155: Chapter 155 Human Cockroach Experiments Discovered Underground

Jacob and William also spoke up one after another, offering brief additions regarding the strategic suggestions in the assessment report and how to demonstrate their loyalty and capability to Zeta Star in the future.

Just as they were still whispering about how Grand Commander Nailong would approve these temporarily selected reserve agents for Zeta Star,

Rockefeller III suddenly raised his voice and issued an order to all the armed personnel around who were still counting casualties and seizing documents:

"Everyone! Immediately split up and search every compartment, every archive, and every sealed room in the entire underground base of the estate that might be used to imprison living beings!"

"His Highness, the Fourth Prince Prince Dao Dun of Zeta Star! Alive, I want to see him; dead, I want to see his corpse!"

Samuel, Isabelle, Jacob, and William were all simultaneously snapped back to reality by this order.

Samuel even slapped his forehead with the back of his hand.

The Fourth Prince Prince Dao Dun was the fundamental reason they had stormed the Crane Family estate today.

The appearance of the Source God just now had been too shocking, pulling everyone's attention toward Zeta Star and Grand Commander Nailong, so much so that they had indeed forgotten this matter:

Whether Prince Dao Dun was still here had not yet been found.

Rockefeller III pulled his hand back from the commando captain's shoulder, watching the remaining armed personnel scattered around—some still struggling to fully process the lingering tremors from the Source God's recent departure—restore order and regroup into position.

In the corridor, the dense yet orderly sound of military boots marching forward rang out once again.

Only then did he turn his head to look at Samuel, his tone returning to its usual calm and precise manner:

"The Source God is a monitoring core composed of nine-dimensional atoms; she has no physical form."

"Having no physical form means she can see where His Highness Prince Dao Dun is being held, but she cannot reach out to pull him out."

"Telling us the weakness of the nano-core and trapping Solomon in an illusion for us to kill was all she could do within her authorized scope."

"She told us: Prince Dao Dun's location is not within her jurisdiction."

"So the rest is our business."

"Right now, we are still in the assessment period."

Samuel lowered the hand he had just slapped against his forehead, letting it hang at his side. After a few seconds of silence, he finally let out a heavy breath and nodded.

Isabelle did not say another word; she simply tightened the straps of her bulletproof cloak with her fingertips and personally led her team to search deeper into the underground base.

Jacob and William also turned around and quickened their pace in different directions.

...

The underground base of the Crane Family estate covered an area far larger than the surface estate itself.

Extending downward from the main mansion's basement entrance, the entire bedrock layer had been hollowed out into a multi-layered complex labyrinth, with neatly arranged research compartments, archives, sample cold storage rooms, and closed experimental zones lining both sides of every corridor.

Large numbers of armed personnel dispersed into various rooms, quickly searching every corner behind every door.

Those that couldn't be opened were blown open with directional explosives.

Those with electronic locks were forcibly hacked using signal jammers.

All drawers, filing cabinets, cold storage cabinets, and wall-mounted safes were pried open one by one.

Solomon was dead; there was nothing left in the entire estate that could threaten the five leaders.

Rockefeller III, Samuel, Isabelle, Jacob Rothschild, and William Vanderbilt V therefore no longer waited in the atrium, but instead walked personally into the depths of the underground base, slowly patrolling between the various corridors and compartments.

The first to let out a cry of shock was an armed squad closest to Rockefeller III and Samuel.

It was a suffocating, muffled sound instinctively squeezed from their chests after having their throats constricted by the sight before them.

A commando standing at the doorway staggered back two steps, his back hitting the corridor wall, his finger trembling as he pointed into the room and shouted into his communicator:

"My God! In here... in here, it's all..."

Hearing this, Rockefeller III and Samuel quickly walked to the doorway of that room.

Standing side by side in the doorway, they both saw the scene inside the room.

Over a dozen huge reinforced glass containers were neatly lined up on both sides of the room, each nearly as tall as a person, filled with a pale yellow low-temperature tissue preservation fluid.

A corpse was submerged in each container.

Below the neck, these corpses were entirely human bodies.

The shoulders, chest, abdomen, legs, and arms all belonged to standard adult human males, with well-proportioned muscle lines, and the skin appeared deathly pale in the preservation fluid.

But above the neck...

There was no human face.

In its place was something resembling a cockroach's head.

But this head was much larger than any insect on Earth.

The width of the compound eyes alone occupied nearly half the area of the entire face.

Mouthparts replaced the jaw, and layered feeding appendages floated slightly in the preservation fluid.

It did indeed resemble a cockroach.

But looking closely, every detail told the observer that this was an extraterrestrial existence that did not belong to Earth's biological classification system at all.

Rockefeller III stood in front of the container, slowly clasping his hands behind his back, remaining silent.

He had seen too many things in his life:

He hadn't even turned his head when threatened at gunpoint by warlords deep in the Congo mines.

He had been able to smile and finish checking a complete set of investment terms even when a defecting KGB agent spat at him.

He had even seen a pile of glass eyeball specimens in his father, Old Rockefeller's, private safe—specimens confiscated from Himmler's private laboratory years ago that had never been turned over to the authorities.

Those visually shocking images still occasionally drifted back to him even now.

But at this moment, what he felt from the glass container before him was not sensory stimulation.

It was a cold sense of alienation that went deeper than the senses.

It did not look like the horror art pieces that humans had been self-devising and self-torturing with since ancient times; it looked like an anomalous evolutionary branch that could never grow from any natural evolutionary path on Earth.

Samuel stood side by side with him, tucking his still-trembling right index finger completely into the seam of his suit pocket, his jaw clenched tight, and said in a low voice:

"These things are not from Earth."

The surrounding armed personnel were all battle-hardened elites.

They had seen severed limbs and viscera blown apart by artillery shells on the battlefield.

They had seen human silhouettes burned to charcoal by incendiary bombs.

They had seen every kind of bloody destruction that conventional weapons could inflict on the human body.

But at this moment, standing before these glass containers, they each turned pale.

Some subconsciously lowered their muzzles toward the floor.

Some took half a step back and then stopped.

Some were whispering the same vague prayer over and over again.

They had long been immune to bloody scenes.

But this eerie humanoid form, quietly soaking in pale yellow liquid, was more chilling to the core than any severed limb on the battlefield.