Chapter 1653: New Discoveries

Chapter 1653: Chapter 1653: New Discoveries

"This sucks." Chu Jiaojiao pinched her nose, baring her teeth in pain like she was wearing a misery mask: "I swear next time I am never packing Wind Oil Essence again. I’d rather bring more stinky bombs, but absolutely no Wind Oil Essence."

"..." Ji You’s mouth twitched: "You sure you want stinky bombs?"

Chu Jiaojiao shuddered all over: "Forget it. Compared to stinky bombs, the smell of Wind Oil Essence is actually kinda refreshing."

The usually mouthy Chu Jiaojiao suddenly grew serious: "Classmate Ji You, no, I really don’t feel anything at all."

Ji You frowned.

Just how strong was the "big guy" Fourth mentioned? Chu Jiaojiao couldn’t sense it at all... Was it that big guy deliberately erased its aura, or was it that Chu Jiaojiao’s Spiritual Level simply wasn’t high enough to pick it up?

Ji You voiced the thoughts in her heart.

When Chu Jiaojiao heard this, she frowned: "So, a big guy once came into the monitoring room, and the one outside the door is just a little guy?"

Ji You nodded.

Chu Jiaojiao gripped her weapon tightly: "What do you mean by ’little’? Low Level, young age, small size? Or some other kind of ’little’?"

This question stumped Ji You, because neither of them could clearly see what that "little guy" outside actually looked like, so of course they couldn’t analyze it in detail.

But the issue didn’t bother Ji You for long. She raised her hand and tapped lightly on the tabletop: "We don’t actually need to know exactly how ’little’ it is. All we need to know is that its strength definitely isn’t that great! As long as the opponent is weak, that’s a huge plus for us."

As she spoke, Ji You narrowed her eyes: "Which means the situation with that ’little guy’ outside is actually more or less like I guessed. It’s definitely a weak scrub. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have skulked around and hidden when faced with us. Jiaojiao!"

She looked at Chu Jiaojiao, her voice pressing down: "When we leave the monitoring room later, we’re going to face it head‑on. Do you have confidence?"

Chu Jiaojiao rubbed her knuckles: "If it’s a beauty contest, I’m definitely not confident. But if it’s a fist contest, I’ll put my words right here today: unless they threaten me with Classmate Ji You’s face, no one in this world is making me admit defeat!"

Ji You: "..."

Chu Jiaojiao chuckled, wiggling her eyebrows at Ji You: "Classmate Ji You, do you feel my resolve and confidence now?"

Ji You’s fingertips twitched. She swallowed back the urge to beat her up and said: "First, let that confidence settle a bit. Don’t blow it all at once. Let’s think about what to do after we go out."

Chu Jiaojiao swept away her goofy grin and returned to being serious and proper.

The two of them stayed in the monitoring room. Ji You said: "You keep watching the feeds, try to find any other clues about Shen Sheng and the others. I’ll look around and see if I can find any information about that big guy."

If Ji You’s Six Spiritual Threads were unreliable in many situations, then when it came to running away and staying alive, they were definitely the most reliable. So since Fourth said that big guy’s aura was left here, then it had to be true.

Auras are intangible and formless, basically impossible to track. But maybe there were traces left somewhere else? Like footprints, fingerprints, or something...

Unwilling to give up, Ji You wandered around every corner of the monitoring room. Just then, Chu Jiaojiao suddenly said: "Classmate Ji You, come take a look."

"Hm?" Ji You’s heart tightened. She asked: "Something wrong?"

"Too many things are wrong." Chu Jiaojiao’s face turned more serious than ever. She pointed at a newly pulled camera feed and said: "Look—"

Ji You followed her gaze and immediately knit her brows.

The feed wasn’t showing anywhere else, but the inside of K-Q75’s Breeding Cabin. The time stamp was exactly a few seconds after Shen Sheng and the others mysteriously vanished. The Breeding Cabin was divided into several sections: the Long-legged Chicken area, the rabbit area, plus four areas for pigs and cattle.

Each section housed roughly a hundred animals of a given type. They were staying in the artificial compartments, happily eating feed at first. Then in the very next second, whether cow, pig, chicken, or rabbit, every last one suddenly started struggling madly—yet their struggles lasted less than a second before they all died together.

They died extremely cleanly. One Long-legged Chicken even had its neck twisted off, blood spilling...

And then—

What really blew Ji You’s and Chu Jiaojiao’s minds was that those animals, which had died so abruptly, vanished in the next second even more abruptly!

At a speed visible to the naked eye, they were annihilated into powder. Then the powder pattered down, and right after that, it was swept away by K-Q75’s automatic cleaning system—without even a speck of ash left behind—directly erased from inside K-Q75.

Ji You and Chu Jiaojiao watched this scene in silence.

Both of them were frowning so hard their brows locked, unable to say a word.

The atmosphere that had still been fairly relaxed just moments ago couldn’t recover after this. It was like a heavy stone had dropped into both Ji You’s and Chu Jiaojiao’s hearts, pressing down so hard they couldn’t breathe.

"No..."

"I... I mean... it’s impossible, this... this isn’t scientific." Chu Jiaojiao clawed at the tabletop, flustered and helpless, then finally turned to Ji You: "Classmate Ji You, did you see it clearly?"

"Yeah." Ji You pressed her lips together.

"So this has to be special effects, right?" Chu Jiaojiao still couldn’t quite accept it. She looked at Ji You and said: "If it’s special effects, then the people on the spaceship must be okay, right?"

After boarding the spaceship, they’d already discovered that all the animals aboard had vanished. If they hadn’t seen this segment of surveillance footage, they would’ve assumed the Breeding Cabin was just for show and hadn’t started raising animals yet. But after seeing the video, it was impossible not to suspect what might’ve happened to the spaceship’s passengers.

Could it be— ℴ

Chu Jiaojiao didn’t have the nerve to say the thought out loud. For the first time, she felt a stab of fear. Not fear of dying, but fear of witnessing her companions’ deaths.

Ji You suddenly stood up: "You stay here. I’m going out to take a look."

Chu Jiaojiao asked: "Take a look at what?"

Ji You said: "I’m going to rummage through the cleaning boxes."

She didn’t say the rest, but Chu Jiaojiao instantly understood what she was going to do: she was going to dig through the trash containers, go through everything the automatic cleaning system had swept up and collected, and see if they could detect human genes or anything like that in there.

This—

This was a brutally cruel thing to do. Choosing to do it took a huge amount of courage and mental fortitude.

It wasn’t that Chu Jiaojiao hadn’t thought of it. She was just afraid—plain afraid that the answer wouldn’t be the one she wanted.

Chu Jiaojiao stayed where she was.

Ji You had already stepped forward.