Chapter 40 – When Paths Narrow, the Brave Prevail

Staring at the door swaying back and forth, the male doctor didn’t hesitate for even a second. He lunged straight inside.

In the room, the male orderly lay sprawled on the floor. He wasn’t dead yet, his body still twitching uncontrollably. The male doctor only cast his companion a single glance before immediately scanning left and right.

Bang!

The door slammed shut behind him.

The male doctor whipped around and saw Su Lifeng standing there with one hand still pressed against the door. Lime dust sprinkled down over his head, and the Bone Wings spread behind him were still dripping blood.

“You’re an F-class Soldier Type, aren’t you?” Su Lifeng did not make any further move. Instead, he suddenly asked a question.

Perhaps it was an illusion, but this male doctor Xenospecies actually caught a trace of eagerness in Su Lifeng’s eyes, even satisfaction and anticipation. That put a hint of caution into his previously cold gaze. At the same time, in the darkness, his eyes began to emit a glow completely unlike a human’s. A faint, eerie blue that was enough to make one’s skin crawl…

“Why aren’t you saying anything? F-class Xenospecies can already use human language fairly fluently, can’t they? I heard you say just now that you wanted to catch me. Now I’ve come right to you on my own. Don’t you think you should at least talk to me, if only because of how enthusiastic I’m being?” Su Lifeng asked, the corners of his mouth lifting into a faint smile. No matter how intelligent these Xenospecies were, once they were inside a human shell, they were still monsters completely different from humans. Su Lifeng wanted to use this opportunity to figure out how these Xenospecies thought. At the very least, he needed to know how they planned their operations.

Up until just now, Su Lifeng had assumed they were simply waiting around in the hospital for humans to deliver themselves to their door. But after hearing the conversation between this F-class Xenospecies and the male orderly, he realized he had underestimated them. Their imitation of human behavioral patterns was even better than he had imagined.

As for the change in the color of this Xenospecies’s eyes… although Su Lifeng did feel as if the temperature had dropped a little, it was nowhere near enough to frighten him. He might as well pretend he hadn’t seen it…

The male doctor Xenospecies kept staring fixedly at Su Lifeng. Only when he realized that Su Lifeng was still smiling after saying all that did he finally open his mouth. “You know F-class Xenospecies have a stronger Fusion Level with humans… Who told you that?”

It worked… A burst of delight went through Su Lifeng’s heart. He had deliberately phrased it as a test, never expecting that he would actually trick this Xenospecies. And in the single casual sentence the creature had spoken, it had revealed an extremely important piece of information: Fusion Level.

Ordinary Xenospecies had a lower Fusion Level with humans, so what did their condition look like? Rapid decay, mechanical imitation… The second point mainly showed itself in their simple behavioral patterns. They were always like broken recorders, repeating the same few sentences over and over. F-class Xenospecies had a higher Fusion Level, so these problems were clearly much less severe.

Su Lifeng himself studied biology. A single brief term was enough for him to rapidly combine it with the facts and analyze all of this.

“So this is the true meaning behind the Xenospecies classifications. A higher-level Xenospecies means a higher Fusion Level with a living organism, and that also indicates the evolutionary stage of that Xenospecies,” Su Lifeng thought to himself. He still was not very clear on what the internal structure of the Xenospecies was like, but at the very least, he could now confirm two things. First, they centered around the Wisdom Species. Second, they had a strict pyramid-shaped hierarchy.

For example, just now, it had been this F-class Xenospecies giving orders to its own kind.

“Where did you absorb an Wisdom Species?” the male doctor Xenospecies asked next. He was also trying to draw information out of Su Lifeng, though his technique was honestly rather crude.

“As expected, Li Yi had already sent all the information back before he died…” Su Lifeng thought silently. Outwardly, however, he answered, “In a mountain. How many instances of Spatial Gate have you opened in total? Where were they? Think carefully. Maybe you can guess which place I’m talking about.”

“That isn’t information I would know.” The male doctor Xenospecies’s answer left Su Lifeng deeply disappointed.

“Are you only planning to use recruitment as your method? That’s a little weak.” Su Lifeng’s expression remained calm as he shifted to another key point.

This time, it was the male doctor Xenospecies’s turn to smile. “Of course not. This is merely one additional method. Mutant, you’re interrogating me… but did you know I’m also stalling for time?”

“Da-da-da-da…”

A sudden burst of dense, rapid sounds came from the corridor. Su Lifeng’s expression changed drastically, and he charged at the male doctor Xenospecies at once.

The male doctor Xenospecies had clearly been prepared as well. Several more blue dots appeared inside his deep-blue eyes, as if multiple eyes had been crammed into a single eye socket. Even though his pupils did not move or even focus, Su Lifeng felt that he had already locked on to everything around him-and every movement Su Lifeng made.

“A spider…” A flicker of disgust crossed Su Lifeng’s face. These Xenospecies really could absorb any living creature, yet every Biological Species they absorbed would ultimately be driven to extinction.

No wonder they were called Xenospecies. They were the enemy of all Biological Species.

Two strands of Black Thread drilled out of the male doctor Xenospecies’s ears. The moment Su Lifeng’s Bone Wings stabbed toward him, those two strands of Black Thread immediately met them with perfect accuracy.

At the same time, the male doctor Xenospecies’s mouth snapped open, spraying out a wisp of spider silk. “Mutant, did you think my original body was my only means of attack? I can tell. You used to be an ordinary person. You don’t know how to fight.”

Su Lifeng truly had not expected this Xenospecies to have such a move. However, after absorbing those ordinary Xenospecies, his body had already been strengthened by a huge margin. In that critical instant, he performed a movement he normally never could have managed: while charging forward at high speed, he accelerated even further, while retracting one of his Bone Wings to shield himself.

Pffft!

The sticky spider silk immediately clung to the Bone Wings, while that strand of Black Thread shot into Su Lifeng’s shoulder with a whoosh.

“Ah!”

This was Su Lifeng’s first time experiencing what it felt like to be absorbed by a Xenospecies. It was as if everything in that part of his body: bone, blood vessels, flesh, was squirming toward that strand of Black Thread.

But even under the excruciating pain, Su Lifeng did not stop.

Bang!

Su Lifeng slammed straight into the male doctor Xenospecies. His Bone Wings had been held in front of him the entire time, blocking all the spider silk the male doctor Xenospecies sprayed out. At the instant they collided, he felt a sharp, snapping pain at his shoulder blade. At the same time, the scalpel in his hand had already stabbed sideways beneath the other party’s fourth rib.

Their gazes met. Two seconds later, the male doctor Xenospecies’s body went limp and collapsed.

“Haa…” Only then did Su Lifeng lower his Bone Wings. The strand of Black Thread that had sucked his shoulder dry and shriveled also detached on its own and fell away. Amid the terrible pain, Su Lifeng looked with satisfaction at a strand of Black Thread drilling out of the male doctor Xenospecies’s heart and muttered to himself, “I don’t know how to fight, but I do know one saying: when two meet on a narrow road, the brave one wins!”

By now, the sounds from the corridor had already reached the door. Through the glass, he could see countless Shadowy Figure shapes crashing violently into the room door…