300: Chapter 300 Specimen Display Room

Chapter 300: The Specimen Display Room. Chen Mo glanced at the small white house.

The helicopter had just crashed right next to it, and half the house had already collapsed.

"Let's go."

Chen Mo dragged him toward the ruins.

"Russell, keep up."

Russell scrambled out of the dirt pit, glanced at the charred corpses around him, and felt his stomach churn.

But he didn't dare to vomit.

Because the monster dragging the old man looked more terrifying than any corpse.

With every step Chen Mo took, wisps of blue smoke rose from the dirt beneath his feet.

It was a sign that his soles were melting from the high temperature.

"Your time is running out."

The green text's voice grew weak. "The heart casing is damaged, and radiation is leaking. You're a walking Chernobyl right now. If you don't find a cryo-pod to lie in soon, you'll burn yourself to ash first."

"Shut up."

Chen Mo pushed open the rickety door.

The inside of the house was a mess.

A large hole had been burned into the expensive handmade carpet, and only the frames remained of the famous paintings on the walls.

"The bookshelf! Behind the bookshelf!"

The old man pointed at a wall.

Chen Mo walked over. Without bothering to find a mechanism, he punched the bookshelf directly.

The solid wood shattered.

Revealing a metal door behind it.

The old man tremblingly reached out and pressed his palm against the scanner.

Beep.

The door opened.

A blast of cold air rushed out.

It was absolute low temperature, carrying the scent of formalin.

"Get down there."

Chen Mo pushed the old man inside.

It was a descending spiral staircase.

It was very deep.

Faint emergency lights were embedded in the walls, casting long, ghost-like shadows.

The further down they went, the stronger the smell of formalin became.

There was also a sound.

Buzz, buzz, buzz.

It sounded like countless refrigerators running at the same time.

"We're here... this is it..."

The old man stumbled to the end and pushed open a heavy lead door.

The lights flickered on.

Ghastly white.

Chen Mo stepped inside.

Then, he stopped in his tracks.

Even he felt his pupils constrict sharply at the sight before him.

This wasn't an archive room.

It was a display hall.

In the massive underground space, over a hundred giant glass cylinders were arranged in neat rows.

Each cylinder was filled with a pale yellow liquid.

And soaking in the liquid... were people.

Or rather, were parts.

Some jars held a massive brain bristling with tubes.

Others held an arm that was still twitching.

Some held half a torso.

In the center row of jars, complete human bodies were preserved.

From small to large.

From infants to adolescents to young adults.

Their faces... Chen Mo walked slowly and stopped in front of one of the jars.

Inside that jar was a boy about ten years old.

Eyes closed, body curled up, as if sleeping in a womb.

That face.

It was exactly the same as Chen Mo's.

"This is your archive."

The old man stood before the console, a morbid obsession on his face.

He pointed at the room full of jars.

"Number 001, who do you think you are?"

"You aren't human."

"You are the only one who survived out of these thousands of failures."

The old man pressed a button.

All the jars lit up.

In that instant, Chen Mo felt as if he saw hundreds of himself opening their eyes in the formalin.

Dead, silent eyes.

"Look at them."

The old man burst into laughter, his voice echoing in the hollow basement. "They are all consumables that existed just to complete you! Your bones came from Number 083, your nerves from Number 129, your muscles from Number 256..."

"This is your true family tree!"

"This is your true past!"

Chen Mo stood before the ten-year-old boy.

The glass reflected his current face.

Half blood, half ash.

His chest still emitted a red glow, as if it could explode at any moment.

"So..."

Chen Mo reached out and pressed his hand against the cold glass.

The space where the boy's heart should have been was empty.

"I'm just a jigsaw puzzle?"

"You are a masterpiece!" the old man corrected. "You are the perfect vessel! A god born to carry that Nuclear Heart!"

"A god?"

Chen Mo suddenly turned his head.

His gaze was very calm.

So calm that the old man's laughter came to an abrupt halt.

"Does a god feel pain?" Chen Mo asked.

"What?"

"I said..."

Chen Mo pointed at the boy with the hollowed-out chest.

"When you dug out his heart, did it hurt?"

The old man froze. "Those were test subjects... they have no pain receptors... we cut them..."

"Liar."

Chen Mo said.

He heard it.

Even through the thick glass, even though that child had been dead for a long time.

He still heard it.

An extremely faint echo lingering in this space.

That was fear.

That was despair.

It was the silent scream of a child on an operating table, watching the scalpel descend.

"You said earlier you wanted to see the archives."

The old man took a step back, his hand quietly reaching for a red button under the console. "They're all here... all the experimental data... you can take your time looking..."

"No need."

Chen Mo turned and walked toward the old man.

"Trash belongs in the trash can."

"And you..."

Chen Mo glanced at the room full of corpse jars.

"You treated this place like a display room."

"What are you doing?!" The old man finally pressed the button.

Sizzle—

A laser fence rose between the two of them.

"This is the defense system!" the old man shrieked. "You can't get through! I have a backup power supply! I can lock you in here until you rot!"

Chen Mo looked at the red laser grid.

He didn't stop.

"green text."

"I'm here." The voice in his mind sounded somewhat helpless. "Are you really going to do this? Those are high-energy lasers; they'll slice you into pieces."

"Block the pain receptors."

"I blocked them long ago, otherwise you'd have died of pain by now."

Chen Mo nodded.

Then, he took a step.

He crashed into the grid.

Sizzle!

The smell of scorched flesh instantly filled the air.

The lasers sliced through his skin, through his muscle, and even into his bones.

But he didn't stop.

Like a zombie without any sense of pain, he pushed through the laser grid, step by step.

Flesh and blood flew everywhere.

"Madman... you're a madman!"

The old man fell to the floor in terror and scrambled backward. "Stay away! Stay away!"

Chen Mo passed through the grid.

Over a dozen deep, bone-exposing wounds marked his body, and his clothes had turned into charred rags hanging off scorched flesh.

But he was still smiling.

That smile was uglier than crying.

"Found it."

Chen Mo walked to the console, ignoring the old man cowering in the corner.

His gaze fell on a folder on the console screen.

The folder's name was simple.

[Chen Nian].

Not a serial number.

A name.

"This is what I wanted."

Chen Mo pulled out the data drive and gripped it tightly in his hand.

Even though his palm had been sliced by the lasers until only a few tendons remained attached.

"No... that's the original... that's the only sample data..." The old man tried to reach out and grab it.

Chen Mo looked back at him.

Just one look.

The old man froze.

"You said earlier that there are thousands of failures here."

Chen Mo said softly.

"Now."

He grabbed the old man by the hair and dragged him toward the nearest empty, giant glass jar.

"There's one more."

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