After planting the Blood Crystal Worm Eggs in the prison's lower and middle levels, Xiang Yi returned to his room and opened the container to take a look.
About a third of the Blood Crystal Worm Eggs remained in the container; this was the portion he planned to take out of the prison with him.
He sealed the container again and pressed his fingers to the back of his neck.
The pain, sharper than simply cutting his own skin, made him frown slightly. Fortunately, the skin and flesh on the back of his neck soon split open, and he used his Spiritual Energy to remove a small chip.
The chip dissolved into a pool of liquid metal on his fingertip, reverting to its nanobot state. However, it was still emitting a tracking signal.
Xiang Yi breathed a small sigh of relief. He let the liquid metal slide from his fingertip to the floor, where, under the remote control of his Spiritual Energy, it began to flow toward the deeper levels of the prison.
At the same time, the tracking bracelet on his wrist also slipped to the floor.
From this moment on, no one could pinpoint his location.
After treating the flesh wound on the back of his neck with a small medical kit left by the doctor on a previous visit, Xiang Yi set off again.
He changed into a hazmat suit he had just swiped from the workshop and headed for the hospital.
Although some people on the way found it strange that Xiang Yi was wearing a hazmat suit on the middle level, their curiosity was fleeting.
Xiang Yi walked openly, and no one gave him a second thought. Just like that, he safely reached the rear of the hospital.
His timing was perfect. The last few bins of trash were being loaded onto the tracks of the waste disposal chute by the workbots here.
He quickened his pace. After confirming the bots were operating on a set program, with no independent AI to assess the situation, he jumped into a trash bin that wasn't completely full.
Xiang Yi definitely felt some apprehension before jumping in. After all, with such a large biohazard symbol plastered on the side of the bin, anyone would be nervous.
But it wasn't so bad once he was inside. The hazmat suit did its job, preventing the needles and chemical solutions within from easily touching his skin.
The bin Xiang Yi was hiding in was soon lifted by a bot and sent into the waste disposal chute.
The sound of the moving rail echoed continuously in Xiang Yi's ears.
About ten minutes later, the trash bin was suddenly upended, and Xiang Yi, along with a pile of medical waste, was dumped and sealed into a giant black trash bag.
The scraping sensation beneath him and the sound of machinery nearby made him feel as if he had been placed on a conveyor belt.
Xiang Yi carefully tore a small hole in the trash bag and confirmed his suspicion.
He was on a conveyor belt, surrounded by identical black trash bags.
In the distance was the port, where the starry sky outside was visible.
And up close, at the end of this conveyor belt, was the very cargo bay of the medical waste transport ship he remembered.
With his goal almost within reach, Xiang Yi's heart began to race once more. Hope was right in front of him.
But just then, the hum of the conveyor belt suddenly softened, and its speed gradually decreased.
It even came to a complete stop just before Xiang Yi was about to be loaded into the ship's cargo bay.
From not too far away, what sounded like the ship's pilot called out, "What's wrong?"
A voice responded from very close to the trash bag where Xiang Yi was hiding, "Spot check. It'll be quick."
「At the exact moment Xiang Yi was about to slip onto the ship.」
Deep in the mines, in the prisoners' residential area.
A group of prisoners had just come out of the decontamination chamber. Having finished their shift and removed their hazmat suits, they entered the showers together to wash up.
One prisoner, laughing and joking with the others, walked up to his locker. He had just opened the door when he noticed his usual change of clothes was covered in a layer of red grit.
At first, he thought it was a prank by an inmate he had a beef with, but then he suddenly realized something, and a look of terror crossed his face.
"This..."
Before he could finish his sentence, a thin, blood-red shadow shot out from the locker, pierced his eyeball, and burrowed into his brain.
He fell to the ground, stiff as a board, as blood streamed from his eye socket, quickly forming a pool on the floor.
Screams instantly erupted in the showers as several more Blood Crystal Worms crawled out of the locker and lunged at the defenseless prisoners.
Driven to the height of ferocity and hunger by their earlier exposure to Xiang Yi's blood, the Blood Crystal Worms began slaughtering the prisoners at the first scent of fresh blood.
Of the forty-some prisoners from the shift change, less than half managed to escape the showers, leaving more than twenty behind as food for the worms.
Their panic attracted more people. When a Blood Crystal Worm crawled out of the showers and burrowed into the back of a slow-running prisoner's head, a riot erupted as the inmates fought for their lives.
The chaos gradually spread throughout the prison's lower level, but the real danger was still brewing inside the corpses left in the showers.
The warden was woken from his sleep by his secretary.
He learned from his secretary that the Blood Crystal from the mines had breached the decontamination chamber's quarantine, causing massive casualties in the prisoners' residential area.
A large number of prisoners were storming the path to the upper levels, but they had been temporarily suppressed by the guards.
But as long as the Blood Crystal problem wasn't solved, the riot would never stop.
Unless... there was no one left to riot.
The warden hurriedly dressed and pushed his door open, just in time to see He Dong passing by his door with an anxious expression.
The warden was about to speak, but He Dong beat him to it. "This incident is definitely not a management issue. Someone brought the Blood Crystal up from the mines."
"Who?"
"Xiang Yi."
The warden pointed toward the Conference Room and said, "Come with me. Explain everything."
The warden hastily assembled his staff.
「Meanwhile, back with Xiang Yi.」
Two prison guards in hazmat suits stood by the conveyor belt, scanning it with detection equipment.
One of the guards suddenly pulled out his personal terminal, glanced at it, and said, "Looks like the prisoners are rioting. All personnel are being summoned."
"We have to go too?"
"We do."
"Alright."
The guard was about to pack up the equipment and leave, but he glanced at it one last time and noticed the shadow of a human figure on the scanner.
He quickly shouted, "Why is there a person in there?"
"It's fine if it's a dead one."
"It's a fucking living one! Quick—"
Before the word of warning could leave his lips, an overloaded Psychic Pulse slammed directly into his and his partner's consciousness.
The two guards' eyes rolled back in their heads, and they instantly collapsed, unconscious, in a heap on the floor.
Xiang Yi immediately tore through the trash bag and scrambled out, whipping his head around to look toward the ship.
Luckily, the last section of the conveyor belt was inclined upward, blocking the pilot's line of sight. The pilot couldn't see the fallen guards; only the surveillance cameras could capture this moment in real-time.
'Besides, with the chaos erupting inside the prison, no one should be paying attention to this place.'
And right next to the two unconscious guards was the conveyor belt's activation button.
"All clear!"
Xiang Yi quickly pressed the conveyor belt's switch and shouted in the direction of the cockpit.
In truth, he couldn't be entirely sure if the pilot would notice anything was wrong.
He was betting his life.
But he was quite familiar with betting his life. After all, back when he encountered those major industrial safety accidents, all he could do was gamble.
If he hesitated in a critical moment, he would have ended up as just another number among the casualties.
This time, luck seemed to be on Xiang Yi's side.
There was no unusual reaction from the ship. He was smoothly carried along with the mass of medical waste into the ship's cargo bay.
As he fell, he felt a needle puncture his hazmat suit, a slight scraping sensation against his abdomen.
He had no time to think. He could only carefully dodge the trash bags still falling behind him and reach out to touch the ship's bulkhead.
However, he ran into the same problem as when he tried to control the computer earlier: he had not yet gained master control of the ship.
Xiang Yi could only temporarily suppress the urge to control the ship and wait for the last few bags of trash from the conveyor belt to be loaded in.
Using this last bit of time, he also found the hatch connecting the cargo bay to the rest of the ship.
And with this discovery, a memory fragment of how to operate the ship's hatch surfaced in his mind.
It seemed he had come into contact with this type of ship before.
But he didn't rush to do anything, instead continuing to wait patiently.
As the last of the trash was loaded in, the ship's cargo bay door automatically closed.
The ship's engines let out a ROAR, and a heavy pressure suddenly pressed down on Xiang Yi.
This was due to the gravitational acceleration of the ship's takeoff. Although it was uncomfortable, it was also reassuring.
The heavy pressure gradually faded as the ship accelerated, replaced by a sudden feeling of weightlessness.
This feeling of weightlessness, a sign the ship had left the space station, allowed Xiang Yi's heart, which had been hammering due to the recent emergency, to slowly return to a normal rhythm.
He had really left the prison and was now heading to an unknown destination.