Disarming the trap

"The gate's over there! Hurry up and close it!"

Out of the corner of her eye, Little Knife saw a silver cloud flying up and knew Liu Feng had come to her rescue.

She kicked the Iron Cockroach Beast in front of her away, then swung her blade and sliced off several of its long legs.

Only after climbing to the eleventh floor had she encountered the real trap. Iron Cockroach Beasts lunged at her from every corner, their sharp forelegs slashing a tear in her trousers.

"You've done pretty well this time. Take a break and leave the rest to me."

Liu Feng had brought his Iron-toothed Insects over, planning to play the hero rescuing a damsel in distress, only to discover that Little Knife was astonishingly good at fighting.

Several Iron Cockroach Beast corpses already lay on the eleventh-floor floor, each hacked to pieces.

Liu Feng felt a pang of regret. These Iron Cockroach Beasts were all mutant beasts.

If he had killed them all himself, each would have given him 1,000 experience points. He could have leveled up again by the end of the day.

"I can handle them. Go over there and close the gate. I'm dying from the heat."

Little Knife grabbed one of the Iron Cockroach Beast's legs and hurled it straight at Liu Feng, making her anger unmistakable.

The Iron Cockroach Beasts beside Liu Feng had already developed an instinct to protect him. They shielded him and quickly gnawed the severed leg clean.

Liu Feng dared not delay. He leaped over to the control console, but just as he reached for the buttons, he saw an Iron Cockroach Beast's leg swinging toward him.

This Iron Cockroach Beast was larger than any Little Knife had killed. It kept laying eggs from its rear, which turned into little Iron Cockroach Beasts upon hitting the ground and crawled toward Little Knife.

So it was a female!

Delighted, Liu Feng immediately ordered his Iron-toothed Insects to attack. In less than a minute, the entire female beast had vanished from beside the console.

A few eggs escaped by sheer luck, but even they could not evade Little Knife's blade.

[Ding! Congratulations on successfully killing a Breeding-type Iron Cockroach Beast. You gained 1,000 experience points!]

"This isn't hard at all."

Liu Feng reached the console without trouble and frantically pressed the various colored buttons.

A cloud of white smoke immediately rose inside the Laboratory Building, frightening Feng Wen and Feng Wu into yelling down below.

"Boss, there's a wiring diagram here! The lever! Pull the lever!"

Liu Feng ignored their instructions, but still managed to hit the control lever.

As the gate opened, the temperature inside dropped rapidly, and even a faint cool breeze drifted through.

"We're fine now. I didn't expect this control room to have no traps at all."

Liu Feng glanced back at Little Knife. Her clothes were soaked with sweat and clung tightly to her body, outlining her curves.

"Why don't you take your clothes off and cool down?"

Liu Feng unconsciously blurted out what he most wanted to say. He had no idea that the entire building's air circulation system had switched on, allowing the people downstairs to hear what they said upstairs.

Han Bing and the others glanced up, wondering whether they should tell Liu Feng the truth.

"It is too hot."

Little Knife tucked her blade into her belt, then actually raised her hands and pulled up her shirt. Liu Feng immediately swallowed. It seemed they were finally about to cross the line into something more.

"Little Knife..."

Liu Feng was not used to girls making the first move. He rubbed his nose, which felt dangerously close to bleeding, and prepared a whole string of mushy declarations, only to see that Little Knife was still wearing a sports bra underneath.

She held her shirt in her hands, wrung the water out of it hard, then put it back on.

Liu Feng instantly felt that the barrier between them had been restored, this time reinforced with bulletproof glass. His enthusiasm faded.

"Liu Feng, something's wrong with Xiao Ming."

Little Knife had hit the nail on the head. She had checked the entire eleventh floor, and nowhere resembled a residence. There was no armory or food storeroom either. Zerui would never have made his home here.

"I'll deal with Xiao Ming, of course. Since he likes hot places so much, I'll let him get a proper taste of the heat in here."

Liu Feng shook the water from his hair. After carefully searching every floor, he returned to ground level with Little Knife.

Han Bing had already opened the first-floor entrance a crack. But Xiao Ming was not the only person outside. Liu Honggou, whom they knew all too well, was there too.

"Boss Liu, don't worry. Now that they're inside this building, they'll soon be burned to ashes. From now on, you'll be the leader of the entire A58 Base. No one will question your authority."

Xiao Ming stood beside Liu Honggou with a fawning expression. The two had been in cahoots for a long time.

Liu Honggou had originally intended to use Xiao Ming to observe Zerui's weaknesses and find a way to eliminate him. Before he could even put his planted agent to use, however, Zerui had turned into a puddle of blood.

Fortunately, Liu Feng lacked the sense to be wary of others, allowing Xiao Ming to lock him inside this distribution center's incinerator. The temperature here could reach eight hundred degrees, enough to melt even steel plates.

"Are you sure? Liu Feng is a Gene Warrior. If he gets out, he definitely won't spare you."

Liu Honggou had not wanted to show himself, but he did not trust Xiao Ming's competence and feared that the trap had not been planned thoroughly enough.

He had brought some people to oversee the operation himself, including the elderly, weak, sick, and disabled whom Liu Feng had previously left in his care.

Earlier, Liu Feng's people had split into two groups. One followed Xiao Ming to the Laboratory Building, while the other went to Liu Honggou's place to collect the remaining people, planning to meet up here.

Yet Liu Honggou could not even wait a single day. The moment he saw Zerui was dead, he turned on them and took those people hostage in case Liu Feng escaped from the building.

"Don't worry. Aside from the heat, there are dozens of Iron Cockroach Beasts in there. Those are Zerui's prized possessions. No matter how many they kill, there'll always be more, until they're completely exhausted."

Xiao Ming sounded very confident. Liu Feng glanced upstairs and understood what he meant.

These Iron Cockroach Beasts had inherited cockroaches' formidable reproductive ability. Every time one was hacked to death, dozens of Iron Cockroach Beast eggs emerged from its abdominal cavity. In a short time, they could become fully fledged Iron Cockroach Beasts and rejoin the battle, repeating the cycle endlessly.

But these Iron Cockroach Beasts could not get anywhere near them. Before they could descend from the eleventh floor, the Iron-toothed Insects Liu Feng had left upstairs killed them.

[Ding! Congratulations on successfully killing a Basic-type Iron Cockroach Beast. You gained 20 experience points!]

[Ding! Congratulations on successfully killing a Basic-type Iron Cockroach Beast. You gained 20 experience points!]

The system's numbers kept rising, but Liu Feng felt that the experience awarded this time was far too little.

They were all mutant beasts, yet the female was worth 1,000 experience points while these Iron Cockroach Beasts only gave him 20. Accumulating experience this way was simply too slow.

"Feng, what do we do about that bunch outside? Should we charge out?"

Han Bing had already pressed his hand against the iron door. Now that the traps here had been disarmed, they could launch an all-out attack at any moment.

(End of chapter)