The Laboratory

"Why do you say that?"

It wasn't just An Ke. As soon as Ye Lin finished speaking, everyone instinctively asked, looking at him in confusion.

Looking at the first glass door leading into the laboratory a short distance away, Ye Lin stopped. He decided to explain everything before they went in.

"Because of the time limit."

Ye Lin turned to face the others.

"According to the system's instructions, we have to find 'it' within two hours, whether it's an actual god or an object."

"But the underground layout is complicated, and we also have to deal with the Species. That makes finding it within two hours extremely difficult."

"So, working backward from that, the number of areas we're meant to search must be limited."

"And the laboratory has the strongest connection to the Species. It's also the most likely place to find clues about how to counter them."

Ye Lin let out a soft sigh.

Ever since receiving the second-round question, he had been thinking about how to solve it.

The system had provided too little information. Even the clues they had found amounted to nothing more than those ten eerie murals. All he could do was reason backward, tracing effects to their causes to find the answer.

The building's structure alone made it clear that the third underground level they were currently on was far from the lowest.

A completely enclosed structure, yet it has water, airflow, and electricity. That means there are other areas below the third underground level supplying power...

"A limited search area... I thought of that too."

An Ke nodded without disagreeing, but she couldn't help frowning as she tried to explain her own view.

"From what we've seen, searching this whole place would take at least a dozen hours. If we're going to search, we can only choose one route."

"But why does it have to be the laboratory? Why not the isolation zone?"

"In typical disaster movies, or even real-life cases, wouldn't the isolation zone be the most likely place to contain clues about how it all began?"

"Like the origin of the Species? Maybe the monsters appeared because someone picked something up, or discovered something? It might not be a hundred percent certain, but we can't rule it out, can we?"

An Ke was puzzled. She could understand skipping the living quarters, but the isolation zone...

How had Ye Lin ruled it out?

Once they committed, there would be no turning back. A wrong choice meant death. With no room for trial and error, they had to be as cautious as possible.

Perhaps influenced by An Ke, He Zheng hesitated for a moment before voicing his own thoughts.

"Ye Lin, I trust your judgment, but there's something I'd like to say too."

He Zheng let out a long sigh, his expression conflicted.

"Here's the thing. You think the living quarters will contain a lot of Species and be dangerous, so you don't want to go there."

"But in my experience, the most dangerous places are often the ones most likely to offer a chance of survival. In the Death Exam, the people most likely to die aren't the least physically fit or the stupidest. Quite the opposite. They're the ones who think they're clever, try to take shortcuts, and are too afraid of dying..."

"Of course, I'm not saying that's you. I just want you to consider it."

After that, He Zheng said no more. Honestly, he didn't know why he had handed the decision over to Ye Lin so quickly.

He was clearly the most experienced one.

Normally, a newcomer had no right to call the shots. Before completing a full exam, they couldn't possibly understand just how terrifying the Death Exam was.

"I understand."

After listening to everyone's opinions, Ye Lin nodded slowly, showing no irritation at being challenged.

Although the three of them had different ideas, they were all trying their best to survive.

"There are two more reasons I think the laboratory area is the most likely place. One is the sulfuric acid. The other is the corpses."

"The sulfuric acid? The corpses?"

Seeing their confusion, Ye Lin simply laid out his initial hypothesis.

"First, the sulfuric acid."

"The sulfuric acid on the second underground level was probably meant to deal with the Species. That means a Species 'uprising' had already happened here before. They may even have accounted for the Species 'escaping' when they first built this place."

"Working backward from that, there must be other defensive measures inside the base."

"The isolation zone could contain the Species with steel cages or alloy rooms. But what about the laboratory? What would they use there?"

As soon as he finished, Hu Jia's eyes widened, and he blurted out an answer.

"Anesthetics! Or something the Species are afraid of!"

Everyone turned to look at him, momentarily taken aback.

Ye Lin glanced at the excited Hu Jia and smiled, indicating that he was right.

"Exactly. Research in the laboratory would inevitably involve contact with the Species. Whether it's an anesthetic or something else, that 'thing' would fit the system's instructions perfectly."

"So I think that even if it's not quite the correct answer, it'll at least let us protect ourselves. After all, the real danger still comes from the Species. If necessary, we can find those things first and then go to the other areas."

"As for the corpses..."

Ye Lin looked at He Zheng.

"He Zheng, who do you think those people were? How many people would have been in this place? Is anyone still alive?"

Faced with Ye Lin's questions, He Zheng hesitated.

"They were probably... researchers here?"

"The corpses were badly decomposed, but looking closely, I'd say they were around forty or fifty years old. There weren't any signs of physical training on their bodies, and there was a crushed pair of glasses on the floor."

"As for numbers, at least a few hundred? Whether anyone's still alive..."

He Zheng instinctively looked around, then shook his head.

"Probably not. Otherwise, the power wouldn't be out, and there would've been some response after we came in."

"Even if there are survivors, there are probably only a few left."

Ye Lin nodded slightly, indicating that He Zheng was right.

"Good. From those three points, we can infer that this place fell long ago. In other words, even the security personnel here couldn't deal with the Species."

"Yet the researchers, who would have been the least physically capable, managed to escape this far. There's only one possible explanation: they had a way to counter the Species."

"The fact that so few people made it here also means they didn't bring much of that 'thing' when they fled. Not everyone had access to it. That also supports the possibility that they were core researchers."

After hearing Ye Lin's explanation, He Zheng understood.

That was right. If these physically helpless researchers had managed to escape, they must have had something in their hands.

The small number of escapees meant the people in the other areas hadn't had access to that "??".

He Zheng's eyes lit up, and he decided not to rack his brains any further.

"All right! We'll do it your way. We're going to the laboratory area!"

"If we die, we die. If this gamble turns out wrong, I'll damn well accept it!"