great-warnovel Chapter 324 Lin Chuxue Awakens
Chapter 324 Lin Chuxue Awakens
Outside the railway bridge, the strange tide turned.
The multi-legged beast that was charging ahead stopped biting the edge of Zhao Leiguang's shield and turned to run towards the old city hospital.
They carried blood bags, organ boxes, and rolls of human skin files on their backs.
Shen Xinglin sheathed his lance and scanned the retreating monster horde.
"The command center was taken down, and they were reassigned to different tasks."
Lu Yan's voice came through the team channel.
"The gift from Europe has arrived."
"The monsters are collecting materials; Ward Six is about to activate."
Zhao Leiguang turned the shield around, blocking the other side of the bridge arch.
"Old Shen and I are supposed to stay here?"
"Guard the railway bridge and prevent the transport convoy from passing."
"Xiao Qianyu, Su Yunqing, return to defend the transfer line."
"Wen Yue, Qin Wuyi, come with me into the old city."
Lu Yan closed the tactical board and stepped into the ruins.
The blood film on the outer wall of the old city hospital bulged even faster.
The vascular patterns beneath the membrane climb from the base of the wall to the roof, contracting every few seconds, like some organ making its final swallow.
Wen Yue pressed down on the World-Destroying Thunder Crossbow and walked to Lu Yan's right.
Qin Wuyi carried a canvas bag and spun the array plate halfway in his palm.
"Something underground is moving."
"Beneath the hospital's foundation, the coordinates keep sliding downwards."
Lu Yan stopped in his tracks.
"How much did you ski?"
Qin Wuyi placed the main plate on the ground.
The route map of the abandoned pipeline network in the old city is laid out on the board. The hospital foundation is marked with six underground floors, and the floors below the fifth floor are all solid rock strata.
At this moment, the rock strata are empty.
Below the sixth layer, there is an unmarked blank area with coordinates extending in all directions and the boundaries are still expanding.
"The floors below the fifth floor are all newly built."
"The flesh and blood array is being dug downwards."
Lu Yan looked towards the main building of the hospital.
"Where do all the coordinates point?"
"Same location. Below the sixth floor."
The three people entered the inner side of the hospital's outer wall along the sewage ditch.
The blood membrane didn't stop them; the patrolling multi-legged beast crawled past them, its mouthparts closed, and it slipped into the crack in the wall.
Wen Yue scanned both sides of the corridor with the crossbow scope.
"Get to know us."
"The membrane recognizes the blood imprint, not the person."
Lu Yan walked to the morgue's freight elevator shaft.
The steel cable was still sending things down, and a layer of blood clots on the surface of the cable was scraped off, revealing new wear marks underneath.
Something came up from below.
Qin Wuyi placed the six array plates into the well wall.
The array pattern drilled underground along the steel cable, and when it encountered the boundary of the sixth layer, the coordinates began to slip.
"The array cannot lock it in place."
"The spatial rules of the target area are constantly changing. I fix a point, and new ones grow next to it."
Lu Yan sent the Void Disc into the well.
Dozens of thin lines were extracted from the disc, and these lines drilled deeper into the energy supply lines of the flesh and blood array.
The buildings below the sixth floor are not of ordinary building structure.
It is a folded space stretched out by the laws of flesh and blood, with each power line connected to the blood membrane and patrol units on the ground.
The entire hospital is like a living organ, and Ward 6 is its stomach.
Six underground floors.
Lin Chuxue opened her eyes.
The ceiling was painted with faded suns and clouds; the paint had peeled off, revealing the yellowed cement underneath.
There was a wooden horse in the corner, with one of its legs broken off and wrapped with tape three times.
The ground is covered with tiny blood vessels that emerge from the base of the walls and converge in the center of the room along the seams between the floor tiles.
Her blood-soaked wails were locked in a transparent isolation cabinet at the other end of the room.
Through the cabinet door, the blood-red patterns on the staff were pressed into a dark red, as if something was pressing down on its throat.
Lin Chuxue propped herself up on the ground and sat up; there was a swollen lump on the back of her head.
She remembered taking Lin Xi away from the medical station and following the trail of blood into the old city's sewage ditch.
Just as I approached the entrance to the sixth ward, I was struck hard on the back of the neck.
When she woke up again, Lin Xi was already sitting by the window.
The girl's ankle was once again encased in the broken rusted chain, the links embedded in the edge of the old wound, the scabs and rust stuck together.
Lin Xi didn't look at her; her fingers were gripping the edge of the windowsill.
"You're awake."
Lin Chuxue did not answer, her gaze sweeping around the room.
Children's rehabilitation room.
The wall is covered with a hand-drawn picture from ten years ago. The sun in the crayon drawing is missing half, and there are crooked numbers written next to the clouds.
Each painting is placed under a doorplate, with a different name engraved on it.
A surveillance monitor was mounted on the wall at the other end of the room, and the screen was still lit.
Lin Chuxue stood up and walked to the monitor.
In the playback footage, she was lying on the ground in the sewage ditch, surrounded by three people in white coats.
One of them raised a scalpel, the tip pointing at her throat.
A person walks in from the edge of the frame.
It was taller than the other three, with gauze wrapped around its left shoulder, and old blood seeping through the gauze.
It was dressed in Lin Jianguo's human skin, with stitches running from its forehead to its chin, and a faded crystal core embedded in its chest.
It looked down at the unconscious Lin Chuxue and raised its hand.
It was not an attack.
It pushed the three people in white coats aside, bent down and lifted Lin Chuxue up from the ground.
The monitor wasn't picking up any audio, but its mouth was moving.
Lin Chuxue stared at the screen.
The incident log then pops up from the bottom of the screen.
[Practicing medicine with a physical body triggered a kinship protection response; target changed to Level 1 complete capture, dismantling prohibited.]
Lin Chuxue's finger stopped on the edge of the screen.
"Family protection response".
She read those six words aloud, the last syllable lingering in her throat.
The human skin belonging to the father inside the blood gate left an instruction in the evolved human's system.
It did not completely lose what Lin Jianguo left behind.
Lin Xi turned her head from the window.
"Sister, you shouldn't have come."
"The life support here is connected to your Blood Mage Mark."
Lin Chuxue turned around.
Lin Xi pointed to the vein patterns in the corner of the wall.
Blood vessels emerged from the cracks in the floor tiles, crawled along the wall into the isolation cabinet, and wrapped around the wailing staff in the pool of blood.
"Three thousand incubation chambers, all powered by your imprint."
"You forcibly released Blood Explosion in the room, causing an energy imbalance as detected by the system."
"The first to stop breathing were the children."
Lin Chuxue lowered her head and placed her palms on the ground.
The veins pulsed beneath her hand, their rhythm matching her pulse.
She tried to probe the door lock with the faint bloodstains.
The moment the bloodstain touched the lock cylinder, three short electronic alarms sounded from next door.
The door lock did not engage, and the heart rate readings in the three adjacent culture chambers simultaneously dropped.
Lin Chuxue withdrew her spell.
The heart rate reading stopped and did not continue to drop.
She clenched her fists, her knuckles tapping on the floor tiles.
Footsteps echoed down the corridor.
It wasn't the rubber-soled shoes of the evolved beings; it was the sound of dragging, the heels scraping against the floor tiles, each step leaving blood in its wake.
Their footsteps stopped in front of the door.
The door lock turned on its own.
The door was pushed open from the outside.
A man dressed as Lin Jianguo stood at the door.
The old wound on its left shoulder was still there, the gauze was soaked with blood, and the light from the crystal core on its chest was dimmed.
It clutched a string of blood-stained children's nameplates in its hand, the nameplates clanging against each other with a soft, rustling sound.
It didn't call her "First Snow".
It lowered its head and placed the doorplate on the low cabinet beside the door.
[Child, the core issue has been addressed.]
Now, it's your turn to open the door for them.
Lin Chuxue looked at it.
The stitches on the human skin stretched into an arc under the light, and beneath the arc, Lin Jianguo's old scars clung to the edge of the crystal core.
She didn't move.
The electronic screen at the other end of the corridor lit up.
Platinum-gold light spilled from the edge of the screen, and the energy supply patterns of the high-level divine core spread across the entire wall along the veins.
The core did not enter the culture chamber.
It was sent through the door opposite the room—a door that had never appeared on the hospital's blueprints.
There was no number on the door, only a faded family photo pasted on it.
In the photo, two little girls with short braids are standing in front of a birthday cake.
Outside the old city hospital, on Lu Yan's tactical board, the Void Disc revealed the core flow to the destination.
"Not in the culture chamber."
Wen Yue lowered the crossbow bolt.
"Where?"
Lu Yan looked at the coordinates of the door marked "Family Observation Door" on the board.
"It wants Lin Chuxue to open the door herself."
Qin Wuyi's array plate was still stuck at the sixth layer boundary, and the coordinates kept slipping.
"I can't control this area; the rules are constantly changing."
"With each change, another door appears on Lin Chuxue's side."
Su Yunqing's voice came from the medical station.
"The three thousand children on the sixth basement level are still alive."
"If the power supply is cut off, the medical station will not be able to cope."
Wen Yue pressed the last high-explosive grenade into the crossbow slot.
"Not going to blow it up?"
"Don't blow it up."
Lu Yan retrieved the Void Disc and took a step towards the Well Path.
"First fix the coordinates, then break down the flow direction."
"If it wants to open the door, let it open it."
"Let's go in together."