Chapter 1 The Eyes Cannot Lie

Having been in complete darkness for a while, Feng Bujue's eyes had not fully adjusted to the light.

However, he didn't spend too long on the matter of adjusting to the light.

A few seconds later, he could see normally, and his gaze immediately turned to the corpse beside him.

It was indeed a corpse wearing a straitjacket. The corpse's head and right foot were missing. Consistent with Jue-Ge's previous judgment, what flowed from the wounds was not blood, but an odorless, fluorescent green, unidentified liquid.

"Strange..." Feng Bujue glanced at the corpse, then looked down at his own hands. There was still some sticky liquid on them. "This liquid... doesn't glow in the dark?"

He didn't dwell on this question for too long before heading toward the metal door not far away.

*Kaka—*

There was no system prompt, but the clicking sound when he turned the doorknob was enough to declare that the door was locked.

"Hmph... as expected." Feng Bujue muttered to himself and walked toward the mirror on the opposite wall.

Soon, he was in front of the mirror and extended a finger, pressing the fingertip perpendicularly against the surface.

"One-way mirror, huh..." Jue-Ge thought to himself as he looked at the reflection of his finger in the mirror.

He was currently using the simple "finger test" (touch the surface of the mirror with your fingertip; if there is a gap between the reflection of your finger and your fingertip, it's a normal mirror; if the reflection of your finger is touching your fingertip, it's a one-way mirror, and there's a see-through piece of glass behind it). Although this method isn't 100% effective (if the reflective layer is sandwiched between two pieces of glass, the finger test will be difficult to perform), he was successful this time.

Of course, even if the finger test didn't work, Jue-Ge was ninety percent sure that this large mirror was a one-way mirror.

Because this room... functionally speaking, was either an "interrogation room" or an "experimental container." If it was meant to be a cell, there was a problem... even if a cell didn't have a bed, it should have a toilet; otherwise, the cell would turn into a sewer-less latrine in a matter of days...

So... since it was an interrogation room or an experimental container, surveillance was definitely essential.

In the 1940s, although the technology to record video already existed, the invention of security cameras was still thirty years away. Therefore, the main surveillance method used back then was to have people watch.

In places like prisons, guards would watch through iron bars or windows. But in this secret underground experimental base, they were more likely to observe and record through one-way glass.

"I feel like... there are eyes staring at me from behind this mirror," Feng Bujue thought. "But it's just a gut feeling, no basis... I can't make a judgment." After staring at the mirror for a few seconds, he thought again, "Well... whether there are eyes or not, breaking this mirror with my bare hands without any tools is impossible. After all, this is military-grade facility, and it's reasonable to assume there's bulletproof glass behind this one-way mirror."

With that thought, he prepared to turn back and look at the corpse.

Unexpectedly...

*Fuu—fuu—*

At that moment, the sound of fabric scraping against the ground suddenly rang out.

Through the reflection of the mirror, Feng Bujue saw... the "corpse" on the ground, which had lost its head and right foot, suddenly wriggling.

"What's going on?" Seeing this, Jue-Ge immediately turned around, warily staring at the corpse.

"No head, which means no brain... to make a body without a brain move, there must be a power source..." In an instant, he came up with three hypotheses: one, an engineering-based remote control device; two, microorganisms or chemical weapons; three, supernatural causes.

*Fuu—fuu—*

A few seconds passed, and the corpse moved even more violently, but... its movements didn't seem to have any pattern, just flopping around wildly like a fish pulled out of a river.

"Speaking of... why didn't it move at all when I touched it earlier?" While pondering this, Feng Bujue took a few steps away from the corpse. "The difference between now and then is..." At this thought, he instinctively glanced at the lights on the ceiling. "The lights?" he murmured to himself. "So... what's the principle..."

In an instant, an idea flashed through Jue-Ge's mind. The next second, he looked down at his hand.

"I see..." Seeing that the color of the sticky liquid on his hand was even brighter than before, Jue-Ge immediately had an idea.

To verify his conjecture, Feng Bujue immediately did something that most people would not do...

He quickly walked back to the switch, raised his hand, and turned off the lights again...

This time, the room didn't become completely dark because the fluorescent liquid emitted a faint glow in the darkness.

However, this light began to weaken almost as soon as it appeared, dimming at a rate visible to the human eye... After about seven or eight seconds, the liquid on Feng Bujue's hand was completely dark, and the liquid flowing from the corpse's neck and ankle only lasted for twenty seconds.

When the fluorescence on the liquid completely disappeared, the corpse stopped moving again, at least... judging by the sound, it was motionless.

"Whether the lights are on or off, my hands don't feel any different," Feng Bujue calmly muttered in the darkness. "That means this liquid can't work outside the body; it has to enter the human circulatory system..." While thinking this, he walked toward the corpse. "As for this guy... his whole body should be filled with this liquid..."

Before long, Feng Bujue squatted down and once again used his hand to confirm the corpse's wounds.

"Oh~ A bone saw..."

He wasn't sure when he first groped in the dark. He glanced at it a few times under the light just now, and now he touched it again, and things became clear...

"And the wounds give the impression that... there was no sign of struggle when it was being sawed," Feng Bujue confirmed these details, then flipped the corpse over to untie the straps behind the straitjacket.

If you think that Feng Bujue is untying the corpse out of humanitarianism, then you must be a very naive and kind person.

If you think that Feng Bujue wants to take off the corpse's clothes and do something perverted to this headless male corpse, then I suggest you see a psychologist or go to the police station to turn yourself in as soon as possible.

In fact, Jue-Ge just wanted to take the metal buckle off the strap...

After removing the buckle, Feng Bujue stood up, turned around, and headed straight for the metal door.

Because he had turned on the lights once, this room was no longer "dark" for Jue-Ge. The image of the entire room had been imprinted in his mind. With his trained sense of distance, accurate to the centimeter, and his control over his stride, Feng Bujue could move freely in the room even with his eyes closed.

"Okay... 1940s... if I'm not mistaken, it's using a pin tumbler lock..." Feng Bujue broke off the iron pin on the strap buckle and inserted it into the keyhole of the metal door. "Traditional things are harder to deal with..."

These words were undoubtedly based on experience. According to Feng Bujue's rich experience in picking locks (don't ask me where that experience comes from), the older the lock, the more it tests the basic skills of lock-picking. The "anti-theft doors" of the early 21st century were actually the easiest to open... The worst were the locks from before the 1990s; some couldn't be opened even with professional tools and could only be smashed open.

*Click—*

To make a long story short, after working on the door for nearly five minutes, the sound of the lock cylinder finally moving rang out.

Feng Bujue exhaled, put the metal buckle into his pocket, then stood up and opened the door...

*Squeak—eee—*

The sound of the door opening was familiar, very similar to the one at the beginning of the opening CG.

Perhaps all the metal doors in this base made such a sound when opened, or perhaps... this was the last door that Andrei opened before he died.

But in any case, this sound was a psychological suggestion... a suggestion that could increase one's scare value.

"The corridor lighting is still normal, huh..." Two seconds later, Feng Bujue, with dead fish eyes and a listless expression, walked out of the room.

He naturally understood the meaning of designing the door opening sound like this, but unfortunately, he couldn't be scared.

"This corridor and the one in the opening aren't the same place, right..." Because the metal door had inevitably made a sound, Feng Bujue no longer remained silent. He muttered in a low voice, "The color of the walls and some of the details are different..."

An average person might have overlooked these "differences," but he remembered them clearly.

A similar example was mentioned earlier; this is a matter of the personal brain filtering mechanism. We "normal people" are often as good as blind; take me for example... There's a desk lamp next to my computer, and there's a lampshade on the lamp. This thing is only thirty or forty centimeters away from me and is in my field of vision for most of the day, but... if you ask me how many pleats there are on the lampshade, I couldn't tell you.

You can all try it... For example, how many outlets are there in the room you live in, what words are printed on the pen you use every day, what's the title of the first book on the top right of your desk... Can you answer without looking?

Feng Bujue... knew these details very clearly, and after years of training, he didn't need to consciously try to do it; he could complete this observation and memorization task automatically.

"No forks in the road, huh..." After observing for a few seconds, Jue-Ge realized that the room he was in was at the end of a corridor, and the door faced the corridor directly. "In other words, I can only go in this direction, and this direction..." He looked back at the room behind him. "Is away from the room behind the mirror..."

After thinking for a few seconds, he closed the metal door, leaving only a crack, and then continued forward along the corridor.

"Heh... there really are some." He hadn't taken many steps when Feng Bujue noticed a few scattered drops of fluorescent liquid on the ground in front of him. "Let me see... where did you guys take the head and foot?"

According to Jue-Ge's conjecture, the corpse's head and foot were undoubtedly sawed off and taken away, and there was definitely more than one person involved. If one person was doing it... halfway through the sawing, the corpse would move violently due to the fluorescent liquid flowing out and reacting to the light. In that case... even if that person could finish sawing, the corpse's wounds would be a mess.

So, this job had to be done by several people working together, sawing off the head and foot at the same time, finishing both sides at the same time, and then immediately turning off the lights and leaving.

And when those people took the head and foot into the corridor, since there were lights in the corridor, the two severed parts would definitely react, which could easily cause fluorescent liquid to spill out and drip on the ground.

"If you were a cleaner here, your salary would definitely be very high..." Feng Bujue followed the fluorescent liquid, and after walking around a corner, he saw another metal door. However, the dripping fluorescent liquid did not stop in front of the door, indicating that the head and foot had not been taken into this room.

Feng Bujue walked to the door and, on a whim, reached out and turned the doorknob... It was locked.

Since it couldn't be opened, he let it go and decided to move forward first.

After walking another twenty meters and turning another corner, a third room appeared, and the traces of fluorescent liquid disappeared at the entrance of that room.

The door to this room wasn't made of metal; it was an active door made of two white panels, the kind commonly used in hospital emergency rooms.

Feng Bujue knew at a glance that he had come to the right place.

He tiptoed over, first standing at the door and holding his breath to listen for a while... but he didn't hear any movement.

So, he gently pushed open the door...

Just a crack was enough for the strong smell of disinfectant in the room to leak out.

Feng Bujue didn't pay too much attention to the smell. He steadily pushed the door open about half a meter and then peeked inside.

The lights in this third room were already on. Jue-Ge glanced around... and saw several yellowing walls, a pile of medical equipment, a pile of experimental equipment of unknown purpose, and an area surrounded by curtains, presumably where a hospital bed was located. Also... a floor covered in fluorescent liquid.

"Very good..." Feng Bujue was very relieved to see that there were no living people in his field of vision. "Get a set of surgical tools, for killing, first aid, carpentry... all-purpose." He said this to himself in his heart as he approached the trolley full of surgical tools beside the hospital bed.

Just as he reached the trolley and was about to pick a few items for self-defense, suddenly!

"Ugh—"

A chilling groan came from the corridor outside the door...