In the end, Ji Lin did not return home.
He had been shut down by a single sentence from Li Sang.
“What? Why would you go back? We have serious business to attend to.”
“If we don’t help the state with its construction and development, how are the researchers supposed to help you find a way to separate your abilities?”
Her argument was so well-founded that there was no room for rebuttal. Ji Lin stared at her through the rearview mirror and, after a long silence, finally nodded.
“Okay…”
He seemed convinced by her words.
However, before the car could even reach Base 08, Ji Lin suddenly turned to the person beside him and asked, “Is everything you said true? Is the apocalypse really coming?”
He was asking Ling Lan. Since he had entered the car, she was the only one who had spoken, while Qi Yan, sitting on his other side, had remained silent from beginning to end. Qi Yan gave off a cold, unapproachable vibe.
Then again, Ling Lan wasn’t exactly approachable either.
Hearing Ji Lin’s question, Ling Lan glanced at him. Instead of answering immediately, she pulled out her phone and tapped into her photo album. She found an encrypted folder, pulled up a video, and handed the phone directly to Ji Lin.
Though she said nothing, her actions spoke volumes. She wanted Ji Lin to watch the video.
Since she wanted him to see it, he would see it. Ji Lin’s thoughts were simple; he took the phone from Ling Lan and looked down at the screen.
It was a surveillance recording. Unlike the grainy, blurry footage Ji Lin usually saw circulating on the internet, this video was unexpectedly clear. He could even make out a small smudge on the snout of the fat pig in the frame.
Yes, the subject of this video was not a human, but a pig.
This pig was different from any other Ji Lin had ever seen; its eyes were a grayish-white. They were the same black-and-white shade as a dead person’s eyes. Not only that, but its snout was not the usual pink, but a dark purple-black.
In the footage, the unusual pig suddenly began to twitch. Immediately after, black-red blood began to gush from its eyes—and not just its eyes; its mouth and nose were no exception. Blood was pouring out frantically.
The process lasted less than a minute. A massive pool of blood had formed beneath the pig; judging by the volume, there was likely nothing left inside its body. Within the span of a single minute, it had bled dry.
Before Ji Lin could even process his shock, the pig, which looked to weigh about two hundred pounds, suddenly collapsed!
Just as he thought the video would end there, only seconds after falling, the pig slowly stood back up. Originally, it had been in the center of the transparent room, but once it stood, it began walking toward the reinforced glass wall.
Its gait was strange and exceptionally stiff. However, this did not hinder its speed. In the blink of an eye, it had reached the edge of the glass and began violently ramming its head against the wall! It seemed desperate to get out.
Even when it rammed itself until its head was bloodied and brain matter began to splatter, it still failed to break the specially made tempered glass. Finally, a gunshot rang out from an unseen source. After the shot, the violently thrashing pig abruptly collapsed, devoid of life.
The entire video—from the moment the pig began bleeding from its orifices to the moment it was shot dead—lasted barely two minutes.
Just as Ji Lin was about to ask a question, the phone automatically played the next video.
It was the same transparent glass room, but it had been restored to a pristine state. All the splattered blood had vanished. It appeared to have undergone a thorough cleaning.
However, this time, the protagonist of the video was no longer a pig, but a person.
The man stood where the pig had once been, looking around before starting to pound on the glass wall, seemingly trying to get out. His mouth opened and closed as if he were saying something. But his pounding didn’t last long; he was soon forced to stop.
Yes, forced to stop in his tracks.
The man in the frame crouched down in pain, reaching up to touch his nose. When he pulled his hand away, it was covered in blood. From that moment on, his expression turned to one of absolute terror. Soon, blood was no longer just coming from his nose; it flowed from his eyes and ears as well, and he began to vomit large amounts of blood from his mouth.
He was terrified, his hands fumbling frantically around his head, completely unaware of what was happening. Beneath him, the blood flowing from his body quickly accumulated into a pool!
The man seemed to bleed out even faster than the pig. He soon collapsed onto the floor. Up until the very last moment before his death, he had no idea why he was dying this way.
What followed was the same familiar scene. The fallen man quickly stood back up, his eyes a grayish-white and his limbs stiff. He walked forward clumsily, raising his hands in a stiff, awkward motion to leave one bloody handprint after another on the glass wall.
In the end, his fate was the same as the pig’s: his life was ended by a single gunshot.
The two videos combined didn’t even total five minutes, yet they delivered an unprecedented shock to Ji Lin. Sometimes, words were nowhere near as impactful as visuals.
Furthermore, he noticed the timestamp on the surveillance footage.
January 11, 2424, 3:48 PM.
This was a recording from just one week ago. The date was so close to the present that it lent the video a terrifying sense of reality.
Ji Lin struggled to pull his gaze away from the screen to look at Ling Lan on his left. Just as he was about to speak, Ling Lan cut him off.
“It’s exactly what you’re thinking.”
“This is a recording from a week ago. But as you can see from the person inside, they weren’t from our country; they were from another nation. But the events are real.”
She withdrew the phone as she spoke. “Originally, this virus didn’t infect humans, but it later mutated. From infection to death, it takes less than three minutes.”
Once those three minutes pass, what’s left moving is a dead person. Or, as people commonly call them, a zombie.
Li Sang had also seen the video. Hearing this, she added, “We have no reason to forge a recording to lie to you. You’ll find out shortly whether what we’re saying is true or false.”
Because their next destination was Base 09.
Actually, Jiang Tai’an had originally planned to go to Base 08. But just now, Li Sang had received a message. She had shown the message to Jiang Tai’an. After reading it, Jiang Tai’an had immediately changed course and headed toward Base 09.
“Where are we going?” Ji Lin asked.
“To the monster base.”