Su Mo tried to rise from the ground, her ears perked up, and the moment she heard the trigger being pulled, she didn’t think, instantly mustering her superpower to kick away and tumble into a place that looked like an archive room.
The explosion didn’t cause the slightest tremor in the passage, but the intense sound caused Su Mo’s ears to go temporarily deaf.
The massive loss of blood left her complexion approaching ghastly pale.
But she couldn’t heal herself right now, couldn’t take out the Zijuan Tea, for in this place filled with surveillance, there would be the risk of exposure.
She lay on her back behind the shelves, staring at the ceiling, listening to the sound of the enemy getting closer and closer, when her eyes suddenly lit up.
Because it was deep underground, the laboratory had a perfect ventilation system, which gave her a glimmer of hope!
She stepped on the document shelf and with a tug, ripped down the entire louver that blocked the exhaust port, and climbed in, relying solely on the strength of one arm.
It was narrow, just enough to accommodate her slender frame crawling forward.
The armed bald warrior entered the archive room and immediately spotted the dislodged vent; he aimed upward and started firing.
Several bullet holes whizzed past Su Mo’s thigh, grazing her skin.
But she moved quickly, and her hearing reached its peak in the operation of the ventilation system.
The president, who had been sitting in a luxurious room, watched the monitors in front of him, his heart sinking to rock bottom.
Snippets of conversation reached Su Mo’s ears.
The further she was from the burly bald man, the closer she got to the Central Control Room or the president’s residence.
The severe loss of blood would cause her to quickly go into shock; there were no cameras here, so she took out the Jasmine Tea and Biluochun Tea from her System Bag and drank them as quickly as she could.
With a small amount of Zijuan Tea, her physical superpower injuries rapidly healed.
Glancing down at her shoulder, which was no longer bleeding, she saw that her right arm below the shoulder was gone, blasted away except for some flesh still clinging on.
Biting her lip, she continued to move forward.
Navigating the massive ventilation system, she wound her way through many areas before slowly nearing the Central Control Room.
All the monitors and Spiritual Ability Users couldn’t find Su Mo, and that formidable bald warrior, having gone in circles, came up empty.
Her system could shield her from Spiritual Abilities, like a ghost lurking in the shadows, leaving no way for them to detect her.
Ahead, the ventilation fan roared, masking to some extent the sound of Su Mo’s climbing.
Through the constantly spinning blades, hidden in the dark, she saw a blinding white expanse below.
On the platform, there were various high-end displays made of glass screens, arranged in a circle, switching between many scenes all seeking Su Mo.
A large number of troops had been dispatched to protect the president; here, only a few superpower users were left.
She peered carefully below, the full panoramic view of the laboratory appearing on the glass display, and she zoomed in her vision, projecting every trace of human activity on each level clearly onto it.
Su Mo committed the blueprint to memory, then took out her Tang Blade. Her movements were a bit unnatural with her left hand, but she still aimed at the ventilation fan ahead and jammed it in.
In such a deep stratum, if something went wrong with an air outlet, naturally, it would be checked immediately.
Soon, the people below realized the airflow had stopped and sensed something wrong.
"What’s up with the ventilation system in the Control Room?"
"A large exhaust vent is jammed," someone reported back after a series of operations.
"I’ll go check it out," a warrior walked over to the vent, just about to look up.
Su Mo fiercely kicked down the vent above, crashing it directly onto the man’s head.
Su Mo leapt down, using the other person as a stepping stone.
"Ah! Shoot! Shoot now! Call the warriors over!"
Several controllers clumsily pulled out their handguns and fired a wild burst at Su Mo.
A giant Wooden Shield reformed on her arm, her figure moving incredibly quickly. Even with only a right hand remaining, she could swiftly retract the shield to pick up the Tang Blade and hurl it at the head of the person closest to her.
The person was unable to dodge in time, a bullet hit the ceiling, and the blade directly sliced off his head.
Su Mo once again used her superpower, her placid, unwavering eyes set on a warrior, and the person’s head just exploded, splattering blood all over the glass screen in front of her.
She violently destroyed more than half of the dozen control consoles that ran the entire laboratory; everyone was dead.
Some lay on the consoles, others were pierced all over with shards of glass.
She stood before the console like a blood-soaked deity of death, not understanding most of the operation keys.
But she understood the few that mattered.
"Initiate self-destruct countdown, 5 days."
"Authorization insufficient, unable to make changes."
"Authorization insufficient, unable to make changes."
Su Mo’s face darkened, did she need the president’s?
The surveillance cameras in the corridor began to turn, with Su Mo locking onto the president’s room.
Before reinforcements could arrive, she once again disappeared into the ventilation ducts.
This time, she had a precise target and moved quickly.
After crawling through the air ducts for a while, she found her final goal.
The root of all the world’s woes.
An expensive desk and sofa, hair groomed to perfection, holding a glass of whiskey in hand.
She watched the man below quietly through the exhaust fan.
He was looking at a screen, seemingly monitoring her movements at all times.
Su Mo’s feet clung tightly to the aluminum walls on either side, using friction to hold herself up. Because of long periods of running and killing, the mixture of sweat and blood on her body was reducing her friction, and she was continually slipping down.
Someone came in through the door beneath the ventilation duct.
It was the man who had blown off one of Su Mo’s arms with a gunshot earlier.
The sounds from the president’s desk phone came from the Central Control Room.
He hung up the phone abruptly and ordered the person in front of him, "She must have come down from there, go and intercept."
As the burly figure walked away, Su Mo also kept slipping downward, and soon the fan would catch her feet, shredding her ankles to pieces.
After the door closed again, a drop of sweat fell from the tip of her nose, watched by her as it passed through the blast of the fan, and dropped onto the head of the man below.
The president’s hand holding the cup paused, a clear sense of panic evident in his eyes.
Just as he was about to call out for help, Su Mo threw her Tang Blade down to jam the fan and, using the same method as in the lab, violently broke in.
She didn’t give him the chance to shout. A spindle-like wood vine formed from her right shoulder, taking the place of her right hand, and pierced directly through his head.
Without having undergone the baptism of the virus, without the escort of superpowers, these people were just like rats in the gutter, fragile and easily crushed.