She is the most beautiful rose

Chapter 356 Basement

Shen Manzhi's pupils constricted, and a cold sweat broke out on her back. Her mind raced. Running down the corridor would definitely alert the patients in the ward and the duty room downstairs. If she entered the room...

Before she could think about it, the door opened from the inside, and a little girl who was just up to Shen Manzhi's chest looked at her with some confusion, without saying a word.

Even if a child is provoked, she can still subdue her. Thinking this, Shen Manzhi pushed her into the room, covered her mouth, and quickly closed the door.

The motion-activated lights in the corridor turned on in response, and the door to the duty room on the first floor was pushed open.

The man fastened his belt while glancing at the security camera screen. Finding nothing amiss, he checked the time—30 AM. He patted his face to clear his head, then sat up straight in his chair and muttered to himself, "I wonder if they'll come early tonight..."

Ward 211 on the second floor.

Shen Manzhi led the child to the window, away from the door, before finally letting out a sigh of relief. Unable to see the child's expression clearly, she turned on the dim light of her electronic watch.

The little girl opened her eyes obediently, neither afraid nor speaking, but rather seemed more curious.

Shen Manzhi threatened coldly, "Don't say anything and I'll let you go."

She didn't really expect the child to understand, but the child still nodded obediently.

Shen Manzhi half-squatted on the ground, released her hand from the child's hand, and kept a close eye on her expression. If she noticed anything amiss, she would climb out the window and run away.

The child stood in front of her, his eyes clear and bright. "Don't be afraid, sister. I won't call out."

"..."

Wow, it's just a little boy.

Instead, he started comforting her.

Shen Manzhi raised her head slightly, a hint of amusement flickering in her eyes beneath the brim of her hat. "Aren't you afraid I'm a bad person?"

"The people in hospitals are the bad guys."

Shen Manzhi smiled and asked, "How do you know I'm not from the hospital?"

“You are different from those people; they are very gentle.”

"..."

Row.

Shen Manzhi apologized to him and asked him why he was standing at the door.

"I heard a sound."

Shen Manzhi raised an eyebrow. She wore comfortable shoes for the mission and moved deliberately quietly, so that even through a door, no one could hear her.

The little boy answered her question, "I have very good hearing. Actually, I heard the sound when you first went up to the second floor."

so smart?

Shen Manzhi immediately became alert. This was a mental hospital, and the reason she had risked restraining the child was because the child was too young to cause any trouble.

But this place is also the "experimental base" of that group of people.

She asked, "Have you always had such good hearing since you were little?"

The little boy nodded. "I've been able to hear a lot of sounds around me since I was little, all sorts of sounds, but my family doesn't believe me..."

He clearly had something left unsaid, but he pursed his lips, unwilling to continue.

Shen Manzhi had already realized that some behaviors that are difficult for ordinary people to understand are regarded as strange things, and thus are diagnosed as mental illnesses.

Currently, the child seems to be in a relatively normal mental state, and is even quite calm and intelligent.

She changed the subject, "Why do you think people in hospitals are bad people?"

"I saw."

Shen Manzhi's back stiffened slightly, and she was about to ask him what he had seen.

A faint light flashed past the window.

"They're coming."

The little boy turned and looked out the window.

Shen Manzhi also stood up and hid behind the curtains, finding the source of the halo. Two ambulances with their lights off drove into the hospital from the southwest side gate of Zone C.

It was Baihu who said that this person enters the hospital around 1 a.m. every night.

Shen Man knew she couldn't stay there any longer, so she peeked out and looked around at her surroundings.

Do you know where they're going?

"I'll be going to the fourth floor today."

Shen Manzhi was somewhat surprised and squatted down to ask him, "Who are they?"

The little boy's eyes were calm. "I don't know, but they were all wearing white clothes, like doctors do."

Just like what Baihu said.

She continued, "What did you see them do?"

The little boy was silent for a moment, then pursed his lips and asked, "Why did you come here?"

Shen Manzhi smiled.

He knew about exchange.

"You're so smart, you should know why I'm here."

The little boy's clear black and white eyes darted around. "I can take you to them, the kind where we won't be discovered."

Shen Manzhi waited for him to say the next sentence.

"Can you take me out?"

She said nothing.

This is not her obligation, much less something she should do.

The little boy pursed his lips, as if he had been thinking for a long time.

Shen Manzhi showed no sign of being anxious.

The child clearly stated that the group would go to the fourth floor. Even if he guessed wrong or lied to her, she could immediately climb out of the window. It was only the second floor, and the escape route had already been planned. However, she was very interested in the clues on the child.

He still couldn't bring himself to say it.

Shen Manzhi rubbed his head and said, "You can pretend you don't know anything and get a good night's sleep."

Even without encountering the child, she could still find her destination.

Seeing that she was about to leave, the child quickly reached out and grabbed her, staring intently at her. "You've come to expose them, haven't you?"

These words sent a chill down Shen Manzhi's spine for a moment.

There are two possibilities when a child says something like that.

Either he does have mental problems, and his thoughts are complex and profound, beyond the comprehension of ordinary people, which could be true or false.

Either he saw or heard it with his own eyes and was telling the truth.

The little boy seemed to know that she wouldn't take him out, so he slowly let go of her hand. "The basement."

Below the window on the east side of the corridor on the first floor of Zone C, there is a ventilation duct connecting to the basement. After 1 a.m., the sound of the equipment running in the basement will mask most of the noise, and it is almost impossible for a single person to pass through the duct.

The boy eventually told her how to get in. Before Shen Manzhi left, she saw him curled up in the quilt, with a few strands of black hair sticking out from the corners.

With hearing this sensitive, it must be hard to sleep soundly.

As I crawled forward along the pipe, I didn't know where I started to slide into the lower level, but the sound of the fan inside the pipe grew louder and louder.

Shen Manzhi crawled forward a little further and found a ventilation opening in a storage room. She observed it from the side for a while, and after confirming that no one was going in or out, she carefully opened the protective panel, reached down to the handle below, and pulled it outwards sharply. After waiting for half a minute, and still hearing no movement outside, she crouched down and jumped down.

Baihu investigated very thoroughly and got her a set of the same white medical protective suit, the kind with a mask that only exposed her eyes.

Shen Manzhi's clothes were already light and form-fitting, and they fit her perfectly.

The basement was not small; Shen Manzhi saw a location map posted at the corner.

The area is almost the same as that of Zone C. In the very center is a huge experimental base, like a hemispherical fortress, with two gates, front and back, and a network of corridors all around.

The corridor is lined with closed doors, marked on the map as "observation area," "safe area," "critical care area," and "danger area."

Enclose it with a glaring red circle.

The corridor where Shen Manzhi was located was marked with the words "Management Area".

She frowned slightly, then heard a jumble of footsteps coming from the other side of the corridor. She glanced at the map again; that was the entrance to the basement!
The basement was brightly lit, offering nowhere to hide. The circular corridor surrounding the experimental base was quite wide. Shen Manzhi quickly retreated to a corner and saw people dressed in white suits leaving from another corner. It seemed that those people in white had entered the base and could move around freely.

Who was the person who came in from outside?

Without having time to think it through, Shen Manzhi went straight into the corridor next to her.

So they didn't see the words "Danger Zone" hanging above.

The corridor was long and narrow, with an iron gate at the end, so it wasn't entirely without places to hide.

Some of the rooms had open doors, while others had closed doors with electronic card locks. The footsteps in the adjacent corridor grew closer, and she slipped into a room with an open door.

The light and shadows reflected from the corridor formed a long, distorted doorway. She glanced back and saw that the single bed was empty; the room was unoccupied.

"...They all have a certain incubation period, and our recent conclusion is that it ranges from one week to one month..."

It was a young and cautious voice, but before it could finish speaking, it was interrupted by another slightly older voice, "It's too short. The hospital staff can't use it for the time being. Let's wait a while longer."

Shen Manzhi frowned slightly.

The man paused for a few seconds, then turned to the corridor where Shen Manzhi was and asked, "What's the situation in here?"

The young man paused, seemingly considering his words carefully before speaking, "The serum we prepared has a certain allergic effect, and we have someone checking on us every night. There are no particularly dangerous situations for the time being... Would you like to take a look yourself?"

Shen Manzhi's brow twitched, and she moved half an inch back, inching her way deeper into the darkness of the room.

The aged voice shifted away, speaking in another direction, "No need, go directly to the laboratory."

The footsteps faded into the distance, leaving only the buzzing of the instruments. Shen Manzhi stood by the wall, her finger unconsciously tapping the surface. It was truly a close call.

She waited a while and was about to leave when the sound of her hand tapping lightly made her realize something was wrong. Almost reflexively, she realized that the wall she was leaning against was hollow.

The watch light came on again, and she used the dim light to look for a gap in the wall. She pressed her palm on the wall and a door that was almost integrated with the wall was gently pushed open a crack.

"..."

She really only pressed lightly, not even as hard as when petting a cat.

The light on the other side of the door was a cold, pale white. Shen Manzhi leaned against the wall and listened for a while, but there was no sound, not even the noise of instruments running inside. She activated the monitoring mode on her wristwatch and pushed open the door.

I got a second fright.

Behind the door was still a long corridor, with rooms on both sides of the corridor lined with iron cages, cold and icy like prison cells.

In this gloomy corridor stood a man in white.

The man stood with his back to Shen Manzhi in front of an iron cage, holding a notebook in his hand, and quietly looking at her with his head turned to the side.

He is over 185 cm tall and is a man.

Having been through countless trials, Shen Manzhi calmly walked over.

The man looked at her, lowered his gaze slightly, then turned back to continue writing in his notebook, "I'm almost done with the checkup here."

Shen Manzhi stopped in her tracks. The distance between them wasn't far, but the corridor was really dark. Her white suit looked like it was about to have two holes punched in it. Only her eyes were covered up so tightly that she naturally wouldn't know which colleague had come.

But this voice... it feels somewhat familiar.

She made no further response, relaxed a little, and turned to look at the iron cage beside her.

It's more like an interrogation room than a cage.

A gaunt person lay asleep on the cold iron bed, his limbs bound to the four corners of the bed by thick iron chains. His brain was covered with electrode patches, and a dense network of wires connected to a screen on the wall behind him, displaying all sorts of data.

Shen Manzhi took two steps closer to try and see the English on the screen, but the person who had spoken earlier stopped her, saying, "I advise you not to come any closer..."

"Ahhh!"

Before the man could finish speaking, the clanging of chains, accompanied by a roar, exploded in Shen Manzhi's ears.

The thin man on the bed suddenly sat up, staring at her with bloodshot eyes. His arm muscles bulged, and if his limbs hadn't been bound by chains, Shen Manzhi felt that he could have rushed right up to her!

Her heart skipped a beat, and she silently stepped back.

Then I heard a soft laugh.

She turned her head, and there stood the man in front of the iron cage next to hers, still taking notes at a leisurely pace.

"..."

It's not that she's prejudiced, but I really want to call her a lunatic.

"come over."

Shen Manzhi looked at him but didn't move.

It's a strange feeling; I feel like this person is somewhat...familiar.

The man wrote with his head down, his tone slightly mocking, "Don't let him see any living things, let him calm down on his own."

She then moved away and walked towards the man.

The man asked, "Is this your first time in a danger zone?"

Shen Manzhi lowered her voice and said, "Mm."

The man seemed to raise an eyebrow, but said nothing more and continued taking notes.

This time, Shen Manzhi did not approach the iron cage again, but stood in the corridor to observe. The situation was almost the same as that room, with the people lying on the iron beds mostly asleep.

Laboratory, serum preparations, "danger zone"...

Although she already knew that someone was conducting similar human experiments with Delson, seeing the scale and the chilling nature of these experiments still sent shivers down her spine.

Because of the existence of Shen Manzhi, a perfect living experimental subject, Delson was willing to go to great lengths to restart the Storm Serum Project. However, his ultimate goal was to unleash the extreme potential of humanity and make some medical contributions, even though he had now taken a risky approach.

But this group has a different goal. They bring "experimental subjects," or infected individuals, into the public eye to create malicious incidents. What they want is to completely control the experimental subjects.

The only saving grace is that they haven't reached the level of Delson Labs yet.

The experimental subjects injected with the mutated serum have extremely strong physical functions and consciousness. The ones that appeared in Huaicheng, and the ones Shen Manzhi is seeing now, are far less than one-tenth the abilities of her and the previous "same kind" experimental subjects.

"gone."

The man had finished recording and turned to look at Shen Manzhi, who was standing in the deep corner. "You've got some nerve."

The fact that the other party didn't realize she wasn't from here, and wasn't even surprised to see a "colleague" there, suggests that the two of them were checking together.
Shen Manzhi quickened her pace toward him, thinking that she would have to find a chance to slip away later.

The two left the corridor, and the man closed the hidden door. With a click, the door closed naturally, making it impossible to tell that there was a door there.

Shen Manzhi followed him out of the empty room, into the corridor outside, and then out again. Shen Manzhi looked up and saw that there were indeed three red words hanging above: "Danger Zone".

Given the complex terrain, it seems the map posted at the corner is just a cover-up.

Shen Manzhi made an excuse to go to the restroom and parted ways with the man in the next corridor.

The man stood there watching her back for a while, a hint of amusement in his eyes, as if he had spotted some interesting prey.