Chapter 1317: The Laboratory in the Mountain
Si Kongchen’s car was marked to pa.s.s the security, so he drove all the way into the area. On each side of the gate was a ten-meter-tall sentry post, guarded by soldiers. As Si Kongchen showed up, the soldiers in the sentry posts and by the gate all saluted him quietly.
Si Kongchen walked straight through the gate, into a metal building which took up about three-hundred meters squared area. In the building was an entrance to the underground s.p.a.ce. Si Kongchen walked in and took the stairs down.
A door was located about ten meters deep underground, behind which was an elevator. Si Kongchen walked into the elevator, and then it moved downward for three minutes. As the elevator door opened, what Si Kongchen saw was an experimental base. The research projects being carried there weren’t the same as the ones in the secret underground lab in Huaxia Base.
It wasn’t as large and roomy as the underground lab in Huaxia Base. The s.p.a.ce was divided into several small laboratories by translucent tempered gla.s.s.
As Si Kongchen showed up, the people who were working in the experimental s.p.a.ce only gave him a quick glance before turning back to continue doing their jobs. Soon, a man in a white lab suit walked over and nodded slightly to Si Kongchen, “You’re here.”
“Where’s your professor?” Si Kongchen looked at him and asked.
“Professor is in Section C,” the man in a lab suit took a sideways step backward.
“Take me to him,” Si Kongchen looked at the man and said expressionlessly. The latter nodded and turned to move toward the other side.
They made a few turns and spent a couple of minutes walking before coming up to a door marked with ‘Section C’. Section C was different from the area near the elevator. There were no small labs, because Section C was a large lab itself. Some cylindrical gla.s.s containers were standing in the lab in straight lines. Each container was about three-meters-tall and one-meter-wide, filled with a turbid, green liquid. Some dark figures could be seen drifting in the liquid, but not clearly.
Walking into that large lab, one could see at least a hundred gla.s.s containers like that at the first glance, and there were more in the back. Both ends of each gla.s.s container were connected with several electrical wires of different sizes. Between the containers were tables lined up, and on the tables were all kinds of devices and equipment for experiments.
The man led Si Kongchen through countless lines of gla.s.s containers and finally found a group of people in white coats busy before a row of tables.
Si Kongchen walked over as he looked at them. Those people were busy dealing with a gla.s.s container behind them, and didn’t even glance at him. He didn’t say anything to disturb them but stood and waited quietly.
Two minutes later, a white-haired, elderly man among those people finally saw him while turning around to observe the gla.s.s container. The old man paused briefly as he looked at him with surprise and said with an old voice, “Eh? Chief Si? When did you get here?”
“Professor Bai!” Si Kongchen nodded at him and said, “I got here two minutes ago.”
The old man turned back to continue doing his work while saying, “Em, why didn’t you say anything? How can I help you?”
Si Kongchen made two small steps forward yet stayed outside the working zone, watching those people do their work. In the meantime, he responded to the old man with, “You were working and I didn’t want to disturb you. I wouldn’t dare to come here to trouble you if I didn’t need your help!”
The old man was holding a test tube with one hand and another container with the other. While carefully dripping the liquid in the test tube into the container, he said, “Tell me, what’s it about?”
Si Kongchen folded his arms and slowly moved from side to side while saying, “I just want to know how things are going on here. Can we start? On the outside, they’ve already gone down to explore the underground realm. After all, so many weird underground creatures have come out and caused severe effects. People are all panicking right now. This is a great chance for us. I’m afraid that if we wait until after the underground creature crisis is solved, there might be some kind of accident that could cause our plan to fail, even though the enemy might be relatively weak by then.”
The old man turned and gave him a glance as he said blandly, “Why so impatient? The eruption of the underground energy forced out those underground creatures, but the true monsters haven’t shown up yet. Let’s wait until those came up. Hehe… Those people went down? Well, the monsters aren’t supposed to come out so soon, but those people might make them want to come out sooner. Oh, have you sent people down as well?”
While asking the question, the old man gave Si Kongchen another glance.
Si Kongchen stopped moving and nodded, “Yes. I want someone to stay down there forever.”
The old man knowingly nodded and then kept doing his work. He didn’t stop talking, though. “You didn’t have to send anyone down there actually, because whoever went down might not have a chance to come back up. The ones you sent down, and the ones you want dead, all of them probably won’t come back alive. You think those underground monsters are so easy to deal with?”
On hearing that, Si Kongchen changed the expression on his face slightly, saying, “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier? I sent your daughter down!”
The old man immediately raised his head and turned to glare at him as he said with a deep voice, “What!”
The look on Si Kongchen’s face had grown peaceful again. He said, “She applied for the mission. I didn’t send her actually.”
Detecting the angry look on the old man’s face, Si Kongchen immediately told him that Xie Longyun applied for the mission herself. He made the whole thing sound as if it had nothing to do with him.
“Naughty girl! Why didn’t she tell me that she wanted to go down there? Eh! Does she have any idea how dangerous that place can be? Does she think that her level-seven superpower can keep her safe down there? Oh, she always makes me worry about her!” Hearing Si Kongchen’s words, the old man sighed with frustration and furrowed his face, which was already wrinkled.
“Is that place really so horrible? She has the drug you gave her, doesn’t she? She also has the drug I got from abroad. Her life will be safe, right?” Si Kongchen asked the old man uncertainly.
The old man handed the things in his hands to his a.s.sistant, who had been staying silent the whole time, and then he walked toward the outside. While walking, he took off his gloves and said, “The drug I gave her can only be used twice within twenty-four hours, and three times within seven days. If she uses it more than three times within that span of time, her body will collapse. The underground realm is much more dangerous than you can imagine!”