An invasion from the Abyss? I, a demonic cultivator, laughed.

Chapter 113 The Balance of Power

After forcefully smashing open the door, a huge circular hall appeared before Chu Xiu's eyes.

In the center of the hall stood a huge pool of blood, filled with viscous plasma, which was now bubbling out, as if a living being was breathing rhythmically beneath the pool.

Around the blood pool, there were rows of cryogenic chambers arranged outwards. Some were empty, while others contained mutated ghouls.

Most of these ghouls had fused with some kind of object; some had blades sprouting from their bodies, some had their chests ripped open to reveal cannon barrels, their ribs replaced by steel frames, and others had fused with armor, the armor plates and flesh becoming one, like...
Just like that silver knight outside the shelter.

The sight of these ghouls before him, resembling the wildest fantasies of Frankenstein, made Chu Xiu appear thoughtful.

Finally, his gaze fell on the deepest part of the hall.

There, there is a transparent glass box about three meters long, wide, and high. Inside the glass box is a cozy room. The pink desk is covered with cartoon wallpaper, and the bed curtains have pleated lace like a princess dress. In the center of the children's bed, there is a crystal coffin. A pale-faced little girl lies flat inside, her eyes slightly closed, as if she is asleep.

Right next to the girl's pillow was a photo of the four of them together.

In the very center is a woman holding a little girl, to her right is a military officer in uniform with a serious expression, and to her left is a slightly overweight middle-aged man with a kind smile.

To Chu Xiu's surprise, the middle-aged man was the same man he had seen in the strange tree. As for the officer on the right, he also looked familiar, especially his brown pupils, which were extremely similar to those of the silver knight.

Chu Xiu seemed to have thought of something, and touched his chin with a sense of enlightenment.

However, after thoroughly looking around the hall, the person in charge was still nowhere to be seen.

He sent out ghosts to explore, but there were no other spaces besides this secret room.

"Don't waste your energy, you won't find me." The voice came from the loudspeaker again. "This is just an ordinary experimental site. I'm not here, and you won't find what you're looking for here. Please leave."

However, the words of the "person in charge" did not make Chu Xiu move his feet.

After looking around the cryogenic chambers again, he smiled.

"interesting."

"Although I don't know how you did it, it seems that you have mastered a method to fuse ghouls and objects together."

"However, based on the photos and some scattered information, I am more inclined to another possibility, namely that you have mastered a method to fuse objects and people together, but the cost is that the fused people will become ghouls."

"The silver-white knight and the giant tree outside, were those your doing?"

As Chu Xiu finished speaking, the "person in charge" fell silent again.

Chu Xiu didn't care and continued, "The life support system here has been destroyed, so if you want to survive, you have to turn into a ghoul. There are two possibilities: either you are currently hiding among the dozens of ghouls in the cryogenic chambers here, or the item you fused with has extremely high concealment and has evaded my search."

"What do you think of the idea of ​​integrating it with the main control center computer?"

"I think it's a bit ridiculous, but it doesn't matter. Whichever it is, I'll find you after I destroy this place, right?"

Chu Xiu's tone was very calm, as if he were casually mentioning a baseless fantasy that suddenly appeared on a sunny afternoon, but it plunged the person in charge behind the scenes into a long silence.

After a long while, her bitter voice finally rang out: "This is all the curse of the 'Boundless Blood Pool'."

"The power of the blood pool will continuously merge people and objects, causing irreversible distortions."

"One day, it just appeared suddenly. The ground cracked open, and thick, foul-smelling blood gushed out, like a huge, never-ending pool of blood."

"Everyone in the shelter has gone mad. One mutation after another is happening. They're killing each other. My daughter is starting to show signs too. I... I don't know what to do. I'm so scared."

The woman's voice trembled, but she managed to steady herself: "You guessed right, for my daughter's sake, I merged with the central control computer. It was a very risky plan, but I was lucky enough to succeed."

"After that, I used the vault's access to control all the ghouls and tried to find a way to break the curse of the blood pool."

"There's nothing here that you're looking for, just a poor mother desperately trying to save her daughter."

As soon as the person in charge finished speaking, a notification sound rang in Chu Xiu's ear.

The person in charge of the base has been located.

[The quest tutorial has ended. You are now free to move around and collect your rewards.]

Chu Xiu was speechless. He felt that the task guide was just for show, and it made no difference whether it was there or not.

Fortunately, he knew that there was a legendary item here.

So he got straight to the point: "I have confirmed that you have a valuable piece of equipment. I have no interest in you and your daughter. Give it to me and I'll leave immediately."

The person in charge paused, and after a long while said, "No, that piece of equipment is my only hope."

"Only equipment of [Legendary] quality, with its immense power, could possibly counteract the effects of the blood pool and save my daughter."

“I can trade you something else.”

As he spoke, a floorboard in the hall suddenly flipped open, revealing a freezer. As the freezer door opened, five blood-red vials containing glass test tubes appeared before Chu Xiu.

【Fused Plasma Extract】

[Level: Scholar]

[Quality: perfect]

[Attribute: Allows fusion of a creature with up to two items, granting the trait [Ghoul Transformation].]

The medicine before him stirred something within Chu Xiu.

This thing is indeed extremely useful to him!
He currently has a lot of surplus equipment that he doesn't need; he has three pieces of heavy armor alone that are of the [Treasured] tier.

With this fusion extract, he could fuse his resurrected corpse with these equipment to further enhance his combat power.

Because he has now entered the realm of ferocious-level combat, the ghost army is gradually becoming somewhat overwhelmed. Lower-level ferocious-level enemies are manageable, but against higher-level ferocious-level and elite ferocious-level opponents, they can only rely on numbers to restrain the enemy.

However, the Corpse-driving Technique does not have this limitation. Reviving a ferocious-level creature means halving its ferocious-level combat power!
If we could cultivate a powerful creature like the Silver Knight...
Just thinking about it makes Chu Xiu excited!
The person in charge's enticing voice continued to ring in his ears: "Even if you don't use this extract, you can sell it to other Awakened Ones for a very high price!"

"Furthermore, I can give you an extra perfect fusion embryo. This is a product that I accidentally created while experimenting with these ghouls here. Its basic attributes are extremely strong, it already possesses ferocious-level combat power, and it has excellent adaptability to items, allowing it to maximize the ability to fuse with items."

“But if you don’t agree, then I’ll have no choice but to destroy the extract and release all the ghouls in a desperate gamble. After all, I can’t just watch the hope of my daughter’s resurrection slip away before my eyes.” As he finished speaking, the surrounding cameras stared intently at Chu Xiu, seemingly awaiting his answer.

Chu Xiu also seemed to be deep in thought; this should be the branching choice for the mission.

If you fight your way through, you can obtain the [Legendary] equipment; if you choose to compromise, you can get a potion and a fierce-tier summon.

However, what intrigued him even more at this moment was...
"You actually know about Awakened Ones?" Chu Xiu asked.

“Of course,” the person in charge seemed to have thought of something, and his tone became somewhat complicated: “If you don’t enter the abyss, how can you be swallowed by it?”

Chu Xiu fell silent for a moment. It turned out that this post-apocalyptic world of zombies and ghouls had once existed like Blue Star, with normal civilizations and even extraordinary professions such as Awakened Ones.

Does this mean that Earth might one day become like this, serving as a stepping stone for the trials of awakened beings from other worlds?

Although, at least for now, the superhumans on Earth are far stronger than those on this world, there shouldn't be any risk of them being swallowed by the abyss in the short term.

But no one can say for sure about these things. Doesn't the so-called "ultimate path" mean that Earth has already been targeted by some beings in the abyss?
While Chu Xiu was pondering, the person in charge urged him, "Outsider, make your choice. You can't bear to shatter a poor mother's only hope, can you?"

The person in charge's words interrupted Chu Xiu's thoughts. He didn't think about it anymore. If the sky falls, there are tall people to hold it up. Now is not the time to think about these things.

He turned to one of the cameras and smiled: "My choice is..."

"I want it all."

The person in charge was speechless for a moment, and then his voice turned cold: "Young man, there are no such things as having your cake and eating it too in this world. I have all the authority over this shelter. Even if I am no match for you, I can still destroy these items before you do."

Chu Xiu said unhurriedly, "Do you know what the biggest taboo in negotiation is?"

Person in charge: "."

"That means the difference in the stakes between the two sides is too great."

Chu Xiu chuckled and stepped forward: "For me, even if I turn against you, I can still gain a [Legendary] piece of equipment, which is enough to meet my expectations. The conditions you proposed are just extra gains."

"And for you."

During the conversation, Chu Xiu had already walked to the room where the girl was and placed his hand on the glass.

"This is the most precious thing you would give up everything to protect."

The next moment, Chu Xiu exerted force, and the glass surrounding the girl's room suddenly shattered!
Amidst the person in charge's shocked and furious shouts, countless shards of glass fell to the ground. Chu Xiu took a step forward and arrived in front of the crystal coffin containing the girl. At this distance, he could even clearly see every pore on the girl's body.

With just a light flick of his fist, he could smash this adorable little girl, coffin and all, to pieces in an instant!

"You, don't you have a heart?!" The person in charge roared in grief.

"How could you lay a hand on a child under seven years old?"

"Can you really bear to destroy a mother's only support in the end times?!"

"Don't you feel any remorse for doing this?"

"No," Chu Xiu said calmly.

He calmly gazed at the little girl before him and chuckled softly, "Speaking of conscience, I've discovered something interesting."

"I didn't find any traces of the object being integrated into the girl's body, but there was a fatal stitched-up wound on her neck."

"So I do have another version of the story."

"The shelter manager kindly took in a mother and daughter who were wandering in the apocalypse because he valued the mother's talent as a scientist."

"Whether an accident occurred later or an accident had already happened before, in any case, the girl unfortunately lost her life, and her mother, unable to accept this fact, sealed her in an ice coffin."

"Her world became bleak, but the appearance of the blood-spraying pool gave her hope of reviving her daughter, so she secretly used the residents of the shelter to conduct human experiments."

"Perhaps it was a mistake, or perhaps it was a thorough investigation, but her actions were discovered by the shelter's caretaker and officers. Just then, the number of ghouls outside the shelter was increasing, so Mother used the power of the blood pool to turn one of them into a knight who patrolled outside, and the other into a giant tree that would forever guard the shelter."

"This brought a period of peace, but the increasing number of people disappearing still attracted the attention of the shelter residents. So she simply went all out and merged herself with the control center, taking control of all the people in the shelter as experimental subjects."

As Chu Xiu spoke, his gaze fell upon the camera, as if he wanted to see the soul hidden behind the data cable through this cold machine.

"Your successful fusion is not due to the miraculous luck you claim, but rather to the research data contributed by the countless lives lost on your hands!"

"Your research isn't about eliminating ghoul transformation, but rather how to remove it while fusing with items! Because you want to use the powerful magic of legendary items to revive your daughter, but you don't want her to become a disgusting creature that's neither human nor ghost."

"Of course, the above is just a guess I made casually, but there is one thing I am certain of."

"That's your deliberately synthesized pitiful voice, it's so fake it makes me want to vomit!"

As soon as he finished speaking, Chu Xiu raised his hand without hesitation, ready to bring it down heavily on the little girl in the ice coffin!
"stop!"

The person in charge shrieked, and Chu Xiu's fist froze in mid-air, less than three centimeters away from the little girl's coffin.

After a long while, the person in charge, whose voice seemed to have exhausted all his strength and was filled with bitterness, finally spoke again: "Tell me, what do you plan to do?"

“It’s very simple,” Chu Xiu said with a satisfied smile. “I want all five tubes of extract, the perfect fusion embryo, and the legendary equipment.”

"Furthermore, you must remain here to produce more extracts for me and research more fusion embryos."

"And all I can offer you is a sliver of hope, a tiny, insignificant sliver of hope."

"I promise you, when I become powerful enough, I will do my best to revive your daughter."

"This promise is not guaranteed in any way. Even if I forget about it the next day, I will not be punished. But these are all the conditions I have set."

After Chu Xiu finished speaking, he clapped his hands with a smile.

"Now, the chips are finally equal."

(End of this chapter)