Lan Jin was strong, and he had no desire to die. Naturally, he wasn't eager to split up from her. If he himself refused to separate, there was no reason to let the rest of his team scatter either. That would just be throwing others into danger.
Captain Zhang sighed helplessly. "You all watch too many dramas. We don't have that many people. Why must we split up to look for things? Searching together is perfectly fine."
His words left everyone awkward.
Besides, there weren't any dramas to watch right now anyway.
Lan Jin said, "Let's go. We'll head in first, talk later. Also, I don't think we can get inside that easily. Looks like it needs a keycard."
The group followed Lan Jin and Captain Zhang toward the main entrance.
The double glass doors didn't automatically open when they approached. Looking at the card reader on the upper right, Lan Jin swiped the IC card they had used earlier to open a crate.
A beep sounded, but the door stayed shut, just as she expected.
Pei Xin said, "That's because this card is for unlocking crates. The reader here is for access. Try my grandpa's work badge instead."
Lan Jin quickly switched to Grandpa Pei's badge. When she swiped it, the machine beeped again, and this time, the door opened smoothly.
The first impression of the villa interior was size, followed by whiteness.
The hall was empty, with no decorations except whitewashed walls and glowing fluorescent lights. The whole place was barren, giving off the feeling of a morgue. The back of their necks prickled, as if a cold wind was breathing down on them.
There wasn't a single sound inside either. The silence was suffocating.
Pei Xin whispered, "No one's here… right?"
Ling Jiang's voice was low and unsettling. "Can't say for sure. Maybe they're all gathered somewhere. Whoever keeps something this important here… probably isn't normal."
"Nonsense. Dangerous things should be stored in dangerous places. Everyone knows that," Captain Zhang said, glancing upstairs.
The first floor was mostly empty, except for two staircases on either side that connected to the second floor. There was no need to split up. Captain Zhang said, "This way. Let's go upstairs and take a look."
They climbed the stairs cautiously, but nothing strange happened along the way.
Once they all reached the second floor, they studied the building layout.
From the first to the fourth floor, the center hall was open all the way up, spanning roughly half of the villa's five-hundred-square-meter area. Another fifty square meters were used for the two staircases.
Between the staircases was a corridor where three oil paintings hung on the walls, in a Western style. But instead of people, the paintings depicted animals from the dense forest outside, each with a disturbingly human face carefully painted onto it.
Whoever chose to hang these here had tastes that were more than just eccentric.
Painting such lifelike human-faced animals must have required serious study and effort. To then hang them prominently as decorations spoke volumes about the artist's mind.
Lan Jin glanced at them and quickly looked away. "No point staring. They're just paintings. Let's check somewhere else."
The hall was definitely empty, but there were three rooms off to the sides: one on the left, two on the right. All three had automatic glass doors requiring a card swipe to enter.
Compared to the large open hall, these rooms were modest in size.
The group started with the left-hand room. Lan Jin swiped Grandpa Pei's badge to unlock it.
Inside was a research laboratory.
Pei Xin and Xi Yu immediately recognized the setup and equipment.
Pei Xin said, "We had all this equipment at the base before the earthquake."
Pei Xin and Xi Yu couldn't help staring longingly at the instruments. But given their uncertain fate, she didn't dare voice any thoughts about taking them out.
The two rooms on the right were the same: research labs, spotless and free of dust.
Lan Jin frowned. Someone had to be cleaning this place. But there were no signs of people living here. So why was it spotless?
The questions piled up, but there were no answers.
After thoroughly checking the three rooms, they headed for the third floor.
If the second floor was a research laboratory, then the third floor was clearly a medical laboratory. Every base had personnel for both. They worked in different fields but shared knowledge and collaborated closely.
Among their group, Pei Xin and Xi Yu followed Grandpa Pei's research lab. The other man specialized in medical experiments. At a glance, he said, "I know this setup. No mistake. This place has hosted experiments… experiments they'd never want outsiders to know about."
The entire third floor was the same.
They didn't find what they wanted, so they continued up to the fourth floor.
This was the villa's top floor, and its design was strange. The staircases and creepy portrait-lined corridors were the same, but the left-side room now had a solid wooden door. The right side had no room at all, just an open platform.
Lao Gao asked, "So we've searched from the first floor to here, and only this wooden door seems odd. Are we saying what we're looking for is inside?"
Captain Zhang shrugged. "Let's find out. Don't ask me. I don't have the answer either."
Unlike the glass doors, the wooden one couldn't be opened with a card. The group stood around the locked door, unsure what to do.
Lan Jin suggested, "Kick it down?"
That was risky. If something important was inside, one good kick could destroy it.
Lao Gao offered, "Then let's pry it open."
That sounded even worse. Only someone with bad intentions would go prying open locks like this.