CHAPTER 230: CHAPTER 230: EVOLVED ZOMBIES

The door hissed as it moved to the side and disappeared into the wall. This was a technology way ahead of time. The lab looked like it had been there for decades but the technology used wasn’t decades old.

Anyway, it was difficult to explain what was going on.

As Lu Zhen and Leng Pan took a step inside the chamber, stale air mixed with the smell of chemicals hit them square in the face.

Leng Pan had not smelled something so awful in a long time.

"This place is older than the lab outside. What on earth is going on? It is obvious even without much investigation that this place is older than the one we just left.

So, what on earth is happening?" Leng Pan was indeed confused because the things here were starting to confuse her.

What does her husband’s maternal family have to do with the research of meteorites and zombies?

"I don’t know either, maybe we will find the answer inside. Let’s check the place out." Lu Zhen was just as confused and vigilant.

He grabbed his wife’s hand and stepped in front of her to act as a shield in case something sprung up out of nowhere like that evolved zombie they had just killed.

Inside was a vast underground chamber filled with rows of glass pods, broken machinery, and consoles still flickering weakly.

It was a bit different from what they had encountered outside, but it still didn’t explain what the chamber was used for.

A storage, or another experimental lab?

The pods nearest the entrance had shattered long ago, their contents dried and rotted.

In fact, you couldn’t even tell what used to be in them.

Leng Pan was curious about what had shattered the pods and why the others were intact. Was it an accident or deliberate?

The intact ones differed with the one in the outside lab slightly, their greenish liquid sloshing faintly around indistinct humanoid shapes.

The two wondered if those were more evolved zombies. Where did these people get zombies so long ago?

Or was this like what happens in the movies where an alien falls into the earth inside a pod buried in a meteorite and is captured quietly by the government or other research organizations and the incident is never publicized?

If that was the case then the government had done something wrong because in the movies the alien always escapes or begins to use hypnosis to control the researchers conducting research and experiments on it causing them to cause havoc.

Is it possible that the people in positions of power never watch movies or what?

The two moved cautiously inside making sure not to touch anything or disturb the.... whatever one would call those things in the pods.

The deeper they went, the more intact the equipment appeared. Even the lights were intact in that place. After so many years, how could the lights work as if there was a maintenance team that came to clean and do maintenance work regularly.

As they arrived at the central part of the chamber, the rows of pods ended and the two found themselves standing in front of large screens that looked like computer monitors.

"This should have data that can explain what this place is and what it was used for." Lu Zhen said while walking towards the screen at the center.

There was nothing else other than the screens. There wasn’t a CPU or anything like that. Not even a keyboard which made it difficult to understand what those were.

Lu Zhen stood there looking at the screens for a while without making a move. However, Leng Pan who was curious and eager to know what was going on brushed her hand on the screen.

The screen flickered to life, and began to display files that were obviously locked behind strings of encrypted code.

She glanced at Lu Zhen with curiosity and asked, "Do you think your finger prints can access this?" She was of course making fun of him and trying to lighten the tense atmosphere.

Even though Lu Zhen had opened the door with his blood, which means DNA was required, it wasn’t possible that whoever locked this place down would be so careless.

If anyone from the Li family bloodline could access the files here, then that would be a disaster in making. And from the way the place was locked and hidden, it was obvious that whoever did it didn’t want it found.

Lu Zhen knew his wife was just making fun of him so he didn’t take it seriously, but his somber mood disappeared.

"Don’t joke, Baby. But we should find a way to take this data back for Lu Tao to decrypt before destroying this place." This was a serious matter and since it seems that some people had known about zombies for far longer than the apocalypse had existed, then maybe the key to defeating those aliens and monsters lay here.

Even though they knew that the files were encrypted, Leng Pan still wanted to try her luck, so she tapped on a file that showed that it was a copy and not part of the other files.

To her surprise, it opened without a problem. However, whatever was written there disturbed her and her husband a lot.

’Subject 47: Genetic augmentation incomplete. Host rejection rate - 89%.’

’Subject 103: Mutation stabilized. Abilities - enhanced regeneration.’

There wasn’t much information, but this was enough to show that something was going on. Something similar to what they had seen in the lab outside.

But, would the righteous Li family do something so outrageous?

"This file seems to have been transferred here or rather copied here automatically after these screens had been out of use.

This means that it was received after this place was sealed." Lu Zhen being the former CEO and having a brain that at times works faster than a computer commented.

Leng Pan had in fact come to the same conclusion after seeing the data.

This data belonged to whoever had been conducting experiments in the lab outside.

But now the question was, "Did all the people who participated in those experiments turn into these monsters? Is that what they call success? Or is there something else out there?" Leng Pan hoped that the answer was that nothing out there was the enemy of mankind created by mankind with such capabilities.

Having an enemy who can regenerate endlessly wasn’t something she was looking forward to.

Leng Pan looked toward a pod where a half-formed figure floated, its features twisted between human and monster.

She wondered what the people who did the experiments were thinking.

Lu Zhen’s expression was as dark as the bottom of the pot. He didn’t understand why his family was involved in this but he was going to get to the bottom of it.

"The gas that was produced by the meteorites could give people powers or create zombies. However, these zombies are older than that which means that this place had been working with the special meteorites long before they fell.

But how?" Even the clever Lu Zhen was confused about this.

Leng Pan sighed and squeezed his hand to comfort him. He probably felt betrayed by his family, but she didn’t think that they would be involved in this abomination.

She liked to think that there was another explanation and they would get it from Uncle Li once they went back home.

"Don’t fret over it so much. We will know the answer once we go back home. We can ask Uncle about it and even if he doesn’t know, I am sure the data here will tell us." Leng Pan didn’t want her husband to start blaming himself for the apocalypse simply because it looked like his family was involved in the genesis of the apocalypse.

Lu Zhen felt comforted and the weight that had settled in his heart when he entered the chamber lifted.

Yes, he should stop fretting over this without knowing the truth. Thus, he cheered himself and the two began to look for something to copy the data in.

After a round in the chamber they didn’t find anything until Leng Pan remembered that she had a space and numerous hard drives inside.

Therefore, she took an empty hard drive to copy everything in.

Lu Zhen immediately tapped the copy data option and a progress bar appeared.

While everything was copying into the hard drive, they took another round in the chamber, this time examining every pod individually.

It was at this time that they found one pod that was different from the rest. It was completely intact and the specimen inside wasn’t some monster but a very complete and good looking zombie that looked almost human.

In fact, it would be difficult to differentiate it from normal humans if dumped in a crowd.

The two were shocked and decided to leave immediately. Their instincts screamed danger.

Thus, they went and found that the progress bar had filled.

They took the hard drive and turned to look at that particular pod one more time before turning to leave.

Lu Zhen’s pendant flickered once more, a little brighter than before. The pod’s lights flickered in response, as if recognizing him or the pendant, or maybe his bloodline?

Neither of them noticed the faint crack forming along the glass.