The whole nation: You're put to survive on a desolate planet, you'll be running an alien b

The mirror in the restroom reflected Li Haotian's icy face.

At this moment, the tap was not turned off, and the faint sound of running water echoed in the narrow space, which just masked the subtle electrical sound coming from his headset.

"Liu Hu, thirty seconds left."

Li Haotian's voice was low and hoarse. He stretched out his gloved fingers and gently stroked the aerospace titanium alloy transport cage at his feet. The cage door was half open, and a dark shadow was slowly writhing inside. It was Xiao Hei, its eerie green pupils like two will-o'-the-wisps in the dim light, filled with a thirst for blood and battle.

"Roger that. This thing is even more powerful than I expected; it can even turn the outer security grid into a mess." Liu Hu's slightly rough laughter came through the earpiece, accompanied by the hum of some kind of equipment starting up. "Get ready, the show's about to begin."

Li Haotian didn't say anything more. He turned off the tap, shook the water droplets off his hands, and his body was tense like a fully drawn bow.

Just then, the soft, bright lights overhead flickered suddenly, then went out without warning. Darkness instantly engulfed everything, with only the green indicator light of the emergency exit at the end of the corridor emitting a faint glow.

"Ah—what happened?"

"Is there a power outage? And why are the security cameras gone?"

The hallway outside was instantly filled with the panicked shouts of security personnel and the sound of hurried footsteps.

"Now."

Li Haotian's eyes sharpened, and he opened the bathroom door. Like a ghost emerging from the night, his movements were light and swift, disappearing into the shadows of the corridor almost without a sound. Xiao Hei followed closely behind, its massive body appearing erratic in the darkness, like a pool of flowing ink.

"Su Wan, how long will you give me the access control?" Li Haotian whispered into his earpiece while dodging a security guard who was patrolling in a panic. At this moment, he had approached the entrance of the private freight elevator leading to the second basement level.

"That security system is a sieve; Liu Hu has rendered it completely unaware of its own existence." Su Wan's voice held an unusual excitement, and the keyboard clattered like a torrential downpour. "Give me three seconds... Alright, B2 level access obtained, elevator door unlocked, quick!"

With a dull mechanical grinding sound, the heavy steel door, which had been tightly closed, slowly slid open a crack.

Without any hesitation, Li Haotian slipped inside. At the last moment, Xiao Hei slid into the cage like liquid. Li Haotian closed the cage door behind him and pressed the button on the B2 level.

The elevator doors closed, and the car began to descend smoothly.

As the floor numbers ticked down, Li Haotian felt the temperature in the air suddenly drop, replaced by a suffocating sense of oppression. This feeling wasn't merely psychological; it was the stench of a peculiar gas permeating the air—the smell of highly concentrated biological culture medium evaporating, mixed with a faint trace of formalin and an indescribable metallic, metallic odor.

"bite."

The elevator emitted a crisp beep, like a welcome bell to the gates of hell.

The door opened. The sight before him caused Li Haotian, who had spent many years fighting on this bloody battlefield, to involuntarily shrink his pupils.

If the building above represents the pinnacle of human technology and luxury, then the second basement level is a nightmare that pushes technology and blasphemy to their extreme.

This is a space far beyond imagination. What should have been a warehouse or parking lot has now been transformed into a massive "factory." There is no noisy machine roar as one might expect, only the low gurgling of countless bubbles and the sound of liquid dripping, weaving an eerie requiem in the empty space.

Li Haotian stepped out of the elevator. The floor beneath his feet wasn't made of non-slip tiles, but rather some kind of elastic metal grille. Through the gaps in the grille, he could see pipes of varying thicknesses pulsating beneath, like the veins of this colossal machine, glowing with a dark red light.

"Good heavens..." Su Wan couldn't help but let out a soft gasp through her earpiece, her voice trembling as she watched the surveillance footage. "What... what is this thing?"

Li Haotian didn't speak. He slowed his pace and coldly scanned his surroundings.

In front of him and to his left and right stood hundreds of huge cylindrical culture tanks. Each tank was three meters high and made of high-strength reinforced glass, which refracted an eerie and mesmerizing luster under the dim blue ambient light.

The tank was filled with a murky, shimmering liquid. The liquid was not still; it was constantly flowing and churning, as if it were alive.

Li Haotian walked to the nearest culture tank and stopped.

Suspended in the murky liquid was a massive, fleshy-pink mass of tissue. It had no specific shape, resembling neither human nor beast, but rather a chaotic accumulation of countless muscle fibers, bone fragments, and nerve bundles. The mass of flesh twitched involuntarily in the liquid, each twitch drawing out a glowing liquid from the various pipes connected to the tank. This liquid flowed through the pipes into the bizarre mass of flesh, as if feeding it.

What's even more disgusting is that, around the core tissue, there are dozens of transparent ducts, inside which red cells swim in dense clusters, tirelessly traversing and repairing this deformed body like worker ants.

"This is not drug production." Li Haotian's voice was as cold as ice shards, breaking the deathly silence in the earpiece.

He raised his head, his gaze passing through the enormous containers filled with liquid, looking deeper into the depths. There were even more tanks there, some of which revealed the vague outlines of limbs yet to take shape—upper bodies with three arms, humanoid faces with metallic skin, and monsters covered in scales but with human spines.

"Su Wan, check the composition of these liquids." Li Haotian stared at the writhing mass of flesh in front of him, the muscles at the corner of his eye twitching slightly.

"Analyzing..." Su Wan's voice became urgent. "The spectral results show that this liquid contains highly active telomerase and an unknown viral vector. But that's not the most terrifying thing. The most terrifying thing is the energy reading. These tanks are not just containers; they are maintaining some kind of life sign... a high-energy reaction. This is not ordinary cloning; this is... creating a god."

"Creating a god." Li Haotian chewed on these two words, a mocking smile curving his lips.

He continued deeper into the area, with Xiao Hei following closely behind him. Faced with these enormous creatures exuding a dangerous aura, even the ferocious beast showed some unease, suppressing low whimpers in its throat.

There are no workers here, only robotic arms tirelessly operating between the culture tanks. They precisely insert needles, extract waste liquid, inject fresh nutrient solution, and even use laser scalpels to cut and reconstruct deformed tissues. This is a highly automated assembly line, and the products flowing on it are monsters that defy the laws of nature.

Finally, Li Haotian reached the end of this "production line".

The layout here is different from other places. In the center stands a much larger main culture tank, surrounded by dozens of sophisticated instrument dials, with complex data jumping on the screens.

Li Haotian approached the main tank, and through the slightly blurred glass wall due to sediment, he finally saw the "core product" here.

That was an embryo.

Even though it wasn't fully formed yet, the chilling aura pierced through the thick glass and nutrient solution, striking straight to the heart. It curled up in the center of the liquid, its body wrapped in golden light patterns that pulsated like blood vessels. Its head had already taken shape, with a faint outline of a human between its eyebrows and eyes, but a spiral horn grew on its forehead, and protrusions resembling bone wings sprouted from its back.

This thing doesn't resemble a human; rather, it's more like a hybrid of a fallen angel and a beast from legend.

The thickest pipes connected to this main tank are the ones that flow with a glowing liquid that is not blue, but rather an eerie golden-red, as if it were crystallized blood purified by some kind of force.

"Is this the 'god' that 'Apocalypse' wants to present to the world?" Li Haotian reached out and gently stroked the cold glass surface through his glove. "Mass production of false god embryos to harvest the faith of believers...or rather, to release these monsters onto the market as some kind of biological weapon."

"The energy response here is excessive, Li Haotian," Qin Yue's voice came through the earpiece, tinged with seriousness. "That embryo... it's alive. It has brainwave activity, and it's extremely active high-frequency waves. It's... thinking."

"Still thinking about it."

Li Haotian withdrew his gaze, surveying the factory filled with Frankenstein-like madness and blasphemy, his killing intent erupting like a volcano.

This is the truth.

Behind those glamorous facades and inviolable beliefs lies a bloody scheme. Using biotechnology to forcibly piece together life, in this dark and damp underground world, they attempt to create monsters capable of wielding power, much like manufacturing parts on an assembly line.

"Record all of this," Li Haotian coldly commanded into his headset. He then drew a black tactical dagger from his waist, the blade tracing a sharp arc in the dim light.

"Whether it's a god or a demon, since it comes from this dirty assembly line, it can only be considered a semi-finished product."

He turned around and looked at the rows of monstrous embryos of various shapes sleeping in the nutrient solution behind him. There was no fear in his eyes, only the cold indifference and determination of a hunter looking at his prey.

"Su Wan, give me the parameters of the ventilation system here. Liu Hu, get your jammer ready. We can't go back empty-handed this time, and we can't let these things leave this factory."

Li Haotian walked to a control panel and hovered his finger over the red emergency brake button.

"Since it's a production line, then you should know what... yield rate control means."

He pressed the button abruptly.

In an instant, a piercing alarm sounded throughout the entire underground factory, the originally dim blue lights turned into scarlet alarm flashes, the pipelines that were calmly delivering nutrient solution began to vibrate violently, and the liquid in each culture tank boiled wildly.

Stimulated by the alarm and electric current, the dormant, deformed embryos slowly opened their different, yet equally malicious, eyes.

The hunt has begun.