The guards hadn't finished speaking when bullets rained down on them like a torrential downpour.
Wei Tianyang was yanked backward by the strong man, quickly falling back and taking cover outside the line of fire thanks to the curvature of the corridor.
Concrete chips flew everywhere as the sound of gunfire relentlessly echoed in the hallway, threatening to burst Wei Tianyang's eardrums.
He clenched his teeth in fury. Under the red halo, the strong man shouted, "Rivers of blood!"
"Kill them all! Kill them all!"
The Medicine People surged forward like a tide, leaping over the fallen Wei Tianyang and storming toward the corner of the corridor.
Although they were unarmed, in their burning rage, they were indifferent to life and death.
Wei Tianyang hurriedly got up from the ground. Glasses Beast pulled him to the side of the wall, creeping forward along it.
Around the corner, the gunfire didn't last long, but soon, the guards' voices filled with terror could be heard.
"I'm pinned down!"
"Switch to thermal imaging!"
"My neck has been bitten!! Ahhh!!!"
"Requesting backup! Seal off B2 section!"
Then the gunfire resumed, yet the bullets didn't head toward Wei Tianyang, but instead, struck the walls.
He rounded the corner to find droves of Medicine People had overpowered the ten or so guards, attempting to strip them of their helmets and bulletproof vests.
Some guards were dragged by their legs, sliding on the ground, followed by a dozen barefoot Medicine People trampling them.
The limbless Medicine People, astonishingly, lunged on top of the guards, using their teeth to tear at their necks and fingers.
Despite being protected by bulletproof vests, there were gaps in their uniforms, and some had already been bitten to the point of bleeding.
Thanks to their numbers, the Medicine People easily broke through the guard's defense. The strong man laughed, "They can't hold us! Can't hold us!"
Four Medicine People gripped a guard and pinned him to a wall, then turned to look at Wei Tianyang, chanting in unison, "Kill him! Kill him!"
Though the guard wore a helmet, Wei Tianyang could feel his terror – his body trembling, three fingers bitten off, a large red patch at his throat.
Wei Tianyang gripped Bone Fist and, without thinking, smashed the guard's helmet.
The iron-gray helmet crumpled as if a soda can had burst, caving in significantly at the front and even cracking the wall behind it.
Following this, the damaged part of the iron helmet began to disintegrate, and the imprint of the fist became a hole, also eroding a palm-sized gap in the gray concrete wall.
A large pool of red fluid burst from the guard's chin, which was supposed to flow down his neck into his collar, but evaporated midstream into a thin, red mist.
This blood mist coiled around Wei Tianyang's Bone Fist, suddenly stringing red meat on the previously bare bones.
Would killing them replenish his own missing parts?
Wei Tianyang turned to look at the other guards on the ground, gnawed and beaten by the Medicine People, his expression cold, his eyes revealing a murderous glare...
When Wei Tianyang reached the top of the circular passage, his right hand was no longer skeletal, but dressed in blood vessels, muscles, and nerve tissues.
It looked so fragile, yet it seemed to be protected by an invisible layer, not affecting his ability to continue throwing punches.
With his fists, he annihilated the door at the top of the arc, making the passage before him wider, and on either side, doors leading to different research labs.
Alarms blared as many researchers had not yet managed to evacuate, clutching laptops and tablets and running crazily towards the elevator at the end, while more guards swarmed in.
Hundreds of Medicine People poured in from behind him, filling the corridor like a tide, Wei Tianyang standing at the threshold, hearing only gunfire and screams ahead.
When everything fell silent, he and the strong man walked slowly into the midst of the hallway.
Rivers of blood...
The researchers who didn't manage to flee and those guards had all become Wei Tianyang's nourishment.
He slowly raised his head; his chin and mouth were gradually recovering from their skeletal state, becoming coated in red flesh.
Looking up at the room number plaques on either side of the corridor, his limited literacy, mostly taught by his mother since he had no schooling, was enough to immediately recognize Hans' office.
A few Medicine People broke through the glass door and rushed inside.
Wei Tianyang walked up to the doorway, noting the utter disarray inside the small office; filing cabinets toppled over, spilling piles of white paper, a bare desk – the laptops had been taken.
Hans wasn't here.
The figure in blue garments stood within the periphery of Wei Tianyang's sight. He turned his head and saw a full-length mirror.
In the mirror, a frail teenager wearing blue surgical clothes appeared. Despite his emaciated appearance, he didn't seem weak but rather as sharp as a knife blade.
Black tears streamed from his eyes, and crimson sinews dragged his wildly skewed jawbone, barely clinging to his face.
His skeletal left leg and right arm were adorned with sinews and blood vessels, with blood flowing in reverse. Near his heart, a palm-sized dark red glow pulsed rhythmically, brightening and dimming.
His messy black hair obscured his eyebrows, his sclera was pitch black, and his amber pupils stared back at himself in the mirror.
This was his current appearance.
Wei Tianyang pinched his twisted chin and gently pushed it. With a "Kacha," the chin snapped back into place.
He tried to feel his tongue and slowly began to form structured sounds.
"w... fo... I..."
The muscular man now approached him and said, "More people have come down from the elevator."
"Kill them all, and then we'll take the elevator up," Wei Tianyang said.
The muscular man nodded, stepped outside the door, and shouted to the Medicine People outside, "Kill them all!"
Wei Tianyang still stood inside the room, looking down at the scattered white papers on the floor.
He picked up one and examined it closely. It was filled with dense Western text that he couldn't understand, but Wei Tianyang still found something useful.
At the beginning of every page of the documents, there was the same circular emblem.
Inside the black circle, three overlapping white triangles framed in black were contained.
And to the right of this emblem, a Western inscription read: Project Black.
Within the documents, the number "091" appeared very frequently.
He grabbed a file bag and haphazardly stuffed some pages into it, planning to find out what they said later on.
Behind Wei Tianyang, the corridor outside was already erupting with gunfire.
He rose to leave, but Bai blocked him, saying, "It's not safe yet, they're not all dead."
Then, Bai peered outside until the gunfire subsided and waved his hand, signaling Wei Tianyang to follow.
In the corridor, blood had turned into a river.
Bathed under the red alarm lights, the true color was obscured, resembling vast pools of black, rolling sludge.
Hundreds of Medicine People stood unscathed, while more than thirty guards curled up on the ground, writhing in agony, murmuring softly.
They were not yet dead, but having been attacked by hundreds, their bulletproof vests were ineffective, and their bones were nearly all broken, barely clinging to life.
Wei Tianyang picked up an assault rifle from the ground, approached a guard, and asked, "Where are Hans and Ruan Yu?"
The guard shook his head.
Wei Tianyang pulled the trigger.
But the gun didn't fire.
The trigger lacked any sensation of weight when pressed. He tried to pull the bolt, only to eject a bullet from the chamber.
He looked down at the safety; no matter how he manipulated it, the result was the same.
The gun was useless.
He simply discarded the weapon, crouched in front of the guard, and delivered a punch straight to the helmeted head.
He stood in front of the elevator doors, as the blood's essence rose, slowly seeping into his body.
Suddenly, the red alarm lights began to flicker.
The slender silhouette, in the alternating light and shadow, grew a bit taller.
Then, the entire floor plunged into silence and darkness.
"They've cut the power," the muscular man said.
In the darkness, a pair of red eyes lit up.
"I can see."