Paintings of Terror

Chapter 110: Crazy Experiment

Everyone returned to Laboratory C and knocked on the door.

By Mu Yiran’s inference, there must be survivors in Laboratory C. Otherwise, no one would be able to open the door from the outside. If everyone with a C card were wiped out, this laboratory would be temporarily inaccessible.

After knocking for ten minutes, someone finally opened the door shakingly from the inside.

It’s Zhang Hanrui.

The girl who was originally bright and beautiful now had tears, snot, and drool clinging to her face. A scent of urine exuded from her body. The moment she saw them, she collapsed to the ground, crying too hard to speak.

Everyone left Wei Dong at the door to comfort the girl and walked into the lab.

Under the dim light of their mobile phone, they could see that, on the chairs next to the two simple machines in the room, the other three people in this group were still unconscious, all with drool covering their faces and the smell of urine on their bodies.

Qin Ci walked over and checked their pulses. He raised his gaze and said, “Deng Guang and Zhao Youyi are both dead. This girl Li Yaqing is just unconscious.”

Ke Xun studied the scene in front of him with the light from his phone. The three people were sitting on opposite sides of the two machines. Zhao Youyi and Li Yaqing were sitting on both sides of the same machine, while the other side of the machine Deng Guang was at was empty. That chair was probably Zhang Hanrui’s.

The dead Deng Guang and Zhao Youyi were still both holding a special wire that was sticking out from the machines. Meanwhile, Li Yaqing, who was just unconscious, was empty-handed.

From this, they could infer that both machines were in use last night, and of the two people on the same machine, one would die while the other would live.

The focus was on the two machines and the cords held in the hands of the dead.

Ke Xun stepped forward to inspect the two machines. Everyone had checked when they came last night. The two machines were only connected by a simple circuit and cable set. Ke Xun found a suspected switch button and pressed it. It clicked on, but there was no power, and so the machine did not respond.

Unable to figure out the machine’s operating principle, they had to ask Zhang Hanrui, who was presently the only sober C person.

“What happened last night?” Mu Yiran walked to the door and asked Zhang Hanrui, who was still crying.

Zhang Hanrui was inconsolable with fright. She didn’t say anything and only continued to cry.

Qin Ci had to wake the unconscious Li Yaqing. Before she could fully recover, he quickly asked, “What happened?”

“Electric…electricity—Electricity!” Li Yaqing screamed as she sat on the ground, incessantly kicking her legs. “Don’t-don’t-Youyi-please, please, don’t let go. I don’t want to die—Please—“

Standing outside the door, Zhang Hanrui heard Li Yaqing’s words and broke down completely, crying even harder. Wei Dong was still in shock from last night’s noise and he still had a headache. When he heard this noisy cry so close to his ear, his legs gave out and he ended up taking Zhang Hanrui and Cai Xiaoyan down with him.

It became a bit chaotic, and so everyone had to withdraw from Laboratory C.

“They have to leave here temporarily and calm down,” Qin Ci said in a deep voice, rubbing his eyebrows. “The three of them can no longer stay in these rooms. Otherwise, it will cause emotional instability. Let’s go back upstairs to get some fresh air and eat something. Hunger can destabilize people’s emotions and weaken their willpower.”

Everyone had no objections. Qin Ci returned to Laboratory B and woke up the other three members. Together with the two surviving girls in Laboratory C, they all returned to the upper floor.

Although the light on the first floor was still dim, they could see the sky and the scenery outside. The building was also more ventilated than the underground area. Everyone went to the bathroom to wash their faces, and they finally felt some measure of calm.

“Now that everyone has calmed down,” Qin Ci’s mood at the moment was much better than it had been this morning, allowing him to restore his doctor’s calmness. “We need to divide the work first and proceed in an orderly fashion. The first thing we need to resolve is food, the second is to examine what happened in the laboratories last night, and the third is to look for the signature. I suggest that some people prepare breakfast while the rest discuss what happened last night. So I’ll trouble Xu Zhen, Zhang Hanrui, and Cai Xiaoyan to help prepare breakfast, okay?”

Xu Zhen said with a pale face, “I can’t cook.”

Seeing Qi Qiang staring at her in disbelief, Xu Zhen coldly added, “I’m usually a workaholic, and I don’t have time to cook. I always order takeaways or go directly to a restaurant.”

Zhang Hanrui also sniffed and said, “I don’t know… I usually eat at the cafeteria when I live at school, and my mother always cooks at home…”

Cai Xiaoyan shivered. “I can only do the simplest…I, I don’t dare go by myself…”

“I’ll go,” Ke Xun said and called Cai Xiaoyan to follow him to the warehouse.

Mu Yiran retracted his gaze from Ke Xun’s departing back and turned to look at Zhang Hanrui and Li Yaqing instead. “Now can you tell me what happened last night?”

When they heard this, Zhang Hanrui and Ki Yaqing started crying again. They squatted on the ground, wanting to cry to death.

“Don’t fucking cry! Cry and I’ll kill you!” Qi Qiang yelled, stepping forward and grabbing Zhang Hanrui by the hair. Still gripping her hair, he pulled her up from the ground. It was so painful that Zhang Hanrui couldn’t help but scream.

“Speak nicely,” Qin Ci hurriedly tried to stop him. “If you scare her like this, she’ll be even less likely to talk. She’s a girl…”

“I don’t care if she’s a girl or a boy!” Qi Qiang’s violent temper surged, and he gave Zhang Hanrui a vicious slap across the face.

Zhang Hanrui let out a wretched grunt. Blood dripped down her mouth, and a bloodied tooth fell from her lips.

Qi Qiang didn’t feel any sympathy at all. He waved his arm, raising his palm for a second slap. Mu Yiran firmly grabbed onto his wrist. Looking at him coldly, he said, “If you don’t want to die, then stop.”

Qi Qiang was unwilling to listen. He tried to yank his arm out to continue beating that little white face, only to find that his arm wouldn’t budge at all. He couldn’t help but turn his head to stare at Mu Yiran, startled.

Mu Yiran released him. Then, ignoring him, he turned to look at Li Yaqing, who was paralyzed on the ground, so frightened that her cries were completely enveloped in her throat. He told her quietly, “Crying won’t solve anything. It’s best to be strong and tell us what happened last night as much as possible. Only in this way can we leave earlier. Crying will only put you closer to death. Do you understand?”

Still sobbing, Li Yaqing nodded. Scooting as far away from Qi Qiang as possible, she began talking about what happened last night, her recounting broken intermittently by sobs. Last night, the four of them were forced by an irresistible power that seemed “human-like,” which dragged them up from the ground and pressed them onto the chairs of the two machines.

Some “people” forced their heads on the machine toward a small electronic screen that had lit up. Instructions for use were displayed on the small screen.

This line of instructions was simple and easy to understand: after the power came on, if one of the users at both ends of chair A and B let go first, then the other would die.

“…Something attached to a wire was stuffed in my hand…Then someone pressed a button and there was an electric current, woo…It was so painful…Really…I really tried my best to hold on but…it was really too painful, so painful I felt as if I would die. I really…really couldn’t hold on anymore so…I let go…”

After Li Yaqing said this, she threw herself on the ground, sobbing.

Everyone finally understood what Zhang Hanrui’s and Li Yaqing’s tears were hiding.

Zhang Hanrui might be fine. After all, the person she was paired with was Deng Guang.

But Li Yaqing was partnered with her good girlfriend and sister, Zhao Youyi.

She couldn’t bear the torture of the electric current, and so she let go, causing her best friend to receive a lethal electric shock.

Li Yaqing felt that she’d killed her friend.

This was even crueler than killing a complete stranger.

“Who would come up with such a crazy experiment?!” Xu Zhen gritted her teeth and yelled, “Is this a fucking test of humanity?! The person who designed this kind of experiment is the most inhuman beast!”

Qin Ci’s eyes darkened. “At present, we already know the experimental contents of the three laboratories, AB and C. Only Laboratory D is left. It also has some equipment that needs to be powered on to operate. But it seems that the laboratories will be powered off during the day. Maybe if we want to find the signature, we’ll have to wait for one more night in Laboratory D in order to gain more clues.”

“No matter what,” Xu Zhen said firmly, “we can’t do nothing during the day and just wait for night to come. We need to search this place from top to bottom, not letting a single brick go.”

No one objected. Since breakfast wasn’t yet ready, everyone left Li Yaqing, who was still in the throes of collapse, and Zhang Hanrui, who had been hit and was sitting paralyzed on the floor. They went back to the small gated door leading to the basement, only to find that the iron gate refused to open no matter how they swiped their cards.

“What is going on?” Xu Zhen looked at Qin Ci and Mu Yiran in surprise.

“Could it be…” Qin Ci’s voice was slightly cold, “it wants us to get a new number card?”

“In order to regroup us.” Mu Yiran’s gaze became heavy. “Since we have already learned the contents of the experiment, regrouping and selecting new numbers is probably another way to test humanity and human thinking.”

“The research projects of this institute cannot be separated from ‘people’,” said Zhu Haowen. “Whether it’s human nature, human thoughts or human physiology, these are their research topic, and people are their research target, or rather, their test subject.”

Everyone was silent for a moment, until Xu Zhen broke this silence. “So, if we each take a number again this time, will the people in front still get the number card A?”

“This is clearly the case,” Qin Ci nodded slightly. “But this time, the people who’ll get the number card A won’t necessarily be four people. Two people died last night and so the number of people in each area will also be reduced. It could also change so that, correspondingly, there might not be only one person in Laboratory D this time.”

“So, who wants to go first?” Xu Zhen looked at everyone.

Everyone already knew the contents of the experiment in Laboratory A. Even though Mu Yiran only narrated it with a few unmodified words, everyone could imagine what it would be like.

No one answered Xu Zhen’s words at first. They were all silently considering the experimental contents in their hearts, judging which one would be…easier to get through.

In this way, the atmosphere became somewhat guarded, each thinking about themselves.

Upon seeing this, Qin Ci spoke calmly, “I don’t think we should worry about this now. We can set aside some time for consideration and discussion. Maybe we can come up with a better and safer way.”

They had no objections, and when they came out of the room with the iron gated door, they saw Cai Xiaoyan approaching. She called, “The meal is ready. Come to the canteen to eat.”

When they walked into the canteen, everyone was surprised.