In the core laboratory area, five people ran for their lives.
At the far end of their view stood a pristine white laboratory. The [GOD] sign above it was unmistakable.
The entrance stood slightly open, light shining from within like hope in the darkness.
Yet He Zheng's face was bloodless as he looked at the nearby door. Even his arm was shaking.
Aberrants had suddenly appeared on both sides, pouring in from every direction like a rising tide.
Half a minute would have been enough to reach the entrance, but they were pinned down.
"Ye Lin! How much time left?"
"Thirty-five!"
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Ye Lin raised his rifle and shot a small Aberrant out of the air, answering without looking back.
Then he immediately swung the muzzle around and slid toward a dark shape lunging from the right.
Facing its bloody jaws, he advanced instead of retreating. Using the rifle like a shotgun, he rammed its barrel straight into the monster's mouth.
Boom!
He pulled the trigger.
A muffled blast erupted inside its jaws. At point-blank range, the bullet tore its mouth apart.
Like a melon split open, the Aberrant's left face exploded, cutting its screech short. Only a strip of skin and flesh remained, swinging against its neck.
"Thirty-five? That's not much time!"
He Zheng's anxiety surged.
He fired his pistol repeatedly, but several shots only knocked the nearest Aberrant down screeching. He hadn't even killed it.
It wasn't that he'd panicked. There were simply too many on the left!
Even with Zhang Tie helping him with the axe, more than a dozen Aberrants kept charging from that direction. Wave after wave left him no time to aim!
Bang!
Zhang Tie roared and knocked an Aberrant leaping at He Zheng's back through the air.
With no real technique, he could only rely on brute strength to ease the pressure on He Zheng as much as possible.
Behind them, Hu Jia and Lin Ya covered their mouths, afraid to make a sound. Unable to help at all, they could only pray that He Zheng would hold on.
As the ring around them tightened, He Zheng couldn't help shouting urgently.
"Ye Lin! Aren't you using the drugs yet?"
"It'll be too late!"
The pressure was overwhelming.
The monsters seemed to know they absolutely could not let the group enter the laboratory behind them.
Looking at the [God] sign nearby, He Zheng felt that those last three hundred meters were an impossible gulf.
Ye Lin said nothing. He merely fired controlled shots and moved closer to the group.
Not yet.
It wasn't that he didn't want to break through. He only had three vials of anesthetic left. He had to make them count.
The white mist covered too small an area. After being caught in it several times, the Aberrants had learned to go around the sides.
A few seconds dragged on like a century.
He Zheng cried out as an Aberrant swiped at his head while he was reloading.
Half his ear was torn away. Blood covered his face as he shouted at Ye Lin again.
"Go!"
With the ring almost as tight as it could get, Ye Lin stopped waiting. He hurled all three vials into the crowd of monsters.
Now!
Crack!
White mist rose. Aberrants that breathed it froze as though their nerves had been severed, collapsing in swathes.
Ye Lin lowered his rifle and sprinted.
The others followed, running toward the laboratory with every ounce of strength they had.
If they could just make it, there was still hope!
...
Two hundred meters! One hundred! Fifty!
They had never run so desperately. Their hearts and lungs felt ready to burst.
Half a minute later, with screeching behind him as the recovered Aberrants resumed their pursuit, He Zheng plunged through the entrance.
"Close the door! Close it!"
He shouted, excitement surging at the sight of twelve metal columns inside the laboratory.
Each cylindrical column stood about six meters tall.
Behind translucent glass like that of a hibernation pod, thick white vapor rolled upward.
He couldn't make out exactly what lay inside.
But from the control panels at the columns' bases, he could guess. These were probably the "gods" in the hint!
He Zheng took a deep breath and approached on slightly unsteady legs.
Before he'd taken more than a few steps, Zhang Tie shouted in alarm.
"Brother He! I don't think the door will close!"
He Zheng spun around. The door, which should have closed and locked, seemed to be jammed. No matter how hard they tried, it wouldn't move.
The gap was half a meter wide, enough for an Aberrant to squeeze through.
His expression changed, his heart plunging.
Shit!
He didn't know how long waking these gods would take. But even a minute would be enough for the Aberrants to rush in and eat them all!
"Ye Lin?!"
He instinctively looked toward Ye Lin, only to find him already running back and aiming his rifle outside.
"We hold them here! Let the others do it!"
He Zheng's heart jolted. His first instinct was to refuse, but after a brief struggle, he could only grit his teeth and rush back.
Only he and Ye Lin knew how to use guns. The others had no chance of stopping the Aberrants.
Hu Jia was still standing there, at a loss. He Zheng roared at him.
"What are you waiting for? Go!"
The hibernation pods were labeled in English. Ye Lin couldn't leave his post. They could only count on this kid!
"Me?!"
Hu Jia stared, never having expected He Zheng to send him.
He was confident he could find the right pod, but the immense pressure made his calves shake.
Opening a pod was dangerous. If his theory was right, choosing the wrong god might get him killed!
"Forty seconds!"
Ye Lin suddenly turned and pointed his rifle directly at him.
"Either I cripple you, or you get moving now!"
Hu Jia's face went white at the gun aimed at him. He could feel that Ye Lin's murderous intent was entirely real!
"I'll go! I'm going!"
...
"[Almighty Christ]... [Enlightened Buddha]..."
"Hu Jia! Which one are we looking for? I don't... I don't recognize any of them!"
Following behind him, Lin Ya sounded on the verge of tears.
Looking at the twelve enormous hibernation pods, she felt an icy chill pierce her bones.
Fear. The unknown. She had no idea what lay inside. It was like standing at the gates of hell. One wrong choice would plunge her into endless darkness.
White mist swirled. Through the translucent glass, she could barely make out a thing.
Inside the nearest pod, she glimpsed an immense, thick hand strung with round beads.
"Morrigan! Find Morrigan!"
Hu Jia kept running and stopping, quickly checking the names above the pods.
"Morrigan? Who's that? Why are we looking for it?"
Lin Ya asked instinctively, bewildered.
"Because all the murals show gods, but only two of them show enemies!"
Hu Jia panted. The sixth pod had the wrong name too, and he had to keep running.
"Enemies? You mean...?"
Lin Ya paused, the images flashing into her mind.
One showed Vishnu burning demons to ash. The other was the black-winged angel. Realizing Hu Jia was using the presence of enemies to identify the god they needed, she suddenly understood.
Right. Only those two of the eleven paintings depicted enemies. And the creatures beneath the black-winged angel were Aberrants.
But...?
"Then shouldn't we be looking for the angel?"
"Wait! Hu Jia, I think we passed it!"
Remembering a pod labeled Angel, Lin Ya hurried to remind him. Her grades weren't great, but she recognized that English word.
"Not the angel! The second painting isn't an angel! It's a trap!"
"Morrigan and the angel are two different gods!"
With no time for a fuller explanation, Hu Jia looked up, struggling to read names obscured by frost.
No one knew how excited he had been when he saw that unimaginably cruel mural in the office. He believed he was the only one who had understood its true meaning.
It looked like a black-winged angel, but it was actually Morrigan, the Goddess of War from Celtic mythology!
Of all the mythologies describing both angels and fish monsters, Celtic mythology was the closest match.
And in Celtic mythology, Morrigan, the Goddess of War, often took the form of a black raven to wander a land of bones.
The fish-headed monster representing death was called Ged!
"God...! Ged!"
With a coincidence like that, Hu Jia had long suspected that the so-called God-Creation Zone actually referred to the fish monster, Ged!
"Found it!"
Passing the third pod from the end, Hu Jia's heart leaped. He stared up at Morrigan's name in ecstasy.
Just as he had guessed, Morrigan, the Goddess of War, really was among the twelve pods.
"Hu Jia! How much longer?!"
He Zheng's furious shout suddenly came from the distance.
Seeing Aberrants already screeching and forcing their bodies through the doorway, Hu Jia's delight vanished. He hurriedly pressed the button marked [Thaw].
With a beep, a fine steel needle shot from the control panel into his wrist. Code scrolled across the screen as it began verifying his identity.
"[Native human genome confirmed. Thaw protocol activated!]"
As white gas hissed rapidly from the hibernation pod, Hu Jia's heart raced. His entire body shook uncontrollably.
It worked!
He couldn't tell whether he was trembling with excitement or fear of the unknown.
All he knew was that in twenty seconds, this legendary being called a god would awaken!
"Twenty seconds! Twenty more seconds!"
...
"Twenty?!"
Thud! Thud! Thud-thud!
Hundreds of Aberrants battered the door like a continuous barrage, one after another.
As they forced their way through, their heads deformed like crushed fish heads. Huge eyeballs were squeezed right out of their sockets.
They reached and clawed, sharp talons scraping the metal door with a piercing screech.
Inside the jammed alloy door, He Zheng braced himself against it. Dodging claws as best he could, he pressed his pistol against Aberrant skulls and fired.
Bang! Bang!
Muzzle flashes lit the darkness. At point-blank range, the creatures' heads burst like watermelons, spraying blood and brains.
The good news was that they were so frenzied, so desperate to squeeze in, that their bodies jammed against one another.
The bad news was that there were far too many. They had killed fifteen in less than half a minute, yet the crowd outside hadn't thinned at all.
With half his face clawed to shreds, He Zheng looked almost grotesquely comical.
Like a rag doll soaked in blood. Half the palm of his only remaining hand had been bitten away too.
"Ye Lin... I don't think... I can hold on..."
Blood came up when he coughed. Losing so much of it, He Zheng felt his awareness fading.
The fighting was brutal. Even the fire axe in Zhang Tie's hands had long since been ruined, its edge so badly rolled that he could only use it as a hammer, smashing it into Aberrants again and again.
"Hold on."
"Seventeen seconds!"
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Ye Lin wasted no words. Crouching, he tilted his head out of the path of an Aberrant dropping from above the door, rolled behind it, and blasted its head apart at close range.
The strain of maintaining such intense concentration had begun to cloud his own awareness. Blood coated his face, tinting everything he saw red.
They had held out so long they didn't even have the strength to run anymore.
All they could do was stake their lives on the awakening "god" being strong enough.
"Fifteen seconds!"
Hu Jia shouted the remaining time. Seeing He Zheng barely able to stand, he could only hope the three of them would last a little longer!
But an Aberrant had already slipped inside, forcing Ye Lin to turn his rifle. Hu Jia doubted they could survive even ten more seconds!
Before he could shout something encouraging, violent tremors suddenly rushed toward them from the distance.
Thud! Thud! Thud-thud-thud!
He Zheng instinctively lifted his head, looking outside through blurred vision.
His expression changed. The sight jolted him into gathering the last of his strength for a warning roar.
What was that...?!
"Ye Lin! Look out!"
A colossal shape had appeared less than fifty meters beyond the door. It was charging toward them at tremendous speed.
The ground shook. Facing a terrifying creation like a giant crab, fully six meters tall, He Zheng sank into utter despair.
The charging crab resembled a fortress rotted through. Its shell was deathly white, and yellow-green pus constantly seeped between its plates.
Where a crab's compound eyes should have been, two pits were packed with dozens of eyeballs of different sizes.
Like an emotionless war machine, it drove its enormous claws into the ground again and again. Tremors spread in waves, knocking all three of them down.
Realizing this was the monster that had broken through the earlier door, He Zheng tried to shout for them to get away from this one.
It was too late. The Rot Crab suddenly leaped at an incomprehensible speed, then slammed into them like a warship!
BOOM!
The immense impact smashed the door open and hurled all three defenders into the air.
The sturdy metal door, strong enough to withstand artillery fire, buckled and twisted, utterly wrecked.
Thrown to the floor, Ye Lin coughed up mouthfuls of blood. One shoulder sagged uselessly, and he no longer had the strength to hold his rifle.
If the door hadn't absorbed most of the force, he had no doubt the collision would have reduced him to pulp.
On the floor, He Zheng couldn't even lift his head. The giant crab came on without giving them an instant to recover. He smiled bitterly, the last of his hope extinguished.
Too late. Everything was too late.
Only a few seconds remained before the awakening sequence finished. But the moment this monster brought down a pointed claw, it would pierce his heart.
"Fuck..."
"Never... thought I'd still... die here..."
"If you... make it back... remember..."
Choking on blood, He Zheng turned toward Ye Lin with a bitter smile, trying to leave a final message.
Suddenly, an intense high-frequency hum beyond the range of human hearing erupted behind Hu Jia.
Hummm.
The six-meter-tall hibernation pod slowly opened. Inside, a woman whose organs had been hollowed out snapped her eyes open.