Free Web NovelNo one knew what exactly had happened to this laboratory.
But perhaps the situation had been too urgent. Before dying, those researchers had not managed to destroy all the important materials inside.
Even the intelligent system responsible for processing the data was still running.
Wen Yuzhi placed the ID badge against it again.
[Scanning—scan complete—C-Level clearance—opening the following databases.]
A long list of files appeared across the translucent blue screen, while several encrypted files showed insufficient clearance and could not be opened.
It seemed the laboratory had divided the importance of its materials into several levels. Different clearances could access different sets of information.
C-Level clearance here was only the second tier. Wen Yuzhi saw that above it there was still B-Level clearance.
But he also noticed that some of the files required even higher clearance—A-Level, S-Level, and so on...
“This is Polaris’s ranking system. Employees at the institute are divided into different levels based on their overall qualifications, from E-Level all the way up to SS-Level. The permissions researchers can use are tied directly to those levels.”
After recording the experimental subjects inside the nutrient tanks, King of Clubs finally stopped circling around them.
Seeing Wen Yuzhi staring curiously at the access levels, King of Clubs simply walked over and explained.
This was not especially secret information. It was even listed on Polaris’s official homepage, so King of Clubs was more than happy to explain it to a premium client in the making.
After Dan took control of Polaris from Dr. Kegso, a number of changes were made, and this ranking system was one of them.
This sort of hierarchical classification could be seen all across Polaris, and it fit Dan’s personality perfectly.
Dan seemed especially fond of survival-of-the-fittest logic.
“Polaris has set up laboratories of all sizes on many planets. The one on Blackrock Star is just a small lab, so the highest clearance here is only B-Level.”
Blackrock Star was resource-poor. In the eyes of many people, it was worthless to begin with, and after Bernard’s slaughter, they had probably assumed Blackrock Star had already lost any ability to resist. That was why the experimental site Polaris established here was only a small laboratory.
Polaris...
Wen Yuzhi had already heard that name several times by now.
Professor Milne had mentioned Polaris back on the warship, and those people had clearly belonged to it. Later, after arriving on Blackrock Star, Uncle Chong’s questions had also circled around whether Wen Yuzhi had any connection to Polaris.
And now this laboratory was tied to Polaris too.
That made Wen Yuzhi more and more curious about what Polaris really was.
“What exactly is this Polaris you all keep talking about?”
That was what Wen Yuzhi was thinking, so that was what he asked.
But when King of Clubs heard the question, the first thing done was to glance at Xi Heyan. Only after seeing that Xi Heyan’s expression had not changed did King of Clubs answer. ƒгeewebnovёl.com
“Polaris’s full name is the Polaris Life Research Institute. When it was first founded, its purpose was to solve the problem of mental-energy disorder.”
Wen Yuzhi blinked.
That actually sounded... pretty good.
If mental-energy disorder could really be solved, that would benefit every species in the interstellar world.
But King of Clubs was not finished.
“Later...” The word hung there like a turn in the road.
“Later, its first founder died, and the successor who took over was someone named Dr. Kegso,” Xi Heyan said, picking up the explanation.
King of Clubs did not seem offended at being interrupted.
After Xi Heyan finished, King of Clubs added, “Dr. Kegso was radical and insane in the way he operated. He spent years researching how to increase mental power, and for that purpose, carried out a great many experiments that violated interstellar law.”
“What you’re looking at now—these genetically modified stray beasts—are Dr. Kegso’s handiwork over all these years.”
By law, a scientist like Dr. Kegso should have been locked up long ago.
And yet Dr. Kegso had gone on living, and living quite well.
If not for the Saint Clan’s sudden attack before this, Dr. Kegso probably could have kept living like that indefinitely.
The reason for that likely had a lot to do with the people standing behind Dr. Kegso.
“On the surface, Polaris is still researching mental-energy disorder. Behind the scenes...”
King of Clubs did not finish the sentence.
But looking at the state of this laboratory, it was not hard to guess what Polaris had really been researching in private—illegal, criminal things.
And the files inside the intelligent system only confirmed it.
The materials accessible with C-Level clearance already contained detailed records of how these stray beasts had been altered.
The researchers first extracted genes from other organisms, then fused those selected genes into the genes of the stray beasts.
“Have you ever heard of chimeras?”
King of Clubs narrowed the eyes behind the rabbit mask.
“When cells with different genotypes develop within the same body, the individual ultimately displays different traits because of those genetic differences. A sheep, for example, might grow a bull’s horns.”
And these stray beasts were like chimeras.
Their bodies had become testing grounds for genes from other species.
The laboratory studied, selected, and filtered out what they considered superior genes.
Like editing a video, they cut out all the best segments, stitched them together, and in the end produced something new.
After being selected, fused, optimized, and mutated again and again, what the researchers ultimately obtained was—
a monster.
Of course, they would never call them monsters.
They called it evolution.
A complete transformation of an entire species.
These “evolved” stray beasts possessed power enough to rival most species.
Their bite force could tear apart mechs. Their flesh feared no ordinary weapon. Their powerful regenerative ability meant that even if starship artillery blasted them into chunks of meat, they could still heal.
When that day came, stray beasts would leap from being one of the lowest life-forms in the interstellar world to becoming the most terrifying kind of genetic soldier.
“They’re insane.”
Xi Heyan frowned, disgust plain on his face.
There were clear regulations among the interstellar races. Experiments involving genes—especially experiments mixing the genes of one species with another—were completely forbidden. Because the moment that kind of experimentation began, the first problems that emerged were moral and ethical.
If too many foreign genes were implanted, was that species still the original species?
And that was not even touching on all the other issues involved. No matter the species, genetic modification of intelligent life was strongly resisted.
Stray beasts were not an intelligent species, but they were special. ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom
Having gone through radiation mutation, they had an abnormally intense craving for flesh and blood. If they were genetically modified on top of that, they would become an enormous threat to every race in the interstellar world.
And more than that...
Xi Heyan had a darker suspicion in the back of his mind.
With the personalities of Dr. Kegso and Dan, would they really be satisfied limiting genetic modification to stray beasts alone?
The answer was obvious just from thinking about it.
Once this technology matured on stray beasts, sooner or later it would be applied to other species too.
Possibly even to humans themselves.
That was why Xi Heyan called them insane.
Anyone capable of doing things like this had truly gone mad. They were not only violating the law—they were violating the very basis of humanity.
Any random clip from these videos, if posted onto StarNet, would trigger a storm across every species.
And before they realized it, the video files had already reached the last one.
After everything they had seen before, Wen Yuzhi had not really wanted to keep watching.
What he had never expected, though, was that in this final video, the researchers were trying to fuse Saint Clan genes into a stray beast.
The shot lasted only a second, but Wen Yuzhi still saw the nutrient tank behind the researchers.
Inside it, pierced by countless tubes, was a Saint Clan member.
And those researchers had been trying to fuse Saint Clan genes into the genetic sequence of a stray beast.
The plan had sounded good to them.
Their earlier successful experiments had given them more than enough confidence.
Enough to make them believe that Saint Clan genes would surely be able to fuse with stray beast genes too.
Reality proved they had failed.
No matter how many times they tried, the Saint Clan genes produced a violent rejection reaction with the stray beasts.
Every experiment ended in failure.
In the end, they had no choice but to give up on merging Saint Clan genes into stray beast bodies, and this video had been filed away by the researchers as a failed case.
Perhaps they had never imagined that one day this video would be seen by another Saint Clan member.
And not just any Saint Clan member—
but royal blood.
If the earlier experiments had only made Wen Yuzhi uncomfortable because they involved species he had never personally known, then this was different.
That earlier discomfort had been a normal person’s instinctive physical revulsion at something inhuman.
But the moment Wen Yuzhi saw that these researchers had even used Saint Clan members for experiments, an uncontrollable anger rose in him.
Under the hood, a thin vertical line quietly appeared in his pale golden eyes at some unknown moment.
Those slit pupils reflected a cold gleam under the light.
It was killing intent directed at the people in the video.
Wen Yuzhi wanted to kill those researchers.
Xi Heyan was very sensitive to killing intent.
He turned and saw Wen Yuzhi standing there motionless, head lowered.
Xi Heyan thought Wen Yuzhi was feeling unwell because of the cruelty in the video.
Just as he was about to step forward to comfort the boy, a piercing alarm suddenly rang through the laboratory.
Red warning lights began flashing overhead.
[Warning—clearance confirmed—self-destruct sequence will begin—countdown: 3 minutes—]
In another room not # Nоvеlight # far from Xi Heyan’s group, a researcher forced up the last breath left and pressed a button.
That researcher was the only B-Level clearance holder in the laboratory.
There was guilt in the eyes.
The researcher had failed to stop Number One.
And to keep the many secrets hidden inside the laboratory from leaking out, the choice at the end had been to die together with the lab.
When that late-arriving figure appeared, the researcher forced the body upright and asked the one question every researcher in the lab had wanted to ask.
“Number One... why... why did you betray the institute?”
“Betray?”
A hoarse, rough voice sounded out.
The figure tilted the head.
“I didn’t betray anything.”
Then, under the researcher’s stunned gaze, Bai Yi said slowly, “You people were just too annoying. You kept getting in my way.”
All Bai Yi had wanted was to find the person being searched for.
But the collar kept transmitting orders, and there had been an endless stream of stray beasts blocking the way.
After enough of that, Bai Yi had simply chosen to clear away everything standing in the way first.
Unfortunately for everyone inside, the laboratory full of stray beasts had become one of those obstacles.
As for the fact that the laboratory was part of Polaris...
What did that have to do with Bai Yi?
Under the gaze of those icy vertical pupils, the researcher suddenly remembered how people inside the institute had privately described these genetically modified experimental subjects.
They were the most perfect killing machines.
And emotionless monsters.
“Monsters...”
“So we were making monsters...”
The researcher had handled countless experimental subjects in a lifetime, yet only at the moment of death did the realization finally come.
In the eyes of these experimental subjects, the researchers had perhaps never been gods standing high above them at all.
On the contrary, because they felt nothing, everything in the world had been divided into only two categories in their eyes:
targets, and everything that was not a target.
The researchers had believed they were the ones controlling the experimental subjects.
But when the day came that they themselves became targets to be removed, they found they had no power at all to stop the monsters they had created.
Bai Yi did not kill the researcher.
Not because of mercy.
But because Bai Yi had caught the scent that had been sought all this time.
Compared to finding that person, the life or death of a single researcher did not matter.
Besides, even without Bai Yi lifting a hand, that researcher was not going to live.
A pack of stray beasts had already followed the smell of blood here.
The moment they saw the researcher on the ground, their craving for flesh made them lunge forward at once.
Amid scream after scream, the researcher could only watch as the body was torn apart by the stray beasts.
The roles of controller and controlled had been completely reversed.
And only then did the researcher finally experience the pain those experimental subjects had once suffered.
But none of that had anything to do with Bai Yi anymore.
Bai Yi did not even look back.
On the other side, Wen Yuzhi immediately tried to use the ID badge to stop the sequence.
But the only response was insufficient clearance.
“It was probably that B-Level researcher who activated the lab’s self-destruct program. Since that was the highest-clearance person here, once the program was started, no one else could stop it,” King of Clubs said, quickly judging the situation.
“Get out first!”
Xi Heyan made the decision on the spot.
The whole group immediately began retreating.
But just as they were passing the nutrient tanks, the sound of shattering glass rang out.
At some point, the stray beasts inside the tanks had already awakened.
Their scarlet eyes were wide open, fixed greedily on the flesh-and-blood people outside.
“Run!”
Xi Heyan shouted.
No one dared delay. Everyone bolted for the exit.
And seeing that the food delivered right to their mouths was escaping, the stray beasts in the tanks quickly tore free from the tubes connected to their bodies and burst out, slick with clinging nutrient fluid.
There was no helping it.
Xi Heyan could only order the others to keep running while staying behind to cover the retreat.
King of Clubs stayed with Xi Heyan.
Though in King of Clubs’s case, it was for money.
“Help me hold these stray beasts back!” Xi Heyan shouted.
King of Clubs replied, “You may be one of my longtime clients, but let me make this clear first—fighting is a separate service. That costs extra.”
Xi Heyan answered without hesitation, “Fine!”
The moment money was mentioned, the look in King of Clubs’s eyes changed instantly.
King of Clubs pulled off the suit jacket and looked at the stray beasts the way someone might look at a pile of valuables waiting to be turned into cash.
At that moment, there were only two minutes left on the countdown.
