Chapter 223: Qinghai Mystery Domain PART 1

The four of them followed the lynx with trepidation, walking deeper into the corridor. The lynx led them into a room, and sure enough, the room began to rotate again. After passing through three such rotating rooms, when they stood in the final room, light gradually appeared before them as the room turned, and a spacious underground chamber slowly revealed itself.

When the room finished rotating, all four were stunned by the scene before them.

It was an underground chamber even larger than the room they had stayed in when they first entered the passage. The light in the underground chamber was blindingly bright, not from flames but from electric lights. After being in darkness for hours, their eyes couldn’t immediately adjust to such brightness.

The underground chamber was filled with various equipment: computers, generators, laboratory tables, liquid oxygen tanks, and even a small helicopter. On the laboratory tables were some grotesquely mutated creatures that defied description.

This was clearly a laboratory—crude, but obviously still operational.

The four remained standing in the room for a long time, unable to step out, speechless at everything before them.

At that moment, a creature emerged from behind the generator. They couldn’t describe what this creature was. If they had to pick out features from him, he resembled a human most closely—a middle-aged man in his forties. He was about two meters tall, his body covered with thick hair. His upper body had six arms arranged in three pairs, each pair different: one thick and strong, one long and flexible, one slender and dexterous. His two legs were sturdy and powerful, with enormous feet, making him look like a six-armed ape. Most shocking of all was his head—this “person” had a massive head completely disproportionate to his body size. The head was not only huge but also grotesquely terrifying. His face remained the size of an ordinary human’s, but from the hairline up, it had swollen several times larger like rising dough. Unlike the thick body hair covering him, only a few sparse tufts of hair remained on his scalp. The swollen head made his scalp unnaturally transparent—so transparent you could see the blood vessels and bulging veins beneath.

Cong Xia felt somewhat nauseated by this “person’s” appearance, and at the same time, he sensed that the puppet jade was on this person.

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Mbl “rlapsd” oyzjle shla okvb bkp xyppkhl blye, “Mlynbla, R jdlo ol oswze xllv ytykd.”

Mlynbla? Mbl vball zssjle yv Ya. Fwd kd pwarakpl.

Ya. Fwd nzsple bkp lulp, “R dlhla vbswtbv usw olal pvkzz yzkhl… sa pbswze R pyu ‘yzz sq usw’?”

Usdt Dky ypjle, “Ya. Fwd, obs kp bl?”

Mbl “rlapsd” xyel y olznsxkdt tlpvwal, “Usxl kd.”

Mbl qswa blpkvydvzu ldvlale vbl zycsayvsau, tlvvkdt y nzlyala hklo sq vbl ldvkal plvwr, kdnzwekdt vbl zudm vbyv bye zle vblx blal. Rv oyp y tszeld-bykale zudm ycswv pkm xlvlap zsdt. G vwqv sq qwa sd kvp qynl bye clld cwadle sqq cu Usdt Dky’p qkal vyzkpxyd, yde kvp zlqv zlt, oswdele cu Fbyd Ykdt’p cwzzlv, oyp czllekdt pvlyekzu cwv eked’v zssj plakswp. Rv zyu sd vbl taswde, zknjkdt kvp oswde obkzl tzyakdt hknkswpzu yv Fbyd Ykdt.

Mr. Sun said, “Jiang Ying, since you’re alive, why didn’t you come find me? What are you trying to do hiding underground?”

Jiang Ying sat in a chair and pressed some button, causing two support structures to extend from the backrest to hold up his head—clearly his neck was too tired to support such an oversized brain. He smiled, “Teacher, it’s not that I didn’t want to find you. At first, I couldn’t get out, and later, when I learned many interesting things, I couldn’t bear to leave.” For some reason, his laughter made everyone feel uneasy, perhaps because his appearance was so bizarre—those three completely different pairs of arms looked as if they had been transplanted from other people, with one pair clearly resembling female arms.

Mr. Sun said in a trembling voice, “Look at what you’ve become! What has bewitched you down here?”

Jiang Ying smiled coldly, “Teacher, can’t you guess?”

Mr. Sun was momentarily speechless, his face turning pale.

“I chose to become this way myself. Rather than become part of someone else’s consciousness, I’d rather control this body myself, even if it means becoming a monster. It’s ugly, but quite useful.” He pointed to his deformed brain, “This head is really quite handy.”

“You… you devoured them.”

“No.” Jiang Ying’s expression suddenly turned somewhat ferocious, “We devoured each other. I won the battle for self-consciousness, so they became part of me.”

Mr. Sun showed a pained expression.

Zhuang Yao said quietly, “Are you members of the scientific expedition that came to Qinghai?”

Jiang Ying glanced at Zhuang Yao, a flash of greed appearing in his eyes, “A young brain domain evolutionary, so young and clever. How enviable.”

Cong Xia instinctively stepped in front of Zhuang Yao, feeling genuine fear of this person.

Jiang Ying leaned back in his chair and smiled, “That’s right, though I wasn’t sent from Beijing. I was transferred from Qinghai’s local research institute to provide support.”

Zhuang Yao said coldly, “Did the others all die in the earthquake? How did you survive?”

“Two days before the earthquake, we discovered the entrance to this underground palace, so several of us came down. When the earthquake hit, those who had descended into the palace didn’t die, but everyone on the mountain died.”

Mr. Sun demanded sternly, “What about the others? What about Cheng Lili? What about Cen Bo? Did you kill them?”

Jiang Ying laughed, “Teacher, why do you insist on thinking I killed them? Cen Bo never came down in the first place. I came down with Cheng Lili, a scientist from Beijing, and two special forces soldiers. After the earthquake trapped us underground, when we were nearly starving to death, we found the passage you entered through—the one following the East Taijinar River basin. We originally wanted to escape through there, but mutated animals started attacking us in the cave. One special forces soldier died, and one mutated. The mutated soldier initially still remembered us, so we relied on him for hunting and survived for a while. Later, all our brain domains evolved, and after the special forces soldier’s second mutation, his self-consciousness became increasingly blurred. Sometimes he’d completely forget about us, putting us in danger again. Not only was food becoming scarce, but we could be eaten at any time. Every time the soldier brought back food, the three of us would engage in brainwave interference battles—whoever won could share his food, but nobody ever got enough to eat. All three of us simultaneously realized that the creatures here could evolve through devouring other species, so… heh heh, we devoured each other. In the end, I won. I merged their wisdom and the power of three brain domain evolutionaries, allowing me to control any creature here, even the illusions in the mushroom forest—I created all of that. That’s why I became like this, but it was the best choice for survival.”

Mr. Sun clenched his fists, his aged face taking on another layer of sorrow, “Jiang Ying, in this world, there’s no longer justice or law. Whatever you’ve done, even I have no right to condemn. But what meaning is there in living like this? Hiding in this sunless underground… Since you’ve evolved and possess brain domain abilities stronger than mine, why didn’t you come find me? Do you know what the outside world has become?”

“Of course I know. Do you think I’m just hiding here playing ape-man? I know everything that’s happened in Qinghai, including your movements. I’ve been waiting for you to come. I’m searching for something, and once I find it, I can leave this place and get everything I want.”

Mr. Sun said sternly, “What do you want? In this riddled world, what’s left that’s worth desiring?”

Jiang Ying smiled coldly, “You saw the murals when you came, didn’t you? I didn’t create those. When I discovered this underground city, they were already there. I modified the underground mechanisms, but I kept many things, especially those precious murals.”

“What do those murals really mean?”

“Teacher is so clever, surely you can guess. In the two-plus years I’ve been underground, like you, I’ve been using all my energy to study the mystery of the apocalypse. My starting point was different from yours—I began at the very heart of the entire secret. Of course, you know many things I don’t understand, like the world outside Qinghai, but those aren’t important for now. I know the reason this world became like this, and what I want to do now is find those core elements and change the entire world according to my will.”

Mr. Sun said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”