IRCDM Chapter 14

Chapter 14: Hidden Dragon, or Let’s Just Die Together

Liang Huan unscrewed his cup and slowly took a sip of tea, “Then do you know anyone who can kill a Special-Grade Heteromorph? Introduce me.”

“Don’t know anyone.” Li Yao turned to look at the road, “Don’t even think about it. Even the military doesn’t have many people who can solo a Special-Grade Heteromorph. You wouldn’t even get to see them.”

“Not necessarily.” Liang Huan took another sip of tea.

Li Yao looked at him with some amusement, “You’re planning to cheat on me right in front of my face?”

“Cheat?” Liang Huan glanced at his thigh, “Won’t happen.”

Dismemberment by five horses was a cruel punishment. The legal reforms before Northern Liang had long abolished this penalty, and Liang Huan himself didn’t like such bloody punishments. When he was younger, he preferred using elegant and gentle methods to pry open a prisoner’s mouth, watching them weep and willingly surrender. Then, he would generously accept them, watching them follow him with unwavering loyalty… But unfortunately, as he grew older and his health deteriorated, he rarely went to such bloody places like the torture chamber.

Now, his temper had calmed down a lot. With a calm mind, his heart could be at peace.

“Good to know.” Li Yao chuckled. After a while, he felt his tone was too harsh, so he glanced at his cup and made small talk, “What are you drinking?”

“Ancient-style health tea.” Liang Huan blew on the wolfberries inside, “Want to replenish your Qi and blood together?”

Li Yao teased, “You replenish yours, I’m not weak.”

Liang Huan shook his head, “Still too young.”

“Says you, like you’re so old.” Li Yao laughed.

In the back seat, Jiang Chuxia and Ai Li were whispering, “Ai Li, they’re really in love.”

Ai Li teased, “They just got married, they want to be glued together 24/7 right now.”

Mao Ming looked solemn, Pei Zhong minded his own business, and Zhou Suiyu sourly curled his lips.

The car drove south, and the surrounding sea view gradually disappeared. Many abandoned buildings began to appear around them. Many of the vehicles that had been following them had long disappeared, with only one vehicle trailing far behind them, acting suspiciously.

Li Yao glanced at it and ignored it, driving the car directly into an abandoned city.

The road ahead became increasingly difficult to navigate. Abandoned vehicles and robots blocked the way. Li Yao parked the car by the side of the road, climbed into the spacious rear compartment, tapped his wrist, and a holographic map of the city appeared.

“This city is designated AER31. A Heteromorph riot occurred on the east side of the city ten years ago, and there are still Heteromorphs active there. The west side is a forest park, and the radiation levels there are severely exceeded. Try to avoid those two locations. The mission this time is to retrieve research materials from the mecha laboratory in the city center that are thirty years old. You can each acquire supplies while completing the mission,” Li Yao said, “It’s 1:00 PM now, and we must be back in the car by 4:30 PM. Everyone got that?”

Everyone nodded.

“Alright, let’s go.” Li Yao fastened his protective suit, took the lead in opening the car door and cleared out a wave of zombies around them.

The grey protective suit was relatively loose, but Liang Huan still felt very uncomfortable wearing it. He tugged at the collar and was the last one to get out. Li Yao, who had been guarding the door, glanced at him, grabbed him, and stuffed him back into the car.

“You guys go first, I’ll be right out.” Li Yao closed the car door.

The space inside the car was barely enough to stand up straight. Li Yao slung his gun behind his back and reached out to unzip his zipper.

Liang Huan naturally straightened his arms to make it easier for him to take off his clothes, and said unhappily, “This thing is very uncomfortable to wear, I don’t like it.”

“You’ll like wearing it even less if you wear a cotton-padded jacket inside.” Li Yao slung the protective suit over himself, roughly tore off his coat, and laughed when he saw him still standing there with his arms outstretched, “Take the rest off yourself, you really think I’m a eunuch serving you?”

Liang Huan hesitated, “I’m not wearing an undershirt.”

This protective suit material was very hard, and it wouldn’t be comfortable to wear it directly against the skin.

“I’ll be damned—” Li Yao resisted the urge to curse, resignedly unzipped his protective suit, took off his vest and threw it to him, “Wear this!”

Liang Huan reluctantly took off his clothes.

Li Yao glanced at him and couldn’t help but whistle, “Your Majesty, you’re in good shape, and you even have abs.”

Liang Huan snatched the black vest, “Impudence.”

Li Yao quickly helped him put on the protective suit, tightened the protective band around his neck, threw his protective suit over himself, and jumped out of the car, “Let’s go, Your Majesty.”

Liang Huan followed him out of the car.

The danger level of this abandoned city was not high, and they proceeded exceptionally smoothly, quickly reaching the target laboratory.

In front of the laboratory door stood a white monument more than ten meters high, engraved with “Yin City Mecha Research Center” and “Established May 27, New Era 16”.

However, this building, which was completed more than a hundred years ago, did not appear old. Apart from the wildly growing plants beside the road and the fallen leaves in front of the monument, which showed that no one had visited for a long time, it seemed as if the noisy voices of people could still be heard in the laboratory building.

In the lobby of the laboratory building stood a mecha model more than five meters high, but many places were corroded, and it no longer looked glorious. Boots made a dull sound when stepping on the floor. Li Yao turned on the lights on the protective suit.

“The information provided by the military shows that the data is inside the building. This building has 18 floors, ten above ground and eight below ground. Uncle Mao and Ai Li, you take the middle six floors. Old Pei, you take Chuxia and Zhou Suiyu up. Liang Huan and I will search below.” He looked at the time, “Let’s get this done quickly.”

Several people quickly dispersed.

The narrow stairwell was filled with the smell of decay. The steps were covered with moss due to humidity, and the handrails were covered with unknown plant vines. Liang Huan looked at the dark brown walls, which looked more like they had been soaked in blood. There were many scratch marks on them, and rotten corpses were piled up in the corners, making it impossible to tell whether they were humans or zombies.

“This place is one of the earliest mecha centers in the Eastern District, and also the first laboratory to propose a plan to integrate humans and Heteromorphs. Unfortunately, they failed. About fifty years ago, they researched a group of monsters, which led to the complete fall of several large cities centered on Yin City. It is said that it was the heart of the Eastern District’s scientific research area at the time. Scientists say that this failure caused human technology to regress by fifty years.” Li Yao said in a low voice, “Some people also suspect that Heteromorphs had already been lurking on Earth before zombies appeared, and that so-called zombies were just a failed product of Heteromorph research on humans. Unfortunately, this theory has not been confirmed until now.”

“So you came here to get research data?” Liang Huan said.

“The military’s footprints only touched this place again thirty years ago. Those people had already searched many times. The important data had already been taken away. Didn’t you notice that there are very few zombies and Heteromorphs here?” Li Yao looked very reliable, “We mercenaries are just here to do some finishing work, pick up some unimportant documents in exchange for Condensed Coins.”

Liang Huan asked, “What kind of data are we picking up this time?”

Li Yao raised his hand to signal him to stop and pointed to the front.

The hoarse breathing of zombies echoed in the empty corridor. Li Yao slowly poked his head out. The next second, a gray-white head suddenly appeared in front of Liang Huan. His pupils shrank, and he elbowed it, smashing it upward. The zombie hanging upside down on the wall roared. Li Yao pulled him back a step, and the two of them looked up at the same time. They saw countless zombies lying on the ceiling, extending all the way to the depths of the laboratory. Dense, gray eyes were quietly observing them.

Li Yao and Liang Huan subconsciously held their breath. The two sides were deadlocked for a few seconds. Li Yao grabbed Liang Huan and started running.

The zombie group made restless hissing sounds.

These zombies were agile and had strange hand and foot structures. They could adhere to smooth walls and crawl quickly, rushing towards them like a tide.

Bang—

Li Yao raised his electromagnetic pulse gun and swept it across the zombie group. Liang Huan kicked open the door of the laboratory next to him. After scanning the room to make sure there were no zombies, he helped Li Yao share the firepower, “Li Yao, come in quickly!”

The laboratory door slammed shut, and the zombie group rushed up, smashing the special material door unevenly. You could even see the zombie’s replica faces, which showed how strong they were.

“Damn, they’re so ugly.” Li Yao took a step back in disgust.

“There are very few zombies?” Liang Huan said.

Li Yao slung the gun behind his back and casually picked up a beaker on the test bench to examine it, indifferently saying, “I haven’t been here before, I was just kidding you.”

Liang Huan decided to take back his reliable evaluation of him.

“This is the fourth basement floor. The data is usually in these safes.” Li Yao opened the cabinet and started rummaging, “This time, the military wants to find the data of an initial mecha named ‘Hidden Dragon’. See if there is any.”

“Initial mecha?” Liang Huan started looking with him, “What are its characteristics?”

“There’s a dragon on the mecha.” Li Yao flipped through the paper data in his hand, making rustling sounds, “I told you that electronic data is unreliable. It gets lost and scrapped with a little disturbance. If everything was engraved on stone slabs from the beginning, it definitely wouldn’t be so troublesome.”

Liang Huan thought of the black dragon tattooed on his body. He couldn’t understand most of the things on these materials, so he looked at Li Yao, “Is the initial mecha very powerful?”

“‘Hidden Dragon’ is the only 3S mecha that still exists. The military has always wanted to find it, but many operations have failed. Now they are trying to find its research data instead. They have been searching for twenty years and haven’t found it. Otherwise, the military wouldn’t have issued such a high reward.” Li Yao stuffed the paper data into his backpack haphazardly, nonchalantly saying, “Relax, baby. Finding Hidden Dragon is impossible, and detailed data is unlikely. Just bring back some things to turn in. Anyway, there’s a basic reward after the positioning check-in. Later, we’ll go out to collect supplies and deduct a few crystal cores to exchange for bonuses, and we can eat two more grilled chickens.”

Liang Huan seemed to see those ministers in the court who were good at being slippery and lazy, saying flowery words but not doing any real work.

A booming explosion came from upstairs.

“I guess Old Pei and Uncle Mao have also run into zombies.” Li Yao patted his backpack and buckled it on Liang Huan’s shoulder, “Now that we’re here, let’s go down and see if there are any Level 1 zombies.”

Liang Huan raised his eyebrows.

“Crack their skulls.” Li YaoDumped his gun, changing its form in a dashing manner, “Let’s go—”

Before he could finish speaking, someone poked his shoulder.

“Tsk, don’t keep touching me.” Li Yao turned around and saw that Liang Huan was four or five meters away from him, his feet suspended in the air, sticking to the wall as if he was fighting something invisible.

Li Yao’s pupils shrank. The next second, something transparent wrapped around his ankle, and he was hung upside down on the ceiling. Fortunately, he was tightly holding the gun in his hand, and shot at the invisible thing.

A long hiss sounded, and Li Yao fell heavily to the ground, his mind instantly falling into a state of chaos, and his eyes could not focus.

Liang Huan finally broke free from the shackles, looked up and saw that Li Yao’s gun had fallen on the ground, and his whole person was distraught. He rushed over, grabbed the gun in one hand and dragged Li Yao up in the other, rolling away. The next second, a pit half a meter deep appeared on the ground where they were standing, and the steel floor was deeply dented.

Liang Huan clicked on the analyzer, and the data in front of him sizzled, and the screen fluctuated violently:

Warning, Special-Grade Heteromorph detected! Radiation value: Unknown! Infection level: Unknown! Please leave immediately!

Liang Huan gripped the gun tightly, but couldn’t see where the thing was. His head felt like it was being drilled open, and blood slowly seeped out of his nose and ears, dripping onto the cold floor.

Li Yao, who was leaning on him, grabbed a plastic white bottle from his backpack, poured out a dozen dark blue pills and swallowed them in one gulp. He got up, took the gun from his hand, and said hoarsely, “This thing can become invisible, we have to find something to hold it back before we run.”

Liang Huan could hardly hear what he was saying, “Find what?”

“You hold it back, I’ll run first.” Li Yao smiled at him.

Liang Huan looked at him deeply, “Okay.”

“…” Li Yao lowered his head, pulled out a heavy bomb and threw it out, viciously saying, “Let’s just die together!”

In the confined laboratory, an explosion sounded.