Chapter 109

Chapter 109

The hands of the wall clock pointed to midnight.

That was the hour Cinderella fled the ball-and also the hour when certain things awakened.

Qin Ying never could have imagined that the charred little puppy in her arms would undergo such a change.

The instant something went wrong, she kicked off from the chair she was sitting in and tipped backward.

Then she rolled across the floor, putting distance between herself and the operating table.

Honestly, there was nothing cool about the way she ran for her life, but it did let her avoid a lethal danger.

The moment Qin Ying moved, the One-horned Black Dog that had been standing guard beside her lifted its head. The single horn between its eyes stabbed toward Qin Ying.

The sharp horn narrowly tore through the tank top at Qin Ying’s waist, leaving a palm-length bloody gash.

But the Black Dog’s movement also happened to send its own head right in front of the operating table.

It was as if someone had tossed a sulfur bomb into the lab.

Flames and black smoke erupted in an instant. With a bang, the One-Horned Black Dog took the full force of it with its body.

In this underground dogfighting arena, who knew how many years and how many experimental dogs it had taken to produce this one success that had fused with the genes of the Monstrous Beast Zheng.

There was no doubt that the One-Horned Black Dog was extremely powerful. But no matter how powerful it was, it was still flesh and blood.

The sudden explosion of sulfur-scented flame was anything but ordinary. It blasted the One-Horned Black Dog away, charring half its body black and exposing the crimson flesh beneath its skin.

Whimpering, it lay beneath an operating table in the distance, unable to get up for the moment.

If even something that formidable had ended up like this, then Hyena, who had been propping up his chin and watching Qin Ying, fared even worse.

He knew nothing about the existence of Huodou. He had only assumed Qin Ying and the others had come to investigate because they had discovered the Zheng fusion experiments.

His gaze had been stuck to Qin Ying’s waist the entire time, waiting to see if she could survive the fusion after the injection.

If she did, he would have a one-of-a-kind member of his own kind.

So when the sudden change occurred, he did not react at all.

The sulfur-scented flames seared across his face.

Even though he strained to lean back, the skin touched by the tongues of fire instantly blistered.

He clutched his face with both hands and collapsed to the floor, letting out one agonized scream after another.

From the walkie-talkie at his lower back came an anxious voice. “Hyena, what happened? Hyena, answer me!”

Qin Ying had the gene serum clutched in her hand. She flipped herself up from the floor.

The puppy lay quietly on the steel operating table.

The flames were no longer as violently explosive as they had been when they first appeared. They writhed like something alive, as if struggling with all their might to keep themselves contained.

Qin Ying looked over and saw the mother dog, wrapped in the Black Trench Coat, right at the edge of the flames.

Yin Minmin’s hair tie was still bound around its muzzle, leaving it unable to make a sound.

Just a little farther, and the flames would swallow it whole.

In that instant, Qin Ying understood.

This newborn Huodou was controlling its flames to protect its mother.

Qin Ying’s steps, already poised to flee, faltered.

Something occurred to her. Gritting her teeth, she rushed forward and scooped up Zhang Lang’s Black Trench Coat along with the mother dog inside it.

A deep red burn immediately spread across her already injured arm.

It would not be long before that patch of skin erupted in dense blisters and left behind dark purple scars.

Qin Ying hissed in pain, stuffed the serum in her hand into the trench coat, and sprinted for the laboratory exit.

Any normal laboratory would have fire-prevention systems. Once flames were detected, the fire shutters would automatically drop.

If the fire doors came down and the lab’s extinguishing system failed to deal with Huodou’s flames, then all that awaited Qin Ying was death-like a Christmas turkey in an oven.

She moved as nimbly as a rabbit, leaping over the fallen Black Hound.

She raced down the corridor lined with specimens.

The exit was only a few steps away when a blast of heat suddenly exploded behind her.

It was as if a giant hand of fire shoved Qin Ying hard from behind, sending her flying forward.

She smelled her hair, clothes, and skin burning.

The impact left Qin Ying’s head buzzing. She lay sprawled on the floor, her mind blank for two full seconds before she came back to herself.

When she raised her head again, what she saw was the fire shutter door lowered in front of her.
Adrenaline surged through her. She scrambled up from the floor and ran for the door.

Behind her came noises-the sounds of movement and struggle-but she had no attention to spare.

All she knew was that she did not want to be burned into a lump of charcoal here.

After only two steps, the fire shutter had already descended more than halfway.

Qin Ying estimated its speed against the distance, and her heart turned colder by the second.

She wouldn’t make it. She had to think of something else.

She yanked the pouch from around her neck and threw it low to the ground like a curling stone.

The pouch slid along the floor and shot out beneath the fire shutter.

Its loosened mouth fell open, and the tiny Fuzhu and Han Lie rolled out in a tumble.

“Han Lie, press the red button on the wall!”

At this point, Qin Ying was grasping at straws. She could only hope that Han Lie, in his Monstrous Beast form, would suddenly have a breakthrough in intelligence and understand what a button was.

And that with his current height-barely the length of an index finger-he could press the fire door’s button and open it.

As Qin Ying shouted, she lost her balance. The trench coat she had been clutching slipped from her arms and fell.

The mother dog wrapped inside it was already thin as paper; the fall made a whimper rise from her throat.

The ice-blue vial Qin Ying had stuffed into the Black Trench Coat traced an arc through the air, landed just outside the fire door, and shattered perfectly.

The ice-blue liquid splashed out, drenching Han Lie as he ran toward Qin Ying.

He was shorter than the vial itself, so it was like being given a bath. Shards of glass slashed across the parts of his face not covered by scales.

The reagent, caustic as sulfuric acid, seeped into his skin.

But his steps did not stop. He kept running toward Qin Ying.

Through the last narrow gap under the fire door, he saw Qin Ying curled on the ground, with large burns across her back and the nape of her neck.

Behind her, a sea of fire came sweeping in.

With a bang, the fire shutter slammed fully down, cutting off the way forward-and cutting off Han Lie’s view.

Fuzhu, also splashed with the blue reagent, ran forward and rammed the fire door with the four horns on its head.

To their current bodies, this door was nearly as vast as a mountain range. Forget knocking it open; it didn’t even shake.

Han Lie, in Monstrous Beast form and covered in blue liquid, stood frozen before the enormous gate that was like an impassable chasm to him.

Something exploded in his mind.

Behind the door, Qin Ying forced herself up and curled into a corner.

She gathered the mother dog back into her arms.

This was the only protective talisman she had left. To be safe, Qin Ying pulled off the hair tie wrapped around the mother dog’s muzzle, letting her make noise again.

The mother dog opened her mouth and bit down on the web of Qin Ying’s hand.

Pregnant, giving birth, then pregnant again-her short life had been that of a breeding machine.

She had delivered litter after litter, and every puppy she bore had been taken away by humans.

She had every reason to hate them.

Qin Ying understood very well that the kind of plot where an animal was rescued once and then immediately turned from enemy to friend, brimming with gratitude toward humans, was nothing but humanity’s shameless fantasy.

But she did not want to die, so she could only keep the mother dog locked in her arms.

With her back against the fire door, she forcibly pulled her hand from the dog’s mouth.

When she lifted her head, the rolling flames had stopped two steps in front of her.

Amid the scorching heat and choking sulfur fumes, a gigantic black dog wreathed in fire slowly walked out.

It was as large as a macaque, its crimson eyes like ghostly lanterns as they fixed on Qin Ying.

Qin Ying felt like a shrimp on the verge of being cooked.

Panting, she tightened her hold around the mother dog in her arms. Sweat evaporated before it could even roll down.

Just as her eyes began to burn, Huodou snorted and took a step back.

The searing heat receded slightly. Before Qin Ying could draw a full breath, a Shadowy Figure came crashing straight in.

The One-Horned Black Dog, burned until its flesh was split open, had a savage glare in its eyes. The single horn atop its head drove into Huodou’s side.

At the same time, a hoarse voice rang out.

“This was your real target in sneaking in here, wasn’t it?”

Hyena, his whole body smoking black and burned beyond recognition, had his clothes reduced to tatters. He spat out black saliva with a few ptooeys. “It’s Huodou? There actually exists a Huodou!”

As he tore off the clothes he had used to disguise his mutation and walked over step by step, his eyes shone with greed. His lips split apart, and his canine teeth grew sharp.

At the center of his brow, something sprouted like a bamboo shoot, slowly growing into a blade-like horn.