The copy has 0 error tolerance, and the last words on the ground are all wrong for me.

Chapter 563 The Modified Flesh and Blood Monster
For Jianxing and his companions, they had seen even more outrageous things than Heping had done. Although passing through the special energy field surprised them, it was still within their comprehension.

However, in the eyes of the three tanks, Peace's actions were absurd. Among the players who tried to break through the energy field, there were several who were well-known in the realm of reason and whose strength had reached the lord level.

The special energy field that these people couldn't break even with their combined strength, He Ping could easily open with just a casual touch. Although this calculation is not reasonable, the effect it showed was that he was stronger than those lord-level players combined.

The three men in the tank exchanged glances, and they all saw the yearning for progress in each other's eyes.

Although Peace is a player who has just been promoted to the Realm of Reason, seniority is not important in the Abyss game. Those who are skilled are given priority. Peace is able to overpower a group of veteran Realm of Reason players, so it is not shameful for them to cling to him.

The Central Research Institute is a ten-story white building. Next to the main building stands a huge tower with a highly recognizable appearance. It is immediately obvious that it is the Sky Tower for treating bionet lysis syndrome, and its specifications are the same as the Sky Tower in Jacques University.

The main building of the research institute and the Sky Tower are covered with a hazy white light, making the details somewhat distorted. From a distance, they look like a projection rather than a real building.

As soon as Wu Chang entered the grounds of the Central Research Institute, he could feel a strange spiritual force spreading out from the Sky Tower, affecting everyone who entered the special energy field.

That spiritual power is not hostile; it is like a mental massage, soothing people's minds, making those affected more relaxed, able to ignore external and internal pressures, and focus on the present moment.

Under the protection of the dimensional fortune, the influence of the Heavenly Tower was extremely hidden, and only Wu Chang could sense its existence through intuition.

The previously tense Jianxing and his companions relaxed completely, their caution turning into anticipation as they eagerly explored the interior of the research institute.

The item information for Tranquilizer mentioned that the Sky Tower can release a bio-coordination field. In Wu Chang's view, the Sky Tower's ability, combined with Tranquilizer, can indeed effectively suppress the side effects of Bio-Net Dissolution Syndrome.

For patients, this combination therapy can indeed stabilize their condition, but that's the problem—this treatment is too sincere and too effective.

The bloodsucking smell wasn't strong enough; it didn't resemble the way Mason described how he treated tools.

Something unusual must be going on. Either Mason is just being arrogant in his old age, pretending to be interested in the patient's body when he actually wants to help them.

Either there are some disagreements among the researchers, or not everyone shares Mason's goals.

Wu Chang let out a breath and brought his thoughts back to the present. Regardless of the truth, they had to get into the Central Research Institute first.

After the Light of Collapse appeared, the institute's electronic access control system became ineffective, and the sensor door was wide open. Wu Chang and his group could easily enter without verification.

Upon entering the hall, Wu Chang was immediately faced with the choice: go up or go down.

Inspiration told him that there were problems both on the top floor and in the basement.

If they were still in the Desolate Realm, he would definitely split into two groups to explore simultaneously, but right now they are in a Gamma-level instance on the verge of going out of control, and Sword Star and the others are not yet at a high enough level to grasp the situation, so they can only act together.

According to Mason's intelligence, the research institute's data storage server is underground. The underground portion is handled by the main body, while the rooftop portion will be handled by him, the Peacekeeper.

The elevators at the research institute are out of service; you can only go upstairs by stairs.

Following the emergency exit upwards, they had just reached the second floor when they discovered that the stairs ended there, and the path to the third floor was blocked by a wall. The wall felt solid when they knocked on it, indicating that it was thick and solid.

Wu Chang looked closely at the wall and found that a layer of spatial power was attached to the surface of the wall. Obviously, someone had moved the staircase leading to the third floor and stitched another space together.

He followed the aura of the space being cut off and walked out of the stairwell, discovering at the end of the second-floor research institute that there was another safety passage, with the aura of the space where the staircase had been cut off on the other side.

Nine days have passed since the Light of Collapse appeared. During these nine days, the Federation has sent people into Jacques City multiple times, and the survivors in Jacques City have also organized several exploration teams.

However, the failure to successfully retrieve experimental data from the central laboratory after so many rounds of exploration indicates that the Central Research Institute, though seemingly calm, is actually fraught with danger.

To get to the third floor via the safety passage on the opposite side, one must traverse the entire second-floor research institute, which is the first crisis within the institute.

The second floor of the research institute is the office area, and its layout is not much different from that of an ordinary office building. In the eyes of Jianxing and others, although this floor is messy, the view is very open, and no potential dangers can be seen at a glance.

But in Wu Chang’s eyes, this place was filled with resentment. The ground, walls, ceiling and glass—in a distance of less than 100 meters, there were at least twenty or thirty traces of resentment.

Most of the resentment came from players who had entered the instance before, and a small number came from the original inhabitants of the plane. They all died in the same way: after entering the second level, they were subjected to tremendous mental pressure and felt great pain in their hearts.

Under the influence of pain, they thought of all the difficulties they had encountered in life. These sufferings merged together and gathered into a huge monster that devoured them both mentally and physically.

Wu Chang pulled himself out of the resentment of the crowd and gained some understanding of the existence of the second layer.

The entire ground space of the research institute is currently under the cover of a huge domain, and the second research area is nested within a smaller domain that only covers this layer.

Larger areas amplify the influence of Sky Tower, allowing players to relax more and immerse themselves in a certain state.

The monsters lurking on the second floor take advantage of this relaxation to lure their target into their zone of pain and launch a mental attack.

If the will is not strong enough, the painful experience in the heart of the attacked person will transform into the body of a monster and be devoured by the attacker.

He stepped towards the safe passage on the other side, released his mental barrier, and waited for the monster of pain to attack.

Everything was just as he had seen in his resentment; he felt someone teasing the back of his neck with a strand of hair, the force of which must have been the effect of the Pain Realm.

Because the stimulus from the other party was too small, he could only take the initiative to generate inspiration and lead the way, helping the other party to break through his passive willpower defenses and reach the heart.

The texture of the hair became increasingly stiff, gradually turning into the collar label of the new T-shirt. The monster of pain felt itself hardening and immediately launched an attack. Wu Chang's vision blurred, and he was dragged into his childhood trauma.

When he was four years old, he was catching butterflies in the neighborhood. He ran into a shady spot and almost bumped into a spider web on a bush.

A spider the size of a thumb on the web terrified him, making his heart pound.

At this moment, the monster of pain successfully replicated this scene, transforming into Wu Chang's inner demon, that thumb-sized spider.

Wu Chang, on the other hand, was a child hundreds of times larger than him.

In the aftermath of the story, Wu Chang, startled, picked up a branch from the ground and flicked the spider off the bush.

At this moment, Wu Chang took control of his mental world and replicated his previous actions, reaching out to pull up a street lamp in the community and smashing it hard against a spider on a bush.

With a crisp sound of metal hitting the ground, Wu Chang's consciousness returned to reality. A detection instrument not far from him suddenly exploded, scattering into countless white tentacles. The tentacles intertwined and pieced together to form the corpse of an adult male.

Although the battle took place in Wu Chang's mental world, the fatal wound inflicted on the Pain Monster came from his manipulation of that mental world, thus still fulfilling the requirements of the job change quest.

"Job Change Quest Three: In a mental journey targeting extraordinary individuals, depending on your manipulation of the mental world, you may wound their spirit and will, or grant them salvation. Current progress: 2/2. Quest time limit: 60 days."

"Do you wish to complete job change quest three?"

Wu Chang refused without hesitation. Two small monsters were clearly not enough to support a perfect score for the third job change quest. The Soul Traveler job change was very important to him, and he had to achieve perfection in everything.

He approached the dead, tormented monster. At first glance, the monster seemed normal, but guided by his intuition, he turned the body over and, sure enough, found a suture line at the back of the neck.

When the sutures were removed, it was discovered that the section of bone from the other person's cervical spine to the core of the bio-recognition network was covered with densely packed small characters.

When these words came into contact with the light, they vanished like startled maggots, turning into tiny white tentacles.

Wu Chang raised an eyebrow. No wonder the large domain on the ground could fit so perfectly with the smaller domain covering a single layer. It turned out that the painful monster guarding the second layer had been tampered with.

Using his intuition to confirm that there was no danger on this floor, he turned around and gave Jianxing and the others a look.

At this moment, Jianxing and the others were staring blankly at the corpses on the ground. Since entering the second floor, they had not felt anything unusual. They knew that the disappearance of the stairs was strange, but they could not feel where the strangeness came from.

Everything was so natural that they couldn't even muster any tension or get into their best fighting state.

Even under these circumstances, Heping noticed something at a glance. He didn't take more than a few steps, didn't even move his hand, and didn't even have an energy reaction. He killed the flesh monster disguised as a detection instrument using an unknown method.

It wasn't until the flesh monster's corpse appeared that they realized the monster had been hiding right under their noses.

If they are competitors, and are simultaneously tackling the same dungeon, while Jianxing and the others haven't even found the problem or discovered the dungeon's difficulties, Wu Chang has already finished the dungeon and is moving on to the next stage.

This huge gap was very familiar to Jianxing and the others, reminding them of their time in the Desolate Realm. They had thought that after advancing to the Realm of Reason, as the difficulty of the dungeons increased, Peace's improvement speed would slow down, and his performance in the dungeons would become more restrained. They never expected that Peace would be even more excessive than he was in the Desolate Realm.

I'm back. It feels like everything is back.

Seeing Wu Chang's look, Jian Xing and the others understood and immediately followed behind Wu Chang to the other side of the safe passage.

The three tank crew members hadn't even realized what was happening before they hurriedly followed behind them.

Sure enough, the safety passage opposite the second-floor research institute led to a staircase to the third floor.

They went up two floors this time, and it wasn't until the fourth floor that the stairs stopped.

Jianxing and the others were very self-aware and did not move in the corridor where they were, acting as a cheering group at the back to encourage Wu Chang.

Unlike the second floor, the fire escape sign on the other side of the fourth floor is hung on a closed wall, and the fire escape on the other side is also blocked, making it impossible to enter.

Wu Chang stood in the fourth-floor hall. Having reached this point, it seemed there was no way out. Should he break through the wall and climb up from the outside?

Hey~
Just as he was thinking, the elevator's arrival time announcement sounded, and the elevator, which had been out of service, actually started working again on the fourth floor.

Seeing that the elevator sign indicated upwards, he raised an eyebrow slightly and stepped into the elevator.

Only odd-numbered floors can be lit up in the elevator buttons. He lit up the button for the fifth floor, and the elevator door closed.

Within the narrow elevator, eight resentments were scattered.

The fact that there are fewer complaints about the elevator on the fourth floor than on the second floor does not mean that this level is easier to pass; rather, it is because the number of explorers who can reach this floor is limited.

Amid their resentment, the elevator continues to rise, ascending to different floors based on the riders' abilities and talents.

For example, a player at the Origin level is taken down to the 35th floor by the elevator, while another player at the Lord level is taken to the 47th floor.

Upon reaching a designated floor, the player's fatigue will be eliminated, allowing them to reach their optimal state. Meanwhile, the elevator will transform into a monster, displaying different powers depending on the floor number.

The number of floors on the elevator will continuously decrease. During the descent, players must withstand the monster's attacks. If defeated by the elevator monster, the player will be swallowed by the elevator.

The player who persisted the longest waited until the number dropped to 9, which was the number he chose.

When the number matched the floor he selected, the elevator monster turned back into an elevator, which made the resentful owner lower his guard, thinking that he had passed the level.

But just as he approached the elevator and was about to leave, the elevator floor suddenly continued to descend, and then it killed the resentful owner with a sneak attack.

Similar to the second level, in order to lure out the monster, he deliberately released his will barrier to entice the flesh-and-blood monster to attack.

As he entered the elevator, he felt a joy that came from the bottom of his heart. He could feel that this joy was numbing his senses, and on the elevator ceiling, four or five white tendrils, under the cover of joy, quietly rested on his shoulders.

The elevator monster, filled with resentment, used this method to determine which floor a passenger would eventually stop on. Wu Chang was curious about which floor he would stop on, so he pretended not to see the white tentacles and let him touch them.

The elevator began to rise the moment the white tentacles touched him.

5, 7, 9...

33, 55, 77...

The elevator climbed steadily without slowing down or stopping, until it reached the ninety-ninth floor, where the displayed value had exceeded the panel's limit, yet the elevator still hadn't stopped.

Snapped!
Snapped!
Two crisp explosions came from the elevator panel and behind Wu Chang, respectively. The elevator panel's values ​​became erratic amidst the explosions, alternating between garbled text and error messages, and the elevator floor number changed to 5.

Immediately afterwards, the elevator door behind Wu Chang opened, and a female corpse with smoke coming from her head entered the elevator and collapsed in front of Wu Chang.

She is the true form of the elevator monster, and behind her head are the same stitches as those of the painful monster.

He ripped open the stitches, and a strong smell of boiled brains wafted out. He determined which floor Wu Chang should go to, which seemed to exceed her ability limit. Not only did the core of her biological network overheat and explode, but the large amount of heat also cooked her brain.

Near her steaming cervical spine, you can see many small words written on it: the elevator monster, like the pain monster, has been modified by something.

Unfortunately, the elevator monster died before it could even exert its power, causing him to miss one level of the job change quest.

After the elevator monster died, all the buttons on the elevator panel except for the buttons for floors 4 and 5 remained lit; the buttons for the other floors turned gray.

It seems that from the beginning, the elevator monster could only go to the 5th floor. If the player who chose the 9th floor had not been so greedy and had instead chosen the 5th floor more cautiously, they might not have been ambushed.

He shook his head slightly, pressed the button for the 4th floor, and returned to the previous floor to pick up Jianxing and the others.

While I was exploring the above-ground portion of the Central Research Institute, Wu Changzhen's main body was on its way to the Central Research Institute.

Mason valued Wu Chang highly. After showing him around Jacques University and introducing him to more than a dozen high-ranking members of the Civil Rights Party, he let him, Eileen, and Raven rest inside the Sky Tower.

Wu, Chang, and the other two rested and recuperated inside the Sky Tower, and also checked on Mason's research progress. It wasn't until 10:30 p.m., after finishing the welcome banquet that Mason had prepared for them, that they picked their teeth and found the players from the Civil Rights Party.

Mason took this operation very seriously and arranged for him to form an exploration team of twenty players.

The player lineup is quite impressive, including two Lord-level players and four Origin-level players.

The leader of the exploration team was named Jason, a burly man who wore a white metal mask and carried a machete.

Despite Jason's best efforts to conceal his Lord-level strength, he couldn't hide it from Wu Chang's intuition. By the standards of the players in the Realm of Reason, Jason was very strong, and even in a lineup where the four major organizations were fighting, he would rank in the top third.

Even if he only uses his domain-level abilities, he can still defeat other players and make them acknowledge him as their leader.

The vice-captain's name is Xianyu. He is a sunny-looking bard who carries a lute. He and Jason have a great rapport and are probably going into the dungeon together. He is an energy-specialized support player.

As for the four Root-level players, their skill level is somewhat lower; two are similar to Tank, while the other two are slightly inferior.

However, judging from the distribution of players, even in the Realm of Reason, only a minority of players below level 45 are able to awaken their Origin.

When players enter the Realm of Reason, their talents become even more important than in the Realm of Wasteland. Without talent, the threshold of Origin will limit the potential of many players.

This is why ranked players in the Desolate Realm receive special treatment when they are promoted to the Realm of Reason.

The exploration team, consisting of five modified off-road vehicles, set off from Yale University. They approached the Central Research Institute in a formation of two in the front, one in the middle, and two in the back. Wu, Chang, and the other two, as the leaders of this operation, sat in the off-road vehicle in the very center.

The driver for Wu Chang was none other than the deputy captain, Xianyu.

Xianyu glanced at Wu Chang in the back seat through the rearview mirror, her smile unusually businesslike.

Given his abilities, logically speaking, he shouldn't need to curry favor with an ordinary person.

But when you're under someone's roof, you have to bow your head. The Sleepless Night dungeon is a competitive mode where players must join a faction recognized by the system and help that faction achieve its ultimate goal.

Of all the factions, the Civil Rights Party, being the local power, is clearly the most reliable.

Mason, the leader of the Civil Rights Party, personally led this young man named Sean on a tour in the afternoon, making no attempt to hide his admiration. It is clear that Sean is an extremely important NPC in the instance.

If we can take advantage of this opportunity to build a good relationship with Sean, then gaining Mason's favor through Sean and obtaining more information within the instance will not be a problem.

Thinking of this, Xianyu's smile became even more businesslike.

"Mr. Sean, the Central Research Institute is almost here."

(End of this chapter)