This place was different from the Third Laboratory. Though the corridors were cluttered, there were no corpses or skeletons in sight.
Buzz... buzz...
After another round of flickering lights, Lingsha suddenly noticed three massive claw marks on the wall of the adjacent corridor. Each gash was three to four centimeters wide and nearly a meter long, clearly the work of some colossal monster.
As they continued onward, similar claw marks appeared one after another on the ceilings and floors.
Could it be that the Third Laboratory escaped a monster attack, while this one was ravaged? Lingsha wondered inwardly, secretly increasing her vigilance.
The trio pressed on. Fortunately, since all seven laboratories had been built simultaneously, the layout here was identical to the Third Laboratory. With this realization, Lingsha quickly located the Core Laboratory.
There, they found a completely destroyed door, now just a twisted heap of scrap metal. Faint claw marks and signs of violent impacts marred the wreckage, but what stood out was that the impacts originated from within the laboratory. This meant the monster had been confined inside and forced its way out by smashing the door.
Lingsha's first thought was, of course, that this was a classic scenario: reckless human experimentation had gone awry, the monster had escaped containment, and the scientists had become its victims—a trope so common it was practically cliché.
Carefully stepping over the debris of the collapsed door, Lingsha entered the laboratory. As expected, the interior was in complete disarray, with shattered equipment strewn across the floor.
Unlike the Third Laboratory, which was filled with cylindrical glass culture tanks unmistakably used for biological research, this First Laboratory was strangely packed with display screens, computer towers, and peculiar devices Lingsha had never seen before.
Most of the equipment was damaged beyond repair, but fortunately, the largest device in the center of the laboratory appeared relatively intact, aside from a shallow scratch on its casing and a thick layer of dust.
With the floor nearly covered in broken machinery, leaving no room to stand, Lingsha had to float over to the machine. After pressing random buttons and fiddling with the controls, she finally managed to power it on.
Following standard procedure, she immediately searched for the experiment logs. The first entry caught her eye: "Research on the 'Heavenly Flaw.'"
[Undoubtedly, 'Death' emerged alongside the 'Heavenly Flaw.' I foresee that preventing 'Death' through medical means is nearly impossible. How foolish of the other laboratories to waste vast resources on advancing medical research!]
[Instead of trying to cure this disease, we should investigate its root cause—the 'Heavenly Flaw' itself. If we fully understand how and why 'Death' arises, perhaps we can discover alternative methods to eradicate it at its source.]
This approach made perfect sense: if we can't defeat 'Death,' we should target its origin. However, Lingsha remained skeptical of the First Laboratory's chances. After all, the 'Heavenly Flaw' was undeniably a Dimensional Rift, and her Main World had been studying such rifts for ages without making any significant progress.
She continued scrolling through the experimental logs. The entries for "Research on the 'Heavenly Flaw'" were numbered sequentially from 01 to 4999—nearly five thousand attempts. Lingsha naturally didn't have time to review them all; instead, she skipped straight to the final entry to examine the results.
Notably, the final log wasn't a text document but an audio recording. Lingsha pressed play, and a frail, aged voice resonated from the speakers:
[As I delved deeper into my research on the Heavenly Flaw, I unexpectedly discovered the existence of other "worlds"—parallel universes similar to our own, yet fundamentally different!]
[If Death is a disease plaguing our world, intent on our destruction, then the Heavenly Flaw is like a global, amplified version of that disease. I've observed it constantly spreading, engulfing parallel timelines one by one.]
[Conversely, this means Death's influence is confined to our small corner of reality. Theoretically, by leaving this world—whether by traveling to another parallel universe or even by boarding a Cosmic Spaceship and venturing beyond this planet into the cosmos—we could directly escape Death's grasp!]
[Death itself isn't the insurmountable problem. The true challenge lies in the Heavenly Flaw, which appeared from nowhere and whose origins remain unknown. Even if we fully unravel the mysteries of life and completely conquer Death, new calamities will inevitably arise to torment our world.]
[No, it's already here...]
As the old man spoke, Lingsha could hear a distinct tremor in his voice. In the background, panicked shouts echoed—people yelling things like "Run!"
The next moment, a deafening roar erupted from the recording, like a jump scare from a horror game—utterly sudden and without warning. Lingsha saw Li beside her prick up her ears, her tail shooting straight out like a rigid rod.
After that came a cacophony of clattering and crashing sounds, as if things were collapsing in a chaotic mess. Yet the old man seemed to have remained, continuing to record:
[When I discovered this "escape route" to the cosmos and other parallel worlds, Death lost its power to utterly destroy us. But a new disaster has already emerged!]
[It's over. I unleashed it! It's all my fault!]
[The First Laboratory is beyond saving. But no matter what! Whether I've done something good or something terrible, I must release this research!]
[Must!]
[Boom!]
[Zzzzz...]
The recording abruptly cut off. It wasn't hard to guess what had happened next. Lingsha surveyed the ransacked laboratory, concluding that a monster had likely appeared and wreaked havoc.
But the question remained: How did the monster materialize out of thin air within the laboratory? Did a Dimensional Rift spontaneously open here?
In Lingsha's understanding, Dimensional Rifts always formed high in the sky. How could one precisely appear inside a room, especially at the very moment the old man achieved some breakthrough in his research?
Leaving these mysteries aside for now, Lingsha turned to Ikezawa. If the First Laboratory's conclusions were correct, all Ikezawa needed to do to fully recover from his "Death" was leave this world!