Chapter 1: Perilous Situation, A Chance for Survival!

Cold, piercing pain, like countless ants gnawing at his flesh and blood. Chen Chong’s consciousness drifted alone in a sea of agony.

Within that chaotic consciousness, a faint, indistinct chuckle seemed to drift in:

“Subject 416, I truly admire you. Electric shocks, drowning, extreme heat, extreme cold, sleep deprivation… You’ve actually managed to endure all these rounds of high-intensity experiments. Even among the most elite soldiers under my command, few could do the same.”

“…I remember from the earliest records in the experiment files, you were nothing but untrained Yellow Race trash, your physical fitness even slightly below the average standard of an ordinary person. That someone like you could survive until now truly surprises me.”

“It’s a pity…”

The voice vanished for a moment. After a brief silence, other blurry voices, as if from a great distance, drifted into his consciousness:

“416, how are you doing?”

“…He actually pulled through again. It seems that bitch of a doctor hasn’t had her fill of fun yet.”

“…I never imagined this kid would have such will power .”

“It’s just a pity that the more resilient he is, the more amusing that bitch finds it.”

“Maybe a swift, clean death would be a release. Ending up like this, ah…”

…

All sorts of faint, blurry sounds seemed like whispers in the darkness, causing Chen Chong’s scattered will, born of extreme pain, to ripple with agitation.

I… am still alive.

Within Chen Chong’s spiritual world, it was as if the world’s first ray of light tore through the darkness. A milky white orb of light, like a warm winter sun, gradually dispelled the darkness.

“Huff… Huff…”

The cold, the piercing pain, the itch, the numbness… all sorts of maddening sensations spread from the empty spiritual world throughout his entire body, making his breathing rapid and wheezing like a bellows.

His eyelids twitched slightly, and a weak sense of his body slowly returned. Bit by bit, Chen Chong opened his eyes.

A cold concrete floor, dim light. Rust-speckled steel bars tightly enclosed him, forming a suffocating and cramped iron prison cell. Through the gaps between the bars, he could see that the gloomy space was filled with dozens of such cages.

Within these cages, one numb-looking prisoner after another was locked away. A decaying, foul smell filled the air; the stench of blood, sweat, and excrement mixed together, intensely assaulting the sense of smell.

“Ha, haha… You stinking bitch, I won!”

Lying on his back in the cell, Chen Chong gasped for air in large gulps, like a drowning man who had just reached the shore.

At that moment, his body still felt like countless ants were gnawing at it. This was the aftermath of being connected to a high-frequency bioelectric current on the experiment table earlier. His muscles and nerves, stimulated by the electricity, were paralyzed and even atrophying, producing an agony comparable to the torture of slow slicing.

This kind of pain, like being burned by fierce flames, like being cut a thousand times over, was an aching, a pain, a numbness, an itch that made every inch of skin and every pore tremble. Words could not even begin to describe one ten-thousandth of it.

The paralysis was slowly receding. Chen Chong controlled his hands and feet to move a little, and after feeling that his limbs hadn’t lost their ability to move, his mouth split open. The smile on his face was slightly distorted by the pain:

“This damn Hell Mode start…”

“I wonder if there’s any other transmigrator more unlucky than me?”

“Why wasn’t I the useless young master of some XX family? Why didn’t I have a pretty maid? Why couldn’t I have been reborn into the past to fix my regrets?”

“Even if I could just go back and buy some Bitcoin.”

Lying on the ground, Chen Chong’s mind spun with all sorts of bizarre thoughts, trying to distract himself and lessen the physical torment.

This wasn’t the first time Chen Chong had experienced this agonizing, living-hell ordeal.

As a member of the not-so-lucky transmigrators, Chen Chong had just been watching a meteor shower when a streak of light hit him without warning. That was how he arrived in this strange world.

As if fate itself had directly chosen Hell Mode for him, the moment he opened his eyes, Chen Chong was already an “experiment subject” in this mysterious and cruel underground Experimental Base, with no possibility of resistance.

From being a mediocre office worker in his previous life to becoming a lab rat here, in the three months since his transmigration, he had already undergone more than one round of potential-unlocking experiments comparable to various tortures.

Extreme heat and high pressure, extreme cold and low pressure, various frequencies of bioelectric current stimulation, sleep deprivation for seven consecutive days or even longer, prolonged sensory deprivation in absolute darkness and a sealed space where not a single sound could be heard… As material used to study life potential and explore the secrets of human awakening, the pain endured during the experiments was unimaginable to ordinary people.

Including Chen Chong, all the prisoners in this prison were like lab rats with no strength to resist. Out of all the prisoners who entered the laboratory, most either died on the spot, suffered nerve necrosis, or completely collapsed mentally, becoming maniacs, idiots, or dullards. After losing their research value, they were placed directly on the dissection table.

For many, dying completely during an experiment was actually a form of release.

With a mortality rate exceeding fifty percent, Chen Chong’s life and will had nonetheless displayed a miraculously stubborn tenacity. Time and again, he struggled on the border between life and death, enduring all the way until now!

By now, Chen Chong himself had lost count of how many times he had survived the hands of that “bitch,” as he called her. He was also long gone from the panicked, weak, and dejected office worker he had been three months ago.

“…You’re awake?”

At that moment, a hoarse inquiry broke the silence. Seeming to sense that Chen Chong’s consciousness had cleared, a scrawny prisoner in the opposite cage couldn’t help but ask him in a low voice from across the way:

“416, how are you? Which experiment did that bitch choose you for today?”

Inside the dim and cramped cell, Chen Chong pressed his hands against the ground, veins bulging on his forehead. Bit by bit, he forced his body upright.

“Heh…”

He leaned back in the corner of the cell, slowly turned his head to look at the prison cell opposite, and spoke deliberately:

“My name is Chen Chong, not some 416!”

Meeting Chen Chong’s gaze, the prisoner opposite felt a sudden surge of panic in his heart.

What kind of look was that?

It was like fierce flames burning brightly in an icy ocean current, yet also like a dying beast in a desperate situation; agonizing yet cold, silent yet ferocious, mad yet indomitable!

The prisoner was startled by Chen Chong’s savage, beast-like glare and didn’t dare speak again.

Chen Chong paid no more attention to the prisoner across the way. He closed his eyes slightly and adjusted his breathing, like a lone wolf licking its wounds. However, a gaunt man in a cage diagonally opposite heard Chen Chong’s words. With a bleak expression, he said:

“It’s not just you, we all have names too. But now they’re meaningless. Our fate was sealed the moment we entered this place. It’s just a difference between dying sooner or later. What’s the difference between a name or a number?”

Chen Chong glanced at the speaker, slowly leaned against the bars, and gave a derisive laugh: “You don’t even understand that principle? Remembering your own name lets you remember you’re still a person. Only then is there hope of walking out of here.”

“Hope of walking out?”

In another cage, a prisoner with disheveled hair and a dirty face seemed provoked and laughed sorrowfully:

“41… Chen Chong, there are over thirty fully armed guards in this entire Experimental Base. That bastard Diris is also a powerful Awakener. He could slaughter all of us barehanded. You tell me, where is this hope?”

“Indeed.”

Another prisoner with sunken eye sockets said in a low voice:

“Even if we set aside all that, what if we were lucky enough to escape the base? Outside is a Wilderness we know nothing about. No maps, no locations of settlements, no food or water, no sufficient weapons, ammo, or transportation. How far could you get? The radiation Alien Species roaming the Wilderness will show you what real terror is. Compared to being miserably eaten and becoming a pile of excrement in the Wilderness, waiting quietly to die in the base might be the better choice for us.”

He laughed at himself:

“At least here, there’s food, clean water, and a somewhat stable place to sleep. No need to fight over pitiful scraps of food every day, no need to constantly worry about attacks from radiation monsters. Even if we die, we die with a full stomach, isn’t that right?”

Before being captured, most of the prisoners in the cell were Scavengers at the very bottom of society. Like wild dogs, they spent their days rushing through the danger-filled Wilderness for tiny bits of food and water. Compared to such a miserable life, a prison life with two fixed meals a day didn’t seem entirely unacceptable.

“That’s right, 416. Give up your unrealistic fantasies…”

A few long-time prisoners all had numb expressions and remained silent, offering no objection. Clearly, they had long since abandoned all hope in their hearts.

“What you say makes some sense, but I am different from you all.”

Looking over these walking corpses, Chen Chong sneered coldly and shut his mouth, saying no more.

This world seemed to be another Earth in a parallel space-time. The prisoners in the cell were all black-haired, dark-eyed people of the Yellow race, so language wasn’t a barrier for him.

But by now, even though he had never made contact with the outside world, Chen Chong roughly understood that this bizarre parallel world had seemingly experienced an unprecedented Cataclysm. The world outside was filled with unimaginable cruelty and danger. The Awakeners and radiation Alien Species his fellow prisoners spoke of were dangerous existences ordinary people could hardly resist. This also meant that for Chen Chong, an ordinary person with neither mutations nor any supernatural powers, the probability of escaping the base alive was infinitely close to zero!

While these prisoners were willing to silently wait for death here, Chen Chong had no such intentions.

“Adding this time, it should be about enough…”

Ignoring everything happening outside, a cold flame seemed to burn fiercely deep within Chen Chong’s eyes. As he murmured to himself, his mind sank into extreme stillness, and his will suddenly plunged into a vast expanse of white spiritual world.

At the center of this void-like spiritual world, a pale, dead-light orb floated silently, completely motionless.

“Archive List!”

As Chen Chong called out with his will, an incredible stream of information suddenly surfaced in his mind:

[Materialization Power Units]: 1024

Archive List:

[Ultra Divine Water]: Rank D. Originating from the “Dragon Ball” world, a divine item owned by Korin the Cat. Contains a potent poison. If a living being can survive the poison after drinking it, it can unlock their untapped potential, boosting the user’s combat power. The extent of the boost depends on the species. (1000/1024)

[T-Virus Improved Version]: Rank E+. Originating from the “Resident Evil” world. Its effect is to recombine biological genetic factors, gradually achieving controllable biological evolution. Ordinary humans have a 30% chance of zombification upon use. (800/1024)

[Muscle and Marrow Cleansing Pill]: Rank D+. Originating from various Xianxia planes. Its effect is to cleanse the muscles and marrow, expel bodily impurities, alter the user’s constitution, grant cultivation aptitude, and slightly increase the user’s lifespan. (1500/1024)

[Senzu Bean]: Rank D. Originating from the “Dragon Ball” world. Rapidly restores physical strength and heals injuries to a certain degree, and wards off hunger for ten days. (Information missing, cannot materialize)

[Gold Saint Cloth – Pegasus]: Rank A. Originating from the “Saint Seiya” world. A divine artifact blessed by the goddess Athena. Only a warrior who has awakened the Seventh Sense Cosmo can wear the Gold Saint Cloth and unleash its true power. (Information missing, cannot materialize)

[Gauss Sniper Rifle]… [EVA Unit-01]… [Ferocious Weapon: Tiger’s Soul]… Over ten pieces of information flowed by, but except for the first three, they were all marked with ‘Information missing.’

The anomaly now appearing in his mind was the culprit that had caused Chen Chong’s transmigration to this world. It was also the trump card that allowed him to endure in this cruel underground base, and his only sliver of hope for survival within this deadly, perilous situation!