Chapter 160: Emergency stairwell
“What is this?”
Looking at the sealed metal door in front of him, the traffic officer asked.
He hadn’t expected there to be a place like this under the city.
“Yongsen Laboratory.”
Lin Ye pressed close to the metal door to sense the lock’s structure. The metal door had an effect of blocking mental energy, but Lin Ye’s mental energy could penetrate the metal and sense a small area beyond the door.
Using spiritual energy to unlock it, Lin Ye pushed open the heavy metal door and entered the laboratory.
Maybe because they thought Lin Ye was useless, or for some other reason, the laboratory hadn’t lost power.
Inside the metal door was a space like an elevator lobby. Directly opposite the metal door were two elevators, and corridors extended along both sides of the space.
Lin Ye entered the right corridor. Along both sides of the corridor were laboratories with different functions. Instruments inside were still running; some patients wearing hospital gowns lay on test beds. They looked like human potted plants, their bodies covered in various green plants.
Although mentally prepared to some degree, the traffic officer still underestimated how vicious those creatures were. He tightened his grip on his Spiritual Energy Rifle, itching to go down and massacre the researchers here. The two began searching the labs, but the important files had been taken away and there were no researchers left on the first underground level.
After a few turns, the two returned from the left corridor to the elevator lobby. Yongsen Laboratory was a polygonal building; the side corridors connected to each other.
“Let’s hurry down and kill them.”
The traffic officer pressed the elevator button. Entering a narrow sealed elevator wasn’t wise, but they were both spiritual energy users—even if the elevator fell, they had ways to survive.
“Why is there no emergency stairwell here?”
Lin Ye looked at the open elevator doors and asked.
“...Don’t know. Maybe nobody comes down here to inspect, so they skipped it?”
The traffic officer didn’t think these bastards cared about safety.
“This is a laboratory. What if the elevator malfunctions? How could a research institution be this unprofessional? Unless...”
Lin Ye probed the elevator’s structure and found nothing abnormal.
“Unless what?”
The traffic officer also sensed that something was off.
“Unless it was designed like this on purpose. They want us to take the elevator down.”
Lin Ye was experienced at spotting traps. The moment he saw this elevator, his trap radar lit up.
“What do we do then? Look for a stairwell? Or dismantle the elevator?”
the traffic officer asked.
“There might not be an emergency stairwell at all. That’s the point—forcing us to ride the elevator. As for tearing the elevator apart, I suggest you stay away from the elevator shaft.”
In Lin Ye’s perception, the elevator itself was fine. The problem, if any, lay with the elevator shaft.
“No problem, we can make them a stairwell.”
Lin Ye drew his experimental longsword and used Shotgun Blade on the elevator lobby floor.
“Open!”
Boom!
The ground exploded into a large pit. At the bottom, the lights of the second basement could be faintly seen.
“...This is underground. Aren’t you afraid you’ll collapse the place?”
The traffic officer felt a slight tremor underfoot and asked.
“I actually considered just collapsing the whole place and burying them, but bringing down a building like this is not easy, and I still need to go down to gather intel.”
Lin Ye used spiritual energy to clear the hole, then jumped down to the second basement.
The traffic officer followed. The second level’s structure resembled the first. Before he could start exploring the second basement, Lin Ye shouted that he had opened a hole to the third basement.
“Aren’t we checking this level?”
the traffic officer asked.
“No need. We’ll go straight to the bottom. I don’t believe they’d hide near the first basement.”
Lin Ye sneakily set several rune traps at the elevator entrance, then said loudly.
“What if someone didn’t have time to go down?”
The traffic officer didn’t want those bastards to leave alive.
“Then they’re lucky.”
Lin Ye jumped into the third basement and casually placed rune traps outside the elevator doors.
In this way, the two rapidly descended to the sixth basement. Lin Ye blew open the floor again; this time it opened onto a huge experimental plaza rather than another elevator lobby.
Through the hole Lin Ye sensed the experimental plaza below; soon he detected several plant people at the plaza’s center. These plant people differed from the earlier trash—they were elite individuals.
“Prepare for combat.”
Lin Ye warned the traffic officer, then leapt into the experimental plaza.
The plaza was an underground space the size of a soccer field. Some elite plant people stood in the center, and a group of researchers in white coats hid behind them.
Before they could say anything, Lin Ye opened fire on the plant people.
Rat-a-tat-tat...
When the first magazine emptied, the traffic officer picked up his rifle and delivered controlled bursts to the remaining standing elite plant people. Lin Ye reloaded and started another sweep.
Rat-a-tat-tat...
After two rounds of suppression, only one elite plant person could still barely stand in the plaza center. When Lin Ye had just finished reloading for a third sweep, that plant person was knocked down by the traffic officer’s bursts. Although not dead, it couldn’t get back up for the moment.
Lin Ye didn’t approach the dead elite plant people; there could be individuals among them—like the target girl—that could cause mid-range mutations. There was no need to get close.
Taking out a Spiritual Energy Sniper Rifle, Lin Ye began blowing away the upper bodies of the distant researchers one by one; he only needed research data, not the researchers themselves.
Boom!
No matter where the researchers tried to hide, each sniper shot shredded one researcher’s upper torso. They scattered in fear, trying all sorts of ridiculous maneuvers to dodge the relentless fatal gunfire.
But it was meaningless; the bullets tore through their bodies without mercy, delivering equal judgment to everyone.
Only after the last researcher’s lower body collapsed to the ground did Lin Ye sheathe the sniper rifle. He then looked toward a nearby camera and smiled as he asked:
“What are you waiting for? For me to dig through those pieces of trash’s corpses for evidence?”
A large amount of gray-green gas sprayed from various corners of the experimental plaza. Stimulated by the gas, thick branches shot up rapidly from beneath the plaza.
Tiny mouths opened on the branches, devouring the corpses of the plant people and the researchers on the plaza.
By then, Lin Ye had already returned with the traffic officer to the fifth basement.
Thick branches crawled upward through the holes. Lin Ye and the traffic officer quickly climbed up; before the branches could grab them, they reached the first basement.
The traffic officer was surprised to find a severely mutated researcher lying near the metal door. The researcher saw Lin Ye and tried in terror to back away, but no matter how it struggled, it could not escape the rune trap’s range.