already anticipated the move—while dealing with the first target, he had carried his momentum forward and lashed out with his right foot.

His boot struck the man's wrist.

With a crack, the wrist bone broke.

The guard screamed, and his pistol flew from his hand. Lin Xiao gave him no chance. He seized the man's collar with his left hand and yanked him forward, then drove his right knee hard into his abdomen. The guard grunted, doubling over like a shrimp. Lin Xiao released him, and he crumpled to the floor, curling up in agony.

The entire process took less than five seconds.

Crow and the other soldiers rushed out, their guns aimed at the two incapacitated guards. The younger one was already unconscious, blood slowly seeping from the wound at his neck. The older one clutched his stomach, his face pale, but his eyes glared fiercely at Lin Xiao.

"You... who are you?" he rasped.

Lin Xiao did not answer. He crouched and quickly searched them. Aside from standard equipment, he found a folded paper map in the older guard's inner pocket—a detailed floor plan of the underground laboratory area, with several locations marked in red pen.

"Sample storage area... main control room... emergency exit..." Lin Xiao scanned the map quickly, memorizing the key information.

Then he stood.

"Captain, what do we do with them?" Crow asked, his gun still pointed at the guards on the floor.

Lin Xiao glanced at Grey Falcon. Supported by two soldiers, Grey Falcon had barely managed to stand, but his face was white as paper.

"Tie them up, gag them, and throw them into the pipe," Lin Xiao said. "We don't have time, and we don't have spare mercy."

The soldiers moved swiftly. Using the guards' own shoelaces and strips of torn cloth, they bound the two men's hands and feet tightly, stuffed cloth into their mouths, and dragged them deep into the dark pipe. Lin Xiao shut the iron door again and wedged its latch from inside with an iron rod—crude, but enough to buy time.

Now they were back in the corridor outside the Maintenance Workshop.

In the distance, flames still burned inside the workshop, though they had weakened considerably. Thick smoke poured from the gaps around the door, gathering against the corridor ceiling like gray clouds. The air was filled with the smell of scorching and the harsh stench of burned chemicals.

Supporting Grey Falcon, Lin Xiao hurried through the corridor. His mind processed several streams of information at once: Grey Falcon's injuries needed urgent treatment; they needed to evacuate as soon as possible; but Blood Axe had gone to the laboratory, and if Fletcher was really there, the firefight between them could destroy the samples and data; and those samples and data were likely the key to uncovering the truth behind the Asset K experiment...

"Captain, where are we going?" Crow asked, his voice echoing through the empty corridor.

Lin Xiao stopped.

A fork lay ahead. To the left was the route toward the base's main exit, which should theoretically allow them to circle back to the Observation Station rendezvous point—Su Ying and the others should already be there. To the right led to the underground laboratory area.

Blood Axe had gone right just now.

Lin Xiao looked at Grey Falcon. His breathing was growing weaker, and nearly all his weight rested on Lin Xiao's shoulder. His body temperature was dropping, a sign of shock.

"Grey Falcon needs a Doctor," Lin Xiao said in a low voice. "Now."

"But the laboratory—" Crow hesitated.

"I know," Lin Xiao cut him off.

He closed his eyes. Fragments of memories from his previous life surfaced—opportunities missed because of insufficient information, prices paid because of hesitation. In this life, he had sworn to do better. But reality was that he could not save everyone, nor seize every opportunity.

He had to choose.

"You four." Lin Xiao opened his eyes and looked at Crow and the other three soldiers. "Take Grey Falcon and go left. Avoid the main passage. Use the ventilation ducts. Go to the Observation Station rendezvous point. Su Ying and Doctor Anna should already be there. Tell Su Ying that Grey Falcon needs emergency treatment. If Nightingale has a medical kit, use it. If not, find a way to contact the outside."

"Captain, what about you?" Crow asked.

Lin Xiao looked down the corridor to the right. From deep in the darkness came the faint sound of distant gunfire—not sporadic exchanges, but dense volleys. The laboratory was clearly already under attack.

"I'm going to take a look," Lin Xiao said. "The samples and data can't fall into Blood Axe's hands. And if Fletcher is really taking the sample, then whatever's in that laboratory is more important than we imagined."

"That's too dangerous!" one soldier blurted. "Blood Axe took more than a dozen people over there. If you go now, that's practically—"

"Practically suicide?" Lin Xiao smiled, but there was no warmth in it. "Maybe. But some things have to be done by someone."

He removed another Communicator from his waist—the one he had searched from the second guard—and set it to the same channel. Then he looked at Crow.

"You leave. Now. Don't look back."

Crow gritted his teeth, then finally nodded. He and another soldier supported Grey Falcon, while the other two took point, quickly heading down the corridor to the left. Their footsteps gradually faded, vanishing into the depths of darkness.

Lin Xiao stood where he was, listening to those footsteps recede until they disappeared completely.

Then he turned and headed down the corridor to the right.

Darkness wrapped around him like something tangible. The emergency lights were even more scattered here. Some areas were completely black, leaving him reliant on his flashlight. The smell in the air changed—rust and mildew gradually gave way to disinfectant and the sharp odor of chemical reagents. Pipes and cables began appearing along the walls, along with warning signs reading: "Laboratory Area. Unauthorized Personnel Prohibited."

The gunfire grew clearer.

It was not a distant exchange, but close-range, violent fighting. The bursts of automatic weapons, the single shots of pistols, and explosions—not grenades, but more like equipment rupturing after being shot through.

Lin Xiao turned off his flashlight and advanced slowly along the wall. His eyes gradually adapted to the darkness, allowing him to barely make out the outline of the corridor. About fifty meters ahead, light flickered at the end of the hallway—not steady illumination, but flashing light mixed with red and blue.

Alarm lights.

Something had happened in the laboratory.

Lin Xiao quickened his pace, but remained concealed. He passed a shattered observation window and saw a small preparation room beyond the glass. Tables and chairs had been overturned, documents scattered everywhere, and dark liquid splashed across the wall—blood.

He kept moving.

At the end of the corridor stood a heavy blast door, now half-open. Bullet holes pocked the frame, and blood stained the door panel. Light spilled erratically through the gap.

Lin Xiao pressed himself against the side of the door and cautiously peered inside.

What he saw made his pupils contract.

It was a massive underground space, with a ceiling at least ten meters high. Rows of laboratory benches and instruments filled the center, most of them overturned or destroyed. Broken glass carpeted the floor, reflecting countless red sparks beneath the flashing alarm lights. Thick smoke and a cloying chemical odor filled the air, making his eyes sting.

And most striking of all was the thing at the center of the room.

A cylindrical transparent incubation chamber, roughly three meters in diameter and over five meters tall. The chamber was made of thick special glass, now covered in spiderweb cracks. Pale green liquid filled it, and suspended inside the liquid was—

Lin Xiao's breath stopped for an instant.

It was a humanoid figure.

No, not entirely human. It had the outline of a human being, but its skin was translucent, revealing fluorescent matter flowing beneath it. Its limbs were unnaturally slender, and its head had no facial features, only a smooth curved surface. It floated motionlessly in the liquid, yet Lin Xiao could feel it—it was "watching" the outside.

Was this Asset K?

And fierce fighting was breaking out around the incubation chamber.

Two groups were exchanging fire. One group wore the Purge Squad's black combat uniforms, about seven or eight people, taking cover behind laboratory benches and equipment as they fired at the other side. The other wore the Conservative Faction's gray uniforms. They had roughly the same numbers, but their formation was more spread out, as if they were trying to approach the incubation chamber.

Lin Xiao spotted Blood Axe.

The tall figure stood behind a smashed centrifuge, gripping a light machine gun and firing wildly. Blood and ash covered his face, his expression savage. He was shouting something, but the gunfire was too loud to make it out.

And on the other side—

Lin Xiao's gaze swept across the Conservative Faction's position. Then he saw him.

A gray-haired old man in a laboratory coat was holding a pistol and crouching behind a control console. One lens of his glasses was broken, and there was a scrape across his face, but his eyes were sharp and calm.

Fletcher.

He really was here.

Lin Xiao's mind raced. The false message had become true—Fletcher was indeed trying to seize the sample. But why? As a high-ranking member of the Conservative Faction, why would he risk a direct confrontation with Blood Axe? Unless the thing inside that incubation chamber was important enough to make him disregard everything else.

The gunfire suddenly intensified.

Blood Axe's men launched a charge. Three people burst from behind cover, firing as they closed in on the incubation chamber. The Conservative Faction returned fire desperately, bullets striking metal equipment and throwing up strings of sparks. One Conservative Faction soldier took a bullet to the chest and fell backward, blood spraying across a control console screen.

Fletcher shouted, "Hold the control console! Don't let them activate the destruction protocol!"

Destruction protocol?

Lin Xiao looked toward the main console beside the incubation chamber. Red warning text flashed on the screen, and a countdown ticked away—03:47, 03:46...

Someone had activated the self-destruct sequence.

And Blood Axe's men were trying to rush over to cancel it—or perhaps they wanted to take the sample before it was destroyed.

Chaos. Absolute chaos.

Lin Xiao hid behind the door, calculating. If he stepped out now, he would face fire from both sides. But if he did nothing, the incubation chamber and whatever was inside it would be destroyed in three minutes. And that thing—whatever it was—likely held the truth behind the Asset K experiment.

He needed to create even greater chaos.

His eyes swept through the laboratory. Along the left wall stood a row of gas storage tanks labeled "Liquid Nitrogen," "Oxygen," and "Argon." On the right were electrical panels and main cable conduits. The central incubation chamber was connected to dozens of pipes and cables, several of which had already been severed by stray bullets and were spraying gas or liquid.

A plan formed in his mind.

Lin Xiao removed the Communicator and switched it to Blood Axe's team channel.

Then he pressed the transmit button. This time, he imitated another voice—a younger, more panicked voice, the tone of one of the guards he had heard outside earlier.

"Captain! Captain! Something's wrong!" he shouted urgently, his voice shaking for real this time. "Conservative Faction reinforcements are flanking us from behind! At least twenty people! We're surrounded!"

Blood Axe's roar came through the Communicator. "What?! Where are they?!"

"The ventilation ducts! They came in through the ventilation ducts! They're moving toward our rear!"

"Damn it! Split half the men off and block them!" Blood Axe roared. "The rest keep charging with me! We have to get the sample before it's destroyed!"

Perfect.

Lin Xiao cut the transmission and watched the laboratory change. Sure enough, four or five men split off from Blood Axe's group and rapidly moved toward the rear entrance—the very entrance where Lin Xiao was hiding. Blood Axe himself led the remaining men in an even more frenzied charge toward the incubation chamber.

The pressure on the Conservative Faction surged.

Fletcher's men were suppressed so thoroughly they could not raise their heads. Bullets rained against their cover, and one soldier was hit in the head, dying on the spot. Fletcher himself crouched behind the console, his face ashen, but his fingers still flew over the keyboard—was he trying to speed up the destruction protocol?

Lin Xiao hesitated no longer.

He took a grenade from his belt—the only one, taken from the first guard. He pulled the pin, gripped it in his hand, and counted silently.

Three.

Two.

One.

He hurled the grenade at the row of gas storage tanks on the left side of the laboratory.

The grenade traced an arc through the air.

One of Blood Axe's men saw it and shouted, "Grenade!"

But it was already too late.

The grenade landed between the liquid nitrogen tank and the oxygen tank.

Explosion.

It was not a violent explosion, but a muffled, oppressive burst. Then the storage tanks ruptured. The liquid nitrogen instantly vaporized at room temperature, and white cryogenic mist gushed out, sweeping across half the laboratory like an avalanche. The oxygen tank ruptured at the same time, mixing high-pressure oxygen with the liquid nitrogen vapor to form a deadly, oxygen-rich cryogenic environment.

The temperature plummeted.

Even from outside the door, Lin Xiao could feel the bone-chilling cold rushing at him. Inside the laboratory, white fog filled the air, and visibility dropped to zero in an instant. The gunfire stopped, replaced by frightened shouts and coughing.

"I can't see!"

"Cold! It's too cold!"

"The oxygen concentration is too high! It could explode!"

Chaos. Absolute chaos.

Lin Xiao put on the gas mask taken from a guard—crude as it was, it was better than nothing—and rushed into the laboratory. The white fog was almost solid, and his flashlight beam could only reach two or three meters ahead. Relying on memory, he moved toward the cultivation chamber.

He stepped on something—shards of glass, along with warm liquid. Blood. He stepped around it and kept going.

Fighting sounds came from ahead.

Through the fog, Lin Xiao saw two figures grappling. One was Blood Axe's man, the other a Conservative Faction soldier. They fought amid the freezing mist, their movements slowed by the cold. Lin Xiao did not stop, circling around them.

The cultivation chamber was right ahead.

Pale green liquid sloshed inside the cracked chamber. The humanoid creature still floated within it, but Lin Xiao noticed—its "head" had turned. Though it had no eyes, Lin Xiao could feel it "looking" at him.

Beside the main console, Fletcher was fighting one of Blood Axe's men. The old man was clearly no match for the younger man. He had been pinned against the console, his pistol knocked away. The other man raised a dagger, about to drive it down—

Lin Xiao fired.

The pistol round struck the man's shoulder. He screamed, dropping the dagger. Fletcher seized the chance to break free, snatched up the pistol from the floor, and smashed the grip into the back of the man's head. The man collapsed and did not move.

Fletcher turned to look at Lin Xiao. Behind the gas mask, his eyes were sharp as an eagle's.

"Who are you?" he asked, his voice muffled by the mask.

"Someone helping you," Lin Xiao said, his gaze shifting to the console screen.

Countdown: 01:23, 01:22...

"Can you stop the destruction protocol?" Lin Xiao asked.

Fletcher shook his head. "Once the protocol starts, it cannot be stopped. It is the highest-level security protocol."

"What about the sample?"

Fletcher looked toward the cultivation chamber. The translucent humanoid creature was slowly raising one "hand," pressing it against the inside of the chamber directly toward them.

"It has awakened," Fletcher said softly, his voice carrying a complex emotion—fear? Awe? Or something else?

Lin Xiao looked at the cultivation chamber. The outline of that "hand" was clear in the pale green liquid. Its five fingers were slender, the fingertips slightly curled as if touching the glass.

Then the cracks on the chamber began to spread.

Crack.

Crack, crack.

The fine cracking sounds resembled ice splitting apart. Starting from where that "hand" touched the surface, the fractures spread in every direction, covering the entire chamber like a spiderweb.

"It's coming out," Fletcher said, raising his pistol.

Lin Xiao raised his gun as well. But he was not sure—should he shoot? Shoot what? That creature, or the chamber about to rupture?

Countdown: 00:47, 00:46...

There was not much time left.

And at that moment, Blood Axe's roar came through the white fog.

"Find them! Kill them! The sample is mine!"

Heavy footsteps were drawing closer.