210: Seeds of Prometheus

Chapter 210: The Seed of Prometheus. That lead door was very heavy.

There was no electronic lock, only an ancient hydraulic wheel.

Chen Mo grabbed Wang Daoming by the collar and threw him in front of the door like a dead dog. "Open it."

Wang Daoming's hands were still shaking; that kick just now had broken at least two of his ribs.

He struggled to lift his arm and pressed his palm onto the recognition area in the center of the wheel.

Hum—

The hydraulic pump let out a dull, low growl.

The wheel turned slowly, and the lead door slid open to both sides.

A blast of white, freezing air rushed toward them.

It wasn't the cold air of an air conditioner; it was the smell of liquid nitrogen mixed with some kind of preservative.

It was pungent and piercing.

"Cough, cough, cough..." Ninth Master covered his nose, but the shotgun in his hand remained steady. "What's this smell? It's like a morgue."

"More advanced than a morgue."

Su Qingxue switched on her tactical flashlight, the beam of light cutting through the darkness.

Before them was a long corridor.

On either side were not the filing cabinets they expected, but rows of cylindrical glass vats glowing with blue light.

Each vat was two meters high and filled with a pale yellow liquid.

All the vats were lit up.

"This... this is your archive?" Su Qingxue's voice was tight.

She shone the flashlight on the nearest vat.

What was soaked inside wasn't an organ, but a person.

A child of about seven or eight years old, curled in a fetal position, with tubes inserted all over his body.

But he had no mouth; the area where the mouth should be was sewn shut, leaving only a pair of giant, eyelid-less eyes staring fixedly outside.

Even more bizarre were his ears.

They weren't human ears; the pinnae had been removed and replaced with metal receivers implanted into the skull.

"Specimen No. A-103."

Chen Mo read out the nameplate on the base of the vat. "Reason for discard: Auditory cortex overload, brain death."

He took a step forward and looked at the second vat.

"Specimen No. A-104. Reason for discard: Inability to filter background noise, mental breakdown and self-destruction."

The third one.

The fourth one.

An entire corridor, at least a hundred vats.

All children.

All failures.

"Blergh—" Ninth Master finally couldn't take it anymore and leaned against the wall, retching. "Wang Daoming, you're a fucking animal! These children... where did you get them?!"

Wang Daoming sat slumped on the floor, cold sweat pouring down his face from the intense pain, but that look of madness returned to his face.

"Get them?"

He gave a miserable laugh and pointed at the vats. "They were orphans, abandoned babies, the trash of society. I gave them a chance to evolve, to become the foundation of the 'New Human.' Isn't that a form of mercy?"

Bang!

Chen Mo stomped his foot onto Wang Daoming's broken wrist.

"Aaaahhh!!!"

The scream echoed through the empty corridor but failed to trigger any resonance.

The walls here were made of special sound-absorbing material.

"Don't talk to me about philosophy."

Chen Mo ground his foot down, listening to the sound of bones grating. "What I'm looking for isn't these failures. Lead the way."

Wang Daoming rolled his eyes in pain and could only crawl inward like a worm.

The further they went, the more mature the 'specimens' in the vats became.

Some were no longer completely human in shape, but flesh-and-blood machines specialized for a certain function.

Some had only massive skulls, while others had withered limbs but abnormally thick spines.

This wasn't an archive.

This was the junkyard of human evolutionary history.

Tick-tock.

Chen Mo suddenly stopped.

He heard it.

In this space of absolute silence, besides the breathing of the few of them and Wang Daoming's screams, there was another sound.

Very light, very rhythmic.

Like water droplets falling into a deep pool.

Or like... a massive heart beating extremely slowly.

"Just ahead."

Wang Daoming pointed to a circular hall at the end of the corridor. "That's the core of 'Prometheus.' The answers you want are all there."

The hall was spacious.

There were no vats.

In the center stood only a huge metal base that looked like an operating table.

Countless screens hovered above the base, all black at the moment.

And in the very center of the base sat a half-person-high transparent container.

The container was empty.

But that didn't matter.

What mattered was the paper file placed next to the container, its cover stamped with a top-secret red seal, along with the line of text that made Chen Mo's pupils shrink:

[Wind Listener Project · Final Sample: No. 001]

Chen Mo let go of Wang Daoming and walked over step by step.

His heart began to pound wildly, and that familiar, intense pain—as if his chest were about to explode—hit him again.

It wasn't because of fear.

It was because of resonance.

As he approached the container, the heart in his chest automatically adjusted its beating frequency to synchronize perfectly with that 'tick-tock' sound.

With trembling hands, Chen Mo flipped open the first page of the file.

There was no photo.

Only an electrocardiogram.

The ripples of that chart were bizarre and chaotic, yet within the chaos lay a strange rhythm, like a symphony from hell.

Below this ECG, a date was signed.

October 24, 2018.

"That was the day you had your heart transplant surgery."

Su Qingxue's voice sounded from behind him, tinged with a tremor. "Chen Mo, is... is this a coincidence?"

Chen Mo didn't answer.

He stared at that date.

That day was also the day of a massive fire that destroyed the Orphanage and killed everyone except him.

He received a heart transplant after that fire, and from then on, the world changed in his ears.

"It's not a coincidence."

Chen Mo closed the file, his voice as cold as ice. "That fire was to cover up the source of this heart."

"Not entirely."

Wang Daoming suddenly scrambled up from the ground.

He found strength from somewhere and stumbled toward the control console. "That fire was a screening! Only in the face of extreme fear and death can we test who the perfect recipient is!"

He slammed down a red button.

Zzz—

All the screens in the center of the hall lit up instantly.

Countless data streams flooded the screens like a waterfall, eventually converging into a giant model of a human face.

That face was exactly the same as Chen Mo's.

"Welcome home, No. 001."

An emotionless electronic synthesized voice boomed in the hall. "System self-check complete. Recipient vital signs stable. Neuronal synchronization rate... 100%."

"What does that mean?" Ninth Master raised his gun, the barrel swinging between Wang Daoming and the screen. "What is this hunk of metal saying?"

"It's saying that Chen Mo isn't human."

Wang Daoming laughed maniacally, blood spray flying from his mouth. "He is 'Prometheus'! He is the god we created!"

"Bullshit!"

Su Qingxue shouted angrily, "Chen Mo is a person of flesh and blood! I have his medical reports!"

"Medical reports?"

Wang Daoming laughed even more wildly. "Have you checked his DNA? Have you counted his chromosomes? Do you know what that heart of his is actually made of?"

He pointed at Chen Mo, his eyes filled with fanatical worship.

"That's not a human heart! That's a biological pump cultivated from 'Tyrant' cells! It can drive an overclocked brain and hear the frequencies of all things! He is the perfect weapon!"

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