Chapter 283 - 283 Qi Yun
Song Jian, regaining consciousness, had a baffled look in his eyes. He gazed at his hands, inspectively scanning up and down his body.
To his surprise, he found his body totally unscathed, all previous wounds evaporated. Even the grisly gashes on his throat were vanishing without a trace. His Vitality Points were already refilled to the max. No, rather, their upper limit had ascended, boosted by one hundred and twenty, rocketing straight to eight hundred.
This was almost equivalent to a mini-boss’s vitality.
Checking other attributes, his agility had astonishingly increased by five points. It was a miracle, equivalent to consuming five Attribute Fruits.
His other attributes remained unaltered. Song Jian hurriedly checked the system’s battle information. As predicted, the increase in all his attributes were due to the transformation initiated by the vampire virus erosion into his body. It was akin to having done a genetic modification on him. But thanks to his Thick-Skinned ” innate skill, the virus was expelled just in the nick of time, preventing a more drastic alteration of his physical attributes.
The quest item!” Song Jian suddenly had a thought and involuntarily sprinted forward. Putting forth a tad of energy, he ran five or six meters ahead, uncontrolled due to his newest modifications, nearly tripping.
“What—What is…” His face displayed an expression of surprise. But soon, he realized that the additional five points in agility had significantly upgraded his body’s capabilities, to which he was still struggling to adapt.
Slowly moving forward, step by step towards the laboratory door, as led by the quest map, Song Jian gradually adapted to his explosive agility, gaining control over his body’s movements.
As he pushed open the laboratory doors, a gadget over two-meters tall emitting a white light came into his view. It was the final quest item that he needed.
Walking briskly over to the device, the moment he touched it, the apparatus over three-meters wide and two-meters tall, weighing over five hundred kilos, instantly morphed into a palm-sized energy ball which Song Jian clenched in his hand.
The last quest item was finally in his possession. Initially, the quest’s time limit was three days, but Song Jian was able to complete it within a single day. “It’s a pity, I’m unsure where to search for the two missing inventory items; otherwise, I could have completed the tasks together…” Song Jian thought to himself.
After rummaging through the entire thirteenth-floor, Song Jian didn’t find anything else worth his attention and decided to commence cleaning upwards. After all, having the Spiritual Sword Control Technique meant he could inflict additional damage to the genetically modified soldiers here. Leveling up in this building was much faster than anywhere else.
As Song Jian was descending the stairs, he suddenly realized that the staircase side doors, initially secured by him on each floor, had all been smashed open from the inside. The monsters inside had all disappeared, vanished without a trace.
Promptly, on the staircase, Song Jian spotted two human mummies. One of them was his renegade follower, Qi Yun. After Qi Yun followed Ma Jiang to this building, he had betrayed Song Jian, and since then, Song Jian was cut off from him. Unexpectedly, Ma Jiang and he had both ended up dead here.
The two bodies had been drained of blood, their skin tightly clung onto the bones, looking like Egyptian mummies.
“This seems a bit like the work of that previous vampire zombie…” After a close inspection, Song Jian speculated.
On the neck of both bodies, there were two deep holes – traces left by the vampire zombies while sucking blood.
”Did these two come here seeking revenge against me?” Song Jian wondered. “But, I didn’t tell Qi Yun that I was coming here. How’d he know I’d be in this building?”
After contemplating for a while to no avail, Song Jian shook his head, brushed past the two mummified bodies, and headed towards the Manor Castle.
For some unknown reason, all the monsters that infested this building had disappeared, even the elite level twenty boss “Zeus Shield’s Guardian” was nowhere to be found. It was unclear if they were annihilated, or if they had abandoned the building.
Having guarded this building for decades, they wouldn’t have left without a good reason. But currently, there was no logical explanation for their sudden absence.
Song Jian felt slightly regretful as he considered this. After all, this place was like a holy land of leveling up for him. With the Spiritual Sword Control Technique, the monsters here were powerless, becoming mere experience packets for him to harvest.
“What a shame…” Song Jian gave a sigh as he glanced back at the building bearing the Zeus Shield Company’s sign.
The sky darkened gradually. Silence enveloped the surroundings and not a single sound came from the Zeus Shield Company’s building.
Just then, Qi Yun, who had turned into a mummy, started to stir.
First, it was a finger movement, then his full arm. Ominously, his whole body rose from the ground at an odd angle. The personified Qi Yun no longer looked human; he was now just like a zombie.
In his blood-red eyes peered a startled confusion. It seemed his past memories were lost; he looked at the mummified Ma Jiang next to him, having a familiar feeling but not being able to recall anything.
After spending some time next to Ma Jiang’s corpse, Qi Yun began to climb the stairs slowly. He didn’t know where he was heading, but an idea would recurrently pop into his mind, urging him to reach the eighteenth-floor of the building. It seemed like something very precious awaited him there.
Qi Yun’s legs wouldn’t bend. Each flight climbed consumed him greatly, even to the point of crawling on the stairs a bit by bit.
The resurrected Qi Yun seemed to have simplified a lot. The lone thought in his head never dwindled. He continued to strive for it, entirely disregarding the price he was paying, not making any judgement or assessments, solely focusing on reaching the top floor of the building.
After several hours of crawling, the gear Qi Yun wore was worn out to zero durability, beyond repair. But he finally made it to the eighteenth floor.
Leaning on the wall, he wobbly pushed open the side door, managing to stand and get inside the 18th floor.
On reaching, Qi Yun felt as if he had located something extremely crucial; an overwhelming craving gnawed at him, similar to a junkie longing for a fix.
Stumbling towards a laboratory door, through the glass, Qi Yun spotted a metallic pillar in the center of the lab. The pillar, reaching well over a person’s height, was topped by a transparent glass dome. Within the dome, a vial glowed with dazzling, multicolored light.
The glass dome was covered with a thick layer of dust, but it failed to mask the radiance emitted by the vial within.
“L..need…”
Dry, cracked lips slightly opened, and from his parched throat, two syllables were pushed out. Suddenly, Qi Yun began vigorously pounding on the laboratory door with his fists.
Thud,thud,thud~
The heavy, repetitive knocking echoed in the vacant hallway, projecting an eerie sensation.