204: Chapter 208 The Warehouse Has Really Opened

The main control tower of Frost Prison No. 4 has been captured.

Half of the lights at the top of the tower went out first. The remaining half of the cold white light was still retreating section by section along the central axis corridor. Like a snake with its spine severed, the body was still twitching, but the head was already gone.

Exile Fortress hung in high orbit, its ventral deployment bay still open.

Outside the wind wall, the grayish-white permafrost had been churned into a slurry by shellfire and flesh.

The first 500,000 mutant cannon fodder troops dropped had already turned the outer ring gun positions and elevator shaft areas into a mess of ruins.

Some were dead, but even more were still crowding forward. The machine gun lines couldn't stop them, the Mecha Battalion couldn't pull out, and the firepower around the main tower's perimeter was still echoing, though its aim had already scattered.

Li Cang did not look at the outer wall.

That layer of things had no longer been worth looking at from the moment he poured the first batch of people down.

He switched the main screen to the internal surveillance map of the main control tower, pushing the perspective deep into the heart of the tower along the rift forcibly carved open by the Knight. There were three doors there. Behind the first door was the main control hall, which had already been cleared by the Astartes. Behind the second door was the sample area sub-control level. The third door was the place that truly needed to be opened.

The lights were very cold.

The walls were very white.

There wasn't much blood on the floor, because blood was usually not allowed to remain out on this level. Every ten meters, there was a low drainage trough, with the rinsing frequency and disinfection procedures carved into the edges. It looked more orderly than a hospital.

But the smell of disinfectant could not suppress the smell of rust.

Nor could it suppress the fishy stench of some kind of meat that had rotted and then been sewn back together.

Li Cang leaned back in his chair, looking at the screen and lightly tapping the armrest.

"This place is worth more than the customs office."

The sub-control Servitor waited for orders.

Li Cang pulled up the general catalog of the sample area. The catalog page was beautifully made, with a pure white background, neat rows and columns, and standardized labels. At first glance, it looked like a high-level drug storage list. But looking further down, it was not.

[Outer Ring Unstable Individual Sequestration Vault]

[Mid-layer Spiritual Pressure Damage Carriers]

[Whitelist Personality Stripping Test Group]

[High-Danger Walking Weapon Embryos]

[Inhibitory Nerve Samples]

The names were all very light.

So light they sounded like administrative vocabulary.

But every entry, when expanded, was a person.

Li Cang flipped through more than a dozen pages before stopping at a record highlighted in red.

[Transfer Category: Unfinished War Carrier, ineligible for public service.]

[Sequestration Status: Low Activity.]

[Affiliation Level: Inner Ring Whitelist.]

He looked at it for three seconds and circled this entry.

"Don't blow up the sample library yet," he said. "There's live cargo in here."

The sub-control Servitor immediately replied, "The main control tower's secondary line is reconnecting. There are still signs of manual operation in the sample area sub-control level."

"That means they haven't had time to burn everything clean yet." Li Cang raised his hand to switch to the tactical channel. "Unit One."

When the channel connected, the background noise was heavy. The idling of chainswords, boots treading through water, and the muffled thud of distant heavy bolt shells were all mixed together.

"Present."

"Between the third floor of the main tower and the sample library, there are still survivors controlling the lines." Li Cang split the screen into four blocks and pushed them to the inner visor of Unit One's helmet. "Don't be in a hurry to sweep. Cut the passages first, then seal the Incineration Wells. When you see a whitelist seal, take the whole block away."

"Understood."

"Also," Li Cang paused, "separate the living ones first. Those who can walk, talk, and whose brains haven't completely rotted, detain them separately. Don't crush them all together."

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the channel.

Unit One didn't ask why, nor did he question it. He only replied with one sentence.

"Copy that."

This was the most useful thing about Unit One. He never tried to understand the tactics for Li Cang. He was only responsible for making the tactics happen.

Inside the main control tower, the Astartes had already begun to push downward.

The silver-white blast door at the very front was riddled with pits from bolt shells. The door lock was still turning, trailing a long string of glowing red warning lights. Two Astartes stepped forward, using Power Anchor Hooks to bite into the door gap, and exerted force from both sides simultaneously. The steel plate first bent, then cracked, and finally, the entire piece was torn and curled inward, revealing a long, narrow, straight white corridor behind it.

The corridor was too clean.

Too clean to look like a prison.

The lights were hidden in the wall crevices, emitting a cold, faint glow.

At intervals on both sides were transparent observation windows. Behind the windows were not cells, but vertical containment tanks.

Inside the tanks stood one figure after another whose full appearance could not be clearly seen.

Some people were facing away from the glass, their backs completely split open, with a metal skeleton growing out along the spine like a crooked iron tree.

Some were fixed in liquid, facing outward, their eyelids pried open, their pupils entirely white.

There were also a few who looked like children, but their bodies had grown too quickly, the proportions of their limbs and chest cavities completely distorted, with absurdly thick inhibitory collars fastened around their necks.

There were no screams.

All the containment tanks were silent.

This was more terrifying than crying and shouting.

Unit One led the team forward, his boots treading over the drainage ditches on the floor. There was no accumulated blood in the ditches, only diluted pale pink liquid flowing slowly toward the Incineration Well along the slope.

An Astartes turned his head to look at a glass tank. The figure with the split chest inside suddenly turned its head as well, its mouth splitting open to reveal a mouthful of ground-down teeth. In the next second, it slammed its head heavily against the glass, letting out a muffled thud. It didn't break through. But that sudden movement was still enough to make one's back go cold.

Unit One did not stop.

"Continue."

The team pushed through the first section of the observation corridor. The further in they went, the lower the temperature became. The smell of disinfectant in the air also grew heavier. It wasn't until they reached the second door at the corner of the corridor that everyone saw the first batch of guards who were still alive.

They were not the gun-wielding prison guards from outside, but the sample area management. They were all in grayish-white uniforms with small serial numbers printed on the cuffs.

Four people, three men and one woman, stood before a sub-control console.

No one drew a gun.

The woman in the lead didn't even retreat.

She just lowered her head, pressed the final command into the console, and only then looked up.

She wasn't very old, her face was thin, her eye sockets deep, and her cheekbones prominent, like a blade that had been ground very thin.

She glanced at the black-armored giants at the other end of the corridor, then at the main control link on the screen that had already jumped to red, her voice very soft.

"The main tower is lost after all."

When she said this, it didn't sound like regret, but more like checking an account.

Unit One did not respond.

The Bolters behind him were raised, their muzzles aimed squarely forward.

But the woman raised her hand first. It wasn't a surrender. She tore off the white card covered in permission patterns from her chest and threw it to the ground like a piece of discarded prescription paper.

"You're too late," she said. "What could be left, I've sealed tight. What couldn't be left has already started to burn."

Li Cang switched to the main control screen and looked at her, his eyes narrowing slightly.

This person wasn't a gatekeeper like Holvis.

She was the one truly in charge of the cargo here.

This made her valuable.

"Name," Li Cang asked.

The sub-control Servitor immediately pulled up the comparison results from the permission fragments.

"Sample Area Director, Celine Arlos. Whitelist authorization level is half a grade higher than Holvis."

"No wonder." Li Cang marked her specifically in red. "Don't kill this person yet."

The channel switched to Unit One's side.

"Break her legs and seal her mouth. Keep her alive."

Just as he spoke, a ring of blood-red light strips suddenly lit up on the wall behind Celine. A low mechanical voice echoed throughout the sub-control level.

[Well No. 1 preheating complete.]

[Ashen Zero being released.]

[Incineration process irreversible.]

Unit One's gaze darkened.

For the first time, an expression appeared on Celine's face. It wasn't a smile, nor was it madness. She just looked relieved.

"Now, none of you can take anyone away."

In the next second, the sealed door to her left slowly slid open to both sides.

A blast of cold air rushed out.

Behind the door was not a new corridor. It was a massive vertical shaft. The bottom of the shaft was invisible; only rings of steel frames and cold lights descending downward could be seen. Something was suspended in the middle.

It was no longer accurate to call it a "person."

It was more like a weapon that had been dismantled and then barely sewn back together.

Over three meters tall, its entire body was deathly white, with dense black lines visible beneath the skin.

Its arms were excessively long, and its fingers had been replaced with long, slender metal Bone Blades.

Its chest was open, revealing not internal organs, but a set of spiritual pressure suppression cores that were still slowly pulsing. Its head hung down, its face shaved down to a thin layer of skin, with a whole suppression steel plate nailed to its forehead.

It hung there like a failed product waiting for inspection.

As soon as the door opened, the steel cables detached simultaneously.

When Ashen Zero landed, the floor of the shaft let out a muffled thud. It first kept its head down, motionless. Then, its head slowly lifted.

There were no eyeballs.

In the eye sockets were two spheres of whitish light.

Before an Astartes behind could raise his gun, it had already arrived. Its speed was unlike anything its bulk suggested. A flash of a Bone Blade, and the Astartes' entire upper body was sheared away from the shoulder, along with the wall behind him, which split into two sections.

For the first time, the corridor truly fell into chaos.

The Bolters fired simultaneously. Strings of high-explosive bolt shells hit Ashen Zero, blasting away layers of blood and bone fragments. But it did not retreat; instead, it used the explosion smoke to pounce directly into the crowd.

An Astartes was pinned against the wall by it, his helmet and the back of his head crushed together. Another slashed from the side, his chainsword jamming into its shoulder, but it was like sawing into a solid piece of resilient hard bone; sparks flew everywhere, but it just wouldn't cut through.

Unit One stepped forward, forcing the thing back half a step with a horizontal sword slash.

An opening finally appeared in the corridor.

Li Cang quickly pulled up data in the main control room. Only half of the project page for Ashen Zero remained; the other half had already been deleted by Celine. The remaining few lines were very short.

[Unstable War Carrier]

[Original Plan: Adapt for Frontline Whitelist Assault Squads]

[Reason for Failure: Retains feeding instinct, unable to obey commands]

After Li Cang finished reading, he looked up at the white monster on the screen.

"Still a semi-finished product."

Having said that, he directly bypassed the control rights of the Executioner Knight mecha and marked a point in the lower shaft of the sample area.

"Unit One, back up half a step."

In the channel, Unit One did not hesitate, and the entire team dodged to both sides simultaneously.

In the next second, the outer wall of the tower body just above the shaft, which had been cut open, collapsed with a roar. The Executioner Knight plummeted from the opening, its steel foot stomping directly into Ashen Zero's chest. The sound of bones cracking was deep and muffled, and the entire shaft shook with it.

Ashen Zero was still struggling.

The chainsword on the Knight's left arm had already descended. It wasn't a horizontal cut, but a vertical dissection down the chest. The spiritual pressure suppression core was sawed in two, white light exploded, and the entire body went limp as if its bones had been removed.

Standing by the sub-control console, Celine's face finally went pale.

She wanted to retreat. Two Astartes had already pounced on her, first breaking her knees, then pinning her firmly to the ground.

Unit One stepped over the scattered pieces of white tissue on the floor and walked up to her.

"Sample list."

There was blood at the corner of Celine's mouth, and she lifted her head, her gaze still cold.

"You won't be able to take much away."

Unit One looked at her without speaking.

In the channel, Li Cang spoke.

"Tell her not to worry. How much we can take away is for me to decide."

In the main control room, Li Cang had already divided the sample area into three blocks.

Stable Zone.

Semi-Discarded Zone.

Incineration Zone.

Move the Stable Zone first.

Then pick through the Semi-Discarded Zone.

The Incineration Zone goes straight to the furnace.

He didn't want to waste emotions here. Nor did he intend to form any redundant judgments about this prison. Whether it was disgusting or not didn't matter. What mattered was how many usable bones were in it, how many breathing materials there were, and how many unburned secrets remained.

In the corner of the screen, rows of new containment doors were opening.

What stood inside were no longer blurred shadows.

But a whole batch of "cargo" that hadn't had time to be moved yet.

Li Cang watched for a moment and finally sat up straight.

"Good."

"This time, the vault is truly open."