Infinite Game Ch.63.1

Chapter 63.1 – Duolan Mountain (3)

Unlike Zhang Xin, who found the blueprint from the old file pile, Chen Jing’s approach to investigating the structure here was more direct.

There was surveillance right in front of the prison cell. The footage of their escape had obviously been seen by the control room personnel. There were no alarms ringing, but footsteps from all directions intensified, and brief conversations echoed around.

These people were searching for the two of them.

Leading the person to hide in the surveillance corner, Chen Jing listened to the movements around him. When he heard the footsteps changing from dense to clear and thin, he casually grabbed the scraps of paper around him and calculated that the other party had probably reached the surveillance corner. Then he took action directly from the darkness.

A person dressed in dark red attempted resistance, but it seemed like sharp metal blades had been placed against his neck after a swift move.

With his life in someone else’s hands, he instantly complied.

Everything here was beyond her usual scope of understanding. Danger and bloodshed were blatantly exposed right in front of her eyes.

The classmate who originally lived in the same world and studied in the same school calmly and skillfully threatened people. The female classmate on the side saw this kind of scene for the first time, and her heart beat loudly.

When breaking away from the routine, she realized the world wasn’t as peaceful as she had always believed it to be.

With limited resources, Chen Jing only managed to gather rough information from the captive about the general layout here, figuring out the number of experimental areas and floors and locating the control room and the area where the higher-ups were situated.

The branch head wasn’t in the current experimental area they were in, but there were personnel from the headquarters present, currently occupying the top-floor office.

Though escapees from the experiments were uncommon, they weren’t unheard of. The two of them escaping wouldn’t be enough to draw him out of the office.

After explaining everything, the person in dark red assumed the other party would relax his guard, so he threw himself at the girl on the side with his hands and feet, trying to take the hostage, but before he could reach out his hand, a cold feeling went down on his neck.

Quietly laying the fallen person on the ground, Chen Jing said, “Let’s head to the top-floor office first.”

Already having a shadow of what happened before, thinking that she would be caught again, the female classmate fell to the ground with eyes wide open. After seeing the person in dark red fall, she stood up again with her hands on his hands.

Today, she experienced more in a single day than she had in over a decade. Witnessing someone die in front of her, she had expected fear or screams, but instead, she felt a sense of security—a feeling derived from the calm and rationality of a once ordinary classmate.

Chen Jing began assessing their surroundings.

Their escape had been discovered, the exits outside were sealed, and the passages between experimental areas were closed off. To leave now, they needed substantial leverage.

The most significant presence in this experimental area was the person from headquarters—the man wielding the spiked whip. Finding him required reaching the top-floor office.

With someone in tow, Chen Jing abandoned the quicker path upward and opted for a more cautious approach.

All visible routes posed danger; being caught meant being surrounded by a horde of people armed with firearms. He might evade them, but the person with him might not.

He chose the ventilation ducts. These allowed passage for slender individuals, and unlike the visible pathways, these ducts were intricate, branching into several directions.

Closing his eyes, Chen Jing listened intently to the sounds around him before choosing a direction.

Moving forward in such a narrow space was not as easy as imagined. The classmate following behind was starting to tire, but she gritted her teeth, persisting despite the filth beneath her.

Surviving seemed far more plausible than staying put and being captured for further experimentation.

She couldn’t fathom how Chen Jing navigated in this environment, but the reliable impression he had left earlier lingered in her mind. She followed without question; the rest was beyond consideration.

Perhaps they passed laboratories or corridors filled with footsteps, eventually arriving at a quiet spot.

Chen Jing instructed the person following not to proceed and to remain there without making a sound or movement.

In this kind of situation, the girl didn’t want to be separated from her classmate and stay in this place alone. But while she didn’t want to stay alone, considering the other person’s thoughts, she could only nod.

Chen Jing proceeded alone, noticeably accelerating once there was no one by his side.

The ventilation ducts didn’t seem to lead directly to the office. He chose an exit and found himself in a room resembling a reception area.

No one was present, and the tea on the table had gone cold. Instantly upon arrival, he demolished the security cameras. After surveying the room, he walked toward a door.

The room was locked. Before he touched the doorknob, the person inside the room noticed and asked, “Who’s there?”

It was the voice of the man with the whip.

Without a response, Chen Jing shattered the door directly. A long whip extended from within the room, striking the ground and creating cracks in the tiles.

Before the whip retracted, Chen Jing grabbed the spiked part of the whip. His hand was covered in blood, yet his black pupils remained calm.

Whip Man, who was about to press the button to notify the guards outside, stopped, and a smile appeared on his lips.

…

In another part of the experimental area, sensing movement behind her, Zhang Xin raised her hand before even turning around. With the lab data now in her possession, she no longer needed to hold back. A searing blaze erupted instantly.

The sound of bones colliding persisted. Outside the flames, skeletal wings flapped up and down. The person suspended in mid-air grinned, revealing an unnaturally stretched smile extending beyond the typical human range.

Applying more force, the already scorching flames spread further, surging upward with a loud burst.

The winged figure was engulfed by the flames, its form entirely concealed by the fiery red light.

Instinct warned her that things weren’t finished yet. Reacting swiftly, Zhang Xin quickly moved away from her original position.

The moment she left, a skeleton emerged from the flames, reaching out towards her previous location.

—This was indeed a skeleton, no muscles, no skin or blood, just a row of codes on the cranial bone.

This was another experimental subject. The deputy branch head had experimented on himself, and the results seemed quite successful.

Despite the heavy sounds produced by the skeleton’s movements, its actual speed was not slow; in fact, it was remarkably fast, able to take off with a single wing beat.

Zhang Xin leaped onto an experimental table, swiftly seeking the next foothold. In the flicker of an eye, an enlarged version of a skull emerged beside her, its finger joints aiming for her throat.

She dodged aside, but she was a fraction too slow. A searing pain shot through her throat. When she looked down at her previous position, several blood streaks appeared, slowly trickling down.

As blood dripped from the finger joints, the skeleton seemed pleased, reveling in utter intoxication, stating, “I’m powerful, right?”

Without the constraints of flesh, the body felt lighter, without vulnerable spots. While others couldn’t capture his thoughts, he could sense everything around him through this body.

Zhang Xin observed but couldn’t pinpoint where the sounds were coming from.

Surveying her surroundings, she eventually grabbed a small iron hammer. As the figure approached again, she first swept its legs to halt its movement, then aimed the hammer at its leg bone.

The hammer was small, but her strength wasn’t. However, the blow didn’t seem to affect the leg bone, leaving only a tiny dent, as if caused by an incidental brush with a small blade—insufficient to impede normal movement.

“I told you, I’m powerful.”

As she attempted to retract her extended leg, a sharp pain shot through her calf muscles. The skeleton dragged Zhang Xin and threw her out of the lab, crashing against the wall.

Wiping away blood from her mouth, she unleashed flames behind the figure, then ripped off a leg of the transport bed, lunging forward.

The bed leg struck the spine, causing the figure’s body to contort. Its bone wings bent forward, slashing fiercely across her arm.

With a final effort, blood gushed from her arm, followed by a wave of numbness as she was kicked into a corner.

The person suspended in mid-air reached for his spine and with a ‘click,’ the displaced bones realigned.

However, even after realignment, things remained odd. Joints didn’t match, and each movement produced a grating friction sound.

Realizing something was off, he looked at the person lying on the ground, his voice suddenly sharp, “What have you done?”

The fallen Zhang Xin slowly rose, blood staining her face, a faint smirk on her lips. She opened her clenched right hand, revealing a bone split into two halves.

When she attacked his spine earlier, she took one of the bones.

With one piece missing, maintaining balance became challenging, and his movements were no longer as fluid as before.

The deputy branch head muttered incessantly, his voice escalating from soft to sharp, while the frequency of his bone wings flapping behind him increased.

Before the bone wings struck again, Zhang Xin rolled aside, evading the attack.

The two continued their frantic, unprotected assaults, scaling all the way from the laboratory to the highest floor.

Cough—

Sliding along the ground before crashing into a corner, Zhang Xin emitted a broken coughing sound, spewing dark red blood clots.

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