Watching the one dead and two unconscious figures before him, Bai Mo fell into contemplation.
"I don't need to worry about the dead one; they have nothing to do with me anyway. But how should I deal with the two who are still alive?
"Going up and finishing them off doesn't seem necessary either. One was already unconscious before I appeared, and the other didn't even see me before I knocked them out with a hand chop. Leaving them alone, though, just doesn't feel fun enough.
"I could also take them back to the laboratory for some experiments. This girl's ability seems quite interesting; she can actually control this strange flame that only has special effects on biological bodies. As for the other black-clad man, forget it, he has no research value."
However, Bai Mo ultimately considered that the laboratory was many streets away from here, and there were people everywhere. Carrying an unconscious girl openly seemed utterly unreliable and carried the risk of exposure.
So, he finally decided to just take some body tissue samples from her.
Having settled on a plan, Bai Mo immediately began to act. First, he spent a few seconds using his divine sense to thoroughly scan the red-clad woman's body structure. To his surprise, he discovered that her first Spirit Hub formation actually occurred in a new organ!
When Bai Mo was observing the fight earlier, due to the intense movements of the individuals, he had always thought the girl's first organ to undergo Spirit Hub formation was her heart. Only after this detailed scan did he realize that it was actually a new organ, encompassing half of her heart, that had completed the Spirit Hub transformation.
In his divine sense vision, he could see this new organ continuously generating some silver substance, which then spread throughout her entire body via the bloodstream.
Regarding this silver substance, he guessed it was the source of the silver flames, so he took a sample from the girl's wound, along with her blood.
Just as Bai Mo, having finished his sampling, was about to make a nonchalant exit and stride forward, he found that the girl, still in her coma, had unconsciously clutched his trouser leg.
"Fine, since I took some experimental material from her, I'll take a few extra steps to save her once. Consider it an exchange."
Following that, Bai Mo picked up the girl. Seeing no one around, he leveraged his superhuman physical prowess to leap onto the second floor, entering an empty room in a small hotel nearby through its balcony.
Then... nothing happened. After tossing the girl onto the bed, Bai Mo assessed that her injuries were not severe. He took 500 yuan from his wallet and tucked it into her clothes, then once again leaped down from the balcony, holding the hard drive he had acquired, and walked towards his dormitory.
"I have to say, 500 yuan for some samples and a hard drive is a bit expensive, but good luck to you."
Bai Mo returned to his dormitory with the portable hard drive, opened his computer, pulled out a USB cable from a drawer, and connected it to the hard drive, beginning to read the information inside. While waiting for it to load, he also washed an apple. Although there was no longer any need for him to eat, Bai Mo still habitually gnawed on something.
The contents of the hard drive were quickly loaded, as they were primarily experimental reports and data files, with only two videos.
Bai Mo guessed the videos were some kind of live recordings, so he opened the first one with the mindset of watching a sci-fi horror film.
Sure enough, the video began in a large laboratory. Inside the lab were many giant transparent cylinders, filled with a pale yellow liquid, and each cylinder contained a humanoid object immersed within.
"Usually, individual organs or tissues are used as specimens, right? What's the point of having so many full human body specimens?"
Ever since awakening his X-ray vision ability, Bai Mo had grown numb to the sight of various organs and human structures. He even had the presence of mind to chew on his apple and comment on the video, feeling not the slightest bit of horror.
The video had no narration, nor any music to heighten a sense of dread; it was purely a documentary-style recording. Before looking at the other experimental reports and data, he could only guess at the content of their experiments.
Each specimen was connected by several wires, and their heads were covered by an iron ring. At the top of each glass cylinder was an exhaust vent, and bubbles continuously emerged from the liquid within the cylinder, seemingly drawing large amounts of air into it, causing the human bodies inside to float and sink with the currents.
For unknown reasons, the first video abruptly ended here.
Bai Mo, his curiosity piqued, then clicked on the second video.
The main content of the second video showed several test subjects, under duress from those around them, reluctantly immersing themselves in the liquid flowing from the various glass cylinders.
In the video, the test subjects who entered the liquid reacted extremely violently. Even through the screen, Bai Mo could almost hear their screams, but under the control of the equipment, all resistance proved futile.
Not long after, the test subjects' reactions ceased, and they stopped struggling, appearing to have died. Such forced experiments occurred many times in the video, but all ended with the death of the test subject.
It wasn't until the final three minutes of the clip that Bai Mo, estimating this was the last test subject in the video, felt that this one should be different. He watched the final individual's experiment with rapt attention.
"Looks no different from the others, still the same agonizing screams, then silence."
However, just as Bai Mo was thinking this, when several researchers in the video opened the locks preventing the escape of the test subjects inside, and prepared to lift out the dead subject as before, an unexpected event occurred.
A green storm erupted from the experimental chamber. The nearby researchers resisted for a few seconds before their bodies carbonized completely and scattered across the floor. Then, the storm dissipated, revealing the figure of a man in a patient's gown.
Alarms blared throughout the laboratory, and the man in the patient's gown charged towards the video camera. Then, the screen went black, and the video ended.
After watching the documentary-style video, which could be called a masterpiece of sci-fi realism, Bai Mo began to flip through the experimental reports on the hard drive. The content of the reports utterly stunned him.
"There are truly so many capable people. It's only been a little over a month since ability users appeared, and already some genius has managed to create an initial version of something as heaven-defying as a 'Biochemical Reactor.'"
Inside, the researchers would render the ability users unconscious, then immerse them in a nutrient solution containing anesthetics. The nutrient solution sustained their lives, oxygen was provided by breathing masks fixed to their heads, and the anesthetics ensured that the 'materials' inside would not awaken.
The other wires were responsible for extracting all the Spirit Energy generated by the test subjects from Spirit Qi, beyond what was needed for sustaining life. Since they hadn't yet developed equipment to store Spirit Energy, they could only allow other ability users to directly contact the liquid transmitting Spirit Energy, achieving the effect of Spirit Energy transfer, thereby directly accelerating the test subjects' Spirit Hub formation.
However, whether due to rejection or some other reason, only one out of over a dozen test subjects survived. The survivor's abilities had become incredibly powerful; within seconds, he brutally eliminated several scientists.
"This concept is genuinely impressive, and the implementation details are very thorough. It seems the person in charge of the experiment was very rigorous. Any random company, given tens of millions in investment for equipment and then capturing some ability users, could replicate this experiment."