Chapter 220
Chapter 220: Skeletons Can Hurt People, You Guys Are Even More Twisted Than Me
Jiang Tea Tea raised her hand: “Report, I have a question!”
The Leader looked at her: “Ask!”
Jiang Tea Tea said: “Is this laboratory related to Wolf Yin Feng?”
The Leader answered: “It has no direct connection to Wolf Yin Feng. It is related to Li Ao, the former director of the Supernatural Abilities Institute.”
Jiang Tea Tea nodded: “Got it!”
The Leader swept his gaze over the others: “Anyone else have questions?”
Sui Xuan Chu and the others answered: “No, Leader!”
The Leader said seriously: “Be careful. Move out!”
As the Leader’s voice fell, the door of the small ship dropped down and opened.
The ship hovered about three meters above the ground. For ability users, that height was very low and not dangerous at all.
The eight of them, including Jiang Tea Tea, did not hesitate. With their gear on them, they jumped down one after another.
Right after they landed, an Artificial Moon rose above their heads like daylight. Its light covered more than a hundred kilometers around them.
The laboratory they were going to probe sat right at the center of the Artificial Moon’s glow. It had been abandoned for three months and no longer showed any of its former glory.
Weeds grew wild. The smell was foul. Insects cried sharply in the dark. Fallen leaves, dead branches, and puddles of dirty water covered the ground.
Huang Da Zhuang and Cheng Xiao Ting, one dog and one wolf with Enhanced Sense of Smell and sharp hearing, walked in front with detector lamps on their heads, opening the way.
Orange Sparrow Yan Yu, Zhang Ting Zhou, and Sui Xuan Chu walked on the left and right sides. Their combat power was the weakest, so the one in charge of Healing, Cheng Lin Yue, walked in the middle.
The strongest fighter, Jiang Tea Tea, walked at the very back. Besides the detector lamps on their heads, they also had Suspended Lighting Devices that automatically locked onto them and floated along.
Once the lamps on their heads went out, the Suspended Lighting Devices would turn on by themselves and light up a very wide area.
Jiang Tea Tea held a plain looking Flame Staff whose Spiritual Power had been sealed. She followed Huang Da Zhuang and the others as they walked into the laboratory.
The laboratory was about 5,000 square meters. According to the map they had, it extended ten levels underground, about thirty to fifty meters deep.
They were now on the ground floor. Broken glass, crushed stones, dust, dead leaves, everything was scattered across the floor.
For safety, and to search the place thoroughly, they still walked the entire ground floor. They put a detector in every corner.
After they finished that, they went down to the first basement level.
All the power and the monitoring system in the laboratory had been destroyed. The elevator no longer worked. There were no ladders. They could only use ropes to climb down.
The first basement level was the same as the ground floor. Aside from the mess and the strange, foul smell, there was nothing else.
They went down to the second basement, then the third, then the fourth.
When they reached the sixth basement level, it suddenly broke off and was different from the five levels above.
The sixth level was even more ruined and foul. The stench was thicker, and they could sometimes hear creaking and banging sounds.
Jiang Tea Tea said: “Be more careful. I’ll go check where that sound is coming from.”
Sui Xuan Chu said: “I’ll go with you.”
Jiang Tea Tea glanced at him and nodded: “Fine. Big Dog Huang, Cheng Xiao Ting, keep a closer eye on Cheng Lin Yue…”
“Ah… someone grabbed my foot, danger!”
Jiang Tea Tea had not even finished her sentence when Cheng Lin Yue cried out in fright.
Jiang Tea Tea’s voice cut off. She rushed toward her.
Before she could reach Cheng Lin Yue, the ground under Cheng Lin Yue’s feet suddenly collapsed.
A pair of rotten hands grabbed Cheng Lin Yue and yanked her down. She let out a sharp scream.
Jiang Tea Tea flicked out her Flame Staff. The Flame Staff stretched out endlessly, and its tip turned soft like a branch, looping around Cheng Lin Yue’s waist and holding her in midair so she did not fall further down.
In her panic, Cheng Lin Yue tried to save herself. She kicked at the hand clamped around her ankle, but that hand was like iron tongs. It seemed eager to dig into her flesh and tear her leg right off.
Sui Xuan Chu, Cheng Xiao Ting, and the others rushed over. They threw down flexible Suspended Lighting Devices and lit up the space below as bright as day.
The owner of the hand around Cheng Lin Yue’s ankle let go when the light flared. It fell and then ran off as fast as it could.
Six of them jumped down after it. They split into two groups: one group chased the fleeing figure, and the other stayed behind to protect Cheng Lin Yue.
Jiang Tea Tea lengthened the Flame Staff. Cheng Lin Yue, tied by the staff, was lowered to the ground. Jiang Tea Tea quickly checked her ankle and then took out Healing spray to spray it.
Jiang Tea Tea jumped down from above: “How is it, is it serious?”
Cheng Lin Yue was still shaken. Her voice trembled: “I’m fine. It’s just that the other side doesn’t seem human.”
Jiang Tea Tea frowned slightly: “Weren’t they supposed to be New-type Mutants? Now they’re not even human?”
Cheng Lin Yue quickly answered: “It felt like what grabbed my ankle wasn’t a hand, but hand bones. A bare hand of bones, with no flesh.”
[Skeleton? A skeleton hand?]
Jiang Tea Tea was just about to ask more when Sui Xuan Chu’s shout came through: “Roommate, hurry, hurry, get over here!”
Jiang Tea Tea looked at Zhang Ting Zhou and the others who had stayed: “Take care of her and treat the wound properly. I’ll leave a trail for you.”
Zhang Ting Zhou nodded: “Okay, Sister Tea, go.”
Jiang Tea Tea grabbed the Flame Staff and ran after Sui Xuan Chu, Huang Da Zhuang, and the other two. The path ahead was lit up.
To keep the Suspended Lighting Devices that Sui Xuan Chu and the others left behind from being destroyed, Jiang Tea Tea left a pinch of flame from the Flame Staff behind every few steps.
The fire on the Flame Staff was boosted by her Spiritual Power. Unless someone with higher Spiritual Power came to put it out, the flames would keep burning for five to ten hours before going out on their own.
To avoid dragging them down, Cheng Lin Yue did not bother checking her wound after she finished using the Healing spray. She could not feel any pain, so she stood up: “Let’s go, let’s catch up with Sister Tea and the others.”
Zhang Ting Zhou asked with concern: “Do you want us to bandage it?”
Cheng Lin Yue said: “I already used the Healing spray. It’s not bleeding anymore. I’m fine.”
Only then did Zhang Ting Zhou nod: “Alright, let’s go.”
They surrounded Cheng Lin Yue in the middle and chased after Jiang Tea Tea.
Following the lights Sui Xuan Chu and the others had left behind, Jiang Tea Tea ran for about half an hour. She felt like she had gone down several more levels before she finally saw them.
They were standing on a suspended platform, looking off into the distance and down below.
Jiang Tea Tea walked over: “What’s going on?”
Sui Xuan Chu said: “We chased that thing that crawled on all fours, whatever it was, and when it got here, it jumped down and disappeared.”
Orange Sparrow added: “The Suspended Lighting Devices and the lamps on our heads are useless here. The light just can’t reach down.”
Huang Da Zhuang added more details: “There’s the smell of rotting corpses here, a strong smell of fresh blood, the smell of maggots, and the smell of Nutrient Injection.”
“All of those smells mixed together, at least thirty different ones, and on top of that, we can’t see what it’s like down there. We didn’t dare charge in blindly.”
As Huang Da Zhuang spoke, Jiang Tea Tea stepped up beside them. She used her sharp eyesight to look down: “Your eyes really can’t see what it looks like down there?”
Beastmen normally had Night Vision Ability. If light could not reach down, their eyes should still see something, but they could not?
Huang Da Zhuang and the others answered: “The visibility is really low. Past one and a half to two meters, we can’t see anything.”
“This place was probably built on purpose by the person in charge of the laboratory, just so no light can shine down and no one can see what’s below.”
Jiang Tea Tea flicked the Flame Staff in her hand. In an instant, five palm sized Flame Spheres fell from the staff and dropped down into the darkness.
As the Flame Spheres fell, the area they could see widened and deepened. But it was too deep. The darkness swallowed the Flame Spheres, and no light could be seen.
“So deep!” Sui Xuan Chu’s expression grew tense: “How can it be this deep? It must be at least two or three hundred meters.”
Huang Da Zhuang said in confusion: “That doesn’t make sense. The Leader never told us there was such a deep pit in this laboratory.”
Orange Sparrow suddenly cried: “I can’t contact the Leader.”
Sui Xuan Chu and Huang Da Zhuang turned to him at the same time: “What do you mean you can’t contact the Leader?”
Orange Sparrow answered: “There’s no signal. Where we are now, the signal is cut off. We can’t connect to the outside.”
Huang Da Zhuang cursed: “Fuck, seriously? The teams that came to search before had no problems. Why is it only us?”
Jiang Tea Tea and Sui Xuan Chu looked at each other.
Sui Xuan Chu tried to calm everyone: “Don’t worry. Since we’re already here, once we complete the mission, we’ll not only have signal, we’ll also earn Military Merit.”
The moment Orange Sparrow and Huang Da Zhuang heard the words “Military Merit,” they were fired up like they had been injected with chicken blood. They puffed up their chests: “If we can’t see the bottom from here, then we just go down. We’ll see it once we’re down there.”
“Come on, get the rope. I’ll…”
Jiang Tea Tea cut them off: “Don’t go down. From here to the bottom is about four hundred and twenty meters. There’s a pool at the bottom, and there’s something in that pool.”
Sui Xuan Chu, Huang Da Zhuang, and Orange Sparrow all snapped their eyes to Jiang Tea Tea’s face. Their voices shook: “Sister Tea, don’t tell us your eyes can see all the way down there.”
“Four hundred and twenty meters, do you know what that means?”
“Roommate, your eyesight is that good?”
Jiang Tea Tea blinked: “It’s not my eyesight. I just dropped those Fireballs down there, remember? The Fireballs sent the information back.”
Sui Xuan Chu, Huang Da Zhuang, and Orange Sparrow felt like clueless new recruits. They stared at the Flame Staff in her hand, their eyes full of doubt. They did not believe Fireballs thrown down into the dark could send data back to her.
Jiang Tea Tea did not waste words with them. She threw the Flame Staff downward, pushed off the shaft with her palm, and jumped straight down after it.
Sui Xuan Chu and the others gasped and stared without blinking. They watched the staff she had thrown behave like a living thing. It shot under her feet and became a support for her to step on.
As she fell, the staff under her feet thickened. It grew from the width of a finger to a thickness that not even one person’s arms could wrap around.
The Five Colored Flame on the staff blazed brighter, lighting up the entire space and revealing the walls all around. They were black and red.
As Jiang Tea Tea dropped faster, the Flame Light grew brighter and brighter. Sui Xuan Chu and the others quickly pulled three ropes out of their space knob storage devices and tied them to three fixed points.
Just as they finished tying the ropes, Cheng Lin Yue, Cheng Xiao Ting, and the other one arrived.
They came at just the right time. They could stay on top and keep an eye on the ropes while the three men went down first.
Jiang Tea Tea, standing on the Flame Staff, landed in the pool. A whole pool of blood water splashed up and overflowed. The stench was overwhelming.
Suddenly, a roar came out of the pool, like a bull bellowing and a tiger roaring at the same time. It echoed in her ears.
Jiang Tea Tea looked down into the pool. A dark shadow clinging to the wall lunged at her, mouth open wide, snapping toward the back of her neck…