Chapter 4 Prototypes

At 7 p.m., on the outskirts of Qiayang City, lay an abandoned tech park.

A section of unfinished road disappeared into the ground at the park's main entrance.

Six uncompleted buildings stood desolate among the overgrown weeds of the barren land.

The tallest one had only reached nine stories.

A black SUV rolled over the weeds and gullies, driving into the underground parking lot of the nine-story unfinished building.

In the passageway, blue lights lit up in response, and the vehicle continued to the furthest elevator before stopping.

Ruan Yu got out of the car, verified her iris, and then activated the elevator, pressing the buttons for the second and sixth floors simultaneously.

The elevator ascended slowly, and by the time she had touched up her makeup, she had arrived at the eighth floor.

Ruan Yu stepped out of the elevator, where a researcher holding a tablet computer had long been waiting at the elevator's entrance.

This park was a relic of yesteryear.

However, under the intervention of the Sethiyan Federation, domestic traitor forces began to rise, with reformist leaders successively assassinated by unidentified assassins.

Four years earlier, something from beyond the Earth had fallen in conservative territory and had attracted the attention of various international pharmaceutical companies and the national powers behind them.

Tiantai Pharmaceutical had come to this small country south of the East Continent four years ago, purchased this long-abandoned park, and took the lead in conducting research on the fallen object.

While the exterior of the park remained in a state of disrepair, a series of renovations had been carried out inside the building.

All entrances and windows on the floor were sealed with military-grade aluminum sheets, accessible only by this elevator.

The lobby was filled with piles of expensive equipment, with many researchers dressed in white lab coats bustling about.

"Come look at this body! You definitely wouldn't expect something like this to happen!" The researcher pulled down his mask—it was a West Soil person.

"Oh? Hans, I hope this time it truly surprises me. Tiantai has made a big bet on the object 091," Ruan Yu said.

Hans led Ruan Yu past the throngs of scientific personnel to a corner of the room.

On the operating table lay the corpse of a man with dark skin and a bare chest.

This was the man who Wei Tianyang had beaten to death on the construction site—he was missing half of his head, and his body was still covered in mud and cement.

Surrounding the body were screens of various sizes, displaying a multitude of data that Ruan Yu couldn't understand.

Ruan Yu didn't need to understand those—she only needed a result.

"So, what is the ability of object number 91? Do you have a conclusion?" Ruan Yu asked.

"Super strength. A single punch has roughly the power of ten tons," Hans said with a smile.

Ruan Yu tilted her head, silent for a moment.

"Is that it?" she asked.

"The subject, number 1202, is severely malnourished; if it were a healthy adult…" Hans added.

Ruan Yu cut him off, "Hans, that's not enough."

She sighed, turned to walk to the side, and took out a pack of cigarettes from her handbag, lighting one for herself.

"Perhaps with a regular army, the strength could be further improved…" Hans caught up, finishing his earlier thought.

Ruan Yu, exhaling smoke and holding a cigarette between two fingers, stood with arms crossed next to a white machine.

The smoke streamed out from between her lips, and Hans saw disappointment and loss of patience in her expression.

"Damn it, this is far from enough…" she shook her head.

"Out of 1202 test subjects, the survival rate for one week is only 1%, yet this ability probably doesn't even reach the Parallel Dual Triangle Level,"

Ruan Yu continued, her words tinged with frustration.

"The countries south of the East Continent will soon become a war zone, and when that time comes, this place will turn into a competitive arena for super special forces."

"If we still can't produce a convincing product, Tiantai Pharmaceutical will abandon our team..."

"A punch with a force of 10 tons is far less useful than a bullet, which is why our previous beast project was rejected."

As Ruan Yu spoke, he stuffed his cigarette butt back between his lips.

"Of course, I'm aware of our team's predicament, that's exactly why I'm excited. The flesh from the fallen object 091 has brought us such a high test subject mortality rate, it's not just about packing a punch with 10 tons of force..." Hans wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"Oh? Why didn't you say so earlier?" Ruan Yu's eyes lit up.

"You didn't give me the chance," replied Hans.

The two came back to the side of the operating table.

Hans directed Ruan Yu to take a close look at the head wound on the corpse.

The immense kinetic energy had blown off half of the poor person's head, completely caving in the left cheekbone, dislocating the jaw, and causing the eye socket to swell up significantly.

Yet, the eerie part was that the muscles exposed at the torn wound, which looked like dried-up, black, rotten flesh, were oozing out a black, tar-like substance mixed with blood.

Moreover, the black tar had even burned a thumb-sized hole in the cheekbone, through which one could directly see a portion of the upper jawbone inside the mouth.

"Did you treat the wound and cut away some of the tissue?" Ruan Yu asked, frowning.

"No, we didn't," Hans said with a smile. "Subject No. 1202's punch didn't just shatter his skull, the damage continued to devour him afterward."

"Oh? Like sulfuric acid?" Ruan Yu leaned in closer to have a detailed look.

"No, no, this isn't a dissolution phenomenon. This is, consumption! Those withered tissue structures didn't transform into water or anything else, they just, completely disappeared," Hans said with a smile.

"Disappeared?" Ruan Yu's interest was piqued.

"Annihilation. True annihilation. A complete erasure of matter," Hans explained.

"This is very similar to the death pattern of subject No. 1201 before. Within a week after they were injected with blood from specimen 091, they all exhibited varying degrees of disappearance in limbs, organs, and internal organs, which was also the cause of their death," Hans added.

"While the rate of annihilation is somewhat slow... but if the ability brought by 091 includes super strength plus the substantive annihilation of matter..." Ruan Yu muttered to himself.

A single punch could gravely injure the target, while also causing continuous erosion...

"Believe me, 091 is anything but ordinary," Hans persisted.

"Is this annihilation effect specific to humans? If it works on metal, concrete, alloys, and so on, and if, the rate of annihilation could be expedited... You know what I mean?" Ruan Yu got serious, flicking off some ash from his cigarette.

If possible, the superpower special forces born from the 091 project could dismantle tanks with their bare hands.

This ability might even be classified as the Parallel Dual Triangle Level.

"I need a larger number of test subjects, and also the cooperation of No. 1202," Hans said with a smile.

"This is Chicken Snake Country, human life is cheap here. As for No. 1202, I've scheduled him for a basic checkup tomorrow," Ruan Yu pondered.

"Since you just saw No. 1202 today, how was his condition?" Hans inquired.

"Jumping around lively, to be honest, I wasn't hopeful about him at first. It would've been nice if he had been an orphan," Ruan Yu said while lighting another cigarette.

"How much money did you promise him?" Hans asked again.

"Why do you care about that? No matter how much I promised, I wasn't planning on giving it to him. Besides, 1000 Langkes isn't that much," Ruan Yu laughed.

"1000 Langkes?! Just 1000 Langkes?! And you're not even planning to give him that?!" Hans was astonished.

"What? You're feeling sorry for him now?" Ruan Yu inquired.

"Not exactly... It's just that I suddenly feel like I'm a rich man," Hans chuckled.

"Hans, get ready for tomorrow's tests. If he meets our expected standards, upgrade him to 'Prototype'," Ruan Yu said with a smile.

"Of course I know, I can hardly wait ~ hahaha..." Hans said, rubbing his hands together eagerly.