IWOL Chapter 141: Beating up the Cockroach

“That person… wouldn’t deliberately lead us into the room and then try to do something, right?”

They had walked along the hallway per the mysterious man’s instructions. They then turned left at the fork and cleared the cocoon blocking the middle. Sure enough, there was an elevator at the end of the hall.

When Lin Hangzhi worriedly said this sentence, they were already in the elevator, slowly descending to the next floor.

The others also had the same worries. Wang Que nodded and said quietly, “There’s a giant insect in that room. Although it isn’t very active right now, I can still feel it.”

Dong Zheng frowned. He’d also been thinking about this same question. As the captain and leader of the team, every decision he made may determine the life and death of his teammates.

But in the end, he chose to believe in that mysterious person. There was a voice in his subconscious telling him that he could believe in this person just this once.

The elevator stopped, and the indicator light began to flash green. Just as the door was opening, Wang Que’s expression suddenly changed and she shouted, “Watch out!”

Boom!

The door that was halfway open was suddenly hit from the outside, creating a protrusive dent. Four slender black feet that were sharp as javelins broke in, directly tearing open the narrow gap!

A cockroach head a hundred times larger than normal entered through the gap it made, waving two long, barbed antennae in the air. There was no doubt that those antennae could scrape off chunks of flesh.

It was greeted by a roaring orange-white flame!

Before the cockroach could see what was in the elevator, it’s face was being burned. Four front legs kicked wildly in the air, slamming into the metal elevator door and deforming it further.

Lin Hangzhi was originally hiding in the corner with his hands over his head to avoid being injured. When he saw this, he quickly dragged Wang Que behind him to protect her.

Dong Linhai sprayed wildly at the cockroach’s head until it began to sizzle, just like frying a piece of pork.

By this point, the door was completely torn open. The whole elevator shook unsteady. Sparks flew, and the depth display screen began to have static. Then, it quickly showed an IF sign, indicating that there was a malfunction.

The cockroach was being burnt and wanted to retreat. It’s upper body stood upright, with two wings flapping indiscriminately. But, when it turned it’s head to run away, it inevitably exposed its abdomen..

Now!

Dong Zheng pulled the trigger. The blue-white laser light instantly punctured through the insect’s abdomen, directly burning a large hole in its evolved exoskeleton!

No one dared to use bullets in such a small space. If the bullets hit the exoskeleton and ricochet off, they might be the ones injured instead.

The cockroach had no vocal cords and could not make a sound, but its writhing antennae and six long legs illustrated how much pain it was in. Attacked by high-temperature flames and an uninterrupted laser light, the cockroach gave up its desire for fresh flesh. It turned around, quickly fleeing.

A cold light flashed.

The Tang Sword ruthlessly slashed down on its back half, cutting through exoskeleton and flesh. Half of the wings that were connected to the top of its back were cut off along with its two hind legs.

Organs spilled out from the cut, but the cockroach had amazing vitality. It didn’t die immediately despite losing part of its body. It struggled forward seven to eight meters at an angle before finally being unable to support its huge body and crashing to the ground.

Lin Hangzhi stuck his head out to take a look. The surveillance camera fell without warning and smashed onto his helmet with a loud crash.

For a while, a buzzing sound echoed in the helmet, making Lin Hangzhi’s vision swam dizzyingly

Cui Zuojing shook the blood off the sword and took the lead out of the mangled elevator, “Let’s go.”

The cockroach had collapsed in the middle of the hallway, but they still needed to enter the second room on the left. As Cui Zuojing passed by the cockroach, he stepped on it’s broken limb and discovered that the head was nearly carbonized.

Cui Zuojing endured his nausea and moved his gaze away. He’d been wondering why they hadn’t encountered cockroaches since entering the box. As creatures that had existed on earth since the ancient Devonian period, the vitality of cockroaches had tenaciously evolved with the pace of evolution, such that, even without a head, they would be able to survive for nine days. There was no reason for them not to appear in this instance.

Now that he really saw it, he hoped that this thing would immediately disappear from his sight.

Dong Linhai followed Dong Zheng. He had just passed by the cockroach when the motionless insect suddenly lifted its upper body and attempted to crawl away with its broken body. In doing so, the barbed tip of it’s antennae brushed against his leg.

“Ahhh!!!” Dong Linhai let out a loud screech, and in a flustered panic, aimed the flamethrower at it.

Wang Que was so frightened by Dong Linhai’s scream that she strode forward without thinking and instinctively stepped on its huge head.

The cockroach’s head exploded with a pop, and thick liquid slowly oozed out.

Dong Linhai seemed to be like a chicken choked at the neck, with the second half of his scream stuck in his throat.

With horrified eyes, he looked at the smeared liquid on the floor and then at Wang Que.

Wang Que was breathing heavily. She forced a smile at Dong Linhai. “At the end of the day, I, I’m also a southerner.”

Cui Zuojing was in a good mood. He retracted the sword he’d just pulled out. Stepping aside, he said, “It’s better for you to clear the way.”

Dong Linhai swallowed hard, held the flamethrower in a tight grip, and went to the front.

The cockroach was probably the little boss of this area. No other bugs dared to set foot in the area where it lived. They found the second room on the left smoothly and tried to break through the door, only to find that the door was already unlocked.

Cui Zuojing and Dong Zheng looked at each other. Dong Zheng raised his gun and aimed at the door, ready to shoot the moment anything happened.

Cui Zuojing kicked the door open. Dong Zheng and Dong Linhai rushed into the room with their guns raised in standard police procedure. They scanned the room and saw a giant stink bug on the ground still in its death throes, half of its body gone. Apart from this, there seemed to be no other creatures in the room.

This was an office, and there was indeed a computer on the desk.

Cui Zuojing walked over and flashed his headlight over the dusty table. He found a fingerprint on the table’s edge.

He leaned over and observed it carefully. Judging from the size, it should belong to an adult male.

Cui Zuojing turned around and asked Dong Zheng, “Do you think it’s from the man who called you?”

Dong Zheng also saw the fingerprint print. “Yes.”

There were obvious traces of dust being swept away on the phone. Five of the number keys were relatively clean, and it was likely that these five digits made up the phone number of the room they had been in when the call came.

Dong Zheng still remembered the caller ID. He called Cui Zuojing over, and together, they went to the office next door and dialed the six-digit number with the landline there.

The receiver began to beeped, and then the phone in the next room rang.

The man really did make the call from here.

Right now, he should still be in the institute.

Dong Zheng put the receiver down and returned to the second office on the left. By this time, Lin Hangzhi had already turned on the computer. In the center of the blue computer screen was an input box, prompting them to enter a password.

Since they didn’t have the password, Dong Zheng directly inserted the U disk. A bar began to load on the screen. After ten seconds, the loading was completed and an architectural diagram of the entire biochemistry base’s four floors popped up on the screen.

Everyone leaned forward to take a closer look. They were on the second floor underground, which was an office area. The third floor was the core laboratory of the entire institute, and the bottom floor was their final destination: the main control room.

Wang Que compared the diagram with her own perception of where the light spots were scattered. She lifted her finger and pointed to a certain floor. “Here, all of the insects are very large.”

“So due to a biochemical leakage, the world became what it is now,” Lin Hangzhi said. “There should be a passageway from the research institute to the outside world. Otherwise, these insects mutated insects wouldn’t be running all over outside.”

Cui Zuojing nodded and said, “Similarly, they also need enough food to survive. A small research institute alone cannot form a stable ecosystem. Personally, I think that the research institute is a place where they go to stay dormant or to reproduce. After all, this place is underground and it’s a lot warmer.”

Dong Zheng did not join the conversation. He stared at the architectural diagram on the screen and worked with Wang Que to note the location of the spots of lights. He recorded these spots of lights representing the Zerg race in his mind. Wang Que placed them very quickly and very accurately. Dong Zheng directly used data from the program kernel to build a realistic model and used a crawler to represent their current location clearly and intuitively.

Lin Hangzhi tried to search the room, and as soon as he walked under a cabinet, a specimen suddenly tipped over and fell on him.

Why was he so unlucky today…? Was something going to happen?

Lin Hangzhi touched his helmet, making sure it wasn’t dented. As he was returning the skull back to its original place, a long, black worm suddenly emerged from socket. Lin Hangzhi saw it but ignored it.

—There were insects everywhere here. After a while, they had become numb when faced with only one or two insects.

However, Lin Hangzhi was a little worried. The fact that minor disasters were occurring one after another meant that he’d inadvertently overdrafted his luck. He went over everything he’d done since entering the research institute and found nothing out of the ordinary.

How strange… Lin Hangzhi wanted to anxiously grab his hair and ended up grabbing his helmet instead.

Dong Zheng compared the model in the kernel world to the image on the screen. After confirming that it was correct, he looked at Wang Que. The young woman nodded, indicating that she was also done.

Dong Zheng said, “Let’s go. We need to go down to the fourth floor, where the main control room is. The elevator shouldn’t be too far away.”

They turned off the computer and left the office. The cockroach was still in the hallway. Even though it’s head was destroyed, it was still not dead. It’s body was still slightly twitching, and it’s wings were trembling. Countless small insects were attracted by the smell of flesh and were crawling all over it, sharing this rare, delicious meal.

Cui Zuojing looked at it with some disgust. Then, he quickly turned around and followed Dong Zheng in the direction of the elevator.

Cui Zuojing knew in his heart that the elevator leading directly to the fourth floor would likely be unusable. He suspected that the laboratory on the third floor would be the most dangerous place in the entire institute. Since Kether could adjust the box script in real time, she would definitely want them to experience it.

They’ll probably need to take the stairs. The worst case scenario was that once they got to the third floor, the stairs to the fourth floor would be blocked, leaving them no choice but to cross the entire third floor to the other stairwell.

Like Dong Zheng, Cui  Zuojing was also mentally prepared. He looked down at the two remaining seals on his wrist and clenched his fists.

Since you want our life, then come and try to get them.