Chapter 20 A Corner of the Base

About twenty minutes later, Feng Bujue, holding the barefoot brother's head, arrived at a corner of the base.

Igor was still walking ahead of him with weapons and several tools, acting as a bodyguard and pathfinder.

"Okay, we're at the corner. Starting from here, how do we get to the 'room where the experimental reports are stored'?" Feng Bujue stopped and spoke to the barefoot brother.

"I'll state this in advance..." the barefoot brother replied, "Because you said you can't see the signs, I can't confirm which of the four corners of the base 'this corner' is. So, the destination we arrive at may not be correct."

"It's fine," Feng Bujue said. "If this one is wrong, we'll just start from another corner. It just takes more time." He paused, "But... I'll also state this in advance..." He cast a cold glance at the barefoot brother, "It doesn't matter if we go to the wrong room, but if we're led to some strange place, like... a place with traps, or where your kind are, then... you can pray for your own good afterward."

These words made the barefoot brother's face change drastically.

Indeed, similar thoughts had already sprouted in the barefoot brother's mind on the way here, and he was just about to put them into action.

However, Feng Bujue had given him a "precautionary shot" in advance, clearly stating - "I already saw through your little trick, you dare to use it, and you can weigh the consequences yourself."

"Hmph..." After a few seconds of hesitation, the barefoot brother reluctantly compromised. He snorted coldly and continued, "Then I'll also state something in advance... The room where the experimental reports are stored is very close to the room where we held the 'ritual'. Although we scattered to all parts of the base after the entire ritual was completed, I can't be sure if there are others nearby..." He paused slightly for half a second, "So, if you encounter my kind on the way, or are attacked near that room, don't say that I deliberately led you into a trap..."

These words made it clear that the monster had stated his bottom line.

Two seconds later, Feng Bujue replied expressionlessly, "Okay, tell me... which way?"

...

The corridor was straight and bright, with basically no obstacles, so Jue-Ge and Igor walked very quickly.

After about twelve minutes of walking, they arrived at the destination the barefoot brother had mentioned.

"We haven't encountered anything along the way..." Feng Bujue thought to himself as he stood in front of the room, "Maybe... the place is wrong?"

His reasoning was correct, because when he tried to open the door, the prompt he received was [Cannot be opened].

So, they had no choice but to start from another corner to reposition their coordinates.

This process could have taken about half an hour... and that was on the basis of not encountering monsters or other events on the way.

But they were lucky. After walking straight along another "edge" of the base for seven or eight minutes, the barefoot brother suddenly spoke up, "Wait... I've found the 'ritual' room."

"Oh?" Feng Bujue immediately stopped when he heard this and asked, looking down, "Which one?"

"The one we just passed at the intersection, turn left," the barefoot brother replied. "There's a lot of blood in that ritual room. Although it's no longer flowing, I can still sense it at this distance..."

Upon hearing this, Jue-Ge immediately gave Igor a look; the latter understood and entered a state of alert, leading the way with his knife.

The two retreated a few meters and turned in the direction the barefoot brother had indicated.

At this time, Igor looked focused, moving his feet silently, which showed that... it wasn't the first time he had experienced such a situation.

Although Igor wasn't a professional soldier, he had indeed fought in wars and had considerable combat experience.

...

In 1942, in that winter filled with death and covered in snow, Soviets, Romanians, Hungarians, Germans... gathered in a place called Stalingrad, and they wrote a stroke in blood that occupied an extremely important place in the entire history of human warfare.

For the Soviets, Stalingrad was a place they absolutely didn't want to lose and couldn't lose. This city not only had an irreplaceable symbolic meaning, but more importantly... it was the transportation hub connecting the central regions of the Soviet Union to important economic areas in the south; it was bordered by Moscow to the north, the Persian Gulf to the south, and the main producing areas of Soviet grain, coal, and oil to the southwest. Losing here could very well mean losing the entire war, and perhaps... the entire history of mankind would be rewritten as a result.

On July 28 of the same year, Stalin issued the famous Order No. 227 - "Not one step back!"

And Igor was one of the Soviet soldiers who received this order...

That year, he was only nineteen years old. He didn't want to go to the battlefield, he just wanted to be a worker, or a shoemaker like his deceased father.

He hoped to live a stable life, hoped to fall in love like a normal young man, hoped to do his filial duty to his sick mother, and hoped to provide his starving sister with enough food every day.

However, war... left him no choice.

Stalingrad in October was known as the "killing stove," and Igor stayed in this stove until the end of the battle.

As a new recruit who hadn't received much military training before being dragged onto the battlefield, this was almost a miracle...

The following spring, Igor was forced to retire due to an injury that required amputation.

When he returned home, his mother and sister had already passed away, and his already impoverished home was left with only bare walls.

He was only twenty years old and had become a lame tramp.

In this way, seven years passed quickly... This was supposed to be the best seven years of his life, but for him, every day felt like a year.

Until one day... some people in military uniforms came to tell him that he had been selected by the government to receive a free "treatment program."

At that time, Igor, who was already terminally ill, naturally had no reason to refuse.

But what he didn't expect was that... he wasn't here to receive any treatment, but to serve as an experimental subject...

...

"There's no need to be so careful," the barefoot brother's sudden words broke the brief silence, "There won't be any ambushes in the room."

"How do you know?" Feng Bujue looked at him, "You shouldn't be able to sense each other's positions, right?"

If those monsters could sense each other, they wouldn't have worried about being beheaded and left somewhere undiscovered. So, this assumption must be correct.

"Because we don't stay in one place without moving," the barefoot brother replied, "Calmness, waiting... these all drive us crazy."

"Okay, that's a reasonable reason," Feng Bujue said, and then gave Igor another look.

Igor, who was already standing in front of the door, reached out and pushed the metal door panel.

Creak—

The sound of the rotating metal shaft made people feel uneasy.

And behind the opening door, a bloody smell immediately wafted out...

"Ugh—" Igor's sense of smell had also become very sensitive, so standing here made him feel quite uncomfortable.

"I'll take it from here..." At this time, Feng Bujue stepped forward, took the lead in front of Igor, and walked into the room first.

He was so confident because he had confirmed while standing behind Igor that there were indeed no monsters in the room...

This room wasn't very large, occupying an area of about thirty square meters; the lights in the room were already on, making the inside of the room clear at a glance; on the wall opposite the door, there was a fixed concrete platform placed lengthwise, just large enough for one person to lie down.

At this moment, this concrete platform looked like a cutting board that had been used repeatedly countless times but never cleaned, with layers of blood stains of varying depths covering its surface... which were mixed with pieces of flesh, internal organs, hair, broken bones, and many other unidentifiable things.

"Explain the principle of the ritual," Feng Bujue stood in the room and looked around, then picked up the barefoot brother's head again and asked directly.

"We can dissect people without letting them shed a drop of blood," The barefoot brother's answer was quite informative, "We can also make people bleed to death without any wounds." As he spoke, he glanced at the surface of the concrete platform, "Below those blood stains, there is a magic circle used for the ritual, drawn by the 'Whisperer'. Only 'he' knows how to use 'power'."

"'Whisperer'?" Feng Bujue used a tentative tone to signal the other party to give a more detailed explanation.

"I don't know what he is. All I have in my mind is the name 'Whisperer', just like I know how to walk," the barefoot brother continued, "His appearance looks no different from us, except... he seems to know more than us."

"Can the ritual only be performed when the Whisperer is present??" Feng Bujue asked again.

"No, as long as the magic circle is drawn, anyone can complete it," the barefoot brother had just uttered the word "complete" when he sensed that something was wrong, "Hey! Hey! What are you doing?"

Feng Bujue ignored him and simply took two steps forward, nonchalantly using the barefoot brother's face to smear the ritual platform.

A few seconds later, he used a set of sweeping and violent movements to smear away a large area of blood stains, revealing the magic circle.

"Oh... the magic system from King Solomon's side." Feng Bujue stared at the magic circle for a few seconds, muttering to himself.

"Bastard! What are you doing!" The next second, the barefoot brother, whose face was covered in filth, shouted angrily.

Feng Bujue ignored the other party's complaints, silently memorized the magic circle in his mind, and then continued in a calm tone, "Okay, take us to the room where the experimental reports are... Since you know it's not far from here, it shouldn't be a problem to locate it from here, right?"

"Damn it..." The barefoot brother was furious, but unfortunately... he was already in the hands of the other party; and on the way here, Feng Bujue had already told him how he had treated the previous monster... The barefoot brother didn't want to end up the same way, or even worse.

So, he could only continue to swallow his anger and obediently pointed out the direction to Jue-Ge and the others.

...

After coming out of the "ritual room", turn right, pass two intersections, then turn left, and the first room is the "archives".

The door here was also locked, and when Feng Bujue tried to pick the lock, he received a special system prompt: [This lock has rusted shut, even a key cannot open it. Using brute force to open it seems to be a better option].

"Hmm... the prompt is quite clear." As the voice sounded in his ear, Feng Bujue began to calculate in his mind, "However, without Igor's help, how would a player open it alone?"

Although he had a ready-made solution, he would still think about questions like this, as it often allowed him to grasp more information.

About five seconds later, Feng Bujue thought of three possible ways to open it:

First, lure a monster and use positioning to use the monster's power when attacking to help you open it.

The probability of this assumption is the lowest, because it's too difficult to implement... Of course, it's not entirely impossible, because the monsters' perspective is very limited. They usually have to walk very close to find out where the door is; plus... if the player runs at full speed, the speed difference with those monsters is not too big. This script was originally designed as a "player can use the maze-like terrain and the monster's perspective to card and escape when encountering a monster alone" layout. Therefore, Jue-Ge still listed this as one of the possibilities.

Second, use the power of a certain NPC to open the door.

This "NPC" naturally doesn't refer to hidden rewards like Igor, but to characters that are somewhat related to the main quest. Maybe there are existences among those monsters that can be negotiated with, such as that "Whisperer", or a victim who has been transformed by the ritual... But Jue-Ge can't verify this for the time being.

Third, and also the most likely possibility - the player kicks the door open himself.

Feng Bujue immediately tried this possibility...

But he saw him kicking the door lock with a roundhouse kick without saying a word (when kicking a door, a side kick and a roundhouse kick are more efficient than kicking with the sole of the foot from the front. The way of kicking the door from the front used in most film and television works is actually unscientific. For details, please see Bear Grylls's *Man vs. Wild Handbook*). But... the door remained motionless.

At this moment, Feng Bujue came to another conclusion: Assuming that among the above three solutions, the probability of one is too low to be feasible, and the situation of two does not exist in essence; on the premise of only considering the third solution... as long as a certain prerequisite is established, the solution can be realized.

And that "prerequisite" is - the player injects himself with VNO-9 and successfully mutates.

"Igor." After thinking for a moment, Feng Bujue said, "This... I'll have to trouble you here."

For the conclusions generated after such multiple assumptions, Jue-Ge still had no intention of implementing them, but... after this thinking, he had more confidence in the success of "VNO-9 acting on the player." Simply put... Because more known information made this theoretical probability increase.

"Okay, no problem." Igor didn't know what Jue-Ge was thinking, he just answered very simply, and then took three steps forward and kicked the side of the door panel.

Bang—

Igor's first kick was originally just to test the waters and see what it felt like to kick, so he didn't use his full strength.

However, even he himself didn't expect that... this kick directly kicked open the heavy metal door, and even a piece of the wall next to the door lock was broken.