CHAPTER 611: CHAPTER 609: RETURN

"Come and look, it’s all eggs inside here."

Lu Chen stepped onto the wooden platform with a stern face, "This is troublesome."

"That’s right, we can’t burn these things in the ventilator shaft with gasoline unless we all want to suffocate here. But without fire, how are we going to get rid of them? If we let them evolve here, who knows what kind of monsters will appear next time we bring people over."

Su Mo was absolutely correct. Lu Chen frowned, "First, let’s clean up below. Then we go down to the control room to see the structure of this place."

After completing the inspection of the huge dining hall, everyone gathered together, and all the zombies that needed to be cleared were indeed cleared.

Now, only the main control room on the last floor remained.

The door leading to this floor was an electronic one, half covered with rust and full of scratch marks from claws.

This was enough to prove that many zombies had previously been stuck at this door.

As Su Mo’s fingers trailed over those scratch marks, she said softly, "Is there someone inside—?"

The keypad lock for inputting the password was out of power and the screen was black. Lu Chen tried to connect, but it wouldn’t open.

No choice then, we had to resort to brute force.

Jianxiong and the Power Superpower Users stepped forward, using all their strength to pull the heavy doors apart.

It was so heavy that even after a long struggle, they couldn’t pull the doors open.

In the end, someone simply took out a small scale bomb from the bottom of their backpack and blew the door open forcibly.

The huge explosion, accompanied by the sound of flying debris, left a blanket of white smoke. It took a few minutes before the people could see inside.

The light from the flashlights scanning the interior revealed it was a huge oval space. The control room was not here. On the vast open ground outside were some blankets, remnants of food, and several bodies wearing white lab coats.

As everyone slowly walked in, Su Mo briefly counted, there were a total of 8 bodies, all unmutated and normal humans.

However, their thin figures and sunken cheeks and stomachs made it easy to guess that these people had starved to death.

Someone said, "Trapped here by zombies and starving to death, that’s really pitiful."

Lu Chen: "Look around, there must be clues about those mutant creatures outside."

When Su Mo turned over a body that was lying face down, the tag from the Luohe Insect Research Institute on the chest made her realize, "Those insect containers on the first floor were all brought back by their people."

Li He found many reports in front of some experimental tables and desks. After scanning them with his flashlight, he said, "You guys should come over and take a look at this."

The report recorded various valuable insects, and during their examination, they also found a diary.

Su Mo also understood how those hybrids came to be.

It wasn’t that the researchers actively used humans for their studies. In fact, it was the insects, mutated by the black rain, that burrowed into humans, thus infecting them.

Although the vast majority of the insects were destroyed, the number of infected mutants in the bunker became completely unmanageable.

These researchers, without a single shred of combat ability, had no choice but to hide in the most heavily defended Central Control Room on the last layer and starve to death.

Jianxiong sighed, "These people were foolish enough, humanity has been wiped out and yet they still tried to protect these insects."

The insect report in Lu Chen’s hands also captured his attention.

The things that existed in the ventilation shaft were eggs laid by hybrid entities, formed by leeches infecting humans and using the tentacles on their heads. Their only weakness, they were afraid of fire.

He set down the report and after a circuitous search, he finally spotted an exceptionally hidden control room. When he pushed the door open, there were also two starved bodies lying inside.

After fiddling with the controls, he managed to restart the generator; then, throughout the entire bunker, which had been dark save for the flashlight’s beam, cold lights began to illuminate every level.

The visibility became exceptionally bright for everyone present. Lu Chen operated the machine for a while and then squinted his eyes.

Su Mo walked over and asked, "What’s wrong?"

"This bunker isn’t abandoned; on the contrary, its equipment has been upgraded to be very sophisticated, with an independent ventilation and cleaning system."

Surprised, Su Mo replied, "Was that done by the people outside? After all, they have been hiding down here all this time."

"It’s possible."

After a brief period of operating the machine, Lu Chen confirmed that all the equipment and electrical systems were intact. He turned on the cleaning system and finally paused in front of a map of the bunker printed on the wall.

"There’s a water reservoir beneath the second-level pool, we will clean out all these insect eggs and stuff, and then return."

The entire large bunker was thus fully explored.

Seated next to Lu Chen, Su Mo softly asked, "Do you think it’s suitable to bring them here for refuge?"

The man nodded, "Yes, we can bring people back and forth a few times, clean up the entire place thoroughly."

Jianxiong, while eating a rice ball, asked, "What about those surface plants? They’re trouble every night. We have to bring so many ordinary people through them; the level of difficulty is too high."

The Spiritual Superpower User suggested, "Since it’s not raining anyway, why not just burn it all? The bunker is underground and won’t fear the fire. Even if the whole city burns down, it would still be safe and sound here."

Although his method was both dumb and dangerous, it was undeniable that he was absolutely right.

Even Lu Chen agreed with this decision.

After finishing their meal, the exhausted group found spots to lie down and rest immediately.

Underground, time seemed to pass especially fast.

They didn’t know whether it was day or night outside when they set out again to clean the water reservoir on the second floor. The large water tank above it was full of plant roots, swollen from soaking and now dead, with several decayed bodies also floating inside.

The soldiers, who had been overjoyed with their narrow escape, now all had solemn expressions.

In the entire water tank, several of the bodies entangled by those plants were actually their own comrades.

"How did they get down here?"

Su Mo replied, "The water in the pool below might have been channeled from outside into the tank. Cleaning up this mess is going to take a long time."

Together, they removed the bodies from the water tank, burned them all in one go, and then, led by Jianxiong, they brought heavy objects to seal off the small pool entirely.

"It’s time for us to go back."

Watching the raging flames, the group silently returned to the first floor, where countless wooden boxes housing insects were also thoroughly cleaned out and burned.

When they reached the surface, it was daylight.

The outside remained a quiet view of lush greenery.

On their way back from Luohe to the military stronghold, this place had been leveled to the ground.