Thick yellow-green fog slowly rolled across the northern edge of Lantern Sector, carrying toxic particles that made the throat feel as though it were being scraped with sandpaper.Beyond the dense toxic fog, the silhouette of a massive steel structure towered into the sky, belching black smoke into the air. Its iron chimneys rumbled softly. A rusted metal sign above the outer gate read:Tingzhao Lantern Oil Factory.Wu Chen crouched behind a mound of excavated earth, pressing a hand against his throbbing chest. The chronic pain caused by the System's penalty crawled up his spine every time he bent his knees, but the young man's pale face remained as expressionless as asphalt.Behind him, five elite loyalists of the Dead Meridian Clan lay prone, holding their breath. They were the remnants of the finest fighters who had survived the massacre, men who had sworn in blood to die for their crippled tyrant."Fucking oil factory," Wu Chen muttered, squeezing the parchment blueprint from Gene

The sight beyond the observation glass was enough to tear apart whatever remained of anyone's sanity.Inside the three-meter-tall cylindrical glass tubes, children from the Slum District floated naked in thick green liquid that churned and bubbled relentlessly. Their faces were deathly pale, yet their chests still rose and fell with agonizing slowness. Their tiny mouths hung wide open, screaming in pain within absolute silence, their vocal cords suppressed by the dense fluid.From their frail backs, more than a dozen rusted metal pipes had been forcibly driven straight through their spinal columns. The damned pipes pulsed rhythmically, siphoning the children's life force and whatever pure meridian energy remained in their bodies, then channeling it into the massive refining machinery above the room."God..." Jiao dropped to his knees beside Wu Chen. The young man's hands trembled violently as he gripped the ventilation bars. Tears immediately streamed down his face, washing through th

The screech of metal grinding against bone shattered the silence of the pitch-black underground chamber. Blue sparks erupted from severed electrical cables dangling from the ceiling, illuminating the nightmarish figure now towering before Wu Chen and his team.The monster stood three meters tall. One half of its body consisted of the grotesque, rotting flesh characteristic of a mutant, riddled with pulsating red meridian veins. The other half, from its lower jaw and right shoulder to its arm and part of its rib cage, had been completely replaced with rusted, spiked machinery.Gears inside the monster's iron chest churned with a harsh grinding noise. A thick glass cylinder was embedded in its back, pumping bright green coolant directly into its spinal column through a network of thick rubber hoses."Fall back! Everybody, fall back!" Wu Chen roared, dragging his chronically aching leg down the mound of rotting corpses."Boss! What the actual fuck is that thing?!" Jiao screamed hysterica

An oppressive silence settled over the blood-soaked underground chamber.Jiao and San stood frozen in place, the weapons in their hands trembling violently. They stared at the young man who had just risen from a pool of necrotic fluid, their minds paralyzed by a mixture of terror and awe.Wu Chen’s once-severely burned and mangled left chest was now covered in a layer of hard, black skin resembling natural armor. The veins in his neck still pulsed with a brilliant blue glow, remnants of the Prototype Serum coursing through his body. But what truly made the two loyal clan members’ courage falter was their leader’s gaze. Wu Chen’s pupils now bore faintly glowing, blood-red vertical slits in the darkness, exactly like those of an apex predator reigning supreme at the top of the food chain.“Little Boss...” Jiao called out, his voice trembling as he swallowed the bitter lump in his throat. “You... you’re still Boss Wu Chen, right? You haven’t turned into a monster like that walking pile o

“Everyone, run for the drainage chute!”Wu Chen’s roar thundered through the facility, tearing through the shrill decompression alarms screaming throughout the steel corridors.The floor beneath their boots shook violently, as if struck by a tectonic earthquake. The reactor engines in the chamber behind them, already beginning to overload, sounded like metal being ripped apart by invisible blades. Blood-red emergency lights flashed aggressively, illuminating the absolute panic that had seized the hellish facility.Jiao, San, and the remaining clan loyalists stationed at the intersection immediately ran after Wu Chen. Their faces were deathly pale, covered in cold sweat and soot.“Boss! Is the reactor really about to blow?!” Jiao shouted between ragged breaths as he ran alongside Wu Chen.“We’ve got less than a minute before this place turns into an ash crater! Keep running. Nobody stops to catch their breath!” Wu Chen roared.The left side of his chest, now covered in mutated black ar