Chapter 111

Chapter 111

The fire sprinklers poured down with a loud rush, forcing back the flames and smoke.

The pure white walls and floor had been burned pitch-black.

The fire door Han Lie had sent flying had plowed more than a dozen meters down the hall, smashing countless Specimen Bottle containers along the way.

Amid the glass shards and all manner of deformed specimens scattered across the floor lay Hyena’s headless corpse.

Perhaps because it had been burned in the Huodou’s flames, his body did not bleed much.

So the scene was not exactly gory. Only the torn-off head had pale, bloody fluid trickling down the spinal column, tinting the pooled water on the floor a faint pink.

Qin Ying coughed so hard she nearly hacked up her lungs. After taking a moment to recover, she glanced at the floor, then immediately shut her eyes.

Ideas bubbled up in her mind as she tried to figure out how to cover this up.

Only then did she notice that a huge head was pressed against her shoulder blade.

Short, newly grown silver-blue hair bristled on that head, pricking the burned skin on her back until it hurt.

Qin Ying pushed the huge head away with one hand. “Put me down.”

Han Lie, whose head nearly reached the ceiling, obediently set her down.

To accommodate her height, he dropped to one knee in front of her, hunched his back, and lowered his head. The guilt in his teardrop-shaped silver-gray eyes was almost tangible.

His tail drooped dejectedly behind him.

Qin Ying noticed it from the corner of her eye and sighed. “Han Lie.”

To her surprise, Han Lie turned his head away, not daring to look at her.

Anyone who had raised a dog knew that avoidance meant it felt guilty.

Qin Ying was not sure whether Han Lie in his Monstrous Beast form had anything in common with dogs.

She tried raising her hand, and her fingertips lightly brushed the side of his scale-covered face.

The next second, she heard his tail thumping against the floor behind him.

Puppies were easy to coax. Puppy was comforted. Puppy was encouraged.

Qin Ying was speechless for a moment.

Still, this was a good thing.

Han Lie was not very intelligent right now, and his body was enormous. If he were not docile and obedient enough, he would be a serious problem.

Qin Ying set aside the question of why he had suddenly grown so huge and pointed at the One-Horned Black Dog.

“There’s something in its throat. Dig it out.”

A small spindle-shaped fragment had once fallen from the mother dog’s body after it split in two.

Combined with the legend of the Huodou’s birth-that a pregnant mother dog was struck by a meteorite fragment, giving birth to a Huodou-

Qin Ying had every reason to suspect that the fragment was the meteorite that had caused the Huodou to be born.

After devouring the mother dog’s corpse and the fragment, the Black Hound had choked up large amounts of blood from its mouth and nose, while red light flickered on and off in its throat.

Time was urgent. Yin Minmin and the others still had guns pointed at the backs of their heads.

Qin Ying did not have much time left.

“Hurry!”

At Qin Ying’s urging, Han Lie, who had been squatting beside her, stepped forward and seized the One-Horned Black Dog by the throat.

Rank suppression existed between Monstrous Beasts.

The Zheng, which had not feared the Huodou, now had its head clamped in Han Lie’s grip. Its tail curled up in terror and tucked between its legs.

Qin Ying did not care how Han Lie retrieved the fragment-whether he used his claws or his teeth, it made no difference to her.

She turned and rushed into the laboratory.

The traces left by the fire’s devouring flames spread through the laboratory like a black dahlia in full bloom.

The documents Qin Ying had come back to retrieve had all been burned to ash because they were too close to where the Huodou had erupted.

She clenched her molars, unable to suppress the disappointment and anger in her heart.

But then she looked toward a corner of the laboratory.

Hyena had taken the blue reagent from there. Qin Ying walked over and, amid the shattered glass and flowing blue liquid, found five intact vials.

She grabbed them at once and withdrew.

When she returned to the corridor, the charred One-Horned Black Dog had a hole torn in its throat.

Yet even with a wound that should have killed it eight hundred times over, it was still alive.

Han Lie held the dripping wet One-Horned Black Dog in his left hand. His other hand, fingertips stained with blood, reached toward Qin Ying. In his palm lay the fragment.

Qin Ying was about to take it, but the Huodou gripped in Han Lie’s left hand began to struggle.

Through the split in its abdomen, she could see that the glow of its furnace-like organs had dimmed.

Perhaps it was about to die too.

Qin Ying heard the whimper in its throat. After thinking for a moment, her heart softened in the end.

She motioned for Han Lie to set the Huodou down and returned the fragment to it.

“It belonged to your mother.”

Qin Ying did not know whether the Huodou possessed any higher intelligence, but when it took the fragment into its mouth, she saw two large tears squeeze out of its eyes.

Han Lie stood in front of Qin Ying, watching as the Huodou swallowed the fragment.
Thump. Thump. Thump.

A sound like a pumping heartbeat echoed through the air, and Huodou’s dimmed organs suddenly flared with firelight.

Han Lie instantly went on alert.

Soaked from head to toe, Huodou stood up. It looked at the dying One-Horned Black Dog, then at Hyena’s corpse.

Then it turned its gaze to Qin Ying.

There was no hostility in its eyes, but it could not exactly be called friendly either.

Only confusion.

A thought stirred in Qin Ying’s mind. “Burn this place down. After that, come with me.”

Huodou watched her in silence. A moment later, it stepped past Qin Ying and walked down the corridor, one step at a time.

Black smoke gradually rose from its body, wrapping around it as threads of flame climbed higher.

Qin Ying glanced back at it, then patted Han Lie on the arm. “Let’s go.”

…

The second underground floor was littered with corpses.

Yin Minmin and the others had been forced onto the spectator stands by five masked gunmen.

After midnight, the masked men were visibly growing anxious.

Especially with Hyena no longer responding over the radio.

“Hey, Hyena, answer me!” the leader shouted several times, then slammed the walkie-talkie down in frustration.

Before the operation, they had switched on a signal jammer.

Aside from walkie-talkies on a specific frequency, no other communication devices could be used.

So the moment contact was lost, he knew something had happened to Hyena, who had gone to the laboratory to retrieve the drug.

Just as irritation gnawed at him, he heard Yin Minmin and the others rustling in the stands.

With a gun pressed to the back of her head, Yin Minmin had her eyes squeezed shut, her hands clasped together as she muttered under her breath.

“The Heavenly Venerable speaks the scriptures, guiding the living through this fleeting world. Diligently cultivate and study nonaction; without seeking truth, the Dao forms of itself.”

Beside her, Lin Yicheng was about to lose it. “At a time like this, why the hell are you chanting the Scripture of Salvation and Absolution?”

“Trying to send yourself off?”

Yin Minmin ignored him. Her lips kept moving, and only after she had rapidly finished the rest of the scripture did she say, “What if they shoot us?”

“I chanted your share for you too, and you’re still yelling at me.”

Lin Yicheng was about to say more when the gun pressed against him jabbed the back of his head.

The man holding the gun wore a robber’s mask, and the moment he opened his mouth, his resentment toward the rich was obvious. “She’s being nice. You spoiled rich kids sure have a lot of crap to say.”

The gang leader was already irritated, and hearing them talk only made him more annoyed.

“Lao San, you talk too much too.”

The robber who hated the rich immediately shut up.

With the noise gone, the blood-soaked stands fell quiet for a moment.

Just then, beep, beep, beep, beep-the watches on the gunmen’s wrists all rang at the same time.

The leader glanced at his and said, “It’s twelve fifteen. Follow the plan. Kill the hostages and retreat!”

Lin Yicheng and Yin Minmin’s hair stood on end.

Even Zhang Lang, who had been silent the entire time, lifted his head.

Yin Minmin shouted, her voice thick with tears, “Wait, boss, why are you suddenly killing the hostages?”

The robber who had been listening to them chatter gave a couple of chuckles. “Sorry, everyone. Business is business.”

For desperate men like them, sympathy was never part of the equation.

He racked the bolt with a click and squeezed the trigger without the slightest hesitation.

Bang!

The gunshot echoed through the empty beast-fighting stands.

A bullet hole appeared in the ceiling.

Lao San, who had been laughing and joking moments ago, froze in place. With a retch, he vomited a mouthful of blood mixed with fragments of organs.

He lowered his eyes to his body and saw an antler like White Jade piercing through his chest and abdomen.

The next instant, his entire body was lifted up and violently flung away.

The massive Four-Horned White Deer, as tall as two men, had appeared behind him out of nowhere. It shook its head.

Its steel-blue deer eyes swept across the armed gunmen.

The leader had no idea where this thing had come from. On instinct, he shouted, “Open fire!”

But before he could act, another voice, pitched so low its tone was impossible to distinguish, spoke first. “Leave no survivors.”

The words had barely fallen when the last few lights in the arena all went out.

Then, a two-man-tall Shadowy Figure dropped silently from the ceiling like a hunting cat.

It landed directly behind the leader.

A crisp crack rang out, and his head twisted all the way around to his back.

At the same time, on the third underground floor where the fire suppression system had been shut off, flames reeking of sulfur erupted and burned everything to ash.