28: Chapter 28 Four gray wolves, not one escaped.

When Carl's HK416 spat out its first burst of gunfire, the Tyrant was no longer in its original position.

Chen Feng saw it clearly from behind the laboratory bench—the moment the "Attack" key was pressed, the Tyrant's reaction wasn't a charge, but a sidestep.

Its two-hundred-plus-kilogram body shifted laterally nearly two meters at a speed completely inconsistent with its size; the bullets struck where it had just been standing, blasting a string of white spots into the concrete floor.

Carl was still adjusting his muzzle when the Tyrant arrived.

It didn't use its fists. It used its shoulder.

Its entire body slammed into him like a moving wall; Carl, gun and all, was sent flying, his back smashing against the glass partition of the corridor. The bulletproof glass cracked halfway but didn't shatter, and by the time he slid down, he was silent.

Jason's reaction was indeed fast enough. From the first second the Tyrant moved, he gave up shooting and rolled to the side instead, creating distance. Fourteen years of battlefield experience told him that at this range, shooting this thing wouldn't kill it; he needed to create space.

"Scatter!" he roared lowly.

Nadim and Patel dodged in two different directions. Patel's MP7 opened fire first, short bursts, three rounds at a time, all hitting the Tyrant's back.

The bullets penetrated the skin.

Chen Feng saw it—the warheads had indeed entered; three bullet holes appeared in the Tyrant's back muscles, and blood flowed out. But the color of the blood was wrong, dark and black, and it stopped flowing in less than two seconds.

The Tyrant turned around.

Its turning speed was much slower than its movement, its joints making clicking sounds, like some kind of heavy machinery adjusting its direction. But it was this seemingly clumsy turn that caused Patel to make a fatal mistake—he thought he still had time to fire another round.

When the Tyrant swung its arm out, Patel was still shooting.

That ridiculously thick palm didn't grab him, but swatted him. Like swatting a fly. Patel was swatted from the left side of the corridor to the right, crashing through a door of a glass partition, falling into a pile of broken glass, his MP7 flying far away.

Chen Feng's gaze fell on the system panel.

The Tyrant's heart rate had soared to 89 beats per minute, and its adrenaline concentration was 1.4 times the combat threshold. But the key data was on another line—"Command response latency: 0.3 seconds".

Zero point three seconds. More than twice as fast as the 0.8 seconds from the last test.

It was learning in combat.

In the corridor, Jason had retreated to the vicinity of the fire door at the B2 entrance. He didn't continue shooting, but instead pulled a flashbang from his tactical vest.

A veteran. Chen Feng gave a mental evaluation. Knowing that conventional ammunition was useless against this thing, he wanted to use the flashbang to create a window for escape.

But Jason made a mistake caused by an information gap—he didn't know that the Tyrant's visual system had been modified by the T-Virus.

The flashbang exploded in the center of the corridor, with white light and a loud bang erupting simultaneously. Chen Feng closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he saw the Tyrant paused for less than a second.

Its dark red pupils constricted for a moment, then recovered.

The iris adjustment speed was more than five times that of a normal person. For it, the flashbang was probably just like someone waving a flashlight in front of its face.

Jason clearly realized this too, because he immediately turned and ran toward the fire door after the flashbang exploded, but the Tyrant had already caught up.

The corridor was too narrow. This was intentional on Chen Feng's part.

The B2 corridor was only 1.8 meters wide, and the Tyrant's shoulder width exceeded one meter. As it moved through the corridor, the glass partitions on both sides were constantly scraped by its shoulders and arms, emitting a harsh friction sound. But precisely because the corridor was narrow, Jason had no room to dodge.

The Tyrant grabbed the back collar of Jason's tactical vest.

Jason was lifted up.

A forty-two-year-old, eighty-five-kilogram adult male, lifted up with one hand, like carrying a cat.

Jason didn't struggle. He did something that exceeded Chen Feng's expectations—he pulled a dagger from his waist and backhanded it into the wrist of the hand the Tyrant was holding him with.

The blade sank in nearly three centimeters.

The Tyrant's fingers loosened. Not because of pain—the system panel showed its pain threshold was extremely high—but because the wrist's flexor tendon had been partially severed, causing the finger's gripping function to temporarily fail.

Jason landed, rolled, and rushed toward the fire door.

Chen Feng raised an eyebrow.

This guy really had some skills. To be able to accurately find the position of the wrist tendon and strike while being lifted with one hand by a 2.4-meter monster. Blake paying three hundred thousand to hire him was worth it.

But Jason didn't run even three steps.

The Tyrant's other hand—the uninjured one—grabbed his ankle.

This time it didn't lift him up. The Tyrant directly pressed him to the ground.

A crack appeared in the corridor's concrete floor.

Jason groaned, and the dagger fell from his hand. The Tyrant's foot stepped onto his back, not with full force, but enough to make him completely unable to move.

The corridor went quiet.

Carl was leaning against the shattered glass partition wall, motionless. Patel was lying in the pile of broken glass, also motionless.

What about Nadim?

Chen Feng glanced at the monitor screen. The electronic warfare expert Nadim did not participate in the fight; the moment the Tyrant appeared, he ran in the opposite direction—not to escape, but rushing toward the server room deep in the laboratory.

This guy was still thinking about completing the mission.

Chen Feng had to admit that the professionalism of this team was indeed quite good. The team leader held off the monster, and the electronic warfare expert seized the opportunity to steal data. If the Tyrant didn't exist, this tactic would be completely viable.

Unfortunately, the Tyrant existed.

And Chen Feng also had Dahei.

He pressed the communicator. "Marcus, in the direction of the B2 server room, there's one that slipped through the net."

"Received, Dahei is already on it."

A short bark came from the communicator, followed by the sound of rapid claws tapping on the metal floor.

Nadim ran to the door of the server room, and he found the door locked. He unclipped the portable hard drive copier from his waist and was about to work on the access control panel when a sound of rapidly approaching footsteps came from the end of the corridor behind him.

It wasn't human footsteps.

He turned around, and in his night vision goggles, he saw a black shadow rushing over at an impossible speed.

Dahei didn't give him any reaction time. The fifty-eight-kilogram modified dog leaped from the last three meters, its front paws accurately slapping Nadim's chest, pinning him against the iron door of the server room.

Nadim's back of the head hit the iron door, and everything went black before his eyes. By the time he barely regained consciousness, a huge mouth filled with fangs was already hanging less than ten centimeters above his face, hot breath spraying directly onto his night vision goggle lenses, instantly fogging them up.

He didn't dare move.

On the other side of the corridor, the Tyrant was still stepping on Jason. Its breathing was still heavy, and its dark red pupils were scanning the surroundings, seemingly confirming if there were any other threats.

Chen Feng walked out from behind the laboratory bench.

On the control terminal screen in his hand, the "Attack" button was still lit. He glanced at the real-time data on the system panel, then pressed the second button.

"Stop."

The Tyrant's foot moved off Jason's back.

It straightened its body, those dark red eyes turning toward Chen Feng. The heavy breathing began to slow down, and the heart rate gradually dropped from 89 beats per minute. Its hands hung at its sides, Jason's dagger still stuck in the injured wrist, black blood dripping down the handle, but it completely ignored it.

It just stood there, waiting.

Waiting for the next command.

Chen Feng stared at it for three seconds, then slowly walked closer. When he reached a distance of one meter, the Tyrant lowered its head.

Not an attack posture. It was—bowing its head.

A new line of data popped up on the system panel; after Chen Feng saw it clearly, the corner of his mouth twitched.

Compliance Rating: B.

From C+ to B. One real combat, jumped one and a half levels.

"Well done," Chen Feng said.

The Tyrant didn't react. It didn't understand the semantics, but its breathing became a bit steadier.

"Go back."

The Tyrant turned around, its heavy footsteps walking step by step back toward the direction of the containment chamber. When it reached the chamber opening, it stepped in by itself, turned to face outward, and then—stood still.

Like a machine that had been set to standby mode.

The heart rate dropped to 41 beats per minute. The muscle spasms disappeared. The adrenaline concentration returned to baseline levels. The dark red pupils were half-closed, entering a kind of low-power silent state.

Chen Feng pressed the hydraulic door switch of the containment chamber. The chamber door slowly descended, sealing the Tyrant inside again.

He turned around and saw Samantha standing next to the laboratory bench, still clutching a marker in her hand, her lab coat stained with dust that had been shaken off just now. He didn't know when she had woken up; her face was pale, but her eyes were flashing with an unusual light.

"You saw it all?" Chen Feng asked.

Samantha's lips moved twice before she made a sound. "From the moment it stepped on that person."

"Thoughts?"

"Command response latency of 0.3 seconds," Samantha's voice was a bit shaky, but she was reciting data, "0.5 seconds faster than the test three days ago. The execution latency of the 'Stop' command was even shorter, I estimate no more than 0.2 seconds. It completed some kind of self-optimization of neural pathways during combat."

She paused, looked down at the marker in her hand, and then looked at the containment chamber.

"Also, it walked back into the chamber by itself. You only said 'Go back,' without specifying a target location. It judged for itself that 'Go back' meant 'Return to the containment chamber'."

Chen Feng nodded. "What do you think this means?"

"It is establishing semantic associations." Samantha tucked the marker back into her lab coat pocket, her fingers still trembling, "Not a conditioned reflex, but primary cognition. The residual function of the B-02 model's cerebral cortex is higher than we estimated."

"Can it be strengthened?"

"Need more data." Samantha looked at the people lying in the corridor, "Like these few—if they are still alive."

Chen Feng smiled. "You learn quite fast."

Marcus's footsteps came from the corridor. He was escorting Nadim over, with Dahei following behind, holding Nadim's portable hard drive copier in its mouth, its tail wagging twice.

Marcus threw Nadim on the ground and scanned the battlefield in the corridor. Carl was leaning against the wall base, his chest rising and falling weakly but still breathing. Patel was lying in the broken glass, his right arm bent at an unnatural angle, but still alive. Jason was lying on the ground; his spine shouldn't be broken, but at least three ribs were fractured.

Four gray wolves, all incapacitated, not a single one escaped.

The entire process, from the Tyrant stepping out of the containment chamber to the last target being subdued, was recorded by the system as—forty-seven seconds.

Marcus looked at the Tyrant quietly on standby in the containment chamber, then looked at Chen Feng.

"Boss, this thing is more useful than me."

"Your functions are different." Chen Feng squatted down, rummaged through Jason's tactical vest pockets, and pulled out an encrypted mobile phone and an ID card, "The Tyrant is the hammer, you are the brain."

Marcus was silent for a moment. "Then what about Dahei?"

Dahei heard its name, spat out the hard drive copier in its mouth, and trotted over to rub against Marcus's leg.

"Dahei is the can opener," Chen Feng handed Jason's encrypted mobile phone to Marcus, "specifically for dealing with hard shells."

He stood up, looking at the four people on the ground.

Gray Wolves. An elite squad Blake spent three hundred thousand to hire. They didn't even last a minute in front of the Tyrant.

Chen Feng flipped over Jason's ID card to take a look. Next to the name and photo, there was a line of small text—the serial number of a certain private military contracting company.

"Marcus."

"Boss, I'm here."

"This Jason." Chen Feng shook the ID card, "Do you know him?"

Marcus's expression had a subtle change, but it didn't escape Chen Feng's eyes.

"2014, Kandahar," Marcus said, "Stayed at the same forward operating base for three months."

"What kind of person?"

Marcus was silent for a few seconds. "The kind that can survive until now."

Chen Feng didn't press further. He put the ID card into his pocket and patted the dust off his hands.

"Keep these four people. Treat their wounds first, don't let them die." He looked at Samantha, "Dr. Samantha, your experimental materials have increased by four."

Samantha opened her mouth, but in the end, said nothing, and turned to get the first aid kit.

Chen Feng walked to the front of the containment chamber and looked at the Tyrant inside through the observation window. It was still in standby state, its dark red pupils half-closed, its breathing as steady as a computer with the screen turned off.

Compliance Rating B. Can fully obey simple instructions.

He silently calculated an account in his mind.

ruisu is a tool for making money. healing factor is the stepping stone to open up the market. Dahei is the watchdog. Marcus is the left hand.

And the Tyrant—is the fist.

A fist that can already be obedient.

Chen Feng turned off the control terminal screen and put it back in his pocket.

Mr. Blake, you won't be getting your Gray Wolves back.

The next question is—do you intend to come yourself, or spend another three hundred thousand?