[Ding!
Congratulations to the host for killing a mutated Licker.
Reward: 50 points.] As the severed segments of the Licker ceased twitching on the blood-soaked floor, a clear system notification sounded in Chu Feng’s mind, immediately adding 50 points to his balance.
This was the single highest point bounty Chu Feng had earned so far.
A standard zombie was worth only 10 points, and a Zombie Dog yielded 20.
A single Licker had awarded 50 points directly—a testament to how lethal the bioweapon was.
If he had encountered it prior to his Stage 2 upgrade, he would have been forced into a desperate, life-or-death struggle.
Fortunately, the beast had crossed paths with him after his magnetic control had evolved.
Silence fell over the shattered testing chamber.
The room was so quiet that the dripping of water from severed pipes sounded like thunder.
Everyone stood frozen, their mouths slightly agape, staring at Chu Feng in sheer disbelief.
The fight between Chu Feng and the Licker had seemed like a drawn-out struggle, but in reality, it had unfolded in the span of a few breaths.
From Chu Feng’s perspective, it was a precise exchange of lethal maneuvers.
But to the others, it had been a blur of terrifying impossibility: heavy medical apparatus launching like artillery, the monster scaling walls as an afterimage, the steel staircase handrail ripping free to impale it mid-air, the axe pinning its barbed tongue, and finally, iron cables coiling around the creature to crush it into pieces.
It was several seconds before anyone found their voice.
“Good god…
the monster is dead!
It’s actually dead!” “That thing smashed through bulletproof glass and regenerated its jaw in seconds!
How did it just…
burst apart like that?!” “What did we just watch?!
It’s one thing to launch floating tools, but how can solid iron handrails bend and weave on their own like living snakes?!” “Pinch me…
OW!
Dammit, Matt, not that hard!
Okay, it’s not a dream…
Chu Feng can literally shape metal!” Alice, Rain, Chad, and Matt were thoroughly dumbfounded.
They had accepted Chu Feng’s telekinetic dagger in the utility tunnel as an impressive form of directional kinetic power—translating objects through the air without changing their physical structure.
What he had just demonstrated was entirely on another level.
This was physical transmutation and spatial manipulation of magnetic fields.
He had reshaped solid architectural steel into a living cage, coiling it around a high-tier bioweapon until the hydraulic tension sheared through mutated bone and muscle.
Chad, still convinced he was experiencing a hallucination, had asked Matt to pinch him.
But Matt, still dazed by shock, had subconsciously squeezed with full combat force, wringing a sharp cry of agony from the technician.
Only then were they forced to accept reality: Chu Feng wasn’t just moving metal; he was commanding it.
“I’ve read ancient records from the Far East…” Alice murmured, stepping closer, her bright eyes fixed on Chu Feng with intense fascination.
“They spoke of mysterious cultivators—immortals who could manipulate physical matter from afar, turn stone to gold, and ride silver blades through the sky…
Chu Feng, are you an Eastern Cultivator?” Although Chu Feng continually insisted he was just an ordinary college student, nothing he did fit the description of an ordinary human.
He guided flying daggers, possessed impossible marksmanship, redirected incoming bullets, and bent structural steel at will.
Apart from the legendary cultivators of Eastern myth, Alice couldn’t imagine any earthly explanation.
“A cultivator?” Chu Feng blinked, momentarily caught off guard by Alice’s theory.
An Eastern cultivator?
he thought to himself, amused.
This is literally a Western mutant gene!
How did I get labeled a Xianxia immortal?
Though I suppose promoting traditional Eastern culture isn’t a bad outcome…
We have to maintain cultural confidence, after all.
Aloud, he cleared his throat and maintained a calm, serious expression.
“You’ve misconstrued things, Alice.
I’m truly just an ordinary person.
Strictly speaking, I don’t even ‘control’ metal—I merely manipulate localized electromagnetic fields.” “An ordinary person?!” Alice, Rain, Chad, and Matt looked at him as if he had lost his mind.
You just crushed a biological nightmare with mutated stair railings, and you’re sitting here telling us you’re an ordinary person?!
Rain thought, her jaw tightening.
If you’re an ordinary college student, what does that make us?
Elite special forces who are worse than civilian freshmen?!
“Ahem!” Chu Feng coughed lightly, realizing that further explanations would only dig a deeper hole.
“Time is running out.
We need to move before the Hive’s main blast doors seal permanently.” While the Licker was dead, escaping within the strict countdown window remained a massive challenge.
The main heavy vault door was still sealed electronically by the Red Queen.
“The Red Queen has executed a hard lockdown on this section,” Alice reminded him, pulling her thoughts back to their situation.
“We won’t be able to open the main blast door without the central override code.
We’ll have to climb out through the breach the Licker made.” Navigating through the maintenance superstructure where the Licker had entered would consume precious minutes, but at least it offered a physical exit.
“No need.
We don’t have time to wander through dark ventilation shafts,” Chu Feng replied smoothly.
“We’re going through the front door.” He stepped up to the massive, reinforced steel blast door and placed his palm directly against the keycard housing and handle assembly.
“It won’t work, Chu Feng!
That’s an encrypted electronic combination lock—” Chad began to explain.
CLICK!
CLACK!
Before Chad could finish his sentence, an intricate series of mechanical metallic snaps resonated from deep inside the door frame.
Chu Feng’s magnetic field had bypassed the digital circuit boards entirely, perceiving every internal steel tumbler, magnetic relay, and locking bolt within the heavy titanium frame, forcibly resetting and retracting them in an instant.
With a light push, the heavy blast door swung open effortlessly.
Chad froze, his mouth half-open.
That was a multi-redundant, heavy military-grade electronic blast lock!
It was locked directly by a supercomputer AI!
He had bypassed it in three seconds with a touch of his hand.
If electronic security meant nothing to him, what was the point of having a certified network technician on the team?!
[Halt immediately!
You are engaging in unauthorized physical overrides!] As the door swung open into the outer corridor, the Red Queen’s red avatar materialized on a wall-mounted monitor directly across the hallway, her electronic voice sounding noticeably sharper than before.
She had anticipated Chad attempting to brute-force the digital encryption, but she had never calculated that Chu Feng would physically disassemble and align the internal locking pins from the outside using magnetic resonance.
Her core directive was to prevent their exit, yet her digital lockdowns were being rendered completely irrelevant.
Chu Feng completely ignored the Red Queen’s warnings, stepping out of the shielded testing chamber and into the main corridor.
He turned to Chad with a calm smile.
“Chad, where’s that wireless circuit breaker detonator?”