19, Clearance

Lee walked cautiously into the deep cave, his footsteps were light and soft, like a flexible cat, moving silently. The thick hooded cloak and the bandages all over his body kept his scent and body temperature from leaking out, which also made it difficult for the dangerous underground creatures that relied on their smell or infrared vision for hunting to find his existence.

He was holding a thick triangular steel pipe with sharp edges and point. The front end was ground very sharply. It could be swung and stabbed straight. It was a terrifying weapon.

The modified rifle and revolver were carried on the back and hidden under the cloak respectively. His revolver was powerful but poor in accuracy.

However, the power of this revolver could be doubled in cave passages.

The problem was that in this deep and quiet passage, the gunshots could travel very far, which was tantamount to telling monsters within a few kilometers that "I am coming".

Lee's eyes glowed with a faint green light, and the light kept changing as the ambient light dimmed, and the scenery in the passage became clearer and clearer.

This was the ability that appeared at the third level of Visual Enhancement in the Perception Domain, Low-Light Vision.

In this cave, several electric lights were arranged by Base N11, illuminating more than 100 meters near the base.

This was the project left over from the last exploration of the base.

The electric lights in the inner cave were destroyed, and the base wisely did not send additional personnel to repair and restore them.

But for Lee, who had Low-Light Vision, as long as there was a little light, he could see the surrounding scenery clearly.

Lee was now walking in the dark passage.

The occasional glowing moss in the passage and the faint glow of sewage was enough to make his Low-Light Vision work.

At a corner, Lee suddenly stopped in his tracks, shrunk back into the cloak, and slowly disappeared into the darkness.

There was a low rustling sound from the cave, and a ferocious-gopher one meter long came out. The disproportionately large nose holes on its head were constantly flaring towards the sky, and its small eyes were dim, seeming to have degenerated almost.

Ferocious-gophers and their cousins, the ground-dwelling dire-rats, were almost indistinguishable a decade ago, but now were almost divided into two species.

Lee, who was quietly crouching in the darkness, suddenly moved!

The triangular steel pipe pierced out like lightning, stabbed against the upper end of the ferocious-gopher's nose, pierced through the upper and lower jaws, and firmly nailed it to the ground.

The nose was the most crucial point of the ferocious-gopher. It screamed frantically. Its four short, thick, and sharp claws were desperately clawing the ground, the gravel splashed, and in a blink of an eye, it had dug a hole in the hard rock.

Lee held the upper end of the steel pipe tightly with his left hand, but his seemingly slender arm was as unshakable as a rock. The ferocious-gopher, whose vitals were badly injured, couldn't hold on for even a minute, its body convulsed violently, and then lay motionless on the ground.

Lee slowly pulled out the steel pipe, turned the ferocious-gopher over, and saw clearly that it was a female.

Male ferocious-gophers were used to acting alone, and when a female appeared, it was always followed by a male.

Lee quickly moved a few steps sideways, and stood in the center of the passage where the ferocious-gopher would appear. He squatted on the ground, and raised the steel pipe horizontally, aiming at the deep and dark passage.

Almost at the moment when he leveled the steel pipe, a gust of wind suddenly gushed out from the passage, and a thicker and more ferocious male gopher suddenly jumped out of the darkness, biting at him in the air!

The steel pipe remained motionless, and with the momentum of the ferocious-gopher, the sharp tip of the steel pipe penetrated deeply into the gopher's throat, passed through the internal organs, and almost broke through its anus.

Lee let his hand go, and took a few steps back quickly, with a light and quick posture, as if gliding on water.

With a click, the ferocious-gopher almost used all its strength to close its giant mouth, and bit hard on the handshake of the steel pipe. Although its incisors could gnaw through almost all rocks, they were still not as hard as this thickened steel. With the sound of clicking, the steel was immediately dented, and the male gopher's teeth were also shattered.

The male rat charged too hard, and after falling from the air, it slid several meters on the rough ground before rushing in front of Lee.

Lee raised his right leg and stepped on the male gopher's head. The male mouse squeaked and wailed and struggled, but it could not lift its head from the ground at all. As long as it exerted force, the body pierced by the steel pipe would feel unbearable pain.

Even though it was severely injured, the male ferocious-gopher still struggled for more than a minute before it stopped breathing.

Lee's beautiful eyebrows moved slightly.

To him, these ferocious-gophers were a little tougher than a few months ago, and this rate of mutation made him feel very uncomfortable.

Lee didn't plan to use the steel pipe that fell into the male gopher's body. He groped around the cave wall for a while and pulled out a wire.

This was the lighting wire installed by the base, which was now disused.

Lee cut off a two-meter-long section of the wire, and peeled off the insulation layer, exposing the tough alloy core inside.

He wrapped the two ends of the wire around his hands respectively, and continued walking into the darkness.

Even in a dark and rugged cave, Lee's green left eye and rich experience could identify the traces of the ferocious-gophers. It didn't take long for him to find the ferocious-gophers' lair.

There were more than 30 ferocious-gophers, large and small, in the nest. The big ones were almost adults, and the small ones had not yet opened their eyes. It could be seen that these gophers belong to three different litters. Judging from the three-month adulthood of ferocious-gophers, they could basically give birth to one litter a month.

"The fertility period has been shortened by another ten days." Lee thought silently, feeling more uncomfortable in his heart.

But his bad mood didn't affect him.

He used the alloy wire to trap a ferocious-gopher in the air, and with a pull and filck, the gopher immediately flew back, only with blood spurting from its neck. After hitting the cave wall and falling, it couldn't get up again.

The blood-sticky alloy wire brushed against the ground again, and seven or eight little gophers instinctively opened their mouths to bite.

However, the alloy wire vibrated slightly, and their heads were almost cut in half.

A minute later, the brood of ferocious-gophers was completely extinct.

Ferocious-gophers were creatures with a very strong sense of territoriality. With this litter of ferocious-gophers, there should be no second litter of gophers within one kilometer.

Lee took out a map, added the topography of the passage in the blank part on it, marked the location of the ferocious-gophers' nest, and put the map away carefully.

Walking a few hundred meters along the cave, Lee stopped at a cave-in.

Behind a pile of dirt, there was a hole that could only be passed by one person. On the other side of the hole was a subway passage that was as complicated and deep as a maze and full of unknown dangers.

Coming here meant that the 500 dallers bonus had fallen into his pocket, and on the other side of the cave, a genetic modification potion was tempting him.

Lee half-kneeled at the entrance of the hole, listening attentively.

The wind blowing from the subway passage was strong and weak, and there was a faint rustling sound inside.

The air was very polluted and the oxygen was very low, which was not suitable for ordinary human beings to survive.

This was also one of the reasons why Base N11 could not explore the subway passage in depth by itself.

Lee was certainly no ordinary human being. A person, who had a third-level ability in the Perception Domain and a second-level ability in Occult, whether he could still be regarded as a human being, even he himself didn't know.

After killing the brood of ferocious-gophers, Lee felt that the genes in his body were about to vibrate again.

He had accumulated three genetic evolutionary points, and maybe he could get a new evolutionary point by walking around the subway passage.

Evolutionary points were the common parlance of turbulent times. The so-called evolutionary point was actually the space left for new genes after gene vibration.

More evolutionary points meant more space, and also meant that it could withstand the injection of more powerful new abilities.

There were various ways to obtain evolutionary points, and most of the naturally generated evolutionary points were obtained for unknown reasons.

Normally, there were mainly two ways that humans could control: genetic modification potions and combat.

Of course, after having some evolutionary points, a specific genome needed to be obtained to form the corresponding ability.

Within each ability domain, there were a number of identified abilities.

However, more abilities were still in the fog.

The evolutionary points obtained through battles were often accompanied by new abilities, and most of the time, these abilities were different from known abilities.

Therefore, many fighters regarded their abilities as their greatest secret.

When two ability domainers met, if one killed the other, there would be a small chance of obtaining the dead person's ability.

So, ironically, in these turbulent times, killing did make people powerful.

Lee closed his eyes, and the faint rustling sound outlined a clear image of the living corpse in his mind.

They wandered aimlessly, their dark red eyes hungrily scanning everything around them.

Unlike the zombies that often appeared in novels of the old era, the living corpses were thin, flexible, and agile, and even moved much faster than humans. Their strong muscles and flexibility allowed them to easily climb and move on walls and even ceilings.

From a genetic point of view, living corpses could still be regarded as human beings, while those high-ranking fighters who had undergone multiple genetic modifications were farther away from pure human beings.

Fifty years had passed since the war, and many of the living corpses now belonged to the second or even the third generation.

They were faster, stronger, and better adapted to harsh environments than their parents.

Many of these living corpses living in subway passages had evolved Infrared Vision to adapt to the often dark environment.

Lee reconfirmed that there were no dangerous creatures clinging to the hole over there, then took out his revolver, lightly jumped into the subway passage, made another long jump, and walked quickly on the steel rails.

He moved fast, quietly, and never lost his balance on the narrow rails.

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