manynovel Page 26
Page 26
"I will supervise you throughout the entire process, testing you for any signs of cowardice or attempts to escape..." A long finger, painted with dark purple nail polish, hovered in the air, making a button-pressing motion.
"—I only need to press it lightly." A cruel, emotionless smile curved his lips: "Understand?"
Lip, Tifa, and the little girl nodded repeatedly like obedient children, "Mmm-hmm!"
Black Lily and Ada Wong exchanged a silent glance and both sighed...
Then, Black Lily tapped the collar controller again.
With the existence of "Pleasure Trick," almost all the functions of the collar, except for the explosion, are perfectly simulated.
The text, which was originally projected onto their retinas by the collar bomb, suddenly appeared before their eyes.
The Ninth-Tier Cleaner Trial is now open.
Difficulty Level: C
[Assessment Type: Multiple Personnel]
[Requirement for approval: Thoroughly investigate or completely eliminate the source of pollution at the hotel.]
Number of participants in this round of trials: 326
[Average initial points: 0]
The leaderboard is now open; please check it out.
Sure enough, since it's an exam, there has to be a scoreboard.
Li Pu opened the leaderboard and scrolled through many pages before finding himself. He and Tifa were marked as one team, while the little girl and 2B were on another team.
Although the people on the first few pages had high scores, each person's name was marked as deceased in parentheses.
The message indicating someone is dead is still being updated.
Currently, only he and Tifa remain from the R-sector team.
"The rate of attrition is too fast..."
Meanwhile, as the last helicopter flew away from the rooftop, all those participating in this round of testing had arrived.
Only one final "face-saving" step remains before sending the cannon fodder to the meat grinder.
Fifteen minutes later, the team distributing the supplies quickly set up in a flurry of activity.
To make the "collar bomb" scene realistic, Lip and Tifa had to "wriggle" through the long supply lines and go through the motions of the act.
Fortunately, there were women in front and behind him.
As he got closer, he took a look.
Each person was given only two dry, empty loaves of bread and a bottle of drinking water with obvious, earthy impurities at the bottom.
Apart from that, there wasn't a single piece of equipment.
These are the supplies distributed by Eagle City this time.
Li Pu's eyelids twitched as he looked at it:
Responding to an S-level disaster? Is this feeding sparrows or suicide squads?
How many hands did they skim off the top? Even if it was just for show, would it kill them to add a starchy sausage?!
Finally, when it was their turn, the bearded man's murky eyes were fixed maliciously on Li Pu's face, and he grinned, revealing a mouthful of yellow teeth:
"Hey~ You two can share one!"
As soon as the words fell——
"Snapped!"
A loaf of bread as hard as a rock and a bottle of mineral water stained with dirt were casually tossed in front of Li Pu!
"..." Li Pu was too lazy to argue with him.
Tifa rolled her eyes and left without looking back, following Lip and the little one.
The bearded man proudly raised his chin, his venomous gaze lingering on the "collar bombs" of the three departing men. "We need to find a way to get our hands on the bomb controllers of those two bastards!"
……
The heavy alloy gate roared open behind us.
When Li Pu stepped into the R District Resort Hotel, into the dim, reddish light filled with dust, blood, and a faint, sweet smell of decay—
An indescribable surge of warmth suddenly rushed into my chest!
Everyone! Ruby, the bearded man, and the group of prospective agents all went into the hotel with him!
I've never missed a place so much!
He greedily inhaled the familiar air, and couldn't help but smile.
"It's like coming home to the mother!!!!"
The author says:
Author's note: Adding Liaoning OTZ
Requesting monthly votes, requesting continued reading, and requesting all kinds of kisses~
Chapter Twenty-Four felt just like coming home!
The hotel's interior space was vast, and a large number of trial participants walked along the maze-like hotel corridors. After they formed teams at various forks in the road and chose different directions, the dense crowd completely dispersed.
In an instant, the clamor vanished as if sucked into the earth, leaving only an unsettling stillness.
Ruby and her group had deliberately shaken off that annoying R-sector kid and were exploring together.
There are no windows, no signs indicating directions, and it seems to stretch on forever. Apart from the decor, it doesn't look like a hotel at all!
Apart from the guest room doors, the walls on both sides of the corridor were covered with a thick layer of dark red wallpaper with a strong grainy texture, which gleamed lifelessly amidst the faint hum of the old, pale fluorescent tubes overhead.
As the lights flickered on and off, the light seemed to distort and become unrecognizable, and the outline of the corridor itself seemed to melt into the blurry gray-red shadows.
In the empty corridor, only he and Tifa remained, still following the group of "prospective operators" at a distance.
The air inhaled through the nasal cavity was a mixture of mold, disinfectant, and some indescribable dry smell.
The carpet beneath our feet was a thick, dark black short pile, so heavy that it completely absorbed the sound of everyone's footsteps.
"Stop! Be careful!" Ruby abruptly raised her hand, her voice trembling with barely perceptible tension. "The spatial structure here has been distorted by pollution! Perception is completely unreliable! Immediately check the pollution concentration in the current area!"
A prospective agent behind him, dressed in the uniform of a certain seventh-tier agency, turned pale instantly, but dared not be negligent in the slightest.
A prospective operator hurriedly opened his backpack and took out a compass.
It was no ordinary compass; its main body was a disc covered with intricate etched patterns, with a cloudy crystal inlaid in the center that resembled a biological eyeball.
A thin, black tubing extends from the edge of the disc, and at the end of the tubing is a metal needle, about the thickness of a toothpick, that gleams with a cold light!
The operative stared at the needle, his Adam's apple bobbing violently, and beads of cold sweat forming on his forehead.
With trembling fingers, he pinched the cold needle and aimed it at one of his eyes!
"Ugh—hiss!!"
Blood instantly trickled down the gap between the syringe and his eyeball, staining half of his cheek red.
Om-!
The compass is activated!
The central "eyeball" lens spun wildly, emitting a teeth-grinding "click" sound!
Less than half a second!
Click——! ! !
The compass is cracked!
The unfortunate operator who was operating the equipment was the first to be hit! He only had time to let out a short scream before he was violently thrown away by an invisible force! Blood mixed with fragments that looked like eyeball tissue splattered through the air! He crashed heavily onto the twisted ground several meters away, his fate unknown!
"This place... is definitely more than just C-level! You guys stick with me." Ruby was somewhat relieved, relieved that she had gathered a bunch of cannon fodder to scout ahead.
No one cared about the unfortunate operator whose eyeballs had exploded, leaving him to fend for himself. With such a high concentration of pollution entering his body, he was bound to mutate sooner or later.
Just then, a figure suddenly appeared out of thin air and blocked their way!
"Empty, space distortion?" Ruby's heart skipped a beat.
This is no monster that a seventh-tier monster can handle!
She was a swollen, waterlogged-looking European or American woman.
Its clothes, covered in flamboyant patches, clearly belonged to the previous batch of patchwork babies.
In front of her, there was a huge, gruesome wound that stretched across most of her body!
The tear ran from the shoulder all the way down to the hip joint, the skin and flesh turned outwards, the color was dark red, and it was swollen like an over-fermented, rotten dough.
“D-rank, no! An elite mutant of an even higher rank…” Ruby frowned and shielded the group of prospective operators in front of her.
Generally speaking, in a Class C contaminated area, only the source boss of the contamination would be a Class C mutant. A companion mutant like this should be a Class D or lower!
His mind was completely preoccupied with the Chosen Ones, and he was completely unaware that the authorities had clearly altered the hotel's pollution level!
Several of the more composed individuals quickly joined him in taking a countermeasure.
The others dropped their guns while trying to draw them, grabbed the wrong equipment while rummaging through their bags, and struggled to pull out half of their stuck riot batons after three attempts.
Even worse, some pulled out a book, clutching it like a lifeline, their trembling fingers flipping through the pages with a jarring thud in the silence, while they nervously muttered to themselves: "Chapter One... Encountering the... Mutant... Non-aggressive... Non-aggressive... Stable... Stability First..."
Holding the book, he tried to calm the woman opposite him, following the instructions in the book, "Are you...are you injured?"
"Don't talk to the contaminated mutants!" The bearded man tried to step forward to cover their mouths, but it was too late!
Upon hearing this, the woman's eyes widened with excitement, and she continued walking slowly forward.
"Injured? Yes!"
"I'm injured, hehehe."
"It hurts so much."
"Would you like to see it!?"
As she spoke, the eerie woman's pace quickened, drawing ever closer.
"Would you like to see it?"
"Okay, I'll make sure you see it."
"You just need a little help."
Ruby, at the seventh level, immediately sensed something was wrong!
The crazy woman continued to stagger in!
Amidst the peeling flesh and the swollen, red wound spanning her upper body, a huge eye suddenly opened—the eyeball filled with a moist, slippery liquid, constantly turning from side to side, its pupil contracting and dilating, as if seeing this world for the first time, utterly novel! And vaguely carrying a greedy desire for light, color, and life.
The strange eye began to wriggle incessantly in the wound, becoming so wet that pus oozed out!
"You will see!" A hoarse, inhuman voice pierced through the thick air.
Almost the instant those giant eyes opened!
The surrounding space seemed to be soaked in boiling oil, eerily folding, stretching, and tangling! And above everyone's heads—
The once pale and neatly arranged long light tube suddenly began to convulse violently!
The strange eye suddenly flashed!
The pollution it emitted instantly triggered painful flesh and blood deformities!
There wasn't even time to fire a shot!
*Pfft!* The bearded man was the first to be hit. His fleshy face immediately swelled up, and a mouthful of blood mixed with tiny bubbles gushed out, covering his thick beard. He staggered backward like a cannonball and fell heavily onto another bearded man who was also swaying. The two rolled around in a heap.
The prospective operator, who had just been flipping through the manual and attempting to communicate, suddenly had his eyes bulge out, made a strange "hoarse" sound from his throat, and then a jet of blood, more exaggerated than a spray bottle, shot straight up to the ceiling, before weakly splattering himself all over his face, staining his glasses black and red with blood. He rolled his eyes back and collapsed to the ground, unconscious.
When Ruby came to her senses, she felt as if all the air in her lungs had been expelled, and her swollen, fat face was covered with snot, tears, and blood.
The will to survive overwhelmed everything! Elegance, grace, and family honor were all crushed to dust in this moment by the pungent smell of blood and the chilling reality of death!
Run! Run!! Run now!!!