Misled

Looking at this lock, it actually opened with a twist, causing the members of the Meteor Rock Guild to change color in an instant!

Lun Tai immediately pulled back with Qiao Qiao and others, while shouting, "Roddy! Come back quickly!"

But Roddy, fearless, clenched his teeth and just stood there.

They could hear a rattling sound coming from the door lock, and this gate actually automatically opened a narrow gap on both sides. However, the interior of the door was pitch black, and nothing could be seen.

Several people stood outside the gate, holding their breath and waiting for a few seconds. Their hands gripping their guns were covered in cold sweat, but they didn't notice any unusual movements.

Roddy pulled out a tactical flashlight from his waist and clipped it under the barrel of his gun. He swept the beam inside and took the first step inside.

Lun Tai took a deep breath and followed suit.

Inside the gate, a chilling air enveloped them. As the members of the Meteor Rock Guild walked in one after another, they could feel that the temperature here was noticeably lower.

In the darkness, this corridor seemed quieter and narrower.

Their boots stepped on the floor, and there were obviously foreign objects. Qiao Qiao looked down and saw broken glass scattered all over the floor, all from the windows of the rooms on both sides of the corridor, shattered as they hit the ground.

Lun Tai bent down, picked up a piece of glass, and examined it closely in his hand. His expression became even more serious. "It's tempered glass!"

The faces of the others didn't look good either.

As they continued down the corridor, the rooms on both sides seemed to be some sort of laboratories. The equipment inside was all smashed, and some tables were overturned.

In the darkness, they relied on the beams of several tactical flashlights to support themselves. The team moved slowly for a few minutes, maintaining a cautious formation as instructed by Lun Tai.

"Have you noticed anything unusual?" Qiao Qiao suddenly whispered.

Lun Tai' eyes darkened, and he nodded silently, exchanging a glance with Qiao Qiao.

Bodies!

There were no bodies here!

According to Alpha's final message, there should have been some security personnel here who sacrificed themselves to bring that "thing" inside the gate.

Clearly, those security personnel must have all died.

But after entering the gate, the laboratory rooms here were in complete disarray, resembling ruins.

However, oddly enough, there was no bloodstain on the ground or walls!

No bodies!

Alive but unseen, dead but without bodies!

Even in the air, there was not a hint of the smell of blood.

Especially for veterans like Lun Tai, who had extensive combat experience, the scent of blood would never escape his notice.

"Too clean, way too clean..." Lun Tai muttered to himself in a low voice.

The corridor reached its end, and there was a revolving door ahead, but it had been completely destroyed. Beyond the revolving door was an oval-shaped hall, in complete disarray. A long platform had been overturned, and it had even been broken in two from the middle!

Lun Tai went over to assess the platform's weight, and his expression became even more grim.

"How is it?"

"Unless we use a special skill, I don't think it's possible to break it," Lun Tai shook his head.

Just at that moment, Roddy, who was leading the way, suddenly staggered and leaned against the wall, coughing violently.

"Roddy?"

"Don't... don't come over, I'm fine," Roddy gasped, turning to look at everyone, but his mouth was already stained with blood.

In the eyes of Qiao Qiao and the others, they could see that Roddy's complexion was extremely pale, and the blood at the corner of his mouth was of a very... light color!

"My chest hurts a bit," Roddy forced a smile and checked the time. "The poison is taking effect, and my body is clearly weakening."

"Hurry up!" Qiao Qiao gritted her teeth.

"There's something on the left!" Xiaolei suddenly shouted, pointing to the left side of the hall.

The left side did seem somewhat peculiar.

They shone their flashlights over, only to discover that on the left side of the hall, there was actually a glass door.

What was even more peculiar was that this glass door was completely intact!

The hall was in ruins, with all the tables and chairs broken and scattered. The doors in the surrounding passages had been smashed open, but this glass door, standing there, had undamaged glass.

"Let's take a look." Lun Tai frowned.

They approached the glass door as a group, with Xiaolei covering their rear, walking backward with his gun. Lun Tai arrived at the side of the glass door and looked at the breathless Roddy. "Are you still okay?"

"I can still move," Roddy managed a faint, forced smile.

Just as Qiao Qiao was about to reach out to open the glass door, Roddy preemptively reached out and pulled it open. Faced with Qiao Qiao's complex and excited gaze, Roddy just gave a faint smile and then walked in with long strides.

Inside the glass door was a room, approximately less than two hundred square meters. It resembled a standard laboratory, the kind of scientific laboratory people would envision, with various chemical instruments neatly arranged, and even some containers placed on the tables, all perfectly intact.

"Is there a small room here?" Qiao Qiao pointed to a corner of the room.

To be precise, it wasn't a "small room."

A portion of this place, roughly ten square meters, was isolated by a glass wall.

Lun Tai went over to take a look and knocked on it. "Tempered glass."

He shone the flashlight inside, revealing a strange apparatus and a refrigerated cabinet containing various peculiar containers filled with liquids of various colors - blue, green, red, and more.

"That's somewhat intriguing." Lun Tai pondered, then reached out to touch the door of this glass room.

The door was locked.

As Lun Tai was about to pull the door, the electronic lock on the glass door unexpectedly flashed red a few times.

Qiao Qiao exclaimed, "Huh? There's actually electricity here?"

Roddy thought for a moment. "This place must be special. It looks like it's very important, and I guess they designed a backup power source here. After all, it's an advanced high-tech laboratory. To prevent accidents, there must be a backup power source. And you see that refrigerated cabinet inside, it must store valuable potions. If the power goes out, it would be a disaster, so there must be a backup power source, maybe it's a generator or batteries or something."

As he spoke, Roddy lowered his head and deftly manipulated the electronic lock. In no time, with his skill, the electronic lock clicked a few times, and the glass door automatically opened.

As everyone was about to step inside, Lun Tai suddenly said, "Wait, let me and Roddy go in. The rest of you stay outside. I have a feeling that this place is a bit strange."

"No, just Roddy and I will go in," Qiao Qiao interjected suddenly. "Lun Tai, you and the others stay outside and keep watch."

Lun Tai hesitated for a moment and then nodded. "Alright. When you go in, don't touch anything inside."

Qiao Qiao smiled and, along with Roddy, entered the glass room.

The glass room was not large, and the strange large apparatus occupied two-thirds of the space.

Upon entering, the two of them first looked at the sealed liquids in the row of refrigerated cabinets, not knowing what they contained.

Qiao Qiao hesitated for a moment. "Could these be antidotes?"

Roddy smiled bitterly. "According to Alpha's video message, it seems like they didn't find any research results. So... even if these are antidotes, we don't know if they'll work."

Qiao Qiao bit her lip. "How much time do you have left?"

"Thirty-three minutes," Roddy shook his head.

Qiao Qiao's eyes became slightly teary.

Roddy then turned and walked towards the apparatus. After touching it for a while, a container suddenly popped out from the apparatus.

This container appeared to be perfectly shaped to fit a human body, like a mold. If a person were to lie down in it, their body would fit snugly, and there were even some restraint straps on both sides of the container, made of special materials.

Qiao Qiao took a few steps closer and examined it carefully, feeling a chill in her heart!

On both sides of the mold, at the positions corresponding to a person's arms, there were deep claw marks!!

It appeared to be made of engineering plastic, but the surface of the material was covered in sharp claw marks!! Judging by the marks, they seemed to be made by human fingernails.

"What on earth is this?"

"It seems like... some kind of experiment on a living person?" Roddy frowned.

After studying the instrument's controls for a dozen seconds, Roddy suddenly pressed a switch, and the instrument's lights suddenly lit up!

Roddy stared at the illuminated screen for a few seconds before exclaiming, "This is... an analyzer! Ah! It's an analyzer!"

"What kind of analyzer?"

"In simple terms, it should be something that analyzes the components in the blood, like studying drugs, analyzing the biological blood after drug injection, and determining pharmacological effects..." Roddy shook his head. "I don't know much about it."

Qiao Qiao, however, said in a deep voice, "Maybe... they were analyzing the virus here!"

"Perhaps," Roddy immediately responded, "I can try it! Analyze my blood."

Qiao Qiao frowned, "Do you have to lie inside this container? I have a bad feeling about this container."

Roddy smiled and pressed a spot on the control panel, and soon a device resembling a syringe emerged.

"This should be able to extract blood directly."

Roddy immediately rolled up his sleeve.

Soon, he inserted the needle into his own arm and drew a small blood sample. The machine started operating, making a sound similar to the CT scanner in a hospital.

At one end of the machine, a circular mechanism was rotating, and soon, some text appeared on the instrument screen.

"Blood sample analysis in progress, calculating treatment plan... Matching the effectiveness of 28 experimental drug samples..."

These words greatly excited Qiao Qiao!

"Can this machine treat your poison?!"

However, a few seconds later, another line of text on the instrument left both of them stunned!

"Sample blood analysis complete, normal composition, no virus detected, does not meet treatment criteria. Matching failed."

Blood... normal?

No... virus?!

"How can there be no virus?" Qiao Qiao was greatly frustrated.

However, Roddy suddenly felt a pang in his heart, took a few breaths, and shook his head. "I find it strange too... but maybe... we've been thinking wrong from the beginning?"

"What do you mean by thinking wrong?" Qiao Qiao asked.

Roddy, however, didn't say a word, turned, and walked to the side of the refrigerated cabinet. Then, with great force, he forcibly opened the refrigerated cabinet!

After a few beeping sounds and alarm signals, the hydraulic door of the refrigerated cabinet had already been pulled open by Roddy.

"What are you doing?"

Both Lun Tai outside the glass room and Qiao Qiao inside simultaneously shouted.

"Just proving my guess," Roddy smiled.

Without waiting for Qiao Qiao and Lun Tai to stop him, Roddy picked up the green container tube that was placed first, forcefully pulled it open, and directly inserted the needle into his own arm!

"Ah!" Qiao Qiao exclaimed, but Roddy shouted loudly, "Don't come near me!"

Saying this, Roddy had already turned and quickly returned to the analyzer, extracting his own blood again for analysis.

Soon, the text appeared again on the analyzer's screen!

"Sample blood analysis complete, normal composition, no virus detected, does not meet treatment criteria. Matching failed."

Seeing this, Roddy's face darkened, and his smile became bitter.

"Roddy! What on earth are you doing?" Qiao Qiao shouted in a low voice, her eyes filled with anxiety.

Roddy glanced at Qiao Qiao. "Qiao Qiao, do you think the liquid inside this refrigerated cabinet is the antidote that Alpha and his team developed? I don't think so."

"What? Then what is it?"

"I believe it's something extracted by Alpha and his team based on their research subjects, some kind of 'virus,'" Roddy quickly explained. "This also explains why this glass room has a special backup power source and security system, to ensure the safety of this place! Because this is where they store the 'virus.'"

"This is just speculation!" Qiao Qiao frowned.

"No, it's not speculation," Roddy pointed to the screen. "Look, virus analysis ineffective! Blood normal."

Then, Roddy quickly shared a message with Qiao Qiao through the team channel.

"System prompt: You have been infected by an unknown force again. According to calculations, it's a repeat infection, and this infection does not accumulate effects."

Upon seeing this prompt, Qiao Qiao was stunned.

This confirmed two things.

First, what Roddy injected into his own body from the refrigerated cabinet was indeed the "virus" mentioned in Alpha's research.

Second... this thing might not be a virus at all! Because the analyzer showed everything was normal!

Not a virus!

Then what was it?

Roddy chuckled bitterly. "We've all been misled... The previous prompt and the current one both mention 'an unknown force.' In other words, the system never actually said it was a virus! And we entered this mission area, which is a biopharmaceutical laboratory, so we all assumed it was a 'virus' from the beginning. But in reality... we all overlooked the fact that even Alpha, a top scientist, said... he had no idea what this substance actually was!"

"Unknown force?" Qiao Qiao shook her head.

And just at that moment, a sudden change occurred!

Roddy's body swayed, and he collapsed to the ground, his face turning ashen green, and his breathing heavy.

"What's wrong with you?"

"I... I have no strength left," Roddy gasped. "Don't come near me. I feel something strange happening to my body... it's alternately hot and cold, and my energy is disappearing..."

Qiao Qiao looked deeply concerned, and outside the glass room, Lun Tai was about to rush in...

Suddenly, a loud noise!

The sound came from a distance.

At the same time, the entire glass room suddenly emitted a rapid electronic sound of "beep, beep, beep!"

Lun Tai's face changed, and he barely managed to shout, "Get out..."

Boom!!

The walls surrounding the glass room, which were originally made of tempered glass, had several metal grilles that suddenly fell from the ceiling above! They landed directly on the ground and made a few clicking sounds! Completely sealing off the room!

The metal grilles not only blocked the tempered glass walls but also sealed off the entrance to the glass room!

Qiao Qiao and Roddy were trapped together inside the glass room!

Lun Tai shouted loudly, grabbing the grilles and shaking them with all his might, but no matter how hard he tried, the grilles didn't budge!

Other team members also came to shake the grilles with all their strength, but it was impossible to move them.

"It's not ordinary metal!" Lun Tai was furious and was about to use his ability to activate the Muscle Fruit.

However, at this moment, there was suddenly a loud crashing sound!

The glass door outside the room suddenly shattered!

A strange figure appeared at the door!

It was huge... like a fleshy blob!

Just one glance at it, and several members of the Meteor Rock Guild, especially the girls, felt a wave of nausea, and some of them even vomited on the spot!

That thing... had an absolutely terrifying shape!