Player Reload
Chapter 347 - 319 Mendes

Chapter 347: Chapter 319 Mendes

It’s over.

The lion’s head naturally dissipated. Li Cheng quickly stepped forward and swept a glance. The Wing Membrane Demon couldn’t be said to be intact; at the very least, it had been reduced to ashes.

The lion’s roar directly corroded a two-and-a-half-meter-diameter pit into the alloy floor, leaving a layer of dark red human-shaped shadow at the bottom—the fragmented flesh and blood of the demon had fused with the metal.

Without a word, Li Cheng fetched two large barrels of strong acid from the warehouse and poured them all into the pit to prevent the demon’s flesh and blood from regenerating.

Sssss——

A thick mist rose from the strong acid, and only then did Li Cheng have time to turn around and look at Talisman Nail, complimenting, "Your brain works pretty fast, very good job, making the demon’s soul spin."

"I was betting on it."

Talisman Nail, lying on the ground from excessive blood loss and pale-faced, managed to squeeze out a wry smile, "Luckily, I won the bet."

From the previous negotiations, it seemed the demon understood human speech. Therefore, Talisman Nail deliberately shouted the wrong time when it called out earlier,

saying the lion king portrait required four minutes to complete instead of the actual three, successfully deceiving the Wing Membrane Demon.

"Say a bit less."

Zhao Zijing, panting heavily, used telekinesis to stitch up the severed artery in Talisman Nail’s arm and then shouted to the others, "Is everyone still alive?"

"I’m okay."

A weak voice came from the corner, where the large Earth Element, originally two stories high, was now only one and a half meters tall. If Bai Jixiong reverted to human form, his injuries would immediately be fatal, so he could only maintain his Earth Element form.

"Cough cough, I’m alive too."

Father Andre coughed violently. The Saint George’s Shroud could only prevent death but did not heal injuries.

Thus, Andre’s skin remained charred black from arc burns, turning him from a white man into a black man.

Among the remaining people, Camus was confirmed dead, and Dorling Gray was unconscious, his breathing weaker than his exhalation. Zhao Zijing poured a bottle of Magic Potion into his mouth, fulfilling his duty.

Buzz!

With the demon dead and no longer draining the building’s power, the room lights gradually turned on, and the ventilation systems began to operate, emitting a droning hum.

The elevator also rose from downstairs, and a crab-shaped robot walked out of the elevator, projecting a three-dimensional hologram of Dr. Noah.

"You killed that monster? I knew you could do it."

Dr. Noah’s tone was relieved, but his expression remained unchanged, "Now, there’s one last monster in the high tower to eliminate. Kill it, and you can activate the Space Jump Engine to travel to the new world.

And you can complete your mission and return to Earth..."

"Don’t talk about useless things,"

Li Cheng interrupted, "Where are you? Before we see you in person, it’s hard to trust your words entirely.

The real persons here should be real people. Don’t use the real photos of Zhang Sanfeng, Qiu Chuji, and Zhang Daoling to fool us."

Since entering the high tower, Dr. Noah had always kept hidden, using the urgency of the situation as a reason to drive the players to hunt the Mutated Monsters.

Although the demon was now dead, before its death, it provided information contradicting Dr. Noah’s claims—that the high tower itself would not slow down the collapse but would instead accelerate it.

"..."

Dr. Noah paused in silence, then calmly said, "I’ve read the gravitational data of the floors in the high tower. Actually, we’ve already met in the embryo cold storage room; I’m one of the frozen meats there."

"Huh?"

Bai Jixiong instinctively got up and exclaimed, "Wait, you’re already dead?"

"Physically dead."

Noah calmly said, "Around two years ago, I too was infected by a mutated bacterium from a mutant that infiltrated the high tower. To avoid dying as a monster, I uploaded my consciousness to the cloud, becoming the high tower’s AI,

and stored my intact somatic cells as cloned embryos in the cold storage room."

"..."

Bai Jixiong felt his head spin, "Wait, didn’t you create the bacterium? How could you get infected yourself? And why mention such an important matter just now?"

"The outside’s wild environment is a natural petri dish for bacteria, with mutation rates beyond any computer’s calculation limits. Even I can’t develop vaccines for every strain."

Noah said, "This does not affect our deal or the final outcome, so it’s not considered malicious concealment."

Bai Jixiong and the others looked grim, but Li Cheng quickly accepted and asked with interest, "How many clone embryos did you make? Have you considered gene editing or sexual reproduction?

When I read ’Romance of the Three Kingdoms,’ I always regretted that Cao Cao killed Lv Bu. If he had let the invincible Lv Bu breed, maybe we could have produced divine Lv Bu, boundary Lv Bu, tall-stemmed Lv Bu, short-stemmed Lv Bu, round-grained Lv Bu, wrinkled-grained Lv Bu, grey-seeded Lv Bu, and white-seeded Lv Bu."

??? Are you talking about peas?

Cao Cao was styled Mengde, not Mendel, you know.

Bai Jixiong and the others’ expressions instantly turned to helplessness, and Dr. Noah’s projection paused for two or three seconds, seemingly retrieving the entire ’Romance of the Three Kingdoms’ from a database. "I preserve my embryos because my brain is a treasure for all humanity. As for sexual reproduction, it is unreliable."

Super geniuses are somewhat like a card game, with genes playing an influencing but not deciding role. Einstein had two sons: one became a hydraulic engineering professor, and the other a violinist with mental illness.

In comparison, clone embryos are more stable—at least the brain structure is less likely to change significantly.

"Our deal remains valid. The last mutated monster is in the engine room on the 198th floor of the high tower. Now that power is restored, you can go directly there by elevator."

"Okay."

Li Cheng glanced at the other players. The dead were dead, the wounded were wounded, and he casually said, "You guys stay here. I’ll go up and take a look."

In the previous predictions of the ’Suicide Notebook,’ potential death scenarios all occurred in the embryo storage room with the macaque and on the same floor as the demon.

In other words, there should be no more dangerous death traps for the remaining mission time.

"I’ll go with you."

Zhao Zijing shook himself unsteadily to his feet, using telekinesis to move the seriously injured ones into the elevator, descending.

The elevator suddenly stopped at the middle floor. After a while, Talisman Nail’s voice came through Zhao Zijing’s walkie-talkie—they had returned to the embryo cold storage room and found Dr. Noah’s human form frozen corpse among the embers.

They verified the hologram’s claims.

Li Cheng nodded, "Alright, Zhao Zijing and I will go to the 198th floor. You guys go back to the underground parking lot. Remember, don’t lick the frozen corpse with your tongue, or you’ll get stuck."

??? We’re not three-year-old kids.

In the helpless silence on Talisman Nail’s end, Li Cheng and Zhao Zijing took another elevator, heading upstairs.