Chapter 144: Your Doomsday Has Been Delivered (27)

The notebook seemed to be merely a diary, yet it contained very few entries.

Written intermittently, sometimes months would pass between entries.

What was recorded within these pages was the extraordinary yet mundane life of Jiang Luyun.

Occasionally, transcripts of his phone calls with Jiang Xunchu were interspersed throughout.

Such as, "I missed my son's birthday today," or "I couldn't make it to my son's parent-teacher conference again today, I'm so sorry, son," and so on.

Flipping to the very end revealed nothing out of the ordinary.

Jiang Xunchu stared at the familiar handwriting, a dazed expression on his face.

Ling Qiong patted Jiang Xunchu's back in a gesture of comfort.

"He was actually very good to me," Jiang Xunchu said. "And I never blamed him."

Perhaps in his childhood, he didn't understand why other children's fathers could pick them up from school.

But as he grew older, he came to understand Jiang Luyun.

Jiang Xunchu himself was never someone who desperately needed constant companionship; he could always find solace and things he loved within the world of books.

After speaking, Jiang Xunchu stood frozen for a moment. He tried to close the notebook, but the next second, he opened it back up, pressing his finger down and sliding it along the crease in the middle.

A page had been torn out of the notebook.

Jiang Luyun did not have the habit of tearing pages from his notebooks.

If he made a mistake, he would simply cross it out; if he didn't feel like writing anymore, he would just leave it hanging there.

Several preceding entries were like that; whenever he wrote something he shouldn't have, Jiang Luyun would simply scribble it out.

He had never torn a page out before.

Jiang Xunchu held the page that followed up to the light, sensing there were indented scratches on it.

Just as Jiang Xunchu was about to stand up to look for something, a pencil was already being handed to him from the side.

The young girl holding the pencil curved the corners of her lips in a smile. "You're welcome."

...

April 23, 2023.

I disagree with transferring the test subject, but the research team feels I am making a mountain out of a molehill, and they have approved this transfer.

Ever since the transfer began, I have had a lingering premonition that something would go wrong. Events proved that I was right; the transfer should never have taken place.

An accident occurred during the transport of the test subject, resulting in the complete annihilation of the security detail guarding the rear. The personnel waiting for the handover dropped their guard and were attacked by the test subject the moment they opened the transfer vehicle. I had thought they would terminate the experiment...

...

That was the entirety of the content.

The rest of the page was blank, with no tear marks and no traces of any writing.

"Could the outbreak of the virus be related to that test subject?"

Jiang Xunchu replied, "The virus broke out simultaneously everywhere. If it spread solely through the test subject, it wouldn't have been that fast."

Ling Qiong thought about it and reasoned, "Then what was the purpose of this test subject?"

Jiang Xunchu shook his head.

Ling Qiong flipped through the notebook. "Your dad usually didn't write about work matters, so why would he suddenly write an entry like this?"

Most of the preceding entries consisted of casual musings during his free time, or records of instances where he felt he fell short as a father to Jiang Xunchu.

Work was never mentioned.

"He must have discovered something, which is why he felt compelled to write it down." Jiang Xunchu raised his head and looked around. "This is my father's office."

Jiang Xunchu had seen Jiang Luyun's office in video calls before.

However, the office in his memory differed vastly from its current state.

It was as if someone had deliberately erased any trace of Jiang Luyun's existence here.

Yet, he had still managed to spot it.

That was why he was able to easily locate the hidden safe.

"Hosts."

Ling Qiong and Jiang Xunchu both turned to look at the person who had spoken from behind.

Mu Chen was holding a file. "There is a parasite inside the meteorites, and humans are their hosts."

Ling Qiong: "..."

Jiang Xunchu: "..."

So the core plot device was in the male protagonist's hands.

As expected of the male protagonist...

...

Before the large-scale meteorite shower, there had been a prior impact.

That previous meteorite impact had caused the collective death of an entire village.

The village had been very impoverished, and poverty alleviation workers had managed to persuade most of the villagers to pack up and move away.

Consequently, only a few households remained behind in that village.

The casualties from that incident were not yet considered severe.

It was there that they had first discovered the meteorites.

Shortly after, they discovered a type of parasite residing within the meteorites.

These creatures were almost invisible to the naked eye and reproduced at an alarming rate inside the human body.

Following that discovery, research into the meteorites commenced.

By the time of this massive meteorite shower, they had already been researching these parasites for over a year.

That was why, when the meteorites fell on a massive scale, the authorities reacted swiftly, cordoning off the impact sites with the utmost speed.

This time, they had believed it wouldn't result in a tragedy like the last one.

They had monitored the situation constantly ever since the meteorites landed.

When no human deaths occurred, they even breathed a sigh of relief.

However, they still found parasites within the meteorite samples, though for reasons unknown, no one had been infected.

It wasn't until the virus broke out that they realized humans hadn't escaped infection at all.

The parasites simply hadn't been activated yet.

These parasites operated in a manner similar to a queen ant colony.

Except that they possessed more than just one 'queen ant'.

Only when these 'queen ants' emitted a signal would the parasites lying dormant within human bodies be activated.

The meteorite containing the 'queen ant' happened, quite fortunately, to be housed right here at Research Institute Number Three.

At the time, it had been very small, so instead of taking samples, they brought the entire thing back.

Who could have predicted that it would continue to grow larger and larger?

Eventually, they discovered it wasn't a meteorite at all, but rather a massive cluster formed by countless parasites piled together.

Upon their death, their corpses would harden, their exteriors petrifying into the likeness of a meteorite.

At that time, they still did not know that the meteorite contained a 'queen ant'.

The 'queen ant' had been sent out by their own hands.

The moment it was released outside, the virus broke out.

After the outbreak, this facility had continued to operate for over a month, and much of the data found in the files were conclusions drawn during that single month.

Of course, it eventually fell anyway.

For reasons unknown, Jiang Luyun had left a copy of the files behind here.

"We're doomed." Ling Qiong slapped the file onto the desk, swallowed hard, and pointed downwards. "The glass down there is shattered."

So the zombies had suddenly rushed over because they heard the signal emitted by the 'queen ant'.

If that really was a 'queen ant', wouldn't they be completely screwed?

Jiang Xunchu said, "We need to get out of here right now!"

Mu Chen asked, "Is there a way up?"

Jiang Xunchu replied, "The control room is that way. I'll go check it out. You guys search around and see if there are any other exits."

...

The four of them separated to search for an exit. Ling Qiong failed to find an elevator or a door, but she stumbled upon a storage room instead.

It was filled to the brim with various weapons.

This place must have been hastily organized and stocked after the virus outbreak.

When the personnel evacuated, perhaps they considered it too much dead weight, or perhaps they simply ran out of time; in any case, they hadn't taken it with them.

"Miss Xu! Miss Xu!!"

Zhou Shun's voice echoed from outside.

Ling Qiong grabbed a crate and walked out.

"Miss Xu, I found the elevator!" Zhou Shun waved from the far end of the corridor.

"I'm coming right now..."

"Shunzi!!"

Mu Chen's voice drowned out Ling Qiong's, laced with a hint of terror.

Zhou Shun was tackled by two zombies into a side corridor, the corner instantly blocking him from view.

Then, countless more zombies swarmed over him.

Gunshots rang out, shaking the ground beneath their feet.

Yet the gunfire stopped almost as quickly as it had begun.

"Brother Mu, run!"

Zhou Shun's frantic voice echoed from that direction, immediately followed only by the sickening sounds of zombies tearing into flesh and feeding.

Ling Qiong forcefully grabbed Mu Chen, who was about to charge forward. "It's too late, run!"

At the T-shaped intersection, an endless horde of zombies poured out, their eyes locking onto them as if they were the most delicious feast imaginable.