Killer Rat King

Cheng Qi continued forward.

At last, he reached the pharmaceutical warehouse.

The lock on the metal door before him had corroded. A gentle pinch shattered it, sending the pieces to the floor.

Rumble!

He pushed open the door.

Dozens of enormous metal tanks stood before him, each at least five meters tall, arranged in row after row.

Cheng Qi approached one of the tanks.

He gently wiped the dust off its nameplate, revealing a line of text.

"It's Song Dayi's Gene-Completion Agent!"

Cheng Qi's eyes lit up. "There are actually this many tanks? Did they develop this stuff by the ton?!"

Cheng Qi had never imagined that Genetic Serum could be stored in such gigantic containers!

He reached out and tapped the tank in front of him, and his expression immediately darkened.

A hollow echo came from inside.

"It's empty!"

Cheng Qi strode over to another tank and tapped it as well. "This one's empty too!"

After that.

Cheng Qi inspected every tank as quickly as he could.

His expression grew increasingly dejected, until a shadow settled over his face.

They were all empty!

"That doesn't make sense."

Cheng Qi frowned in thought. "Didn't Song Dayi already admit he'd failed? That means this agent was basically a failed product. Why go to all the trouble of taking every last drop away? This wasn't exactly a small amount!"

Cheng Qi leaped onto the top of a tank and wrenched open its upper hatch.

The lights on the Extreme Warrior Armor illuminated every inch of the interior.

It was indeed empty, without a single drop of liquid.

At the same time.

Cheng Qi noticed rings of residue along the tank's inner walls, with faint traces of crystallization.

That was easy enough to explain. As the liquid inside decreased level by level, it left dried residue at each corresponding waterline.

"The agent evaporated?!"

Cheng Qi thought he understood, but a moment later, he noticed something wrong.

Those rings of residue were uneven.

If the liquid had evaporated, its level would have fallen steadily, leaving evenly spaced marks!

Yet the state of the tank's inner walls clearly defied that logic.

Some of the gaps between the marks were wide, while others were narrow.

That meant a large amount of liquid had suddenly disappeared during certain periods, while very little had disappeared during others.

There was no regular pattern at all.

"This looks..."

Cheng Qi's eyes widened slightly. "Like something drank all this liquid!"

The instant that thought occurred to him.

Cheng Qi felt a chill run down his spine.

Another creature was hiding in this underground space!

It had to be something extraordinary, because it had drunk hundreds of tons of Gene-Completion Agent!

Cheng Qi jumped down to the floor. A silver dagger flipped out of his arm, and he narrowed his eyes, scanning his surroundings inch by inch.

Drip...

Drip...

The sound of dripping water still came from the dark depths, echoing through the space.

Rustle...

Rustle...

Another faint sound came from farther away, like fur brushing against metal.

Inside his armor's visor, a sheen of cold sweat formed on Cheng Qi's forehead.

His eyes darted around, examining every detail before him.

What on earth was it?!

Drip!

Drip!

Rustle!

Rustle!

At that instant, Cheng Qi felt the hairs behind his ears stand on end. He spun around!

The lights mounted on the Extreme Warrior Armor's shoulders instantly illuminated the space ahead!

There, on the crisscrossing black pipes, a little white mouse stood quietly upright!

Cheng Qi's pupils abruptly contracted.

The little white mouse was only palm-sized, with soft, snow-white fur, delicate pink paws, and a pair of glossy black eyes like tiny gemstones.

"You...?"

Cheng Qi had not expected this. The creature that had suddenly appeared was nothing like what he had imagined.

Instead of some terrifying, enormous monster, it was a tiny, fluffy creature that looked utterly harmless.

But Cheng Qi did not lower his guard. All kinds of thoughts flashed through his mind.

Was it a lab mouse that had survived the experiments?

That didn't seem possible...

Even setting aside its natural lifespan, what did it eat and drink?

Could it have drunk all that Gene-Completion Agent?!

But it was far too small!

Drip...

Drip...

Rustle...

Rustle...

The little white mouse held out its tiny paws to catch condensation from a nearby pipe, making motions that resembled "washing its hands."

Cheng Qi noticed that his armor's light was aimed slightly too low to illuminate the top of the mouse's head.

He straightened his chest slightly, slowly raising the beam.

Then Cheng Qi saw something utterly inconceivable.

The little white mouse had no skullcap.

Someone had made a circular cut, removing the entire upper section of its skull, and installed a tiny metal frame on its head. In the center of that frame was the mouse's brain, exposed to the air.

Clearly, this was an experimental procedure intended to study the little white mouse's brain.

Cheng Qi drew in a slight breath. "Was it really a lab mouse from a hundred years ago?"

When the humans had evacuated, no one had bothered with the mouse, much less removed the equipment, leaving its somewhat horrific appearance unchanged to this day.

But that was not what shocked Cheng Qi most.

What truly astonished him was that clusters of pink crystals had grown on the mouse's brain, like a miniature patch of grass. The crystals shimmered with a mesmerizing, mysterious luster, looking extraordinarily beautiful.

As he studied the structure of those crystals.

Cheng Qi grew even more astonished. Why did they look a little like the characteristics of silicon-based life!?

Could his earlier wild guess have been right?!

It really had survived for over a hundred years by consuming Gene-Completion Agent.

And during that process, it must have undergone some genetic mutation. Its brain, for instance, now displayed the characteristics of silicon-based life!

"Squeak, squeak...!"

The little white mouse stopped moving its paws and turned toward Cheng Qi. Its mouth moved, letting out faint squeaks.

Cheng Qi froze.

He suddenly saw a blue ribbon drift out of the pink crystals on the mouse's head. It flowed sinuously through the air before gathering between Cheng Qi's brows.

Then, incredibly, Cheng Qi understood the little white mouse's language.

"Humans."

"Cruel and vicious, just like demons."

Cheng Qi's heart trembled.

Those words were exactly what he had imagined earlier. The difference was that the little white mouse could now express them!

A moment later, Cheng Qi realized what was happening.

The mouse was not speaking human language. Rather, it possessed not only the characteristics of a silicon-based lifeform, but some of its abilities as well.

That exchange had been a special form of communication between silicon-based lifeforms.

The inheritance had once described this: silicon-based lifeforms communicated through specific electromagnetic waves.

In other words, without his dual gene sequence, Cheng Qi would only have heard the "squeaks" perceived by carbon-based lifeforms.

"I do not allow humans to set foot in my territory."

"You are about to be killed."

"This is the punishment you should have suffered long ago."

The little white mouse squeaked, and the pink crystals on its head suddenly brightened, flashing at a specific frequency.

Cheng Qi felt the entire Gene Research Center tremble. More precisely, a tremendous upheaval had occurred on the surface, and the vibrations traveled down through layer after layer, finally reaching this underground space a hundred meters below.

At the same time, Cheng Qi heard the roars of countless Killer Rats.

It was hard to imagine that those roars could reach his ears through such a thick layer of earth.

That alone showed how crazed and furious the Killer Rats had become.

The ceiling began to crumble.

Cheng Qi heard digging sounds drawing ever closer, mixed with the snapping of Killer Rats' claws. Yet they disregarded everything, desperately clawing their way toward him.

At last, Cheng Qi understood everything.

The little creature before him was the only surviving "mouse" in the Gene Research Center. It had drunk all the Genetic Serum, and its body had undergone an incredible transformation.

Through the pink crystals on its head, it could emit special signals and control the entire Killer Rat population.

No wonder the Killer Rats on the surface had been so agitated and frenzied when Cheng Qi approached the Gene Research Center.

Because.

They needed to protect their... Rat King!