Volume 11: Memetic Crisis Chapter 552: Clearing the Corridor
The situation in the corridor was pretty much the same as Ke Lan had expected. The tangled, blood-corroding vines occupied almost every inch of space in her field of vision. Fragments of tiles, cement, and glass were scattered all over the floor. A nearly 30-centimeter-thick, severely deformed airtight door was pushed into the corner by the vines. There were several dried bloody handprints on the valve of the airtight door.
This airtight door was "pulled" off the wall by the Corrosive Ivy. As for the original metal door frame, it was torn into several pieces by the vines. The sharp metal fractures cut open the epidermis of the Corrosive Ivy. Wherever the blood-red juice flowed, the metal material turned into a grid-like shape with thousands of holes, as if it had just been fished out of aqua regia.
The concrete wall used to fix the door frame had long been shattered. On a concrete block strung with steel bars, there was a shaky doorplate. Ke Lan glanced at it and saw the words: "11th Floor, Area A, Class C Drug and Consumables Temporary Storage Cold Storage Room."
"Eleventh floor, Area A... It seems I'm lucky. I picked a random window and came in through Area A." Ke Lan murmured. Each floor of the Biological Laboratory Building was divided into four major areas, A, B, C, and D, by the central cross-shaped main corridor. If he had come in from the other three areas, he would have to go through at least half of the eleventh floor to get to Professor Smith's laboratory.
As for Class C, it refers to the safety level of medicines, reagents and laboratory consumables, which is also divided into four levels: A, B, C and D. Class A is the most dangerous, basically some things that can kill people if touched or kill them instantly. Then the degree of danger decreases according to the level. Those that can be classified as Class C are completely harmless reagents, such as glucose and saline, which can be bought from vending machines in residential areas.
This level classification is very similar to the biosafety level, but this set of standards only uses drugs, reagents and laboratory consumables. Except for those working in research institutions, most ordinary people have never heard of this thing.
Following the gaps between the vines, Ke Lan glanced into the cold storage room and vaguely saw several bloody corpses squeezed by the vines - these corpses should be the owners of the bloody handprints on the airtight door.
These people probably hid in this relatively safe cold storage room as soon as the incident happened, but they didn't expect that they escaped the most difficult to prevent meme infection, but eventually died at the hands of the mutated Corrosive Blood Vine.
Compared to those who were infected or died at the hands of the crisis management department, they could be considered the luckiest people in the entire building, but this luck only allowed them to live an extra hour or so.
There were no survivors or lucky people in the entire laboratory building - just as it was written in the report document of the Crisis Management Department: no one survived.
Another sound of glass breaking was heard behind him - Asano Akiya climbed up along the outer wall of the experimental building and entered the corridor through another parallel window.
"The road ahead has been blocked by blood-corroding vines... Be careful. Even though they are quiet now, as soon as we get close, these vines will pounce on us like mad dogs." Ke Lan stopped Asano Akira who wanted to move forward and said.
"I can feel them... they are not still, but are slightly wriggling." Asano Akira said softly, "The sound of the juice flowing through the blood vessels is like the sound of blood flowing through the blood vessels..."
"It would be best if you can hear it." Ke Lan nodded. Asano Akira's detection ability was so strong that people around him often subconsciously forgot that he was a blind man.
The communication that had just been restored was interrupted again - the energy shields equipped on Ke Lan and Asano Akira's power armor were all full-coverage type. After activation, they would form a protective shield similar to an eggshell that enveloped the entire person. Compared with the restrained local shield that could only defend in a single direction, the advantage was that there were no blind spots in protection... As for the disadvantage, when the shield was opened, all connections between itself and the outside would be cut off.
Only some specific energy weapons can penetrate the shield and launch one-way attacks on enemies outside the shield. No matter which direction the physical warheads are shot from, they will be intercepted by the shield - not to mention the communication cables dragging behind.
However, from another perspective, even if the energy shield did not damage the communication cable, after entering the laboratory building, it would be almost no difficulty for those vines and infected monsters to cut off the unprotected cables behind them... Ke Lan found it incredible that the communication could be maintained until after entering the laboratory building.
The "meme" itself has a very high IQ, and it has absorbed the memories of so many infected people. Even if these memories are not complete, it should have mastered most of the information about humans ... After all, the number of people who have died from meme infection has exceeded five digits. Even if the memories of those people are incomplete, they can be pieced together to get a complete puzzle.
Judging from the behavior of the "pretender" in attacking the communication cable, the "meme" subject obviously knows the function of this thing.
This made Ke Lan feel very troubled - the resources that the other party could use were obviously much more than his own, and even time was on its side. However, the "wisdom" that Ke Lan and his team had as the only advantage as humans was wiped out in this situation... It was like the three major elements of "time, place and people", the other party occupied "time" and "geography", and as for "people", the two sides were temporarily tied.
But this "battle" is related to the life and death of all mankind. Even if the chance of winning is slim, Ke Lan has no choice but to bite the bullet and fight.
Until the "meme" is eliminated, he won't have any backup and can only rely on himself.
Now, he still has two cards left in his hand——
"Zero" and " Holy Word ".
He had no intention of using the former, not to mention what consequences would result if Ze Luo's identity was exposed... If Ze Luo was also not immune to the "meme" infection, then this trump card would instead give the opponent a boost that was as strong as cheating... Ke Lan didn't dare to gamble. If he lost the bet, then he would really have no chance of winning.
As for the latter... although no negative effects have been shown yet, Ke Lan's subconscious mind has been resisting this power. For some reason, he always vaguely feels that the price to pay for this trump card is even more terrible than Ze Luo being infected by the "meme".
The villain in Ke Lan's mind couldn't help but smile bitterly: "Other people's trump cards are magic weapons that can win with one strike and turn the tide, but all my trump cards are double-edged swords that will lead to mutual destruction... Who the hell can I go to for justice?"
"Let's go to the laboratory of that idiot named Smith first, and then go to the top floor." Ke Lan said to Asano Akira. Although the chance of finding useful information is not high, considering that they can take the shortcut "outside the wall", the laboratory still has certain search value.
"Let me lead the way." Asano Akira stepped forward and gently pushed the sword out of the sheath several inches with his thumb.
He leaned forward, his whole body like a taut bow, all the strength concentrated in his waist and back, and then transferred along his shoulders and arms - Ke Lan had no doubt that Asano Akira's Iai Slash would definitely be able to cut through the huge mass of corrosive vines blocking the way.
However, Ke Lan patted Asano Akira's shoulder and said, "There's no need for surgery."
"I can cut it."
"I know you can, but once you cut through all the rotten blood-corroding vines that are blocking your way, your sword will be useless... Nino alloy is not difficult to make, but there is nowhere to get those stalagmite fragments that have melted into the blade. Using this sword to trade with these minion-level monsters is a huge loss for every hundred you exchange." Ke Lan said, "Besides, you can't open the shield when you use the sword, otherwise the corrosive juice will stain your body. It's not worth it no matter how you calculate it."
"What should we do then?"
"Just open the shield and burn all the way in." Ke Lan said, and then activated the energy shield and walked directly towards the corrosive blood vines.
"You follow me, and wait until my shield cools down. Then we switch positions and you go to the front to clear the way. Also, we have to speed up. If the shield melts through the ground beneath our feet, we will fall to the next level."
This is also one of the key flaws of the full-coverage energy shield: this type of shield is indeed perfect if installed on a non-ground aircraft, but if it is installed on a mecha or a ship, the former will directly burn the ground when it is activated, and the latter will directly evaporate the surrounding seawater, forming a huge vortex...
Therefore, more than 99 percent of the full-coverage shields currently held by Ark are allocated to the Air Force fleet, Army Aviation Corps and carrier-based aircraft. As for ground vehicles, they basically use partial shields.
At this time, the ground beneath Ke Lan's feet had begun to sink - the tiles and cement were instantly vaporized, revealing the metal layer inside, which also turned bright red in the blink of an eye and was about to melt through.
Ke Lan ran quickly and ran into the vines.
"laugh--"
Just as Ke Lan had expected, as soon as he approached, the originally quiet and virgin blood-corroding vines immediately switched to a swift and agile mode... No, the word "swift and agile as rabbits" could not describe the vines' degree of agitation, it should be changed to "swift and agile as mad dogs".
The corridor's space of less than 30 square meters was instantly covered by the surging vines, and the already shaky doorplate was directly crushed into several pieces. These vines swept towards Ke Lan like octopus tentacles, but when they came into contact with the layer of light covering him, they turned into ashes.
Even the corrosive juice in the vines was vaporized at the same moment, with no chance of splashing out.
For a moment, the corridor was filled with a choking smell of burnt food and a strong pungent sour smell. Fortunately, the two men had already closed their masks in advance, and a gurgling sound came from the metal tube of the oxygen supply device.
"It's a bit like playing a game with an invincible cheat and pushing all the way. It's really cool, but it's a pity that it can only last for five minutes." Ke Lan muttered while paying attention to the house numbers on both sides - behind the cold storage room is the No. 1 biochemical laboratory, followed by No. 2, No. 3...
The numbers were increasing, which meant Ke Lan was going in the right direction.
"It's a bit too smooth..." Before Ke Lan finished speaking, the end of the corridor appeared in front of him.
And the last laboratory in this corridor is numbered... eight.
"Damn, just pretend I didn't say anything!" Ke Lan then realized that, excluding the cold storage room, there were only eight laboratories in one corridor, and Professor Smith's "Laboratory No. 9" was on another corridor.
Ke Lan had seen the architectural diagram of the biological laboratory building, but that diagram was so sloppy that it only drew a rough framework of the interior of the building. As for which specific laboratories those rooms belonged to, they were not marked at all.
Schroeder explained that what they got were the construction design drawings of the laboratory building, and the specific functions of each room were determined after the building was completed. The interior of the building has undergone many renovations. The latest and most detailed drawings are stored in the offline database of the institute's headquarters. For the sake of confidentiality, this database is not connected to the Internet and has no cloud backup, so when the power outage occurred at the institute's headquarters, the data inside was completely locked.
Ke Lan had to stop and turn around - the corrupt blood vines that had spread from somewhere else were reoccupying the corridor that he had burned down. They were climbing rapidly along the ceiling and walls, and the farthest end had been blocked again. From where Ke Lan and the others were, they could no longer see the outer windows and the airtight door of the cold storage room.
If we give these vines another half a minute, I estimate they will be able to fill the entire corridor again.
It took Ke Lan less than two minutes to run from one end of the corridor to the other, and the overheating progress bar of the energy shield had not even reached halfway - he could easily burn the corridor clean a second time, but the problem was that the ground beneath his feet could no longer support him to run another trip.
The space on the next level can be seen from many places. If he runs back now, he probably won't be able to reach the corner, and he will fall to the tenth floor without his feet.
what to do?
Ke Lan's gaze shifted involuntarily to the wall on his left.
The walls were already badly damaged by the blood-corroding vines, and now he had burned all the blood-corroding vines that were originally inserted into the walls as supports. He didn't even need to hit them hard. He only needed to kick them down to create a hole in the wall big enough for a person to pass through.
Since there is no way to get back to the corner, just create a passage for yourself!
With this thought in mind, Ke Lan rushed directly towards the wall in front of him and crashed into it!
