Chapter 53
Chapter 53
When Xiao Huai and Lu Yuanshi appeared in the underground laboratory, several people in white coats approached them.
They glanced at the visitor badges hanging from the two men’s necks and asked, “Who are you here to see?”
“Steve,” Xiao Huai replied without hesitation.
Not Jack or Rose, but another extremely common name.
After all, Jack and Rose knew who they were.
The staff scratched their heads. “Do we have anyone named Steve here? What business do you have with him?”
“The Count sent us to conduct a random inspection.”
Xiao Huai spoke with effortless elegance. Though his face was still somewhat pale, it could not conceal his innate air of nobility.
At the mention of the Count, the white-coated staff members’ expressions changed. One raised an eyebrow while another fetched a roster and stepped forward.
The roster was nearly as thick as a textbook. There was no telling how many names it contained.
“Found them. Are you here to see Steve Bory or Steve Rayne?”
Xiao Huai picked a name at random, and a staff member handed them protective suits and masks.
“Gentlemen, Steve is being held… Ahem. He is currently undergoing treatment in the moderate zone. Please follow me.”
Xiao Huai’s gaze shifted. The man had said Steve was *currently in the moderate zone*, undergoing *treatment*.
Those two phrases revealed two pieces of information. First, the townspeople being experimented on in the underground laboratory were divided by different levels of illness.
Second, the staff member had called it treatment. But what virus, exactly, were they treating?
Or was *treatment* merely a nicer word for what they were doing?
After all, the man had initially been about to say Steve was being held somewhere. He had only changed his wording after realizing his mistake.
Still, if the Diamond Factory allowed outsiders to tour the laboratory, then the truly useful information was likely hidden deeper within, somewhere far more secret.
Every ward was transparent, its walls replaced by reinforced glass. The patients’ conditions could be seen clearly from outside.
To reach the moderate zone, they first had to pass through the mild zone.
The patients in the mild isolation wards appeared relatively peaceful. Dressed in white hospital gowns, some read books while others watched television.
Their expressions barely changed. Every one of them seemed at ease, and nothing looked obviously wrong at first glance.
Apart from the tiny puncture marks on their necks, the one feature they shared was that each person’s appearance was flawed in some way.
Some had protruding teeth. Others had scars or spots on their faces…
After about three minutes of walking, Xiao Huai noticed a little boy confined in one of the mild wards.
The boy was curled into a ball in the corner, his hair a mess and his eyes vacant.
Compared with the others, his features were rather delicate.
“Wait,” Xiao Huai said suddenly.
The guide turned to him. “What is it? Is something wrong?”
The boy had at least twice as many puncture marks as the average resident.
Xiao Huai walked to the glass room and slowly raised a hand to touch the pane, his gaze fixed on the child.
The little boy noticed someone watching him and suddenly began trembling violently.
“He looks frightened.”
The guide came closer as well. He flipped through the documents in his hands, pulled up the boy’s file, and widened his eyes.
“Good Lord, you’re right. He should be transferred to a moderate ward. He has type O blood, so we can begin seeding him now.”
The guide hurriedly spoke into his radio, then turned back to Xiao Huai.
“Thank you so much. If you hadn’t kindly pointed it out, we would have wasted a perfectly good hide.”
Xiao Huai said nothing. The guide took his silence for aloofness and continued leading them onward.
* * *
The air pressure in the moderate ward was many times lower than in the mild zone. At least the sounds of entertainment had drifted from the wards there.
The moderate zone was deathly silent.
To Xiao Huai, the stillness felt more like the sea’s eerie calm before a storm.
He caught the scent of sea salt. The guide used a key to unlock the door to the moderate zone ahead and pushed it open.
The countless white, transparent, cavernous wards beyond were filled with a glaring red. Every patient’s face was deathly pale, and the backs of their hands were riddled with tiny puncture marks.
Almost every ward held a hanging bag of blood, but it was obvious that the blood was not being transfused into the patients.
It had been drawn from them.
Lu Yuanshi gently bumped Xiao Huai with his shoulder. Xiao Huai glanced at him from the corner of his eye and noticed him staring in one direction.
Following Lu Yuanshi’s gaze, Xiao Huai looked into one of the wards.
His pupils contracted slightly.
Several pimple-sized crystals had sprouted from the foreign man’s face.
These people looked much like the corpses covered in diamonds that Xiao Huai had seen at the manor.
But they were native townspeople. Why were they showing the same symptoms as players?
Known World Truth No. 1: diamond fiends were transformed players. They ate diamonds, became monsters, and when they finally died, diamonds grew from their bodies.
Then what was happening to these people?
Was the purpose of the experiment… to create a new species, a monster somewhere between a player and an NPC?
The thought of the intention behind it sent a chill through Xiao Huai.
The guide stopped outside a ward. “Here we are. This is Steve’s room. Would you gentlemen like to go in and inspect him?”
Xiao Huai was currently posing as an inspector sent by the Count. It would be stranger if he refused to perform an inspection.
He nodded, and the guide opened the ward door.
Steve was around forty or fifty, with a weathered face and a full beard. He lay on the bed, staring motionlessly at the ceiling.
Even when Xiao Huai and Lu Yuanshi entered, he barely reacted. He simply raised one hand.
When the expected cold touch did not come after a long while, he turned his head slightly and met Xiao Huai’s eyes.
“Aren’t you here to draw blood?” Steve’s voice was as faint as a mosquito’s buzz. It was weak and breathless, and not a spark of life remained in his eyes.
Xiao Huai crouched beside him and rolled up his sleeve.
As more of Steve’s arm was exposed, Xiao Huai saw additional needle marks and unusual striations in the texture of his skin.
Steve had actually… been contaminated.
Only contaminated creatures developed marks like these.
In other words, the laboratory truly was using residents to cultivate contaminated monsters.
There was little point in examining Steve’s condition any further. Xiao Huai pretended to continue the inspection while speaking quietly beside him.
“Don’t you want to leave?”
All these patients were confined here, yet none had rioted. That meant they had not been abducted.
On the contrary, they had most likely come here of their own free will.
A glimmer seemed to enter Steve’s eyes, but it vanished just as quickly.
“Am I not more valuable now?”
With an almost fanatical look, he lifted his shirt. A diamond nearly two inches wide had already grown from his abdomen.
“Look at it. Isn’t it beautiful? Who would have thought an ugly creature like me could create a diamond this magnificent? What does a little blood matter? Drawing it only makes more room for them to grow even more beautifully!”