“An alien species. It seems to be taking genes.”
“Aim and fire! Don’t let them get away!”
“Lu Yuan, shoot! Hurry and stop them!”
Wendy spun her gun as she headed toward the fiercely fought battle on the second floor. Just as she reached the stairwell, several anxious roars rang out, followed closely by a chaotic series of hurried footsteps.
Lu Yuan?
He seemed to be from Team B.
Judging from the commotion, had some Human-Faced Mosquitoes broken through the defensive line?
Hearing the sounds approaching the stairs, Wendy stopped. Sure enough, the next second, two Human-Faced Mosquitoes appeared at the bottom of the staircase.
Upon seeing someone on the stairs, the Human-Faced Mosquito in front split its mouth into a grin, and its proboscis shot out instantly.
“Jiang Qiao, watch out! Shoot!”
The guards who had followed closely behind, not expecting anyone to be upstairs, had their pupils contract in alarm and hurriedly shouted a warning.
But clearly, it was already too late. The monster was simply too fast. The girl on the stairs had not even raised her gun, as though she had not yet reacted.
They froze in place, their blood running cold as they prepared themselves for their companion’s death.
Yet in the next second, just as the long, black proboscis was about to pierce the girl’s neck, the two monsters suddenly exploded in midair.
It was as though… some enormous invisible force had crushed and pulverized them from the outside.
Yellow-green fluid and chunks of flesh splattered through the air. The guards instinctively raised their arms to shield themselves, but several seconds later, they realized that not a single piece of flesh had landed on them.
A transparent barrier had caught and restrained the scattered remains. Also trapped within it were two terrifying giant mosquitoes, each about the size of a palm.
The giant mosquitoes desperately beat their wings, apparently sensing danger and attempting to escape, but they were firmly locked in place.
“Jiang Qiao, your… your eyes…”
The guards who had witnessed everything stood frozen.
Without the Human-Faced Mosquitoes blocking their view, they finally noticed something unusual about their companion.
Just moments ago, in the blink of an eye, they had assumed their companion had simply failed to react in time because of the sudden situation, leaving her standing motionless on the stairs.
But now…
The short-haired girl stood on the highest step of the staircase, examining the giant mosquitoes trapped in midair as if they were toys.
Hearing their voices, she glanced at them expressionlessly.
Those eyes…
They were the color of the deep sea.
The instant that gaze fell upon them, every guard stopped breathing.
They felt as though enormous waves were swallowing them whole, bringing with them an intense sensation of suffocation.
It was clearly the same familiar face, and she was still wearing the Guard Army combat uniform, yet they could all sense something profoundly inhuman about her.
The person standing on the stairs was not their companion, Jiang Qiao.
The moment they realized this, their hair stood on end. They immediately aimed their guns at the figure on the stairs and fired several shots in succession.
Yet the bullets stopped one after another in midair.
The guards hurriedly sought cover, but after waiting for some time, the restrained bullets did not shoot back at them as they had expected.
She had no hostility toward them?
As this thought surfaced, they looked toward the stairs again.
The black-haired, blue-eyed girl had turned her attention back to the giant mosquitoes. She raised a hand, and a stream of luminous blue energy flowed from it.
The giant mosquitoes, enveloped by the energy, instantly disintegrated like ashes in the wind.
After finishing, she slowly walked down the stairs.
The guards hurriedly raised their guns and retreated, warily watching the “person” before them.
“What are you!?”
Lu Yuan, standing at the outermost position, tensed every muscle in his body and gritted his teeth as he forced himself to ask.
Was this “Jiang Qiao” a monster too?
But if so, why would a monster help them kill its own kind?
“I am—”
Wendy looked at the guards before her and smiled faintly.
“Of course, I’m Jiang Qiao.”
At the same time, her sea-blue eyes rippled like whirlpools, releasing an eerie glow.
The guards, who had been holding their guns at the ready, suddenly lost the focus in their eyes.
“They ran that way!”
“Hurry! Catch up with them!”
As if they had fallen into some shared illusion, they began running in place.
Wendy released her psionic energy, transforming it into a barrier that enclosed the guards.
After settling them, she clapped her hands and headed downstairs again.
There were nine left.
Of the three abilities possessed by the Sea Race, she had already mastered psionic energy to perfection. The Sea Hunters’ heightened senses and strength were passively activated and therefore required no practice.
Only the Sea Sirens’ illusions were something she had used just once.
This was a perfect opportunity to practice.
The functional area on the first floor and the Transfer Residents’ living area on the second floor were both constructed in an open, ring-shaped layout with hollow centers.
Only from the third-floor cafeteria upward did the structure become enclosed.
That was also why the Human-Faced Mosquitoes had initially been able to fly directly from the Medical Department to the Transfer Residents’ living area.
At this moment, all the Human-Faced Mosquitoes had been driven by gunfire into the open area between the two floors.
The guards stood with their guns raised in front of the Transfer Residents’ cabins, using their own bodies as shields to form a defensive line.
“Why are you treating us like this? What did we do wrong!?”
“I’m in so much pain, husband! Why won’t you come save me?”
“It hurts! It hurts so much! Stop shooting!”
The Human-Faced Mosquitoes flew wildly through the air, wearing unabashed grins on their transformed faces.
Yet they continuously cried out for help in pitiful voices, attempting to lure the original relatives of their hosts into opening the cabin doors.
They laughed eerily while uttering human-like words of manipulation, and whenever there was a gap in the gunfire, they took the opportunity to thrust their proboscises toward the guards, attempting to inject their mucus-covered eggs into human bodies.
The guards constantly dodged the proboscises shooting toward them, struggling to maintain the defensive line.
But as the seconds ticked by, they watched helplessly as the Human-Faced Mosquitoes remained completely unharmed no matter how many times they were shot.
Despair gradually filled everyone’s eyes.
They were running out of bullets.
Perhaps… they really were going to die here today.
“Whoosh.”
At that moment, the metallic door of the stairwell suddenly opened.
Both the Human-Faced Mosquitoes and the guards were startled and turned toward the sound simultaneously.
The airflow caused by the opening metal door swept the girl’s hair backward.
She casually spun her gun as she stepped out, looking completely out of place amid this tense battlefield.
“Jiang Qiao, you…”
One of the nearby guards frowned and spoke in confusion.
But in the next second, his eyes met a pair of blue eyes.
The rest of his sentence died in his throat.
Deep blue surged like a hurricane.
Countless threads of luminous blue light scattered outward, deliberately traveling throughout the entire escape vessel before drifting into the eyes of every guard and Transfer Resident.
As the strands of light entered their eyes, the guards stood there dazed, their guns still raised.
Psionic energy surged outward and formed a barrier, enclosing the entire outer ring of the second floor.
After completing all this, Wendy turned around and looked at the eight Human-Faced Mosquitoes she had previously restrained with “Dominance.”
They hung motionless in midair as though someone had pressed a pause button.
Only the constantly changing expressions on their faces proved that time was still flowing.
Wendy identified the faint smell of rust in the air.
Using “Dominance,” she lifted herself into the air and sat on the metal outer wall of the second-floor ring.
There was still some time.
She needed to verify a few of her hypotheses.
She released the restraints on the Human-Faced Mosquitoes’ mouthparts.
“What are you?”
The instant it could speak, the Human-Faced Mosquito using Huang Jieshu as its host immediately spoke.
Sensing the danger warning originating from its genetic instincts, the Human-Faced Mosquitoes, which had inherited half of their hosts’ intelligence, seemed to have reached some kind of consensus through an unknown method.
They chose not to attack the person before them.
“There is a memory of you in my mind, but you are not the human from my memories.”
“You are not human, and you are not one of us either.”
Its protruding compound eyes continuously shifted.
Although it was still unfamiliar with the process, it was clearly thinking.
Wendy quietly watched it, her gaze darkening slightly.
“Are you from the Sea Race?”
Suddenly, its eyes stopped moving.
All the Human-Faced Mosquitoes simultaneously became motionless and turned toward Wendy.
Wendy did not answer.
She took a deep breath and crushed all eight Human-Faced Mosquitoes before her at once.
[You have killed eight C-rank Alien Species — Human-Faced Mosquitoes. You have obtained 400 Action Points.]
The notification sounded at precisely the right moment.
She leaped down from the inner wall of the second floor and walked toward the Medical Department.
Inside the Medical Department, Han Jianhong lay in the middle of the floor. The little-girl Human-Faced Mosquito had injected mosquito eggs into him.
Yellow mucus covered the walls of the cabin. Han Jianhong, already parasitized, lay within it as his body visibly underwent mutation.
His originally normal limbs began to grow long and slender. Fine hairs and scales emerged across his skin. Beneath his tightly shut eyelids, his eyeballs seemed to inflate, swelling larger and larger…
Until his eyelids, stretched so tightly that even the blood vessels were clearly visible, could no longer withstand the pressure.
Two enormous compound eyes burst out.
They rolled around with a gurgling motion, and a pair of mosquito wings suddenly tore through the flesh along his spine and emerged.
“Bzzzz—”
The Human-Faced Mosquito flapped its wings, attempting to take flight, only to discover that an invisible barrier in midair was blocking it.
Just as it was wondering what was happening, it suddenly heard footsteps.
It turned toward the source of the sound, only to meet a pair of icy blue eyes.
The next instant, the entire world froze.
It watched as its own body suddenly exploded apart.
This time, Wendy did not use psionic energy to destroy the last Human-Faced Mosquito’s true body.
Instead, she controlled the palm-sized giant mosquito and suspended it in front of her.
She carefully examined the insect before her.
The true body of a Human-Faced Mosquito was only about the size of an adult’s palm, but its antennae were a full twenty to thirty centimeters long.
An adult’s throat-to-crown distance was roughly twenty centimeters.
After seeing countless parasitized hosts explode into mosquito-like forms, Wendy had discovered long ago that the adult insect’s true body was hidden inside the throat.
They concealed their most vulnerable true bodies in the least conspicuous location, then used their long antennae to control the host’s brain.
This was also why infected individuals clearly showed signs of mental interference during the early stages, yet shooting them in the brain had no effect.
The giant mosquito struggled, its constantly beating wings producing a series of buzzing sounds.
Wendy lowered her eyes toward its broad, membranous wings.
The wing veins and scales covering them formed a pattern resembling a human face.
It was Han Jianhong’s face.
The familiar face had been reproduced on the wings of the enormous insect.
She stared at the horrifying pattern, sinking into thought.
The Human-Faced Mosquitoes knew about the existence of the Sea Race.
But that shouldn’t have been possible.
Judging from the insects’ growth cycle, the parasitized larvae floating on the surface of the sea should have been born from eggs left behind after the previous host died.
After the larvae parasitized their hosts, they completed their differentiation aboard the escape vessel.
During their short lifespans, they had never encountered the Sea Race.
They shouldn’t have known that a race called the Sea Race existed beneath the deep sea.
Yet they knew.
Why?
Could it be because the Human-Faced Mosquitoes possessed inherited memories?
Or was it because…
The alien species shared a collective memory?
She couldn’t help recalling what the Human-Faced Mosquito using Wang Tianci as its host had said:
“We cannot be killed. We will only become more numerous. In the end, all of you will become one of us.”
At first, she had assumed that the “we” referred specifically to the Human-Faced Mosquitoes.
But moments ago, when the Human-Faced Mosquito had questioned her identity, it had also used the pronoun “we”—except this time, it was referring to all the alien species.
If that was the case, then what about “you”?
What exactly did “you” refer to?
The Human-Faced Mosquitoes knew of the Sea Race’s existence.
So did the “you” in that statement include the Sea Race?
Wendy looked at the struggling insect before her and lowered her eyes, concealing the strange flicker within them.
Up until now, every alien species she had encountered—Scale Leeches, Devourer Species, Three-Headed Swallowing Eels, Abyssal Giant Spiders, Parasitic Mosquito Larvae, and the Human-Faced Mosquitoes that had evolved from them—
could broadly be divided into two categories:
Parasitic species and aggressive species.
Before this incident, the only parasitic alien species she had encountered was the Scale Leech.
They were too weak. Even after differentiation, they only reached D-rank.
As a result, she had focused almost all of her attention on the aggressive alien species.
She had instinctively assumed that the purpose of the alien species was simply to seek out fresh flesh for food.
But was that really the case?
The fish-scaled monsters produced through Scale Leech parasitism retained the intelligence of a six- or seven-year-old child.
After absorbing blood and undergoing differentiation, their intelligence increased accordingly.
And this time, after completing its differentiation, the Human-Faced Mosquito had even obtained the host’s memories, gaining the ability to communicate and think.
It gave her a strange feeling.
The alien species seemed to be taking genes.