In the apocalypse, I hoarded goods and handed over my storage space to the government.

In the dark and deep underground corridor, the cold white light cast a pale shadow on the metal walls.

Steven walked at the front, followed by three assistants carrying data terminals.

"Doctor, this operation cost the team fourteen elite agents before they managed to bring these four back. They resisted fiercely."

An assistant quickly stepped forward and handed the terminal screen to Steven's side.

Steven didn't stop walking, not even lifting his eyelids.

"The fate of field agents is the responsibility of the War Department; that's a problem for Hegesias to worry about. Here, I only look at the quality of the sample."

"Extremely high quality, Doctor!"

The assistant quickly swipes the screen to zoom in on the data.

"They are all second-tier ability users. One has enhanced strength and metal, one has a wind-type mutation, and there is also a pair of rare mental resonance twins."

Steven slowed his pace slightly upon hearing the words "spiritual resonance".

"Excellent. This is the key to unlocking the divine factor."

He stopped in front of the airtight door at the end of the corridor.

The retinal scanner emits red light and scans up and down.

Click! Click!

The mechanical latches popped open layer by layer, and the airtight door slid into the wall on both sides.

Inside the door, four specially made restraint beds were placed side by side in the center.

One person was tied to each bed.

Wrists, ankles, neck, waist, and abdomen were all tightly bound by metal rings made of polymer material.

The four awakened individuals wore tattered combat uniforms, their clothes stained with dried blood and desert sand.

They are struggling desperately.

"Let me go! You bunch of bastards!"

On the leftmost bed, a burly man let out a beast-like roar.

His muscles were bulging, and the veins on his neck were standing out.

He tried to activate the supernatural power within his body, but the strength that could easily lift a tank was now so great that he couldn't even budge the metal ring.

There was an indwelling needle inserted into a vein in his arm.

It is connected to the IV bag above.

The dark blue liquid was flowing evenly into his veins at a rate of one drop per second.

This is Steven's proud second-generation ability-suppressing drug.

As long as the drug circulates in the blood, the divine factors within the awakened person's body will be forcibly severed, turning them into an ordinary livestock at the mercy of others.

Upon hearing the sound of the airtight door opening, all four people turned their heads simultaneously.

When Steven and his group walked in, the burly man's eyes bulged out, and he stared intently at Steven.

"You bastard, dare you untie me? I'll rip your guts out with one hand!"

The curly-haired youth on the second bed next to him immediately followed up with a string of curses.

"You bunch of cowardly turtles hiding underground! Lackeys of the underground government!"

What kind of skill is it to hide in the shadows and plot against your own people!

He was spitting as he spoke, and the skin on his wrists had been rubbed raw.

"You'd better let us go! Do you understand? Otherwise, you'll regret it!"

Their curses echoed throughout the laboratory.

Steven was not angry at the verbal attacks from the four people; instead, he shook his head slightly.

"You bunch of 'special survivors.' Are you still hoping that Great Xia will come to rescue you?"

He spoke in a flat tone, as if he were looking at four cockroaches stuck on a sticky mouse trap.

"We are officially registered Awakened Ones of the Great Xia Dynasty!"

The young woman in bed number four stared at him, her voice fierce.

"Our identity terminals are connected to the Pangu supercomputer! If we disappear, Great Xia will definitely track us down to the end! You can't hide!"

The twin brother on bed number three also gritted his teeth and spoke, his voice hoarse but fierce.

"The Great Xia expeditionary force was able to quell the monsters in Australia that numbered in the billions!"

Who do you think you are! You won't be able to hide this score from me!

He was trying to awaken the other person's fear with these words.

But this was destined to be in vain.

"Don't have too high expectations for Daxia, samples."

Steven raised his hand, and his assistant immediately handed him a tactical tablet.

His fingertips slid across the screen, the blue light reflecting on his aged yet mad face.

"Whatever your name or title may be outside, whether you are called 'Special Survivors' or 'Awakened Ones'."

He raised his eyelids and glanced at the four people.

"Here, you have no nationality, no name."

"You are number 121." He pointed at the burly man.

"You are number 122, you are number 123, you are number 124."

Steven withdrew his finger and looked at the tablet.

"Number 121, dual-elemental enhancement of strength and metal."

He gave instructions to his assistant in a flat, monotone tone.

"Send him to Dissection Room No. 1. Perform live bone marrow aspiration and forced removal of the divine factor."

Remember, no anesthetic injections are needed. I want to observe his skeletal remodeling response and muscle breakdown rate when his pain receptors reach their limit.

The focus was on collecting instantaneous data on gene strand breaks that occurred when his bone marrow fluid leaked out while he was alive.

The burly man's pupils contracted sharply, and boundless fear crept into his eyes.

His eyes were red-rimmed, and a wild roar, like that of a trapped beast, burst from his throat.

"Come on! I'll fuck your ancestors! You old freak! I'll skin you alive even as a ghost!"

Ignoring his impotent rage, Steven walked to the bedside of the curly-haired youth.

"Number 122, wind-type mutation."

The curly-haired youth gritted his teeth, his eyes revealing an undisguised fear.

"Send them to a negative pressure gas chamber. Drain all the oxygen inside and replace it with a high concentration of neurotoxin VX-3."

Observe the self-rescue proliferative response of pulmonary extracorporeal factors under the dual conditions of hypoxia and poisoning.

The time is set at forty minutes.

This was a very interesting physiological characteristic test; this self-rescue response mechanism under high pressure has never been recorded in previous literature.

The curly-haired youth shook his head, his scalp rubbing against the metal pad until it bled.

"Madmen...you bunch of madmen!"

The man, number 122, twisted his neck frantically, tears and snot streaming down his face.

"You can't do this! Let me go!"

With each cruel experiment Steven read out, the atmosphere on the operating table grew more oppressive.

That's not how you treat humans.

That was the cruel dismemberment of lab rats, of consumables.

Curses, pleas, and sobs mingled together.

"Number 123, number 124. A rare spiritual resonance."

He looked at the two almost identical faces, his eyes growing increasingly fervent.

"Push them into the vivisection tables in areas A and B respectively. Prepare two sets of thoracotomy equipment."

They cut open their chest cavities at the same time, keeping their hearts beating. Then they removed their left ventricles simultaneously.

The focus was on observing the resonance tomography data of the two individuals' brainwaves after the hearts were removed from their bodies.

The twins were completely devastated.

The older brother roared and pushed forward, while the younger sister cursed loudly.

"I curse you! You hell-destroying beasts!"

The young woman screamed hysterically.

The entire laboratory was filled with harsh curses.

A barrage of foul language rained down on Steven.

Faced with this situation, several assistants skillfully stepped on the release pedal of the hydraulic rod to unlock the rollers at the bottom of the restraint bed.

Steven stood to the side, his hands back in the pockets of his white coat, quietly watching the four people.

He thought to himself with fervor.

"Go ahead and curse. Shout louder. Struggle more violently."

Yes, that's how it should be! This will make your brain activity more active.

Only then can I collect more accurate data.

When a person experiences extreme emotional stimulation, the pituitary gland will work beyond its capacity.

The more intensely neurons fire, the faster those factors hidden deep within the genes will be released into the bloodstream.

Only under these conditions can this special group of survivors be considered top-tier experimental consumables.

If they become dead fish and resign themselves to their fate, the experimental data will be greatly diminished.

The rollers rolled over the anti-static floor, making a dull thud.

The four restraint beds were pushed toward different airtight doors.

"Bastard! Bastard! The Great Xia's warplanes will raze this place to the ground sooner or later! I'll curse your ancestors for eighteen generations..."

The burly man's voice was cut off by the heavy metal door of the centrifuge.

Next came the gas chamber and the dissection table.

As the last airtight door closed tightly, the deafening curses ceased.

Steven walked up to the metal workbench.

A newly released human genome map was placed on the table.

He reached out and stroked the mutated gene chain circled in red on the diagram.

Da Xia's movements are getting faster and faster, and time is running out for the Eden Bunker.

Once the Great Xia Dynasty is completely free, its guns will be pointed at this underground area.

"Hurry... I really hope we can extract the perfect potion sooner!"

Steven spoke softly, his voice echoing under the empty dome, carrying a morbid piety.

"Let me steal this fire from the gods for humanity!"

……

The focus shifts back to the Kunlun Base. Main hall of the Global Awakeners Headquarters.

The map on the big screen was frozen in the southwestern interior of North America.

Li Guodong characterized the incident as a "hostile hunting operation against the global awakened system" and determined to mobilize the national power of Great Xia to intervene.

Su Ran sat in front of the dispatch console, while Mo Yun threw several documents on the table.

"Brother Su, the bait is ready."

Su Ran stopped what she was doing and looked up.

"Pangu Supercomputing used big data analysis to select three small and medium-sized camps that were most likely to be targeted."

These are located in northern Arizona, on the outskirts of New Mexico, and in abandoned mining areas of Nevada.

Mo Yun pointed to three newly lit, glaring green dots on the map, speaking very quickly.

"These three places are in remote locations and are all guarded by awakened individuals, but their defenses are relatively weak."

Su Ran lowered her gaze slightly and asked, "Where are the candidates?"

Lin Feng's Sharp Sword Special Forces selected thirty of the most skilled counter-tracking fighters, divided them into three groups, and infiltrated the camp.

In addition, there are several second-tier peak Awakened individuals in North America who have volunteered to assist.

Mo Yun pulled out a list, ran his finger across it, and continued,

"They were all equipped with specially made terminals, which increased their anti-interference capabilities by five times."

Most importantly, the technology department implanted the latest miniature positioning beacons under the skin of everyone.

This beacon doesn't use batteries; it's powered entirely by the body's bioelectricity. It actively receives signal fluctuations.

As long as it's operational, the Pangu supercomputer can follow the trail and infiltrate the systems of these underground agents, completely locking down their hideout and transportation network.

Mo Yun paused for a moment before continuing,

"There is an extremely harsh condition: these accomplices who act as bait must first voluntarily be captured alive."

"The beacon needs to be extremely close and maintained for a considerable period of time before we can filter out interference data and achieve precise positioning."

Su Ran looked at the list and tapped her fingers on the table.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The pace is very slow.

"Not enough." Su Ran shook her head.

Mo Yun was taken aback, her brows furrowing slightly. "Not enough?"

"I mean, the bait isn't firm enough."

Su Ran stood up and walked to the map.

"The fact that the group in the underground bunker dared to arrest people in an organized manner, and even use directional electromagnetic pulses, shows that they have trump cards from the old era."

It's too risky for an ordinary second-tier awakened individual to act as bait.

If the enemy uses weapons of mass destruction or potent anesthetics, these people won't even have a chance to resist; they'll be packed up and stuffed into transport vehicles.

Even if we manage to track them down, they're very likely to end up as laboratory consumables.

Mo Yun took a deep breath. "So, Brother Su, what you mean is...?"

Su Ran turned her head and looked at Ye Xiao, who had just returned from outside the base.

He had to go to great lengths to capture that third-tier mutated creature alive.

His combat uniform was still stained with dark purple beast blood, and he exuded a murderous aura.

"Old Ye."

Ye Xiao paused, then suddenly looked up and said, "Yes."

"Bring along dedication."

Su Ran said calmly, "Go to North America. You two go to the abandoned mining camp in Nevada and act as bait."

The main hall fell silent for a moment.

Mo Yun gasped.

"Brother Su, sending Lao Ye and Jingye as bait? That's too risky!"

If they're really trapped in the underground bunker...

"Old Mo, aren't you a little too insecure about Old Ye's abilities?"

Su Ran interrupted him, "You've seen Old Ye's special training program, what kind of anesthetic do you think could take him down?"

Mo Yun was speechless.

Indeed, Ye Xiao's physical abilities are now beyond what can be measured by the standards of "human".

The ability development project that the Academy of Sciences customized for Ye Xiao can be described as nothing short of physical torture.

To achieve breakthroughs in physical limits through various forms of destruction.

"The two of them going are just bait. I won't let them venture into the lion's den alone."

Su Ran sneered, "I want to see if their good teeth can break through the Great Xia's knife."

"Click!"

Ye Xiao sheathed his sword, stood up, and walked to the control panel.

"When are we leaving?"

"In one hour, a military transport plane will airdrop you directly there."

Su Ran looked at him. "You only have one mission. Pretend to be outmatched and get captured by them."

"Brother Su was taken down by a few ordinary people with just two tranquilizer darts, stuffed into a sack, and carried away..."

Upon hearing this, Ye Xiao looked troubled. "This job sounds frustrating."

"You can't hold it in for long."

While you're being held captive, our technical team will hack into their core systems and figure out all the rats they've deployed across the ground.

Su Ran patted Ye Xiao on the shoulder, comforting him.

"Once this task is completed, headquarters will send you operational instructions."

At that point, you won't need to pretend anymore; you can kill freely.

Send all those scum who kidnapped you to hell.