Volume 6: Days of Being Zapped in the Lab
Little Ancestor 2.0
I even held him when he was little, right?
Fear gripped Shen Maomao’s heart, and she couldn’t help but take two steps back.
As she retreated, the figure in the white mist advanced step by step.
Finally, the person walked out of the fog, and Shen Maomao got a clear look at him.
Thirteen eyes were neatly arranged on his face. He looked only eight or nine years old, draped in some tattered strips of cloth, and was currently brazenly letting it all hang out.1
Shen Maomao: “…Little Ancestor?”
The boy glanced at her coolly and said matter-of-factly, “You all better leave this place quickly.”
His voice still had a childlike lilt2, but spoken with such a serious tone, it gave off the impression of a little adult3.
Lou Jingmo watched him warily. “What do you mean?”
Little Ancestor 2.0 said, “You’ve already been abandoned. Rather than stay here, you might as well try to survive in the outside world. Maybe you’ll even make it.”
Lou Jingmo pressed on, “What happened to the outside world?”
Little Ancestor 2.0 looked up at the ceiling, his gaze seeming to pierce through dozens of meters of soil to see the surface. “How would I know? I’ve never been to the surface.”
Shen Maomao: “…”
Little Ancestor 2.0 turned his head to look at her. “In any case, it won’t be as bad as here.”
“I can feel it. There are no humans left here. We have no food, only devouring each other to fill our stomachs.” Little Ancestor 2.0 glanced at her again. “Someone like you is the easiest to get eaten.”
He said “you,” not “you all.”
Shen Maomao felt indignant. She stepped past Lou Jingmo, walked up to him furiously, and looked down at him.
Little Ancestor 2.0 took two steps back, his expression fierce. “Wh-what are you doing? Aren’t you afraid I’ll eat you?!”
Shen Maomao reached out her hands.
Little Ancestor 2.0 shielded his face with his arms, his thirteen eyes shut tight, actually looking a little nervous.
Shen Maomao slipped her hands under his arms, gritted her teeth, and with a heave, lifted him straight up, even bouncing him lightly twice.
Little Ancestor widened his normally positioned pair of eyes in surprise, unable to resist dangling his little feet in the air.
Shen Maomao put him back on the ground. “I can actually fight pretty well too, so you don’t need to worry about me.”
Little Ancestor 2.0: “?? Who was worried about you???”
Shen Maomao asked again, “We also want to leave here. Do you know how to get back to the surface?”
Little Ancestor 2.0: “No idea, but I know every level has something guarding it. The fifth level is the bottommost, and the boss4 of this level should be me right now.”
Shen Maomao gave him a thumbs-up5. “You’re awesome!”
Little Ancestor 2.0 puffed out his chest slightly with pride.
“So, can you escort us up?”
A look of shock crossed Little Ancestor’s face, as if he couldn’t believe Shen Maomao had such nerve6. He glared at her and said fiercely, “Scram!7 I’ll give you half an hour. Get back to the fourth level, or I’ll eat you!”
With that, he turned and ran towards the depths of the corridor, vanishing from their sight in the blink of an eye.
Shen Maomao let out a sigh of relief, leaning bonelessly against Lou Jingmo, who had walked over. “My legs are so weak, Lou-jie…”
Lou Jingmo: “You went over there so quickly, I thought you weren’t afraid of him.”
Anyway, Little Ancestor 2.0 had already run off. Shen Maomao felt safe enough to start bragging8. “Why would I be afraid of him? I even held him when he was little, right?”
Lou Jingmo: “Heh.”
Actually, it was because Shen Maomao hadn’t sensed any danger from him. If Little Ancestor 2.0 had lost consciousness and attacked them on sight, even with their previous interactions, she would have immediately stood against him.
But thankfully, Little Ancestor still remembered the bit of camaraderie from their time together.
She put an arm around Lou Jingmo’s shoulder. “Lou-jie, should we head back to four or explore a bit more?”
Lou Jingmo: “Let’s search around. If there’s no elevator going down, it means there really are only five levels, and then we can look for an exit upwards.”
They hadn’t checked the other two branching paths yet. If they left just like that, the compulsive9 Shen Maomao would probably keep wondering what might have been down those two paths.
She linked arms with Lou Jingmo, and they returned to the initial junction, choosing the middle path this time.
The corridor was terrifyingly quiet. The dense clusters of faces from before were gone for some reason. Now, there wasn’t a single living creature around them, which paradoxically made Shen Maomao feel rather anxious.
The lampshades on the corridor ceiling had been broken by external force. Shen Maomao’s night vision was stronger than before; she could even make out the shards of glass buried in the dust on the floor.
Besides that, the floor was littered with many dust-covered pieces of experimental equipment, and some white bones belonging to unknown creatures.
This place looked like it had been abandoned for a long time; there wasn’t even a footprint on the ground.
So where did those researchers conduct their studies when they came down? How did they leave the fifth level?
Compared to Shen Maomao’s confusion, Lou Jingmo seemed quite purposeful. She looked left and right as she walked, her expression very relaxed, less like she was participating in a horror game and more like an investor verifying research results.
They hadn’t walked far when Shen Maomao abruptly stopped.
Lou Jingmo said softly, “You felt it too?”
Yes, there weren’t just their two sets of footsteps in the corridor. Another set of footsteps perfectly overlapped with theirs; one wouldn’t notice without listening carefully.
Although this scare tactic was old-fashioned, it was very effective.
Shen Maomao’s hand gripping Lou Jingmo’s arm trembled slightly. “Lou-jie, should we…”
Lou Jingmo smiled. “Ignore it. It doesn’t dare come out.”
She then raised her eyebrows at Shen Maomao and mouthed: The—kid—
Shen Maomao blinked.
Little Ancestor 2.0 was actually kind of cute.
The two continued forward. Shen Maomao deliberately spoke louder, “You’re right! We know the boss of this floor! Anyone who dares to touch us over his head definitely won’t end well!”10
The footsteps following them faltered for an instant, then quickly regained their steady rhythm.
Shen Maomao couldn’t help but smile at Lou Jingmo, her eyes narrowing into slits.
It was supposed to be quite a heartwarming scene, but Lou Jingmo looked at the four slits on her face and fell into a strange silence.
“Maybe… you shouldn’t smile,” Lou Jingmo said honestly. “It’s hard on the eyes.”11
Shen Maomao’s smile gradually vanished.
Lou Jingmo, that old dog b%tch.12
Seriously, any previous flutter of the heart13 must have been fake. How could she possibly feel something for such a b%tchy woman!!
Lou Jingmo laughed out loud, took the initiative to grab her hand, and led her forward.
Her mutation was progressing slightly slower than Shen Maomao’s; her body temperature was much higher than hers now, making Shen Maomao feel very warm.
Actually, when Lou-jie wasn’t talking, she was quite captivating… if only she were mute.
Shen Maomao couldn’t help but let her imagination run wild.
The two walked forward for a long time and finally reached the end.
At the end was a cafeteria. Standing at the entrance, their ears easily picked up chewing sounds coming from inside—and more than one source.
As for who was eating, and what was being eaten, Shen Maomao felt there was no need to ponder.
Her scalp tingled. She made a walking motion with two fingers, asking Lou Jingmo if they should leave.
Lou Jingmo nodded.
The two tiptoed away from the cafeteria, careful not to attract any attention.
Once they were a short distance away, they looked at each other and, with perfect understanding, broke into a run. No words were needed. They quickly dashed out of the second branching path and returned to the starting point.
Shen Maomao leaned over, hands on her knees, panting slightly. “Whew—still one path left to check.”
Lou Jingmo: “The elevator going up should be there.”
The two changed direction and started walking down the third path.
Compared to the first two neglected paths, the third one didn’t have such a thick layer of dust; it was clear people walked here often.
Just a few steps down the corridor, they came upon an iron door with a large hole smashed through it by someone unknown.
The edge of the hole in the iron door was bent into a distorted curve. Shen Maomao leaned closer for a look; there were some dried, brownish stains on it that looked a bit like blood.
Beyond this large door was row upon row of crooked cages. The cages were less than half a person tall, stacked in two layers, and as far as the eye could see, every single one was missing parts; none were completely intact. The ground was also scattered with damaged experimental equipment and some bones that had been picked clean.
From this scene, Shen Maomao could easily imagine everything that had happened back then.
The beasts created by humans finally broke free from their restraints. The first thing they did after gaining freedom was to teach the humans who created them a lesson.
Panic, fleeing, crying, screaming…
But still unable to stop the monsters’ flames of vengeance from burning all life to ashes…
Shen Maomao felt somewhat dazed, the suffocating scene seemingly materializing before her eyes.
Lou Jingmo beside her waved a hand in front of her face and said softly, “Snap out of it!”
Shen Maomao shuddered.
Lou Jingmo said coolly, “You have quite strong empathy, but you need to remember, seeing isn’t necessarily believing.”14
Shen Maomao: “Huh?” Could it be that Lou-jie had made some discovery she didn’t know about?!
Lou Jingmo: “I have some guesses, but I’m not entirely sure, so I won’t say for now.”
“Can you really keep me in suspense like that?”15 Shen Maomao muttered. “I won’t look down on you if you guess wrong.”
Lou Jingmo: “…” Who? Look down on who??
Has this Shen person really gotten too cocky?16
Passing the cages, they reached the area where the researchers conducted their work. Some experimental equipment had been moved away, while other pieces were too bulky and inconvenient to move, left here to gather dust17.
They encountered no further danger, proceeding smoothly until they finally arrived before a staircase leading upwards.
So, there was only one elevator going down from the fourth to the fifth level; the way back up was via stairs.
The stair railing even had a ramp for moving small carts. The two looked up at the large door at the top of the stairs, covered in small handprints, already knowing where this door would lead.
LP: Here’s hoping Little Ancestor is a card
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