16 years

Almost at the moment when the partition door fell, with the research institute as the center, there was a sudden violent vibration from the surrounding underground.

When Liu Ruosong's forward steps faltered, he staggered a step, and hurriedly supported a tree beside him, barely maintaining his balance.

The earthquake came suddenly and inexplicably, Liu Ruosong subconsciously thought it was another trap left by Joe Eden, looked around but did not see the fire, only the earthquake came from under his feet intermittently, which had not stopped completely.

"What's going on?" Liu Ruosong was surprised and suspicious: "An earthquake?"

"Explosives."

Fu Yan's expression changed suddenly, and his eyes scanned the ground very quickly, as if he judged the scale and center of the explosion based on the magnitude of the earthquake in just a few seconds.

"It was blown up underground." Fu Yan said, "There is a hollow layer underground."

After he explained in a hurry, he rushed towards the research building first, followed by Liu Ruosong and Shao Qiu, not caring for a while whether there were other traps around.

The door of the experimental building was wide open and the lights were brightly lit. When Fu Yan rushed in, the ground shaking under his feet just ended.

I don't know if the underground explosion damaged the keel. The foundation of the whole building was not stable. It shook for a moment, and the body of the building sank at a slant.

But fortunately, the scale of the explosion was not large, and did not cause greater damage to the building. Although the moment of subsidence was a bit scary, the overall tilt was not large, and the building remained intact without the risk of collapse.

The laboratory building was empty, and there was no one in sight, and the siren had stopped. Fu Yan listened for a while, but he didn't hear any living voice.

Only the landscape of a fountain in the hall was shaken a little bit, and water droplets seeped out from the cracks of the broken pool edge, condensed into water droplets, and hit the tiles drop by drop.

Fu Yan hesitated for a moment, Shao Qiu seemed to see what he was thinking, and said first: "Captain, let's divide the troops into two groups. I'll go downstairs to check the explosion point."

This is the most efficient situation. If it wasn't for Liu Ruosong's non-staff personnel, they would be more efficient if they split up with each other.

"Okay." Fu Yan said quickly, "Keep in touch."

Shao Qiu nodded slightly to him, then turned and walked deep into the corridor.

Liu Ruosong didn't notice their communication for a while, his eyes were attracted by the fountain in front of him, staring at the statue in the fountain, he didn't speak for five seconds.

Before that, Liu Ruosong had a very shallow impression of Joe Eden.

If you have to say one, two, three, it is probably a virtual silhouette derived from the totem photo, the "boss", and the "sponsor" He Laosan said.

Uncertainty, deep scheming, shallow moral sense, and anti-social personality—these speculations are too superficial, like some kind of theoretical symbolic label, and are not enough to outline a specific figure.

But at this moment, standing in front of this statue made of marble, Liu Ruosong's first feeling was not shock, but a sense of suffocation for no reason.

The construction scale of this experimental building is actually not large, and it even looks a bit old from the outside. Although the interior decoration looks like an experimental base camp for some near-future sci-fi film, the overall floor space is actually very limited.

But even so, Joe Eden still gave up most of the area to this useless fountain landscape.

The marble statue is more than four meters high, and the top of its head is almost close to the ceiling. From a visual point of view, it is obviously too cramped, and even the whole building looks like a huge cage.

In the center of the fountain is a statue of a woman who looks very close to the description of "Eve" in mythology.She has soft and smooth long hair, is almost coquettishly beautiful, naked, with a graceful figure, half-closed eyelids, holding an apple in her hand, and her expression looks almost divine indifference.

But contrary to this divinity, a thick black snake is wrapped around the naked body of "Eve".The carving technique of this black snake is extremely detailed, even the scales on it are lifelike.Its entire body is almost coiled around the woman, starting from the ankle and winding upwards, then the snake's head wraps around the woman's shoulders to the front of her body, and finally sinks into the private part of the statue.

This statue is too bold, and as a whole, it gives people a deep sense of restraint and immorality. Liu Ruosong has a high empathy for art, and he felt the discomfort almost instantly.

And what Liu Ruosong cares about is that her face is not close to the mythological aesthetics that Liu Ruosong recognizes. In the oil paintings of related cultures, "Eve" is usually plump and round.But the statue in front of him is too slender, and the face sculpture is also lifelike. Every detail seems to have been polished thousands of times, and there is a very clear reflection.

Liu Ruosong's eyes fell on "Eve"'s face, and he was absent-minded for a short while. Fu Yan noticed his blankness, coughed lightly beside him, and regained his reason.

"I'm sorry, captain, I was in a daze just now." Liu Ruosong admitted his mistake with a good attitude: "I was dumbfounded just now, and I always feel that this person is Joe Eden himself."

"This is a woman." Fu Yan said.

"I know, but if you stare at her face carefully, you will experience visual confusion after a few seconds." Liu Ruosong said: "Because the statue is too large, it will be difficult to distinguish between men and women."

Fu Yan frowned, he took a step back, and looked at the statue from bottom to top.But he has been trained all year round, and his ability to catch sight is many times better than ordinary people, so he will not have that kind of cognitive bias.

He looked at it for a while, but he didn't see male and female indistinguishable, but he felt uncomfortable.

"This should be the petri dish." Liu Ruosong said suddenly, "Joe Eden's younger sister."

This conjecture has been lingering in Liu Ruosong's mind since just now, until the moment his vision became blurred, he suddenly became sure for no reason.

But then, an even more absurd thought suddenly popped up in Liu Ruosong's mind.

"He seems to have a bit of an unclear feeling towards her sister." Liu Ruosong frowned so much that he could kill a fly: "His inner reflection is too obvious."

Speaking of this, no matter how slow Fu Yan is, he doesn't need Liu Ruosong to point it out.

Does "tasting the forbidden fruit" refer to knowing good and evil, or is it a pun? No one can tell which one the pervert prefers.

As soon as Liu Ruosong finished speaking, he heard two beeps in the communication, followed by Shao Qiu's voice from inside.

"There is only one large compartment in the basement, which is already empty and there is no one there." Shao Qiu said, "The source of the explosion is in the basement corridor. There is a passage cut off by a steel broken door. The explosion should have come from inside. I doubt It's an act of silencing—”

"Understood." Fu Yan said: "Meet upstairs and search the situation."

As he spoke, he took two steps back to make sure that the action recorder could take a picture of the whole hall, and then he turned his head and said to Liu Ruosong: "Joe Aiden's people have withdrawn ahead of time, and it is probably difficult to find experimental equipment and medicines. But there may still be legacy information remaining—”

"Understood, captain." Liu Ruosong answered, "I will search as carefully as possible."

Fu Yan nodded, led him around the weird statue, and went up to the second floor from the stairs at the back. At the same time, he contacted Feng Lei, explaining that it was safe here, and asked their people to come across the river to meet him.

The second floor seemed much more normal. Liu Ruosong and Fu Yan split up. After going upstairs, they went to both ends of the corridor and began to search room by room.

It can be seen that they evacuated in a hurry, most of the doors were open, and useless things were scattered all over the place.Liu Ruosong stepped over the shards of glass on the ground, and cautiously walked further into the room.

It looked like a large office, with a few filing cabinets and specimen cabinets lining the walls, but it was now empty, and there seemed to be nothing useful left.

But Liu Ruosong was very patient. He searched from the innermost side to the outside little by little, not even missing under the table or in the corner.It's a pity that this group of "fleeing" researchers seemed to be well-trained, and even in such a short period of time, they cleaned up their tails very cleanly, and there were no research items left behind.

This is the last room in the half-floor corridor, Liu Ruosong is still empty-handed and has nothing.

Liu Ruosong clicked his tongue, a little discouraged.

He straightened up and walked out, ready to think about where there might be paper materials.When they walked to the door, the hidden dangers left by the explosion seemed to have not completely disappeared. The whole building shook for a while, and then suddenly sank a bit.

The tiled floor was so bright that it seemed to reflect light, Liu Ruosong slipped on the soles of his feet, staggered back a few steps along the angle of the collapse, lost his strength for a while, and hit a row of filing cabinets by the wall.

He hissed in pain, and just about to stand up straight, he heard a slight rubbing sound coming from his ear.

Liu Ruosong followed the sound and looked at his feet, only to realize that a small object appeared beside his feet at some point.

——It is a U disk.

Liu Ruosong bent down to hold the little thing in his hand, and turned to look under the filing cabinet, only to find that there was an imperceptible gap there. Liu Ruosong had touched under the cabinet before, but he didn't touch this gap.

Now that I think about it, the USB flash drive should have just happened to be stuck inside, but the earthquake just hit the wall connecting the cabinet body, and Liu Ruosong hit it from the outside, which happened to "knock" the thing out.

Liu Ruosong's gaze returned to the palm of his hand, he stared at the little thing, his heart suddenly jumped wildly.

Such a small thing probably fell out accidentally when the researcher was evacuating. Because of the emergency, no one found it.

Liu Ruosong's heart was pounding, the shell of the metal object pressed against his palm, and was soon warmed by his body temperature.

He clearly hasn't determined what's inside, but he has some kind of intuition, telling him that this may be the moment he's closest to the truth in several lifetimes.

Ashamed to say, Liu Ruosong thinks he has no great prospects, he is not interested in why Joe Eden wants to create a disaster, and he doesn't want to understand the other party's mood.

For him, he only cares about when and how this disaster will end.