Honkai, why do you only throw me into high-level battles?

Stepping out of the room, Lin Wei saw over a dozen Deadman corpses lying scattered haphazardly in the narrow corridor. They were the agile type, with hands mutated into blades, giving them a home-field advantage in such a confined space with no room to maneuver.

Lin Wei glanced at Anna walking ahead, thinking the battle must have been incredibly intense.

Anna also sensed the gaze from behind, feeling a little awkward. Her cheeks slightly flushed, she turned back to give him a warning glare.

"What are you peeking at!"

"A brilliant double-layered trap. Using a door to separate you and me, then exploiting the terrain advantage to ambush the super-strong you."

Lin Wei didn't want to embarrass Anna further, so he deliberately skipped over the part about himself. Then, using his hiking stick, he flipped over a few Deadman corpses to briefly examine them.

"I just wonder if they underestimated our strength, or if they were just weak to begin with, so this is the best they could muster in the end?"

"Underestimating you is a given!"

Lin Wei's focus wasn't on her, which made Anna feel a little deflated, and she silently retorted in her mind.

This guy has been looking sickly all along and hasn't lifted a finger. It's perfectly normal to misjudge him!

Actually, after calming down, Anna was quite accepting of the fact that Lin Wei could defeat a high-level Deadman head-on.

After all, those who possessed high Honkai energy resistance and could walk freely in high concentrations of Honkai energy were rare lucky individuals. They would more or less have some unique qualities – for Anna, an elite and direct descendant of Schicksal, this was almost common knowledge.

It was just that the survivors she had personally seen and rescued at Honkai sites were all like frightened birds, and very few could even maintain basic composure. Over time, she had become accustomed to not expecting much from ordinary people living in the normal world.

Lin Wei was the first person to surprise her, and these surprises kept coming one after another.

Intuition told her that Lin Wei was hiding other secrets, making her unable to resist wanting to get to the bottom of it. But if he didn't want to talk, there wasn't much she could do.

A brief chat didn't slow their progress. The closer they got to the tightly shut door, the more alert Anna became.

Signaling Lin Wei to step back, she took a deep breath and silently pushed the door open. A slight tremor went through the door – but nothing happened.

Anna had prepared for all sorts of scenarios behind the door: Deadman lurking, mechs, even Honkai beasts. But the eerie silence inside caught her, who was ready for a major battle, completely off guard.

The room was brightly lit. On both sides, rows of culture tanks were neatly arranged, extending forward, with over a dozen on each side.

They looked like they had suffered severe damage. The tanks were all shattered, not a single one left intact. Fragments of reinforced glass were scattered everywhere. The walls and floor were splattered and covered with translucent green liquid, even flowing out to the doorway, making Anna lift her foot in disgust to avoid it.

The room wasn't large; you could see at a glance that the shattered culture tanks were all empty. There was nothing inside that should have been there, only the residual green liquid at the bottom, declaring that they had once been used.

This unexpected scene greatly surprised Anna. She couldn't help but check the life detector again. The direction it pointed was indeed here. Hesitating for a moment, she stepped into the wreckage, with Lin Wei following closely behind.

In front of each tank was an operating console. At this moment, all the consoles were paralyzed. Victims of collateral damage, they were covered in glass shards, occasionally sparking and emitting wisps of acrid smoke.

"What happened here? Why is it so badly damaged?"

Anna cautiously advanced, filled with doubt.

"Could it be that Honkai erupted here too?"

If that was the case, she didn't know whether to feel sad or relieved.

"The Deadman you just eliminated should have crawled out of these tanks. With a major enemy present, it's not that strange."

Lin Wei wasn't surprised by this. He pointed inside and then outside the door.

He had clearly seen several red lines on the Deadmen – incomplete Stigmata. These lines were interwoven with the purple patterns that originally covered their bodies, making them not very noticeable. However, with a closer look, they were still easy to distinguish.

Failed subjects of the Stigmata Project, or rather, sacrifices. How tragic.

What's even more tragic is that most people don't even qualify to become sacrifices…

Is that girl one of them too?

Shaking off the thoughts in his head, Lin Wei continued,

"This base is only so big in total. How many people can it hold? We've already definitively eliminated several hundred Deadman. How much combat power can it still have left? Probably not much. After all, this isn't a real ant nest in the end. It can't be truly endless."

Anna nodded in agreement, feeling a sense of unease.

At the end of the room was a flight of stairs, but contrary to expectations, it didn't lead deeper underground but upwards.

Anna and Lin Wei exchanged glances. Could there be more to this?

Taking a closer look, the stairs were short, straight up, and not winding as they had imagined. You could see the end at a glance.

Lin Wei gave a slight gesture, and Anna unhesitatingly stepped onto the stairs, rushing forward at top speed, ready to break through any possible ambushes. Unfortunately, still nothing happened.

"This is?"

Lin Wei, trailing behind, heard Anna's incredible exclamation from above, but no other sound.

What happened?

Filled with suspicion, Lin Wei quickened his pace and quickly climbed up. The scene before him first stunned him, and then sent a chill down his spine.

This was a somewhat dim and cramped room. All the light sources came from densely packed, constantly flashing signal lights – countless unknown lines connected these red and green signal lights, densely interwoven and arranged like spiderwebs, extending from all corners of the room to the very center, weaving into a huge cocoon, tightly binding a "girl" there, neither lying down nor sitting, unable to sit or lie.

"What in the world is this thing?"

Anna broke out in goosebumps, then couldn't help but draw her blade and slash at the "spiderweb" beside her. Several thick lines snapped in response, and the signal lights connected to them went out, falling heavily to the ground and dragging towards their roots on both sides, surprisingly elastic.

Lin Wei saw that the girl, who had been quietly "bound," suddenly began to convulse silently in pain.

Anna also saw this and dared not act rashly again. The direction of the life detector was pointing directly at the "cocoon."

She's alive!

"Neural network…"

Anna wasn't stupid and didn't plan to rush in to save her.

She had already judged what this strange spiderweb was from the touch of the blade and the "girl's" reaction – Lin Wei had mentioned many times that this base was controlled by a biomass neural network. It wasn't hard to figure out.

Therefore, that "girl" could only be the enemy!

But why did she look so pitiful? Completely different from what she had imagined!

"Queen bees, queen ants, aren't they all like this? The names sound nice, but they're just egg-laying machines deep in the nest, unable to move. Without the protection of 'soldier ants' and 'worker ants,' once enemies break in, they're at their mercy."

Lin Wei seemed to have guessed her thoughts, his tone somewhat melancholic.

"The one who has been opposing us all along is this defenseless thing… How does it feel? Disappointing?"