Everyone landed at the bottom of the abyss and stood in a row on the riverbank. The Grand Elder asked, "Which way should we go next? Upstream or downstream?"
Qingchen, holding a flashlight, silently observed the marks on the stone wall: "Go downstream."
"Why?" Da Yu asked.
“If Fireseed Company is going to build a base here, the most convenient way to transport large equipment after it is brought down is by boat. If it were me, I would choose to land downstream on such a turbulent river,” Qing Chen said. “Of course, this may be a wrong guess. We’ll see.”
The group walked along the riverbank for nearly two hours before they gradually felt the riverbank widening and saw traces of human excavation!
We've found the right direction.
Qingchen shone his flashlight over, but the next moment, everyone stared in astonishment at the scene before them.
But then you see glass vessels, each two meters tall, densely embedded in the stone wall, standing out starkly to the outside world. Pipes connect these glass vessels to the carved grooves in the wall.
The glass vessel base was an unidentified device, and inside it was empty, with scattered human skeletons.
They have been silent here for who knows how long.
Qing Chen said, "A long time ago, the glass container should have been filled with solution, and these skeletons should have been human, but we don't know why they were placed here."
He leaned closer to look and wiped the dust off the stainless steel nameplate on the base of the vessel: Bionic T-3019.
Chapter 749, One Bionic Body is Missing
The skeletons in the glassware, the words on the metal nameplate—everything about them exudes an eeriness.
T3088.
T4901.
T5029.
These serial numbers seem unrelated. If there is any pattern, it is that the prefixes of T3, T4, and T5 are different, which seems to indicate a difference in level.
On the entire wall, there were only three glasswares marked with T6 serial number plates, but they were empty, assuming the glasswares were not damaged.
In terms of rarity alone, T6 should be the rarest, so its tier should also be the highest, with T3 being the lowest.
The endless glasswares were neatly arranged, like coffins embedded in the stone wall.
This underground abyss is like a giant mass grave.
A mass grave made of bionic materials.
Zard looked at the pitch-black surroundings and shrank back.
Qing Chen also realized that this guy was extremely bold when it came to matters of the mortal world, but extremely timid when it came to matters related to the underworld.
“No wonder the Fireseed Company built its secret base here; it turns out they were conducting such inhumane experiments,” the elder exclaimed in amazement. “If the Federation found out, they would be condemned by everyone.”
Qingchen looked up and scanned the cliffs on both sides of the underground river. Wherever the flashlight beam passed, there were densely packed glasswares, as if they led to the sky.
He could even imagine that a thousand years ago, these vessels contained whole human figures, filled with green or blue liquid, like embryos and wombs, nurturing deformed lives.
The glassware was all intact, but the androids inside had all turned into skeletons within the sealed containers over the years.
"Could the shroud restore the skeletons to their original form? If it could, wouldn't we be able to see what people looked like a thousand years ago?" Zard asked curiously. "I wonder if they were men or women?"
Qing Chen calmly replied, "Judging from the pelvis and pubic bone, they are all male. First of all, the male pelvis is wider at the top and narrower at the bottom, forming a funnel shape. The female pelvis is short and wide, forming a cylinder shape. If this were a normal experimental site, then the types of androids should be diverse, making it convenient to collect various data. But all the skeletal models here are adult males, so I suspect that the androids to be created here... are all war machines."
As he spoke, Qingchen smashed a glass vessel, only to see that after the vessel shattered, the bones inside quickly oxidized and turned gray.
“Huh,” Da Yu frowned and said, “This glass container is still airtight after so many years. What about the liquid in their glass container? I thought it was the container that leaked and caused them to die inside the glass.”
Qing Chen said, "Let me make a bold guess: this place was originally one of the most important secret experimental sites of the Fire Seed Company, where they created a large number of androids. But one day, something went wrong here. Someone manually shut down all the experimental equipment and drained the nutrient solution and breathing fluid inside."
At this moment, the beam of light in Qingchen's hand was still sweeping back and forth, and the next second, he froze.
On the eighteenth layer of the glassware arrangement, one of the glasswares was found to be broken.
"Was it an accidental breakage, or... did someone crawl out?" Da Yu asked, frowning.
"Wait a moment," Qingchen said, and then climbed up with his bare hands.
Soon, Qing Chen slowly stepped back: "There were no bones inside the glass vessel, and the metal nameplate on the outside of the glass vessel was forcibly torn off."
The glassware is empty!
Everyone was startled.
They all understood what this meant: a android had survived the catastrophe and had even broken a glass container to crawl out!
Qing Chen said in a low voice, "Keep going, but be careful."
“Even if he survived back then, he should have left this place by now, or perhaps he died here,” the elder said doubtfully. “This base has been abandoned for at least several hundred years; it’s impossible for anything to have survived.”
"It's hard to say," Qingchen shook his head, "I hope I'm just overthinking it."
Only the knights knew that the Fire Seed had indeed created 'humanoid creatures' with theoretically infinite lifespans, not only Ren Xiaosu, but also those 'experimental subjects' who had wreaked havoc on human civilization.
All of those experimental subjects managed to coexist with cancer cells; theoretically, as long as they could survive, they could live for thousands or even tens of thousands of years.
This is true immortality.
Qingchen picked up a bone and handed it to Da Yu: "Please take this with you. I'm going to send it back to City 10 so that Scientist Number 2 can see if he can research it and find anything."
The muscle tissue of these skeletons is gone, so the shroud cannot restore the lost substances, just as it cannot heal the wound on Qing Chen's chest.
But glassware is so airtight, so it's possible to extract DNA from the bones inside.
Qingchen scanned the glasswares several times, making sure only one was broken, before continuing inside. On the way, he whispered a few words to Zard, which made Da Yu frown.
The roads are getting wider and wider, but the only thing that remains unchanged is the swiftness and width of the river.
When everyone looked at the dark river again, they felt a chill run down their spines, as if they were afraid that something might be inside.
The next moment, the abyss suddenly opened completely, and a huge human-built structure came into view, just like a giant stadium.
The entire exterior of the building is made of metal and is covered in rust.
“Let’s go in and take a look,” Qingchen said, but he suddenly turned around and looked at the abyss behind him. He felt as if someone was watching him from behind, but no sound was made.
Qing Chen traced the beam of light in his hand but found nothing unusual.
It's like... a gecko-like reptile is quickly disappearing into the darkness of a cliff corner.
"What's wrong?" Da Yu asked.
"It's nothing," Qingchen shook his head.
As the group entered the building, they found a large number of security screening devices at the entrance, which were already decayed.
As you walk further in, you'll find a large number of skeletons scattered on the ground.
Qing Chen looked at the ground: "There are many shell casings and bullet holes on the wall. It seems that a battle took place here and everyone was suddenly killed."
As he spoke, Qingchen coughed up blood. He was indeed exhausted after walking such a long distance with his injuries.
Qin Yiyi asked with concern, "Shall I carry you on my back?"
"No need," Qing Chen wiped the blood from his mouth, "I can still manage."
"That's strange. Was it an internal purge within the Fireseed Company, or was it attacked?" Da Yu asked, squatting down to examine the corpse.
“What’s strange is that there are no bullet marks on these people,” Qing Chen analyzed. “In a large-scale battle, bullets would leave bullet marks on the bones to some extent, but there are none on these bones. I suspect that they are not fighting an enemy with firearms, but rather that a beast that is not afraid of firearms attacked this place.”
Suddenly, everyone remembered the broken glassware from earlier, and a chill ran down their spines.
"Let's get moving. The Chen family might find their way here, and we don't have much time," Qingchen said. "Our goal is to find the database first. A thousand years ago, most data was backed up on paper. This is a closed environment, so a lot of information will be preserved here. If we find any computers, we should remove all the hard drives and take them with us."
After searching around, they found that a quarter of the building was sealed off by metal gates, and they didn't know how to get in or what was locked inside.
"How do we get in?" Da Yu asked. "These metals are very hard; we can't blast them open."
He had barely finished speaking when he saw Qing Chen reach out and gently twist the knob, opening the database door...
Da Yu: "Damn..."
To their surprise, in the huge archive, two skeletons lay on the ground, and all the paper documents around them were shredded into strips and mixed together, and there was a small incinerator full of ash.
Qing Chen said, "I just glanced at the door lock, and it was locked from the inside. These two people must have been members of the Fireseed Company, responsible for destroying all the data and evidence in this secret base, and then they starved to death inside."
These two people were risking their lives to ensure the complete destruction of the data.
Let alone the documents in the incinerator, even those shredded into strips by the shredder would take ten or twenty years to piece back together.
But the shroud can restore all the data here.
Qing Chen looked at the documents in front of him: "Gather all the shredded documents and put them in the shroud. Sweep out all the ashes from the incinerator, don't miss a single one."
Everyone turned the incinerator upside down, and the elder used a brush to scrape off the ashes little by little.
After the shroud was closed, everyone sat in the archives and waited.
Qing Chen asked, "What exactly is the Fireseed Company? It seems that various conglomerates rarely comment on them in their own historical documents?"
“It was a very complex company,” Da Yu recalled. “Their mission was to preserve the human race and find new ways to continue the human gene pool. However, their methods of protecting humanity were somewhat extreme.”
"Does the so-called extreme nature of their protection methods mean that they have conducted many experiments that violate human ethics?" Qingchen asked.
“That’s right. Their experiments have always had huge ethical problems. Moreover, back then, in order to extract genes, the ruling faction was also arresting superhumans on a large scale, hoping to obtain the genes of the new human from them,” Da Yu replied.
“It seems to be a very ruthless organization,” Qing Chen nodded.
An hour later, the shroud was opened, and all the shredded documents were restored, while the burned paper documents still had some holes.
The elder said, "The information in this shroud is probably several thousand pages long, and it's all in disarray. How long will it take to finish reading it? We can't just stay here for several years."
Qing Chen glanced at him, then quickly went through all the information. In his mind, he rapidly categorized, organized, summarized, and sorted the more than three thousand pages of data.
They are restoring their logical order.
When the Grand Elder saw that Qing Chen had gone through the documents so quickly and even closed his eyes, he immediately sensed that something was amiss...
Qing Chen opened his eyes again and summarized the key points for everyone:
"Our base is Laboratory 048. The documents show that Spark Corporation has developed a medical method to coexist with cancer, but when it was widely promoted in Laboratory 039, it was discovered that the success achieved on test subject 001 was accidental. Laboratory 039 is in crisis and requests headquarters' permission to destroy the laboratory or permanently close it."
Qing Chen glanced at everyone and asked, "Could this Laboratory 039 be the place where the god Ren Xiaosu stayed back then?"
He continued, "The Fire Seed Company suspects that Ren Xiaosu's own strength is what led to the success of individual cases. So, after learning from the experience of Laboratory 039, they built a huge secret laboratory in this place, hoping to use genetically modified powerful bionics to artificially induce cancer and test the technology of coexisting with cancer again."
Simply put, the Fireseed believed that ordinary people could not coexist with cancer; only superhumans could. Therefore, they collected the genes of superhumans and specifically cloned them to create gene warriors for experiments.