Chapter 20 To the Corner

About twenty minutes later, Feng Bujue, holding the Barefoot Brother's head, arrived at a corner of the base.

Igor, still carrying a weapon and several tools, walked ahead of him, acting as a bodyguard and scout.

"Alright, we're at the corner now. Starting from here, how do we get to the 'room where the experiment reports are stored'?" Feng Bujue asked the Barefoot Brother after stopping.

"I'll state this in advance…" the Barefoot Brother replied, "Because you said you can't see the signs, I can't confirm which of the four corners of the base 'this corner' is, so the destination we arrive at might not be correct."

"It doesn't matter," Feng Bujue said. "If this one is wrong, we'll just start from another corner. It'll just take more time." He paused for a moment. "But… I'll also state this in advance…" He gave the Barefoot Brother a cold look. "It's fine if we go to the wrong room, but if we're led to some strange place, like… a place with traps, or where your kind are, then… you can just pray for good fortune afterwards."

These words made the Barefoot Brother pale.

Indeed, similar thoughts had already sprouted in the Barefoot Brother's mind on the way here, and he was just about to put them into action.

However, Feng Bujue had given him a "vaccination" in advance, clearly stating—"I've already seen through your little tricks. If you dare use them, you can weigh the consequences yourself."

"Hmph…" After hesitating for a few seconds, the Barefoot Brother reluctantly compromised. He snorted and added, "Then let me state something in advance too… The room where the experiment reports are stored is very close to the room where we held the 'ritual'. Although we scattered to all parts of the base after the whole ritual was completed, I can't be sure if there are others nearby…" He paused slightly. "So, if you encounter my kind on the way, or are attacked near that room, don't say I deliberately led you into a trap…"

These words showed that the monster had made his bottom line clear.

Two seconds later, Feng Bujue replied expressionlessly, "Okay, tell me… which way?"

…

The corridor was straight and bright, with basically no obstacles, so Jue Ge and Igor walked quickly.

After about twelve minutes, they arrived at the destination the Barefoot Brother had mentioned.

"We didn't encounter anything on the way…" Feng Bujue thought to himself as he stood at the door of that room, "Maybe… the place is wrong?"

His reasoning was correct, because when he tried to open the door, the prompt he received was [Cannot be opened].

So, they had no choice but to start toward another corner to re-establish their coordinates.

This process could have taken about half an hour… and that was on the premise that they didn't encounter any monsters or other incidents on the way.

But they were lucky. After walking straight along another "edge" of the base for seven or eight minutes, the Barefoot Brother suddenly spoke up, "Wait… I've found the 'ritual' room."

"Oh?" Upon hearing this, Feng Bujue immediately stopped and looked down to ask, "Which one?"

"At the intersection we just passed, turn left," the Barefoot Brother replied. "There's a lot of blood in that ritual room. Although it's no longer flowing, I can still sense it from this distance…"

Hearing this, Jue Ge immediately gave Igor a look. The latter understood and entered a state of alert, holding his knife and going ahead.

The two retreated a few meters and turned in the direction the Barefoot Brother had mentioned.

At this time, Igor looked focused and moved silently. It was clear that… this wasn't the first time he had experienced such a situation.

Although Igor wasn't a professional soldier, he had indeed fought in wars and had considerable combat experience.

…

In 1942, in that winter filled with death and covered in ice and snow, Soviets, Romanians, Hungarians, Germans… gathered in a place called Stalingrad, and they wrote a stroke that held extremely heavy weight in the entire history of human warfare with their blood.

For the Soviets, Stalingrad was a place they absolutely didn't want to, and couldn't afford to, lose. This city not only had irreplaceable symbolic significance, but more importantly… it was the transportation hub connecting the central regions of the Soviet Union to the important economic areas in the south. It was located north of Moscow, south of the Persian Gulf, and the main production areas of Soviet grain, coal, and oil were in the southwest. Losing here would likely mean losing the entire war, and perhaps… the entire history of humanity would be rewritten because of it.

On July 28th of the same year, Stalin issued the famous Order No. 227—"Not one step back!"

And Igor was one of the Soviet soldiers who received this order…

That year, he was only nineteen years old. He didn't want to go to the battlefield. He just wanted to be a worker, or a shoemaker like his deceased father.

He hoped to live a stable life, hoped to fall in love like a normal young man, hoped to do his filial duty to his sick mother, hoped to give his starving sister a full meal every day.

However, the war… left him with no choice.

Stalingrad in October was called the "killing stove," and Igor stayed in this stove until the end of the battle.

As a new recruit who hadn't received much military training before being dragged onto the battlefield, this was almost a miracle…

In the spring of the following year, Igor was forced to retire due to amputation caused by injuries.

When he returned home, his mother and sister had both passed away, and his already impoverished home was left with only bare walls.

He was only twenty years old and had become a lame tramp.

Thus, seven years passed quickly… These should have been the best seven years of his life, but for him, every day felt like a year.

Until one day… some people in military uniforms came to tell him that he had been selected by the government to receive a free "treatment program."

And at that time, Igor, who was already terminally ill, naturally had no reason to refuse.

But what he didn't expect was… he wasn't here to receive any treatment, but to serve as a test subject…

…

"No need to be so cautious," the Barefoot Brother's sudden words broke the brief silence. "There won't be any ambushes in the room."

"How do you know?" Feng Bujue looked at him. "You shouldn't be able to sense each other's positions, right?"

If those monsters could sense each other, they wouldn't have worried about being beheaded and abandoned somewhere unnoticed, so this reasoning must be correct.

"Because we don't stay in one place without moving," the Barefoot Brother replied. "Calmness, waiting… these all drive us crazy."

"Okay, that's a plausible reason," Feng Bujue said, and then gave Igor another look.

Igor, who was already standing in front of the door, reached out and pushed the metal door panel.

Squeak—

The sound of the metal axis turning made one's heart palpitate.

And behind the opened door, a bloody smell immediately wafted out…

"Ugh—" Igor's sense of smell had also become very sensitive, so standing here made him feel quite uncomfortable.

"Here… I'll take it from here." At this time, Feng Bujue stepped forward, ahead of Igor, and took the lead in entering the room.

He was so confident because he had confirmed while standing behind Igor that there were indeed no monsters in the room…

This room wasn't very big, occupying about thirty square meters. The lights in the room were already on, illuminating the room clearly. On the wall opposite the door, there was a concrete platform that couldn't be moved, and the platform was just enough for one person to lie down on.

At this moment, this concrete platform looked like a cutting board that had been used repeatedly and never cleaned, with layers of bloodstains of varying depths covering its surface… mixed with pieces of flesh, organ fragments, hair, broken bones, and many other unidentifiable things.

"Explain the principle of the ritual." After Feng Bujue looked around the room, he picked up the Barefoot Brother's head again and stared directly at him, asking.

"We can dissect people without letting them shed a drop of blood," the Barefoot Brother's answer contained a lot of information. "We can also make people bleed out without any wounds." As he spoke, he glanced at the surface of the concrete platform. "Underneath those bloodstains, there's a ritual array drawn by the 'Whisperer'. Only 'he' knows how to use the 'power'."

"'Whisperer'?" Feng Bujue used a tentative tone to signal the other party to provide a more detailed explanation.

"I don't know what he is. All I have in my mind is the title 'Whisperer,' just like I know how to walk," the Barefoot Brother continued. "His appearance looks no different from ours, except… he seems to know more than we do."

"Can the ritual only be performed when the Whisperer is present?" Feng Bujue asked again.

"No, as long as the array is drawn, anyone can complete it." The Barefoot Brother had just uttered the word "complete" when he felt that something was wrong. "Hey! Hey! What are you doing?"

Feng Bujue ignored him and simply took two steps forward, casually using the Barefoot Brother's face to smear the ritual platform.

A few seconds later, he used a set of sweeping, crude movements to smear away a large area of the bloodstains, revealing the array.

"Oh… the术系 (shu xi, lineage) from King Solomon's side, huh." Feng Bujue stared at the array for a few seconds, muttering to himself.

"Bastard! What are you doing!" In the next second, the Barefoot Brother, whose face was smeared with filth, shouted angrily.

Feng Bujue ignored the other party's complaints, silently memorized the array in his mind, and then continued in a calm tone, "Alright, take us to the room where the experiment reports are… Since you know this place isn't far from there, it shouldn't be a problem to locate it from here, right?"

"Damn it…" The Barefoot Brother was furious, but unfortunately… he had already fallen into the hands of these people. Moreover, on the way here, Feng Bujue had told him how he had treated the previous monster… The Barefoot Brother didn't want to end up in the same, or even worse, situation.

So, he could only continue to swallow his anger and obediently pointed out the direction to Jue Ge and the others.

…

After coming out of the "ritual room," turn right, go through two intersections, then turn left, and the first room is the "archive room."

The door here was also locked, and when Feng Bujue tried to pick the lock, he received a special system prompt: [This lock has rusted shut. Even a key cannot open it. Using brute force to open it seems to be a better choice].

"Hmm… the prompt is quite clear." As the voice rang in his ears, Feng Bujue pondered in his heart, "But, without Igor's help, how would a player open it alone?"

Although he had a ready-made solution, he would still think about questions like this, as it often allowed him to grasp more information.

About five seconds later, Feng Bujue thought of three possible ways to open it:

First, lure a monster, use positioning, and use the power of the monster's attack to help him open it.

The possibility of this hypothesis was the lowest, because it was too difficult to implement… Of course, it wasn't completely impossible, because the monsters' vision was very limited. They usually had to get very close to discover where the door was. Plus… if the player ran at full speed, their speed wouldn't be too different from that of the monsters. This script was originally designed with a layout where "players can use the maze-like terrain and the monsters' vision problems to 卡位 (ka wei, card position) to escape when encountering monsters alone." Therefore, Jue Ge still listed this as a possibility.

Second, use the power of some NPC to open the door.

This "NPC" naturally didn't refer to hidden rewards like Igor, but to characters that had some connection to the main storyline. Maybe there were some negotiable beings among those monsters, such as that "Whisperer," or a victim who had been transformed by the ritual… But Jue Ge couldn't verify this for the time being.

Third, and also the most probable possibility—the player kicks the door open themselves.

Feng Bujue immediately tried this possibility…

He saw him say nothing and kick the door lock with a roundhouse kick (when kicking a door, a side kick and a roundhouse kick are more efficient than kicking with the bottom of the foot. Most movies and TV shows use the front kicking method, which is actually unscientific. See Bear Grylls' "The Ultimate Survival Guide" for details). But… the door didn't budge.

At this moment, Feng Bujue came to another conclusion: assuming that in the above three plans, the probability of one is too low to be feasible, and the situation of two does not exist in essence; on the premise of only considering the third plan… as long as a certain prerequisite is met, the plan can be realized.

And that "prerequisite" is—the player injects themselves with VNO-9 and successfully mutates.

"Igor," Feng Bujue said after thinking for a moment, "Here… I'll trouble you to do it."

For the conclusions generated after these multiple hypotheses, Jue Ge still had no intention of implementing them, but… after this thinking, he had more confidence in the "VNO-9 acting on the player can successfully take effect" thing. Simply put… because the known information increased, the theoretical probability was improved.

"Okay, no problem." Igor didn't know what Jue Ge was thinking. He just responded very simply, then took three steps forward and kicked the door panel sideways.

Bang—

Igor's first kick was originally just to test it out and see what it felt like to kick it, so he didn't use his full strength.

However, even he himself didn't expect that… this kick directly kicked the heavy metal door open, and even a piece of the wall next to the door lock was broken.