Chapter 75: Ashspire City, The Beginning (3)
Grey strode around the laboratory. There were plenty of rooms, and every room was tightly sealed. There was no way to see through the rooms, he also felt a barrier forcing his mind perception out, so there was only one thing left to do. Enter one and find out.
Grey chose the one closest to him. Considering there were no handles on the door, it was most likely technologically locked, and from the looks of it, it was locked from the inside.
Grey accessed his interface and immediately, a formation appeared in his head. He cracked it down one by one and the door in front of him opened up with a pressurized hiss as air was released from the seal.
Grey peered inside the room and entered.
Huge human-sized tubes, computers, many holographic screens and countless wires appeared in Grey’s vision. In the dead center, there was a guy wearing a lab coat and a mask. In front of him lay what appeared to be a civilian with cybernetics, unconscious. He had a crystal in his hand and it flashed with a mysterious light.
He was just about to push the crystal into the unconscious civilian’s body but he froze midway when he saw Grey enter.
"You! Who are you?" The lab member asked with a hint of caution. "Who let you in? Guards!"
He shouted for the guards, but no one came.
Grey, on the other hand, was staring up and down at the person wearing a lab coat. He waved his hand and immediately Heaven Seizing Hand shot out and undid the person’s mask.
What appeared in Grey’s vision was a person with an average face and deep red eyes.
Grey then activated True Origin Sight and immediately, he saw a fluctuating pool of dense black energy within the person. Abyssal energy.
"You are actually stable with Abyssal energy in your system?" Grey curiously looked at the person from head to toe. He looked just like any other ordinary human being.
Nothing like Cedric, who he fought and who underwent an earth-shattering transformation.
"How do you know about the Abyss?" The lab member asked in panic, and immediately his aura surged. He unleashed the aura of a mid-stage 1st ranker.
However, Grey was unbothered. He leisurely pulled up his hacking interface and logged into the local database server of Ashspire City.
With experience from hacking into Nova City’s local database, it didn’t take him long to crack it and gain access to this city’s database either, even with a lot of ByteRippers around and he had been using it to go around the Ashspire city for the past months.
He then used the database to cross-check faces in the database and what came up was a 0 percent match with people in of Ashspire City.
Even if the person was someone who entered here temporarily, they would still have their picture recorded and stored in the database.
This meant this guy was without a doubt a High Order member. Only they could manipulate technology to this extent, and of course the Abyssal energy already confirmed that fact.
Confirming it more rigorously wouldn’t hurt anyone.
"To think I would run into one here." Grey smiled faintly. "Alright then, Mister High Order Member, what are you doing here?"
However, instead of answering him, the lab member charged at him without any explanation.
Seeing this, Grey waved his hand slightly and the member froze in place, suspended in the air. Then, an oppressive force descended onto the lab member.
"Y-You! Let go of me!" The lab member’s expression twisted in terror.
He felt his body being crushed slowly.
"Sure." Grey spoke. "I’ll let you go if you explain what is happening here."
He looked over to the unconscious civilian and the crystal.
"Is that a Law Crystal?" Grey asked curiously. It wasn’t his first time seeing it. He recognized it in one glance.
"I-I cannot say anything!" The lab member said in a rushed tone. "I will instantly die if I speak anything. The High Order has complete control over us. They have performed a curse technique on me!"
"Huh?" Grey tilted his head with a glint of surprise. "That’s certainly news to me."
Then, Grey smiled calmly and unleashed Nexus energy. "Don’t worry. The curse won’t activate in my presence. You feel it too, right? The Abyssal energy within you is now completely suppressed. That curse technique must need Abyssal energy to activate. With me here, it won’t activate."
"I won’t say it!" The lab member said gravely. "Whoever you are, you are messing with the wrong people. You’ll regret this."
Grey wore a bored expression when he heard this.
He curled his hand into a fist and immediately, the lab member’s expression froze and the sound of bones snapping rang out within the room. Blood began gushing out from the lab member’s orifices.
"Arghhh!" The lab member screamed in pain, and the pain grew stronger with each passing moment.
He knew he would be crushed to death at any moment.
"Alright alright! I’ll tell you!" The lab member screamed in agony and began speaking. "This lab was made for Cybor—"
However, just as he began speaking, he abruptly froze and the Abyssal energy inside him surged out of control.
Noticing this, Grey tried to take action by suppressing the energy with his natural Nexus energy, but it was already too late. The lab member’s eyes flickered in terror and then his head dropped forward, lifeless in the air.
"He wasn’t joking, huh?" Grey shook his head and tossed the body aside before walking up to the civilian.
He connected his interface with the civilian’s cybernetics and checked his condition.
"He’s in a half-dead state. I see several traumas and signs of torture from the data complied from his cybernetic chip inside his brain." Grey frowned slightly.
Then, he turned his attention to the Law Crystal next to him. Law Crystals were utilized to comprehend laws. A higher-leveled evolver could trap laws into these specific crystals for lower-level evolvers to comprehend.
[Your Comprehension Defies the Heaven! By observing the Law Crystal of Machinery, you have gained insight into the Law of Machinery]
’Law of Machinery?’ Grey had a confused expression on his face.
He had never heard of something like that before.
With no further hint, Grey turned his attention to the computers. He swiftly hacked into them and information started pouring into his head.
Soon, he began going through the files.
"Test #21, The test subjects reacted violently to the Law of Machinery. The law cannot be controlled fully by current cybernetics, changes have to be made."
"Test #41, The test subjects have gone berserk. Forced comprehension of the Law of Machinery resulted in the death of test subjects."
"Personal Data, The higher ups are angry at the lack of progress. They want to force the Law of Machinery out earlier to deal with Subject Et—"
However, just as Grey was reading it, an error popped up in his interface.
[Error! Data has been wiped]
"Someone erased the data." Grey’s eyes narrowed.
At the same time, he suddenly sensed multiple presences outside the room.
Grey activated his Mind Perception and peered beyond the walls.
Outside the room stood several lab-coated members, Black Viper Crew members, and a burly man. The lab members were middle-stage 1st rankers, and among the Black Viper Crew were late-stage evolvers, around level 8 or 9 of the 1st rank. However, the burly man gave off a presence far stronger than all of them combined.
Grey immediately activated his Appraisal skill to check the burly man’s rank.
[Power: 1st Rank, Level 10]