LWGP - Chapter 9
Chapter 9: The Dean
Everyone was stunned for a moment, looking at Wang Jiu, who was pressing a button on the control panel. Her expression was a bit strange as she said faintly, "Just now, while you were all looking at the snake, I decided to go for broke and just mashed a bunch of buttons. It's not outside the main gate anyway, so even if this door opens, it's fine. That doesn't count as a mistake, right?"
"Lao Wang, you're my Guanyin ancestor! Run!"
Everyone sprinted towards the secret room's door. By then, the snake's head from outside the glass window had already poked in. Seeing them about to flee, it quickened its pace, and half its neck was already inside. But Wang Jiu and the others had already entered the secret room.
"Close the door, close the door! This door should be titanium alloy!"
As the door was closing, they could see its material. One by one, their brows relaxed, as if they'd all just had a refreshing massage. Of course, most of them were also drenched in sweat.
When the gap in the door was only a palm's width, two-thirds of the snake was already inside. With a flick of its tail, its head shot towards them.
It closed, airtight. Everyone was silent for two seconds, then BANG!! It slammed into the door but didn't make a dent.
"Solid, solid, definitely an international brand!!"
"But is this a secret room?"
Having set their minds at ease, they finally had time to observe this secret room.
Beyond this door... was a staircase. Below the stairs was a large, three-dimensional space, about two stories high. It was a laboratory of considerable size.
But if a laboratory like this were ever made public, it would surely cause a massive uproar. It was filled with cages for living subjects, and the subjects inside weren't white mice or rabbits, but living people. However, these people had long since lost their ability to express themselves; they were dazed and listless, their clothes barely covering them.
"This Dean is an animal! But where is he?"
"Hiding again?"
"Is there an exit to escape from here too?"
As they were discussing, Liu Guang said, "There's a very direct method. Director Wang, what do you think?"
Wang Jiu glanced at him, took out her phone, and dialed a number.
"Let's try our luck. Maybe he has a habit of carrying his phone with him."
Obviously, almost every human in modern society had this habit.
A phone rang. Liu Guang and the Big Guy moved with extreme speed, rushing to a lab cabinet and yanking open the door.
A middle-aged man with a gloomy face was huddled inside. He was about to lunge out and attack them with a scalpel, but the Big Guy shot out a hand, grabbed his wrist, and with a twist and a bend, snapped the man's arm.
A scream like a pig being slaughtered.
The phone inside his clothes also fell to the floor.
Wang Jiu picked it up, checked it, and raised an eyebrow. "It's his phone."
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief and began to interrogate him about the key's whereabouts, but this "Dean" refused to talk, as if he were mute.
Liu Guang looked at him for a moment, then suddenly asked, "Are you really the Dean? What's your shoe size?"
The middle-aged man was startled. Liu Guang smiled. "By the desk in the Dean's office, there's a pair of slippers he changed out of in a hurry. Whether you're escaping or hiding, slippers are inconvenient. Those slippers are a bit small. They belong either to a woman or a slender man. A shoe size like yours probably wouldn't fit."
"So... you're his deputy, the one who actually works in this laboratory, right? Just smell the chemical reagents on you."
He tugged on the man's sleeve. The middle-aged man's face was exceptionally ugly. "I won't tell you."
Hearing this, Liu Guang sighed. "I don't need to ask, because..."
He turned his head and saw that Wang Jiu was already standing in front of one of the cages.
She flicked a steel bar of the cage with her finger and asked the person inside, "Looking at the equipment and chemical materials here, this must be an experiment on bioactive mutations. To ensure the survival rate of cellular mutation, the other nine subjects are all young, healthy men, women, and children. What would they need an old man like you for? A reverse-test experiment?"
Her choice of words was quite civilized, but utterly infuriating.
The originally dazed and listless old man still showed no reaction.
Wang Jiu continued, "You look frail, but it's due to old age, not malnutrition like the others. On the contrary, your skin is smooth, your diet is excellent, and you even use high-end skincare products. Your hair has also been meticulously cared for. Oh, and you've had hair transplants, haven't you?"
The old man's face instantly darkened, his eyes turning cold and sinister.
The middle-aged man was dumbfounded. He looked at Liu Guang, then at Wang Jiu, his expression like he'd just eaten shit.
Zhang Xu chuckled and patted the man's head. "Don't underestimate corporate drones like us who've had at least five years of undergraduate studies, not to mention these two directors who've read several times more books than we have. We're all educated people in similar fields. Let's have some mutual respect. Don't try to pass off counterfeit goods, okay?"
The middle-aged man stared daggers at Zhang Xu, his hatred palpable. And then... he was dragged into a corner by Zhang Xu and the others, who gave him a sound beating while interrogating him for information.
To conduct such experiments, aren't you afraid of being struck by lightning? Beating you to death wouldn't be going too far!
The Dean was pinned to the floor with an axe at his neck. It didn't take much effort to make him talk. Most of the people present were from the medical field and knew all too well how those chemicals could torture the human body. Seeing several bottles and jars placed before him, with Li Meng even thoughtfully opening the lids for use during the interrogation, the Dean, faced with such a vicious group, decisively spoke up.
"I've hidden the key somewhere. I'll take you there."
The group was skeptical. Liu Guang asked, "Such an important key, and you didn't keep it on you, but hid it somewhere else?"
The Dean glanced at him and sneered, "You yourselves said I'm a decrepit old man. I can't protect it on my own. If I were really captured, would I just keep it on my person for you to find?"
Oh, old ginger is indeed spicier.
In truth, there wasn't much room for interrogation. They couldn't torture an old man like him too severely. If he accidentally died, it would all be over. Could they only go along with him for now?
"I disagree. What if he's setting a trap for us?"
"Let's just interrogate him slowly. We have time now, anyway."
Just as these words were spoken, the lights in the research lab suddenly started creaking, and then several of them began to flicker.
"What's wrong with the lights?"
"Maybe there's a problem with the circuit."
The Dean was even more nervous than they were. "It must have destroyed the electrical box, or maybe it's you outsiders messing around!"
You're the villain, and you think you're in the right!
Zhang Xu's temper flared, and he was about to hit him, but Wang Jiu held him back. "If we don't leave now, we'll be trapped here. Is that an internal elevator going down over there?"
Wang Jiu had noticed that elevator earlier. She figured the Dean used it for escaping, but she didn't know why he hadn't used it before.
While the power was still on, everyone quickly got into the elevator.
Once inside the elevator, this cunning and vicious Dean became particularly docile.
"Press the button for the lowest basement level. I hid the key down there. It's not that I didn't want to escape, but it's not safe below. There are a few outsiders like you hiding there. I had to leave two people to intercept you, so there was no one to protect me. I'm telling the truth. Ma'am, could you please take the axe away from my neck?"
The elevator outside didn't have an option for the basement; one probably had to use the stairs to get down there.
Wang Jiu withdrew the axe, looking somewhat apologetic. "Sorry about that. I've been scared a lot today. I almost used your neck as a whetstone."
The Dean forced an awkward yet insincere smile.
Don't think he hadn't seen on the surveillance monitors how she had taken out several murderers in a row.
The back-stabbing fiend.
The elevator reached the basement. As soon as the doors opened, they saw an abandoned parking garage. The cars were all covered in a thick layer of dust, looking like they had been abandoned for a long time.
It made sense. Did any normal people come and go from here? This place was a slaughterhouse.
"Don't go out yet."
At the elevator entrance, Wang Jiu stopped them and asked the Dean, "Where is it?"
The Dean said, "If I tell you now, what if you kill me? I'll take you to get it... Ah!"
Before he could finish, he let out a scream. Wang Jiu had bent down and severed the tendons in both his legs with a scalpel.
He collapsed to the ground, unable to even crawl.
"Now, you can either call the people you sent to ambush us to come carry you away, or you can beg us to take you. Otherwise, you can just wait here to die."
"You may be old, but you have good lung capacity. Your voice is quite loud. If your people are coming to get you, they probably know our location by now. In that case, we'll just wait for them to come."
Wang Jiu was as calm as if she were treating a patient. She wiped the blood from the scalpel on his clothes and then said to the others, "He dared to bring us down here, so he's probably made arrangements. Let's prepare for the worst and wait for a bit."
Noticing the Dean's face turning pale from the pain, she said to Li Meng and Wang Ling, "Don't let the old man bleed out. Bandage him up. It would be bad if he passed out from blood loss."
Li Meng immediately perked up. This was her specialty. She could do it!
The Dean gritted his teeth. "Thank you so much."
Wang Jiu: "You're welcome. A healer should have the heart of a parent."
The Dean: "..."
Rather than letting the enemy wait for them, it was better to turn the tables.
The group trusted Wang Jiu, so they waited patiently. But at that moment, they also noticed the lights were still creaking.
Was the circuit really damaged?
If so... the situation would be even more complicated.
Just as they thought this, flick! All the lights in the basement suddenly went out, plunging them into complete darkness.
"Damn it, they really went out."
"I did it."
"???"
Huh? Everyone looked towards where Wang Jiu was in the pitch-black darkness, unable to pinpoint her location. It seemed she had just walked over to the side.
"I just saw the electrical box, so I turned it off."
Wang Jiu closed the electrical box cover, her voice sounding somewhat thin in the darkness. "My worst-case scenario was that this Dean might have also called for gunmen. Turning off the lights is actually more advantageous for us. Even if they chase us to the door, let's see if they dare to shoot blindly."
In the darkness, the Dean, his legs crippled, had an exceptionally ugly expression on his face.
Are you a demon?!!
In the pitch-black, everyone's breathing was a little tense. The Dean, however, kept making faint noises, though it was unclear if he was doing it on purpose.
Seeing this, Li Meng used a bandage to wrap up his mouth as well.
Her technique was very professional, and also quite aesthetically pleasing.
The Dean: "..."
Demons, they're all demons!
But what they attracted first wasn't a murderer or a gunman, but... a resonant, powerful voice that suddenly echoed through the dark parking garage.
"It was I! I who insisted on marrying Chunyuan! It was I! I who had a child with her! Why don't you hate me!"
Wang Jiu and the others: "???"
The atmosphere was, for a moment, extremely awkward and suffocating.
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