Silin's nose was very sensitive. He could separate and analyze the mixed scents. That was why Silin was surprised.
Was the person who used these reagents bored out of his mind, or was he interested in research? Or was there some other reason?
The smell did not come from the rain outside. From the direction of the wind and several other smells mixed in with the airflow, it could be determined that the smell came from inside the building. However, who would use those ancient reagents in an abandoned building like this? Or rather, in this day and age, other than some weird R&D departments, who would use such primitive methods?
Following the smell, Silin found a pipe as thick as a thumb in a pile of waste. He didn't walk far along the pipe before he realized that the back of the pipe was hidden in the wall.
He hid it really well.
He turned on the thumb-sized light projector. The light blue light shone on the wall, revealing the pipe buried in the wall. After checking, Silin became more and more curious.
Interesting.
Other than this pipe, Cillin found a few other places, and they were all very well hidden.
Silin became more careful. Although leaving this place was the best choice, Silin had a strange feeling that urged him to find the reason.
Going down the pipe, he went through many turns. Some of them even required Silin to crawl in through the ancient air vents. When he arrived at the first floor of the building, Cillin opened a hidden cover and walked down the narrow staircase below.
The surroundings were quiet, but not completely silent. After carefully sensing that there was no one within a short distance, Silin held the light and continued walking.
The number of pipes increased, and Cillin knew that he was getting closer and closer to his target. He took a deep breath and turned off the flashlight. Although he did not sense anyone in front of him, his instincts told him that it would not be as smooth as it seemed. Although the energy waves produced by the flashlight were limited to a range of ten meters, Cillin decisively turned it off just to be safe.
The surroundings were pitch black. Silin relied on the subtle flow of air to determine the direction and avoid obstacles. About half an hour later, the surrounding space gradually expanded, and some fingernail-sized electronic lights appeared one after another. With the light, one could see that this place had a certain history. There was also a layer of dust on the electronic board. Although it was not thick, no one would be able to leave this place for at least a month.
Looking at the spots of light on the wall, Silin became more and more uneasy.
Something was wrong, very wrong! This place was like … a trap! A trap!
A strong sense of danger struck. Silin didn't think too much about it and turned around to run back. As a hunter, his instincts told him that he had no way of dealing with the upcoming danger.
But what was even faster than Silin was the thick, custom-made steel plate that sealed off the path of retreat.
With a flip of his hand, a metal knife appeared in Silin's hand. Although he could cut through the steel plate with a laser knife, it would take a lot of time, and the strong energy fluctuations of the laser knife would expose Silin's position.
With his back against the steel plate, Silin quietly looked ahead. He knew that there must be someone up ahead.
Tap, tap, tap …
The footsteps were neither fast nor slow as they approached. There was no intention of hiding at all. Instead, there was a fearless attitude.
Click.
A beam of light shone and the tunnel was instantly lit up.
Silin squinted his eyes and quickly recovered from the discomfort he felt from going from weak to strong light. But the person standing in front of him did not seem to be in a hurry, waiting for Silin to recover.
It was an old man who looked like an F-rank genotype who was nearing a hundred years old. He looked like he would be buried at any moment. The old man's skin was yellowish-brown and his body was shriveled. His exposed arms showed the atrophy of his muscles. Because the old man was wearing goggles, Silin could not see his eyes clearly. But it was this shriveled old man in front of him that made all the hairs on Silin's body tremble.
The old man slowly walked towards Silin, so leisurely that it was as if he was taking a stroll.
Strike first and gain the upper hand!
Silin jumped up with a whoosh, not even leaving an afterimage behind. It was clear that his speed was not any weaker than a D-rank genotype.
Clang!
An ear-piercing sound of metal rang out.
Next to the old man's carotid artery, a withered twig hand gripped the tip of the knife firmly, as if it was holding a twig.
Be it the ion blade or the laser blade, the energy waves generated by them were too great. With Cillin's current physical fitness, the chances of him exposing himself were even higher. Therefore, Cillin preferred to use cold weapons and kill people in silence. But even such a specially made alloy knife was easily blocked by the old man in front of him who looked like he was about to be buried. No, it should be said that it was easily gripped!
Three years of experience as a hunter between life and death gave Silin no time to think. The person in front of him was not someone he could handle. Run!
But before Silin could make a move, his body was suddenly tightly bound by something that looked like liquid metal. Looking towards the source of those things, Silin was shocked to find that these liquid metal things were coming from the five fingers of the old man's other hand. To be precise, they were extensions of the old man's five fingers!
Human? Machine? Mutant? Or was it some unknown species?
Cillin could smell the scent of death from the cold touch. Every pore on his body was exhaling cold air.
Crack!
The alloy dagger that had taken the lives of god knows how many wanted criminals was crushed. The old man's withered fingers grabbed Silin's neck and lifted Silin off the ground like a little chick.
His limbs were bound, and the blood vessels in his neck were almost blocked.
"Hehe, you came at the right time." From the sound of his voice, the old man seemed to be very happy, even a little impatient.
If a normal person was grabbed like this, they would have started to roll their eyes, but Silin still had the mental energy to think of a countermeasure.
The old man looked at Silin, and was even more satisfied.
Door after door opened, door after door closed. Silin was more and more shocked. There was actually such a place hidden in this poor town!
This underground secret room was definitely more than thirty to fifty years old, and it was far more complicated than Silin thinks. Be it protection or concealment, it was done extremely well. Otherwise, it would not have been discovered for so many years. Or perhaps, the people who discovered it were already dead.
Silin glanced at an open room, which was filled with people who were kept in liquid tanks like preserved specimens. The twisted expressions on their faces made Silin shudder. It was obvious that these people had suffered unbearable torture before they died.
Perhaps, in the next moment, Silin would become one of them.
The old man did not intend to kill Silin immediately. He controlled the strength in his hands very well, not giving Silin a chance to escape, nor did he damage Silin's bodily functions.
The reason why the old man said that Silin had come at the right time was because Silin had just delivered himself to the door after a dead test subject was put into a liquid tank.
Cillin was brought into a room filled with instruments and tools of all sizes. There were many bottles and jars placed on a table in a corner of the room, and Cillin had already identified a few of them from the gas that was expelled from the pipes. These were the reagents used to purify DNA.
In this era, except for those old pedants, almost no one used or understood the primitive method of DNA purification. Silin had also done similar experiments, but it was only out of curiosity, and he did not conduct in-depth research.
With today's technology, purifying DNA only required a palm-sized instrument. It was fast, precise, and could even perform functional analysis of the genome. However, no matter what kind of purification and analysis instrument it was, it required a real-name authentication and registration. Every instrument had a registration code, chip binding, and data connection.
Since the old man had chosen to purify by hand, and from the looks of it, he was doing it in large quantities, it meant that this person was engaged in illegal research and was a wanted man. However, Silin searched through the wanted information in his mind but could not find anything related to this person in front of him. The planet's wanted list, regardless of the degree of danger, was public. There were only two pieces of information on the wanted list: one was a picture, and the other was the bounty.
Because this laboratory was underground and covered with a rare layer of isotope isolation, it had not been discovered by the "Sky's Eye". The data from the instruments in the laboratory should also not be connected to the outside world, so it could avoid other investigations.
What was this old man trying to do?
Placing Silin on a floating white table, the old man pressed a button on an instrument next to it. Silin's wrists and limbs were buckled by a hook that emerged from the table. Fine silk threads emerged from the table and drilled into Silin's body through his clothes, instantly turning Silin into a test subject full of wires and tubes. One side was full of red silk tubes, and the other side was full of blue silk tubes. The data on the monitor next to him kept jumping.
Since Silin had been tied up by the thing on the table, even his fingers were not let go. The old man retracted his hand, and his fingers returned to their original withered form. After injecting a tube of something that looked like a cold, sticky liquid into Silin, he quickly pressed the button on the instrument and analyzed the data from more than ten other instruments.
Pain, pain that drilled into his bones. His fingers trembled, and the blood in his entire body flowed irregularly. Every moment was challenging the limits of his nerves, and his thoughts were almost instantly scattered. However, after a short period of blankness, Silin finally managed to focus his thoughts bit by bit. Otherwise, it wouldn't be long before he himself would become one of those specimens.
Those sticky liquid-like things were actually tiny specially made biochips. Some of their properties were very similar to gene carriers, and they could be integrated into the chromosomes of the human body to replicate and divide at the same time.
The red silk tubes were in charge of induction, providing nutrients while inducing the metabolism of the host body to speed up cell division. Meanwhile, the blue silk tubes were in charge of apoptosis, causing the lagging cells to die.
The old man stared at a rising wave on the screen and chuckled a few times. He turned the knob in his hand ten degrees clockwise. Every ten degrees, the degree of induction would increase by one stage, and the degree of activation of the biochips would also increase accordingly.
The changes in the hippocampal region of the brain, the methylation region on the chromosomes, and the communication frequency between cells were displayed in the form of data on the constantly flashing screen. This made the old man extremely excited.
Silin's nerves were once again assaulted by an even greater wave of pain, and then he painstakingly gathered his spirit together.
"Not simple, not simple. A mere F-rank genotype can actually reach such a level!" Looking at the knob that had already been turned one hundred and eighty degrees, the old man began to talk to himself, but his words were filled with obvious excitement.
One hundred and eighty degrees meant that the biochips had already been activated by fifty percent, and now this person was actually still alive. The data flashing on the screen caused the old man's voice to tremble slightly. Among those experimental subjects in the past, less than half of them could withstand one hundred and eighty degrees. This meant that this mere F-rank genotype's body's endurance was comparable to that of a D-rank.
However, how long could he last? Another ten degrees would result in another set of data that made the old man unbearably excited, but the old man didn't care about Silin's life or death.
Silin searched for an opportunity to escape amidst the constant bombardment of pain.
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