13: Chapter 13: Another Big Red Emerges! [Beast Serum (Code Name: Swan Song)]

"1, 2, 3... 27"

Tilting his head and using the corner stair handrail as cover, Chu Hong carefully counted the number of active zombies in the hallway at this moment.

Twenty-seven!

If it were anywhere else, given his current equipment and strength...

Dealing with these twenty-seven zombies would be an absolute breeze.

But this was the "Cliffside Epidemic Hospital". Any slight commotion would inevitably alert that monster boss, which he definitely couldn't afford to provoke yet.

"I can only carefully lure them over first..."

He quickly went downstairs and took out a few plasma bags from his backpack.

Then he turned back and came to the third-floor stairwell.

"Thud!"

The plasma bag smashed onto the ground.

The smell of blood instantly splattered through the hallway. The moment he threw the plasma bag, Chu Hong immediately flashed and hid over on the second floor.

Sure enough.

Just as he retreated to the second floor, a series of low growls and dense, chaotic shuffling footsteps came from the third-floor hallway above.

"Roar..."

The vicious licking and low growls made one's scalp tingle.

A faint trace of joy flickered in Chu Hong's eyes. After waiting for a moment, he suddenly smashed another plasma bag at the entrance of the second-floor stairwell.

"Thud!"

"Roar!"

"..."

After repeating this a few times, he quickly and easily dispersed the twenty-seven zombies that had originally gathered in the third-floor hallway.

Pulling out his compound bow, Chu Hong's figure instantly appeared.

"Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh..."

Looking at the zombie corpses lying at the entrance of the first-floor stairwell, each with an arrow piercing straight through the center of their brows, Chu Hong couldn't help but mentally praise himself for his caution and wits.

Fortunately, he had cleared out all the zombies around the [Staff Dormitory] just now.

Otherwise... there really might have been a chance he would have alerted that monster.

All the way up.

Soon, the zombies that were originally active in the hallway were all shot and killed by Chu Hong.

The task assigned by the Action Department to clear out the [Staff Dormitory] did not show as completed. In other words, there were still some zombies inside the closed dormitory doors.

However, Chu Hong was not in a hurry.

He strode over to the entrance of Room 322 requested by the mission.

He pushed the door.

It didn't open.

"Bang!"

With a fierce kick to the lock cylinder at the doorway, the solid wood door was kicked open by Chu Hong in an instant.

"Roar~"

The roars of zombies immediately began to echo under his feet and in the hallway, but trapped inside the rooms, they couldn't spread out of the [Staff Dormitory] at all.

He walked into Room 322.

This was a relatively neat and clean room.

It had a one-bedroom, one-living-room, one-bathroom layout.

However, placed in the middle of the living room was not a coffee table or dining table, but a huge silver metal machine that looked like a hibernation pod from a science fiction movie.

Through the glass, there was a decaying skeleton lying quietly inside.

Clearly, without a power supply, this hibernation pod was no different from a coffin.

However.

Suddenly, Chu Hong's pupils shrank sharply.

His gaze stared straight at something inside the hibernation pod that was plugged into a row of grooves beside the skeleton's skull, looking like test tubes.

Almost all the test tubes in the row were empty.

But there was still one left.

Inside it was a clearly extraordinary red-orange potion, emitting a faint fluorescent glow.

Chu Hong immediately reached out from outside the hibernation pod and pulled open the mechanical hatch switch.

"Click!"

A gas that surely carried some kind of putrid toxicity drifted out from the hibernation pod, but it couldn't affect Chu Hong, who was wearing a gas mask.

He reached out and pulled out the potion tube.

Immediately, a red item interface came into view, making Chu Hong's breathing involuntarily turn rapid.

[Item Name]: exotic beast serum (codename: swan song)

[Item Grade]: Red

[Type]: Source Energy Substance

[Weight]: 0.15 kg

[Backpack Grid Capacity Occupied]: 1 × 2

[Item Description]: The final work updated and improved on the basis of exotic beast serum IX. The relevant data has been destroyed in the disaster, so this is the final swan song. After injection, it will permanently and without side effects enhance the user's physique and perception.

"It's actually a red-grade enhancement-type source energy substance!?"

Chu Hong hadn't forgotten.

The reason why he was able to master source energy ahead of those classmates who had not yet graduated, and in fact become a rank-one Qi Origin Pioneer ahead of schedule...

...was because he had fished out a bottle of purple-quality [Exotic Beast Spirit Liquid] from the "Little Rabbit Insurance" in the parking lot back then.

"Permanently and without side effects enhances the user's physique and perception..."

This didn't even have any source energy level restrictions!

"If this thing circulated to the outside world, it would be worth five million at the least. No, someone might even bid ten million source energy points..."

Chu Hong had no illusions about getting rich because bringing this thing out would cost him his life.

"It takes up two grid spaces and cannot be put into the [source energy space], so the only option is..."

Chu Hong rolled up his sleeves in one go, and without the slightest hesitation, directly injected the potion into his body with a single needle.

The ice-cold liquid medicine flowed along his veins and quickly spread throughout Chu Hong's entire body.

A scalding, sauna-like sense of thorough comfort caused Chu Hong's face to quickly flush red, and his body temperature began to rise. At the same time, invisible streams of energy on his body also began to rapidly increase at a clearly perceptible speed.

"Boom!"

Chu Hong's expression turned pale, as if his abdomen had taken a heavy punch.

However, joy immediately appeared on his face.

"Rank-Two Qi Origin!"

That wasn't the end of it.

As this tidal heat current gradually intensified, Chu Hong could clearly feel that his muscles and bones were also undergoing changes at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The clothes on his body began to feel slightly tight.

A sense of stifling discomfort even came from his lower regions...

Time flew by, and half an hour passed.

Chu Hong's internal source energy had already broken through to Rank-Four Qi Origin.

He wiped the sweat from his face.

His face was full of excitement and thrill.

"Hahaha, if others found out that I advanced from an ordinary person to Rank-Four Qi Origin in just one day, wouldn't I be treated like a lunatic?"

He already had enough confidence in the upcoming graduation exams.

At this moment, he was gradually growing somewhat looking forward to the examination a month later.

Just as he was excited, a row of crimson numbers suddenly popped up before his eyes.

[Ding! Time remaining until final evacuation: 00:05:00]

[Failing to evacuate past the time limit will result in the loss of all supplies except the source energy space]

"Holy shit!"

Only five minutes left?!

Chu Hong dared not waste any more time now and hurriedly began searching Room 322 for the [Confidential Meeting Minutes] required by the mission.

Soon, he finally found the mission item in a desk drawer.

Then, ignoring the fact that there were still quite a few containers in Room 322 that hadn't been searched,

Chu Hong hurriedly rushed toward the other side of the third-floor hallway.

In that direction, the map clearly marked a golden icon for a large safe.