Xie Chiyuan had not yet retracted his bone blade.
He glanced around and said calmly, "No rush. All these tricks he's playing are just because he's bad at fighting. He's just a rat in the gutter, he'll die sooner or later."
Yu An nodded, deeply agreeing.
Halfway through the maze, Yu An realized something was wrong. The maze's layout was strikingly similar to a place he knew well.
Secret Shield Research Institute.
Yu An was familiar with the Secret Shield Research Institute, while Xie Chiyuan had never been there, so naturally he was not as familiar with it as Yu An.
He walked and walked until he came to a laboratory.
There were filthy bloodstains on the laboratory floor, and a large green medical waste bin stood near the door. Not far from the waste bin lay a corpse.
The corpse was wearing a research institute uniform, with a chubby little fish embroidered on the back.
Yu An's face turned pale instantly.
He raised his hand and hugged Xie Chiyuan's arm tightly, his voice trembling as he spoke: "Xie, Xie Chiyuan, this really is a haunted house!"
Xie Chiyuan had never been to Mishield, but he wasn't blind and could recognize the Mishield's logo.
"It's not a haunted house."
Xie Chiyuan soothingly ruffled the tuft of hair on his head: "The magician's superpower is space. This is just like the casino and the iron cage before, both are spatial representations."
His magician sequence number is D89. Logically, given his later sequence, his spatial abilities shouldn't be as powerful as they are now.
Unless, like some of the zombies outside, he has evolved.
Xie Chiyuan thought about the Red Bird organization to which the magician belonged, pondering their intentions. The Red Bird was an internationally notorious terrorist organization, and they also had a mercenary nature, taking on side jobs whoever paid the most.
After the outbreak of infection, Akagiri kept a low profile for a while.
Who knew that after keeping a low profile, their first heist was to occupy the abandoned old city of Yu and kidnap Ruan Ke, the partner of the West District boss and a biological nutritionist.
In Xie Chiyuan's view, this kind of kidnapping was very irrational.
Red Bird and the West District had no prior conflict. Even if other districts that were at odds with the West District offered them money to do things, they shouldn't have accepted.
In other words, even if they were to take the job, they would be offending the West District anyway, so they might as well pull off a big heist and kidnap the West District boss.
Although Xie Chiyuan was thinking about something, he didn't neglect Yu An.
He told Yu An about the magician's special ability: "His spatial reconstruction can only recreate places he has been. It seems he might be from the Secret Shield Research Institute."
"Impossible," Yu An denied outright.
The magician's approach doesn't seem to come from the Secret Shield Research Institute.
Furthermore, the Secret Shield Institute never conducts experiments on aberrations. Selina stated that the aberrations they receive are products of other research institutes.
Yu An asked why research on aberrations wasn't prohibited, and Selina replied that they couldn't interfere.
At that time, Yu An was just a patient living in the research institute. He had neither power nor money, so he could only watch helplessly as the experiments on the mutants were conducted.
How can you be so sure?
Xie Chiyuan's golden eyes had returned to their dark depths, his gaze unreadable, fixed on Yu An without wavering for a moment.
Yu An gave a perfunctory hum: "I'm not sure, I just feel that there wouldn't be any freakish characters like magicians in a place like this."
Xie Chiyuan stared at his face for a long while before looking away.
Everything in the Secret Shield Laboratory overlapped with the scene Yu An saw when she woke up.
"Ta-da!"
Footsteps sounded.
Selina appeared behind him, but this time Yu An did not rush to call her.
She stared intently at Yu An, and then threw herself at him.
Xie Chiyuan swiftly and decisively knocked her down.
"It's a rare opportunity to come here, come with me to take a look around." Xie Chiyuan led Yu An to visit the other rooms.
Yu An walked to the door and suddenly looked back.
In a single glance, he caught sight of Selina's hand, and his pupils constricted sharply for a moment. Before he could think further, Xie Chiyuan grabbed him by the back of the neck and dragged him outside.
There was an identical zombie outside, except it was a small deformed one without three heads.
Xie Chiyuan strolled leisurely around the research institute as if taking a walk. He was curious to know why the magician had placed him there.
Yu An felt he was quite familiar with the research institute. But as he walked, he felt lost.
"Where...is this?"
The row of rooms in front of him was unlike anything he had ever seen before. But just standing outside the rooms, he felt a chill creeping up his feet.
The magician's spatial abilities were insufficient to support the recreation of the entire research institute; the scene behind them had long since collapsed, with only buildings remaining within a few dozen meters around them.
"You'll know once you go in and take a look."
Even if they don't go in, they have no way back. The magician's powers, used to this extent, probably won't last much longer.
Xie Chiyuan led Yu An inside by the wrist.
As soon as I went in, the door slammed shut.
A burst of unidentified gas sprayed towards Yu An, but Xie Chiyuan quickly blocked it behind him.
Xie Chiyuan held his breath, but still inhaled a little air. A rustling sound came from inside the room, and a group of palm-sized deformed creatures crawled out.
Calling them deformed is simply a matter of Yu An being unable to find a proper way to describe them.
They all have long, thin mouths like needles, and crawling on them is extremely creepy.
When Xie Chiyuan saw this thing, he originally wanted to stomp it to death. But he couldn't kill it at all; it was deformed on the ground and unstable above.
The room was filled with blue-purple lightning.
The room was completely dark.
In the instant the lights went out, Yu An suddenly saw the sign posted on the sect's sign: "Group A Deformity Observation Room".
These words struck Yu An like a bolt of lightning.
His babies were often taken to the observation room before.
But that's not right.
Yu An was confused. His children were only in the observation room to check their physical condition, how could they possibly be in this observation room?
There are also piles of white bones in this observation room.
"Yu An, don't be afraid."
Xie Chiyuan turned his head and offered Yu An a word of comfort.
A chill ran down his spine, and now he understood why the magician had chosen this location for the spatial reenactment.
In this small room, he couldn't even draw his bone blade.
Yu An's palms were ice-cold. He held Xie Chiyuan's hand and tried to remain calm: "I'm not afraid!"
This is definitely all fake.
There won't be such a place in the Secret Shield Research Institute.
Without external force, Xie Chiyuan was not afraid at all. He could tell that there were not only small deformed creatures crawling on the ground in this room, but also bloody claw marks inside the large round glass container hanging against the wall, which indicated that it was not a simple place.
Inside the observation room, the two sat side by side.
Outside.
The handsome young man was mocked by a little child in a childish voice: "I told you a long time ago not to hang out with Xiao Ba. Xiao Ba is just a plate of seafood. What future is there in following him?"
"See? Now Xiao Ba is off catching fish, and you're taking the blame."
"You're so awesome! You even pushed the big brother in!"
The little boy wasn't even as tall as the young man's thigh, but he didn't seem to be inferior in terms of presence when facing the young man.
The young man's eyes turned cold. He didn't care to wait for the magician to get rid of Xie Chiyuan any longer. He pushed aside the little child beside him and went to find the magician to release Xie Chiyuan.
A few minutes later.
The magician was blocked by the two, one big and one small. Mycelium floated in the air. The young man looked at him with a look that said, "Get my older brother out here, or I'll kill you."
The magician stared at them intently, and the atmosphere slowly became tense.
The stalemate ultimately ended with the magician backing down.
The magician knew the boy's background; all the boys he raised, no matter how sinister, had a bottom line—
Anyone who touches my elder brother must die!
Just as the magician was about to dispel the spatial illusion, he focused his attention and realized something was wrong—
"Your eldest brother is gone."
Damn, he's in trouble!
Chapter 22
As soon as the magician finished speaking, two cold gazes pierced him like knives.
His scalp tingled as he searched through his own space.
After searching for a while, the magician finally spoke again: "It must be Xie Chiyuan. He broke my spatial barrier and kidnapped your eldest brother."
All mutants possess special abilities. For example, in the village, the ability Yu An encountered was a form of mind control; he was bewitched by the ability, but Xie Chiyuan was not.
Perhaps Xie Chiyuan was strong enough, or perhaps Xie Chiyuan's physique was just strong enough to withstand it.
In short, Xie Chiyuan, who was hated so much by the mutants that they wanted to skin him alive, actually had some skills when facing the mutants.
"They've run away?"
This word made the faces of the two, one big and one small, grow even colder. Little Nine's mycelium almost wrapped around the magician's back, and her soft, childlike voice revealed undisguised murderous intent: "Say it again."