radicalducati The reward for completing Chapter 31 is a physical examination.
The reward for completing Chapter 31 is a physical examination.
After the queen bee died, there seemed to be some invisible signal of collapse that swept across the bank building.
All the remaining bees in the building, as well as the pupae left behind by the queen bee, quickly began to soften and shrink, eventually forming large patches of oily, carpet-like slime on the third and fourth floors, but without any activity.
"Those things... they've all melted." Little Green stared blankly into the building.
"Were those the clones we were fighting before all that guy's clones? Once the queen bee died, all the remaining clones were destroyed?" Xia Zhaozhao turned to Xiao Lü and asked curiously.
"It's probably not that simple." Looking at Xia Zhaozhao, who had a million questions in her mind, Xiao Lü simply replied, "I'm not entirely sure about the specific principles either. You can ask her directly later."
The survivors, who had gathered in a corner on the second floor of the bank, quickly noticed the anomaly after the loud gunshot.
"Look, the monster has melted!" Feng Yue was the first to exclaim, pointing in surprise at a worker bee in the stairwell.
Although the stairwell had long been sealed off by flames from flammable materials, a worker bee happened to wander in there. Although it managed to crawl out of the fire, it lost all mobility and twitched slightly in place.
At that moment, everyone saw that the "worker bee," whose body was still trembling slightly, melted like a wax figure the instant the gunshot rang out, silently collapsing and limp.
"What happened?" Old Qian stared in disbelief. "Did that shot hit some mechanism? Why did this thing suddenly melt?"
"I don't know," Wei Yuan answered honestly, "but this is for the best."
"I wonder what kind of reinforcements those two girls called for. Such a loud noise, it probably wasn't just any ordinary bullet," Old Wang said, puzzled.
"The reinforcements are over there," the veteran said, pointing out the window to the unfinished building.
"It's definitely not an ordinary bullet; it sounds a lot like an anti-materiel rifle."
At this moment, in that unfinished building, the NTW-14.5 anti-materiel sniper rifle that fired those four bullets has been quickly disassembled by Bai Shuyuan and put back into the gun bag that is taller than her.
Perhaps some clever enough monsters will be able to detect the direction from which the sound is coming and rush toward her location.
Thinking this, Bai Shuyuan packed away her beloved gun, picked up her briefcase, casually lifted the woven bag containing the now motionless, deformed aggregate with her other hand, and left the place.
A few minutes later, she appeared at the bank building a few hundred meters away.
At this moment, Xiao Lü and Xia Zhaozhao, along with the five survivors, had reunited and were gathered here, waiting for the person who had helped them so much.
However, the atmosphere was somewhat awkward.
After entering the VIP area on the second floor, the girl took off her hood, revealing long, black hair and glowing eyes.
But she didn't speak; she simply looked them over with a purely observant gaze.
"Um..." Old Qian wanted to ask her something, but stopped abruptly when he met her amber eyes.
The dark-haired girl's eyes seemed to hold only pure curiosity and scrutiny, as well as an inorganic sense of analyzing an experimental subject.
After staring at Lao Qian for a very long time, she finally uttered a sentence, her tone devoid of any emotion:
"This person has severe fatty liver."
"However, there is no need to worry too much. Given the current intensity of the disaster, your daily exercise will definitely increase, while your food intake will decrease. Therefore, your fatty liver condition is expected to improve rapidly."
"Is this something you don't need to worry about?" Old Qian was stunned, somewhat unable to follow her train of thought.
"Huh? How did you figure that out?" Xia Zhaozhao stared at her curiously, wanting to know the answer, but suddenly realized what she meant and her eyes widened.
"Huh? No way! She can see through things?" Xia Zhaozhao exclaimed, instantly shrinking behind Xiao Lü, trying to use Xiao Lü's body to block the girl's view.
"I can't see through things." The girl didn't react much, simply explaining, "My eyes can indeed see more things, but that doesn't mean I can see through fabric and see your skin."
"What I can see are more structural things. For example, what parts of my gun need maintenance or replacement, the functional state of the organs of the organism in front of me, and any possible lesions or deformities."
"Oh? A free CT scan?" Xia Zhaozhao instantly deactivated her transformation, flashed in front of Xiao Lü, and stared at the girl in front of her with starry eyes. "Good sister, please take a look at me!"
Bai Shuyuan's gaze lingered on her for a moment.
"The structure is intact and the functions are normal... However, you are extremely, extremely, extremely lacking in exercise."
"Oh, I see. There's nothing wrong with it, right? Great!" She completely ignored the subsequent comments.
Bai Shuyuan's gaze swept past Xia Zhaozhao and turned to the veteran: "This man, your liver... has some rather serious lesions."
"Yes, liver cancer." Although the veteran also found the current situation somewhat unbelievable, he did not express his shock and simply gave a simple answer.
"I came to Xinmao City just to see this," the veteran said, his voice completely calm, as if he had long accepted the situation.
"That's not very—" Old Qian expressed his concern, but was interrupted by the veteran's gaze.
"It should only be the early to mid-stage. Besides, there's no point in discussing my physical condition right now. Don't we have more important things to discuss?"
"...That's right." Little Green helped steer the conversation back on track.
"This is 'Wren.' Because of her unique abilities, she knows far more about monsters than we do. I think we should prioritize discussing these monsters."
The veteran's experience is indispensable to the survivors. While his health issues are certainly worrying, the threat posed by the monsters in the current environment is clearly a more deadly problem.
The group found some chairs from other rooms, arranged them in a circle in the VIP reception room, and sat down casually to discuss the current problems and their upcoming situation.
First, they began with the common enemy they faced.
In a calm, lecturing tone, Bai Shuyuan explained the basic facts about these creatures to everyone: they are aggregates formed by black thread-like structures, and certain parts of their bodies possess key functional areas called nodes, which maintain their basic life activities.
"Huh? So that's how it is! Sometimes you can kill them with one strike, and sometimes you need several strikes. Is it because you didn't break the nodes?" Xia Zhaozhao suddenly realized.
"Yes. If the nodes on the remaining limbs can still maintain its life activities, then it will not die."
"Then why does killing the queen bee cause all the bees in the colony, which are still structurally intact, to die?" Little Green asked.
"Because they are not complete, independent aggregates," Bai Shuyuan explained. "Their individual bodies do not contain structural maintenance nodes. The queen bee, as the mother bee, takes over the function of these nodes."
"They can't survive without the queen bee, what a failed evolution," Xia Zhaozhao complained.
"No, the information reflected behind this evolutionary pattern is very alarming." Bai Shuyuan told the people in front of her her previous conjecture, namely that "aggregates can read the genes of organisms and selectively activate them."
"Huh? Stealing the genes of Earth's creatures won't make them bulletproof. Didn't those few shots just take down that big guy in seconds?" Xia Zhaozhao said disdainfully.
"Yes. On a physical level, they do follow some of the basic rules of carbon-based life. Except... this guy."
She pointed to the motionless "deformed child" inside the woven bag, recounted the incident that Xiao Lü and her companion had encountered, and reminded everyone that this ability to "spiritually pollute" was what they should really be concerned about.