Xiao Lou suddenly had a splitting headache.
Something deep within his mind seemed to be suddenly awakened, like a seed breaking through the soil and sprouting rapidly. The intense pain felt like it was tearing his nerves apart one by one. He closed his eyes in pain, pressed his temples hard with both hands, and his shirt was instantly soaked with cold sweat.
Seeing his pale face, Yu Hanjiang quickly hugged him, her voice hoarse with worry: "What's wrong?"
Xiao Lou, pale-faced, shook her head frantically: "My mind is filled with a jumble of images..."
Lots of blood, faces that looked exactly like his own, and the cries of children.
That's a place more terrifying than hell.
Xiao Lou's vision was filled with blood red. The people who looked exactly alike were pulling at each other, and the children's claws turned into the sharpest knives, stabbing into the bodies of their own kind.
The room was covered in blood.
He was panting heavily, his strength was waning, and his wounds were bleeding profusely. His consciousness was becoming increasingly blurred, but he knew that if he collapsed, he would die immediately.
What should he do? Why did his father send him to this place, which is worse than a nightmare? Who are these people? Why do they look just like him? His father is telling him to find a way to survive; what should he do?
Seeing one child after another fall down around him, he suddenly had a flash of inspiration and came up with an idea.
Xiao Lou saw himself run to a corner, lie down, and pretend to be dead, using a child's corpse to shield himself.
The pungent smell of blood made it almost impossible for him to breathe.
He looked up and met a pair of eyes—the eyes of a five-year-old child. The child, who had died with his eyes wide open, had a face exactly like his own.
Xiao Lou: "..."
When Xiao Lou suddenly woke up from a nightmare, he found himself above the familiar hotel skylight, through which he could see a sky full of stars. He stared blankly at the sky until he heard a familiar voice: "You're awake? Does your head still hurt?"
The voice was deep and gentle; it belonged to Yu Hanjiang.
Xiao Lou snapped out of his daze, frowned, and tried to get up. Yu Hanjiang immediately helped him up and put a pillow behind his back to make him more comfortable.
The other teammates weren't there. This was his and Yu Hanjiang's bedroom in the hotel. Xiao Lou asked in confusion, "Am I asleep?"
Yu Hanjiang said, "To be precise, you should be in a coma. You were in so much pain that you fainted. I was worried about you, so I carried you to the bedroom to sleep and watched over you from the side."
Xiao Lou glanced at the time on her wrist.
They returned to the hotel at 3:30 PM, and it was already 3:30 AM. He had been unconscious for 10 hours. Yu Hanjiang hadn't even changed out of his pajamas and sat by the bed watching over him. Xiao Lou felt a warmth in his heart and gently held the other's hand, saying, "I remembered what happened when I was five years old. It might be because we deduced the key information about raising Gu that Guardian helped me regain my memories."
Looking at his still pale face, Yu Hanjiang asked in a low voice, "Is that really so?"
Xiao Lou nodded, her voice trembling slightly: "Out of 100 clones, only 4 survived. Father put all the children together and made them compete for survival based on their abilities. When I saw so many children who looked exactly like me, I was completely terrified..."
That memory is so vivid, it's as if Xiao Lou experienced it firsthand.
Competing for the right to survive with 100 "selves" is even more brutal than a battle royale in a horror movie.
Yu Hanjiang gently hugged Xiao Lou: "How did you survive? You don't have Zerg genes, you probably couldn't beat those clones in melee combat, right?"
Xiao Lou smiled bitterly: "I hid in a corner and pretended to be dead, covering myself completely with the corpse of a child, and they stopped attacking me. Many clones have just been released from the nutrient solution and can't even speak. My only advantage over them is that I have lived in human society for five years and know a lot of knowledge, while they were catalyzed to the age of five in the nutrient solution and only have nature and instinct."
In other words, five-year-old Xiao Lou survived that "breeding poisonous insects" scheme because of his intelligence.
The others relied on their physical advantages.
Although they share the same genes, the culture medium is different, so there will definitely be subtle differences after they grow up.
The clones released from the laboratory have no human education, so their intelligence is at the level of an infant. However, their growth rate has been accelerated by the nutrient solution, turning them into five-year-old children.
His Majesty put these children together, selected the most outstanding ones to continue training, and destroyed the rest that were deemed unsuitable...
It was indeed a cold-blooded and brutal plan to raise treacherous insects.
Perhaps in His Majesty's eyes, these children are nothing more than his private "properties" that he has raised, and he has the right to "select the best" for admission.
Although those five-year-old children at the time had no emotions, Xiao Lou still felt a chill run down his spine when he recalled the bloody scene of countless identical children competing for survival.
After that selection process, Xiao Lou underwent deep hypnosis surgery and forgot everything.
Yu Hanjiang never expected that the Emperor of the Luoke Empire would be a madman! He said in a deep voice, "Your Majesty wants to put the clones together and select the best one to continue training, but why not even spare the one born of you? What if you were killed in that selection? Perhaps Your Majesty thinks that a prince who can't even beat a clone with the intelligence of an infant doesn't deserve to live?"
"Probably, after all, those 100 were indeed babies."
"Intelligence? If I can't even solve this little problem, he might choose to abandon me too." Xiao Lou gently pressed his temples, quickly regaining his composure, and said, "Leaving aside the ethical issues, some details I discovered from my memories of when I was five years old should be helpful to us."
Yu Hanjiang said gently, "Let me pour you a glass of water; your voice is hoarse."
He got up and poured Xiao Lou a glass of warm water. Xiao Lou took it and drank a few sips to moisten his throat. Sure enough, his throat felt much better. Xiao Lou cleared his throat and continued, "First of all, there were four children who survived that selection, including me. There were three princes we saw in the palace before. Where did the remaining one go?"
Yu Hanjiang speculated, "Could it be that His Majesty secretly hid it away?"
Xiao Lou said, "That's possible. But it's also possible that it was taken away by someone with ulterior motives."
He paused, then continued, "Furthermore, after human cells are infused with Zerg genes, the human remains human and does not gain the Zerg's ability to merge and upgrade. In other words, when a clone kills a clone, it doesn't 'eat' the other and upgrade; once it dies, it's dead. However, clones gain the Zerg's healing ability, and their wounds can heal over time. This is something I discovered during that selection process. It's just that some clones heal quickly, while others heal very slowly."
Yu Hanjiang frowned: "What about climbing and jumping?"
Xiao Lou shook his head: "No, humans still have to walk upright. This may be related to the gene fragments selected when the cells were replicated. The hybridization and fusion of species is a very complex technology, and mutations may occur."
Its healing ability alone is already quite powerful.
Normal humans need to go to the hospital for treatment when they are injured, but clones can wait for their wounds to heal on their own.
Xiao Lou said, "What I'm worried about is that if clones can even heal their internal organs and regenerate severed limbs, then they'll essentially become 'undead,' never getting sick and never needing to go to the hospital. Like the Zerg, they're only afraid of fire?"
Yu Hanjiang said with a stern face, "This is almost the same level as the ancient emperors who cultivated themselves into immortals."
"Yes," Xiao Lou said helplessly, "Currently, the research on clones is only at the first generation. Nobody knows whether the second generation born after a clone combines with a normal human will mutate again. I've said before that artificially modified genes inserted into the human gene sequence could very likely trigger a butterfly effect, creating all sorts of unsolvable genetic problems."
Yu Hanjiang nodded: "We have to stop all of this."
Xiao Lou said, "What my sister saw was only my clone. But Noahs Ark Project didn't just take my cells; there might be other clones. To stop all this, we must find all the clones."
Yu Hanjiang asked in a low voice, "What should we do after we find them? Destroy them?"
What's frightening is that most clones today are now adults in their twenties. They have lived in human society for so many years, developed their own thoughts and consciousness, and are not significantly different from humans except for their genes.
How do we "destroy" these copies that have already developed self-awareness?
How is this any different from murder?
Xiao Lou took a deep breath and said, "Simply destroying them won't work; there must be another way. Let's find all the clones first. Stopping the Noahs Ark Project should be the way to clear the secret room?"
Yu Hanjiang agreed: "Okay. You're missing one clone, so we need to find ' Xiao Lou No. 4 ' as soon as possible. Secondly, we also need to investigate the legend about the invisible man that your sister mentioned. We need to find the people who saved Ninth Brother and Tang Ci; they must know something."
Xiao Lou frowned and said, "My sister said it's marine life. Oceans cover more than 50% of this planet, so what kind of marine life is it?"
Yu Hanjiang said helplessly, "Let's search slowly. We'll find some clues by investigating and visiting people along the coast."