204: Chapter 203 Oh ho

Lin Feng crouched down and traced the seam with his finger.

The seam was very thin, and it didn't look like a natural crack. It appeared more like it had been cut by some kind of Sharp Weapon—the edges were smooth and the depth was uniform, identical to the severed vines at the entrance of the office building.

He tapped the concrete on both sides of the seam; the sounds were different.

The left side was solid, while the right side produced a hollow echo.

"There's a space underneath."

Lin Feng stood up, unsheathed the dragon slaying sword, inserted the tip into the seam, and gave it a gentle pry.

A half-meter square concrete slab was flipped up, revealing a pitch-black hole beneath.

The opening wasn't large, only enough for one person to pass through. A puff of stale air surged out from the hole, carrying a faint scent of disinfectant.

It wasn't the smell of ash and rust typical of ruins, but rather that specific, pungent chemical odor found in hospital corridors.

This smell was out of place in the Void Corridor—void energy erodes all organic matter, and volatile chemicals like disinfectant should have decomposed long ago. This suggested the area had been sealed off, completely isolated from the external void environment.

Xiao Jin lay on the edge of the opening, sticking its antennae inside to explore, then turned back and chirped twice at Lin Feng.

That meant—the treasure was down there, and it was big.

Lin Feng was in no hurry to go down.

He first laid a layer of perception barrier around the opening—this was a simplified version learned from Xiao Guang's Formations. While it didn't have the defensive power of the Six Harmonies Heaven-Sealing Array, it could serve as an early warning.

Then he let Xiao Jin go down first to scout the way.

The Void Holy Beetle was small and fast, and its treasure-hunting Talent was more acute than Elemental Perception in such enclosed spaces.

Xiao Jin dove into the hole without hesitation, its six golden legs crawling rapidly along the dark walls. In less than half a minute, it sent back a squeak—it was safe.

Lin Feng put away the dragon slaying sword and switched to the taixu sword—this sword had a suppressing effect on Void Creatures and was more suitable for this unknown, enclosed space.

He squeezed into the hole sideways and climbed down a narrow shaft.

The walls of the shaft were metal, with neatly arranged rivets remaining on the surface. There wasn't much rust, and every few meters there was an emergency light that had long since gone out.

This was clearly a man-made passage, not a random architectural fragment sucked into the Void Corridor by spatial folds.

Its structure had nothing to do with the office building's original elevator shafts; it was an independent vertical passage, like a secret entrance added later.

After climbing for about ten meters, he reached the end of the shaft.

Lin Feng landed on a metal platform, his footsteps producing a dull echo.

He raised his left hand, and a soft golden light lit up in his palm—the light orb from the Illumination Spell slowly rose, illuminating the surrounding space.

It was a massive underground laboratory.

The ceiling was at least seven or eight meters high, and the area was equivalent to a basketball court. The surrounding walls were covered in a layer of grayish-white fungal mat—the same material as the dark patterns on the vines outside the office building, but thicker and denser.

The fungal mat spread from the walls to the floor. Stepping on it felt slightly elastic, like walking on a rubber floor.

The smell of disinfectant was stronger here than at the entrance, mixed with an indescribable fishy-sweet scent.

Underneath this layer of fungal mat, one could vaguely see remnants of writing and warning signs on the walls. The font was archaic, with symbols resembling hazard warnings, but they were too blurred to read due to age.

The laboratory was filled with various equipment.

Against the walls were several rows of metal shelves, neatly stacked with glass containers—most were shattered, their contents having long since evaporated.

However, a few containers remained intact, with some kind of grayish-white biological tissue soaking inside.

Lin Feng approached one container and lightly tapped the glass with the tip of his sword.

The liquid inside swayed slightly, and the mass of grayish-white tissue followed suit—the next second, an eye suddenly snapped open on the surface of the tissue.

It was blood-red with a vertical pupil, exactly the same as the one Lin Feng had seen on that Fusion monster before.

The eye only opened for an instant before losing its luster, turning back into a mass of grayish-white dead meat.

But Lin Feng had seen it clearly—this tissue slice soaking in the jar shared the same origin as those Fusion monsters outside.

"These things weren't created recently."

Xiao Guang jumped down from his shoulder and walked over to another intact glass container to inspect it closely.

What was soaking in this container wasn't an eyeball, but a section of a tail. Its shape was highly similar to the Taotie tail-hook Lin Feng had seen before, just many times smaller.

The barb at the end of the tail floated slowly in the liquid, occasionally twitching as if some biological current still remained.

"The tissue activity is still there, but the cell walls have been completely permeated by void energy. In other words, these tissues were 'frozen' by void energy—when the laboratory was swallowed by the Void Realm, void energy suddenly flooded in, instantly solidifying all the biological tissues being cultured. They neither died nor continued to grow, remaining in this state ever since."

Xiao Guang turned around, looking at the dense rows of glass containers, his voice involuntarily lowering slightly.

"Lin Feng, this laboratory was still operational before it was swallowed by the Void Realm."

Lin Feng walked further inside along the metal shelves.

The central area of the laboratory was a row of reclining metal surgical beds with several sets of remains strapped to them—not the grayish-white empty shells left behind after a Void Creature dies, but actual corpses.

Some had already turned to bone, while others still had remnants of withered muscle tissue. Each set of remains bore varying degrees of stitching marks.

The skull of one had been replaced with something like the skull of a Void Single-Horned Dog, while the right arm of another had been transplanted with the arm blade of an Iron Bone Clan warrior.

All the corpses maintained their final positions in life—firmly tied to the surgical beds.

The hand bones of one were deeply embedded into the edge of the surgical bed, the fingertips having scratched shallow grooves into the metal surface—marks that would only be left by someone being dissected alive while fully conscious.

Beside the surgical beds were rows of operation tables scattered with various surgical instruments—scalpels, forceps, hemostats, and suture needles. Most were rusted, but a few scalpels still glinted with an ominous cold light under the Illumination Spell.

One scalpel was still stuck diagonally into a Void Stone Scorpion tail-hook that hadn't been removed in time. The blade was deeply embedded in the carapace, frozen in the position it held when that final surgery was interrupted years ago.

Beside the operation table was a massive experimental log desk.

The surface was covered in papers, most of which had been eroded into fragments by void energy, turning into grayish-white powder at the slightest touch.

However, under a corner weighed down by a key, an intact experimental log remained. The pages were yellowed, the ink had faded to a grayish-brown, and the handwriting was scrawled but still legible.

"The date is from over six years ago. Before the swallowing, a major experimental accident occurred, codenamed 'Eris'. The log mentions they used a specific genetic source to create a powerful stitched monster, but the monster went out of control. It used spatial abilities to tear open a massive spatial rift, causing part of the city to be pulled into a void fissure. The area where the laboratory is located was exactly the piece that was pulled in."

Lin Feng gently brushed away the rubble, leaned down to pick up the log, and tried to keep his voice steady.

His fingers tightened slightly on the paper, and he paused for a moment before continuing to read: The log says they had been trying to find and destroy this out-of-control monster but had failed so far. The final sentence mentions that if Eris wasn't found within a week, they would be forced to abandon the laboratory and seal off the entire city.

"They didn't have time to seal it."

Xiao Guang said softly, looking at the surrounding remains.

"The spatial rift expanded before they could seal it. It wasn't that they actively sent the city into the Void Realm to contain the monster; rather, the rift's swallowing speed was faster than their emergency protocols—the entire city was pulled directly into the Void Interlayer. This city didn't fall naturally. It was swallowed whole by a spatial rift torn open by some stitched monster."

Lin Feng put the experimental log into his void mithril ring.

He now knew how this Dungeon came to be—this city, numbered ED-003, was a coastal city just like Donghai City and had once truly existed somewhere on Earth.

Over six years ago, a stitching experiment codenamed 'Eris' went out of control, creating a monster with spatial abilities.

That monster tore open something that shouldn't have been torn, dragging the entire city along with all its residents into the Void Interlayer.

The city ruins, streets, office buildings, and the researchers working against the clock inside—all became specimens for Void Creatures to hunt.

And that out-of-control monster had still not been found.

But there was still one problem that didn't make sense.

If this laboratory was a human research institution before being swallowed by the Void Realm, what was it researching? The place was piled with organ tissues from different races—human Explorers, Iron Bone Clan warriors, Taotie, Void Stone Scorpions. Numerous unrelated biological traits were crammed into the same operating room.

This didn't look like normal scientific research; it looked more like someone was purposefully collecting genes from every species they could contact, trying to stitch together a weapon that surpassed the limits of a single species. He had never seen the words "Stitching Laboratory" before, but standing here among these surgical beds and glass containers, a scene he had once witnessed inexplicably surfaced in his mind—Mount Dashu, that underground cave, those Void Beasts contaminated by the heart of darkness, and those mutated tissues soaking in containers.

The equipment in that cave wasn't exactly the same as here, but that mixture of disinfectant and fishy-sweet scent was an unexpected match.

At the time, he was just a newcomer who had recently undergone Awakening and thought it was just an isolated incident.

Looking back now, although that laboratory on Mount Dashu was much smaller than this one, the layout style was remarkably similar.

If these two laboratories were built by the same group of people, then they had been researching these things for much longer than he imagined, and the distribution was much wider.

Master had said that the pressure on the Void Frontier had been increasing over the years, with alien races like the Panzi Race and Iron Bone Clan eyeing Earth covetously.

This city had been swallowed by the Void Realm for several years, and the scope of this accident was still being sealed off by the state in the form of an uncleared Dungeon.

The occasional mutation events in the low-level Dungeons of the Old City District, Mount Dashu, and Donghai City—he had always thought they were just accidents.

But the laboratory before him forced him to rethink these so-called "accidents."

Alien races were trying to Breakthrough the frontier defenses from the outside—that was an external threat. Meanwhile, some humans were secretly researching alien tissues, stitching alien and human genes together in an attempt to create some more powerful species.

He used his sword to gently brush aside a piece of fungal mat, revealing an ID plate engraved on the metal floor—ED-003.

It was exactly the same as the mission prefix in Chu Han's notebook, and it also matched the small city ID number printed under the Explorer Association emblem on the cover of his parents' diary.

He finally knew that this wasn't just a place to find clues about his parents.

Perhaps the entire matter had, from the very beginning, far exceeded the scope of what any single Explorer, Family, or even city could handle.