CHAPTER 228: CHAPTER 228: THE LAB

"Then, what should we do?" Lu Tao was now worried about his elder brother and sister-in-law. He didn’t want anything to happen to them just because they had gone to the battlefield unprepared.

He blamed himself for not telling his brother about the suspicions he had when he saw his jade pendant.

However, it wasn’t the time to wallow in self-pity. They had to find a solution before it was too late.

"Send that information to your brother. He will know what to do with it." His Uncle Li wasn’t as worried as he was when he first heard about the information in the jade pendant.

He was aware that something in that lab, or rather, the apocalypse had some connection to his nephew and niece-in-law.

At first when the apocalypse started, he was still skeptical. However, as time went by and he remembered a conversation he had overhead when he was the head of security in that lab, he became more convinced that Lu Zhen and Leng Pan were the chosen ones.

But he was never going to say those words to anyone out loud because he didn’t want to pressure them.

Leng Pan and Lu Zhen walked deeper into the ruins of what looked like a once prosperous town.

Jagged concrete jutted like broken teeth into the ash-colored sky, while vines already began to creep over what used to be one of the busiest roads in the town.

As they walked, a slight glow caught Leng Pan’s eye, she looked closer and realized that another catalyst core as they had come to know the special meteorites to be might be buried in a part of the ruins in front of them.

"Let’s check what’s over there first. Maybe we might find a surprise." Leng Pan suggested to her husband who in turn tightened his hold on her hand.

"Mmm... let us see what might be there." Lu Zhen just agreed with his wife and followed her lead.

Since regaining their memories, he was determined not to let her out of his sight. It was as if he was guarding against a thief.

It was hilarious, but Leng Pan didn’t dare to laugh. She was the one who had planted insecurities in the man’s heart.

As they walked on the broken asphalt road full of ditches and pot holes, Leng Pan felt as if something beneath her feet was humming.

She crouched and pressed her hand flat against the cracked asphalt. Cool vibrations pulsed beneath her palm, subtle yet undeniable. There was something beneath them.

Her lips curved into an attractive smile, "There is something down there. Maybe the lab we are looking for? I don’t know how anything could still be running in this situation.

But maybe we should go and check."

When Lu Zhen heard her suggestion, he immediately walked forward, letting her hand go. He muttered, "Follow behind me."

With that, he exchanged glances with his wife before he walked forward.

No words were needed. He took point, while she followed, her eyes never still. Together they moved across the broken road until a jagged fissure revealed a dark staircase leading into the earth.

The air grew colder with each step downward. Dust floated in lazy swirls, disturbed by their boots. The silence here was unnatural, thicker than the oppressive quiet of the ruined city above.

Leng Pan’s chest tightened, though not from fear. Memories flickered at the edges of her mind, hazy visions of soldiers drilling in neat lines, the roar of war drums, the weight of a sword in her hand. Her ancient instincts whispered of battlefields soaked in blood, of enemies who wielded powers born of strange stones.

"Panpan?"

Lu Zhen’s voice woke her. She blinked and realized her grip on the handrail had tightened enough to snap rusted metal. She forced her hand to relax. "I’m fine, hubby. Keep moving."

The staircase opened into a corridor. Dim red lights flickered along the walls, powered by some system that should have long since failed. The floor was lined with reinforced steel plates, unmarred even after decades of abandonment.

"This isn’t military," Lu Zhen muttered, scanning the faded signs bolted to the walls. "BioTech Corporation. I’ve heard of them, secretive research firms. Disappeared years ago."

Leng Pan’s expression hardened. "Not disappeared. Buried as is evident with what we are seeing now." She hadn’t expected to see something like this here.

The first chamber they entered was vast, lined with shattered glass containers. Liquid long evaporated left only dried stains on the walls and floor.

"They must have been conducting experiments or something." She whispered, moving closer. The air carried faint traces of chemicals, long stale but still acrid. " Were they experimenting on humans." Leng Pan asked this based on some of the tools in the room and some very visible human skeletons piled on the ground.

Lu Zhen grimaced. "Or maybe worse." He kicked aside a crumpled lab coat and pointed to the corner. A skeletal arm, deformed with bony ridges, still clung to the remains of a shattered pod.

"They must have been testing something like the meteorite fragments we found, long even before the apocalypse." Lu Zhen added.

Leng Pan’s heart hammered. The ancient memories surged in her brain once again. The visions of generals ordering the capture of enemy aliens, of dissecting strange stones that had fallen from the sky like a meteor shower.

The world she’d come from had walked this same path before. The path of the apocalypse.

"History repeats itself," Leng Pan murmured with eyes hooded.

Lu Zhen glanced at her, sensing the anxiety in her tone.

"Don’t worry too much, Baby. We won’t be defeated again. This time we are in the dark while they are in the light." This was the only way he could think to comfort his wife.

"Let’s explore the place first. If there are answers here, we’ll need time to dig them out." Leng Pan felt that her husband was right and decided to loosen up and do what that had come for.

They swept the corridors, room by room. Some held rows of computers covered in dust. Others stored cracked cylinders leaking faintly glowing residue. A few chambers collapsed entirely, as if something inside had burst free long ago.

It wasn’t until they reached the central lab that the true scale of the place revealed itself.

The room was circular, the ceiling domed high above. In its center stood a containment chamber of reinforced glass, spiderwebbed with cracks but still intact. Inside, suspended in hardened gel, floated a shard of meteorite unlike any they had ever seen. Unlike the purple stones they had seen before, this one shimmered with layers of color; blue, red, silver; all twisting together like liquid fire.

Leng Pan stepped forward, transfixed. The hum beneath her skin intensified, resonating with her water ability. Her veins tingled as though the shard was calling her name.

Lu Zhen moved beside her, eyes narrowing. His fire flared instinctively, responding to the shard’s energy. "It’s reacting to us." Lu Zhen made the observation because he could feel the energy fluctuations from his wife.

Leng Pan clenched her fists. "Indeed, and I wonder why that is." She had been finding out everything going on intriguing and also terrifying.

She didn’t want to imagine that what would have happened if something that seemed to amplify power like this fell into the wrong hands.

Suddenly, the lights in the chamber flickered violently. A warning klaxon blared, echoing through the halls. The containment chamber hissed, as if it was about to release something.

Leng Pan’s instincts screamed danger and she immediately pulled Lu Zhen back. She didn’t understand what was happening, but she wasn’t taking a risk.

But it was too late. The glass shattered outward in a deafening explosion. Shards rained down as the shard of meteorite exposed to the elements pulsed with blinding light.

The gel evaporated instantly, and the meteorite core dropped heavily to the floor, sending shockwaves through the lab. This was something neither of them expected.

The blast threw them both back. Leng Pan slammed into the wall, her ribs aching, but she was already rolling to her feet. Her memories of the years she was a general know kicking in.

Lu Zhen was the same, flames roaring to life around his arms.

From the cracks in the floor, something began to stir.

At first it looked like shadows, liquid darkness pooling and coalescing. Then shapes formed. A grotesque humanoid figure, skeletal and elongated, its skin stretched tight over glowing veins of violet. Its head twisted unnaturally like a newly mutated zombies. The eyes of the humanoid were burning with the same colors as the shard.

Leng Pan’s blood ran cold. This was definitely not an ordinary zombie.

Lu Zhen started to build a wall of fire when suddenly a voice echoed throughout the lab, "Experimental subject 034 failed."

The couple could not understand what failed meant when clearly that thing was alive.

They couldn’t even tell what it was.

Leng Pan looked at the monster in front of them closely, purification water surging to her palms.

The creature shrieked, a sound that made the walls vibrate. In a blur of motion, it lunged at them faster than any zombie they’d faced before.

Lu Zhen’s fire surged in crimson-purple, creating a blazing wall, but the creature smashed through it, body half-burning yet relentless.