Apocalyptic Era: Starting from picking up a Bishoujo
Chapter 194 - 185 The Doctor’s Secret Room 2

Chapter 194: 185 The Doctor’s Secret Room 2

"Is that a computer?" I asked.

"Yeah, you... wait a second..."

Lu Chan, the girl, was about to continue when she realized something, then asked me with a strange expression, "What do you think it is?"

I told her exactly what I saw.

"You..." She seemed to lack even the energy to complain, "You..."

She took a deep breath and then said, "...you don’t happen to be able to see the secret materials inside the computer directly through those folders, can you?"

"It’s possible," I said. "Maybe there are clues we need inside. I’ll go take a look."

I walked over to the bookshelf, pulled out a folder, and looked down at it.

I had been pondering whether, since to Lu Chan this appeared to be "data from an encrypted computer," it might appear to me as "data written in cipher." My concern, however, was unnecessary. I could understand everything in here.

Unfortunately, this "understanding" meant that "I could understand every word," but "put together, I couldn’t understand a thing." In simple terms, these were indeed Dr. Silver Mask’s secret research materials, filled with professional jargon and data incomprehensible to an outsider like me. It felt like I was reading a highly advanced medical paper, leaving me dizzy and confounded.

At the same time, I also asked Lu Chan what she saw me doing. To her, it appeared that I was randomly tapping away at a keyboard paired with a computer, while the monitor displayed an incomprehensible mess of gibberish.

I returned the materials I couldn’t understand to the shelf, then pulled out new ones; upon finding those incomprehensible, I would put them back and take out others. This back-and-forth allowed me to find some materials I could understand.

Amongst the secret research documents, there were occasional memos and personal insights similar to those left by the researchers, interleaved with their sporadic grumbles written amid chaos. Through these, I caught a glimpse of the Human Bureau’s internal situation. However, much of it was old wine in new bottles, with some expressing the belief that the Human Bureau’s high-level and backers treaded too much on ethics, while others doubted whether the backers of the Human Bureau were official forces at all.

There was also a document "requesting the introduction of pregnant women and children as experimental subjects," possibly submitted by the same senior researcher I had killed. Not all researchers were like the young researcher hypnotized by Lu Chan, averse to unethical experimental methods. Some accepted inhumane human experiments as a "necessary measure in extraordinary times."

I faintly sensed similarities between their approach and the Transcendentalism Mountain that sought Mazao.

They were not unaware of more righteous paths, but pressure from various sides made them incredibly urgent. Urgency bred madness, and madness bred evil.

The evil leader was likely one of the reasons they became unscrupulous. In some of the records, I saw the marks of Ying Lingyun as the one with the highest authority. Not only did he manage this stronghold in the past, but as the lead scientist, he also shone brightly on the front lines.

"Where did Ying Lingyun’s scientific capabilities come from? ’Possibility avatars’?" I wondered. "Did he summon ’the self that became a scientist’ and then let his main body also receive that scientific knowledge... Is that possible?"

Lu Youxun, the source of the ’possibility avatars’ ability, never seemed to have demonstrated such a versatile talent.

Since one could summon avatars representing countless possibilities and inherit knowledge from these selves, Lu Youxun, as the original, should have become quite powerful, and this power shouldn’t have all been lost merely due to the absence of fighting strength.

"It’s possible, but I never really did that in the past," Lu Chan replied.

"Why not?" I inquired.

"Even if they are different possibilities of oneself, they are ultimately different personalities. Blindly absorbing those memories would cause the collapse of one’s own personality," she explained.

"Wouldn’t it be okay to just inherit knowledge?" I probed.

"It wouldn’t. Knowledge, no matter how objective, is also approached and digested from our subjective perspective, and during this process, personal biases are mixed in," she said. "Even scientific knowledge is like this—if you learn it in fragments, these biases might not be obvious. But once you attempt to integrate lots of knowledge into a system, the system itself carries a strong personal consciousness. If someone else carelessly absorbs it, mental instability ensues.

"In the past, I too summoned ’the self that became a scientist,’ and even synchronized with it through the consciousness network. But I deliberately chose not to absorb that scientific knowledge system. Because I consciously avoided it."

I said, "So, Ying Lingyun, he..."

"He went mad," she asserted.

So, Ying Lingyun had already become mentally unstable?

I grappled with this information while continuing to look for more materials on the shelves.

Maybe there would be records related to Changan, or clues about the apocalypse.

How they transformed humans into monsters, where Ying Lingyun got this apocalyptic technology... Since these were secret materials placed in the manager’s room, there might be secrets unknown even to the researchers.

Searching and searching, it seemed I had indeed stumbled upon some important documents.

However, they were not about the origins of mutant technologies, but a file named "Super Transformation People Plan."

The "Super Transformation People Plan" was a project established by the Human Bureau to develop Extraordinary Soldiers strong enough to counter the "Luo Mountain’s Super Demon Hunters" (also known as Great Success Rank), consuming the organization’s most resources since its founding.

This experimental plan had in total twelve subjects, and Chen Long was one of them. The senior levels of the Human Bureau seemed to have drawn inspiration from the code name "Chen Long," thus the other eleven subjects were also assigned code names corresponding to the Chinese zodiac, and the plan was thereby nicknamed the "Twelve Gods Plan."

The plan ultimately created two "Super Transformation People," yet it was declared a failure in the end.

One of the "Super Transformation People"—Chen Long—was already a distinguished figure among those who had achieved level. His becoming a Super Transformation Person, bolstered by the Twelve Gods Plan, could not provide the Human Bureau with useful experimental data to accomplish their goal of "giving ordinary people exceedingly strong Extraordinary Power." The reason he was initially chosen for the Twelve Gods Plan was merely as a safeguard, to prevent the project from being a complete disaster.

The other "Super Transformation Person" was code-named "Xu Gou," who should have been a failure like the other subjects. However, in the final stage of the experiment, Ying Lingyun implanted an unknown substance into him, leading to miraculous results.

This "unknown substance" received only a brief description in the documents as "an object resembling black jade."

No matter how I thought about it, that had to be the Divine Seal Fragment.

Xu Gou, implanted with the Divine Seal Fragment, gained power even Chen Long couldn’t contend with, and the Human Bureau even believed he had become a "Great Impermanence Qualifier"—but because this miracle relied on the Divine Seal Fragment, it also lacked reference value.

Moreover, Xu Gou had an extremely serious defect—he had to rely on a large quantity of drugs and external life-support equipment to sustain his life activities, and he had less than a year left to live.

What was even more fatal, he escaped from the Human Bureau not long afterward, and his life or death remains uncertain to this day.

When I just read the part about Xu Gou being implanted with the Divine Seal Fragment, I wondered if he might be the current Dr. Silver Mask. But now it seems I can dismiss that suspicion.

Additionally, from the content of these documents, it’s apparent that Ying Lingyun has collected more than one Divine Seal Fragment.

Lu Chan, the young girl, asked curiously, "How’s it going, any leads?"

"Wait, I’m still searching..."

Records related to Changan might not have been entered into the archives in time, or perhaps Ying Lingyun never intended to leave any records at all. Likewise, it seems that clues related to the apocalypse wouldn’t be here. The more I investigated, the more I felt that these secret documents belonged less to Ying Lingyun and more to Dr. Silver Mask.

Dr. Silver Mask obviously hadn’t synchronized all of Ying Lingyun’s memories—he seemed to be unraveling the secrets of his own origin as well.

For instance, he didn’t know what the original forms of all the monsters were, only certain that they must still be a living human. Luo Mountain speculated that the original must be "above the Great Success Rank," while Dr. Silver Mask’s hypothesis was even bolder—he believed the original was "a human above Great Impermanence."

Above Great Impermanence? Impermanence was already the pinnacle, so was there even such a thing as "above" that?

In the past, Dr. Silver Mask had also tried to inquire indirectly from Ying Lingyun about the original, but nearly to no avail. The only thing of value was Ying Lingyun apparently calling the "seed of the heart" the "Meng Zhang original seed" once.

Meng Zhang... according to my knowledge, that should be another name for one of the Four Symbols—the "Azure Dragon"...

I put the folder back in its place and took another one out. But just then, something unusual caught my attention.

It wasn’t that there was something odd about the folder I had taken out, but rather behind the bookshelf, I noticed the wall exhibited a strange color.

I immediately put the folder back in place and forcefully pulled the bookshelf stuck to the wall aside. Then, I saw what was hidden behind the bookshelf.

"Lu Chan, have you ever been in this director’s office before?" I asked.

The young girl, Lu Chan, answered, "I rushed in here during the jailbreak."

"Was this thing here at that time?" I asked.

"What did you see now?" she exclaimed in surprise.

Seems she couldn’t see it.

Yet I could see it all too clearly.

On the wall behind the bookshelf, there was a wooden door.