Stone Eye's troop of apes had actually trained their own hounds to track enemies!
Shen Feng and Kuafu had thought it would take their pursuers at least half a day to check every room and find them. They never expected to be found so soon.
Kuafu scrambled to the door, heaving several tables and stone statues into a pile to barricade it.
Meanwhile, as Shen Feng's heart pumped the injected Skin-Stripping Potion through his veins, he felt a scorching heat erupt from deep within him.
The heat was like an internal furnace, rapidly softening his skin and joints as they were turning to stone.
He was on the verge of the Stone Statue Virus's final outbreak. The struggle between the Skin-Stripping Potion and the virus triggered a violent chemical reaction inside him, generating immense heat.
First came the sweat, and then steam began to pour directly from his body.
Shen Feng's eyes flew open, bloodshot and red. An intensifying burning sensation seared his eyeballs.
Fortunately—and he didn't know if it was because of the Pangu Virus—his mind remained perfectly clear.
He flexed his joints. The grinding sound from the Petrification Disease was gone. His joints were flexible again, and... searing with pain!
A searing pain pulsed through his muscles as well, but with it came a boundless surge of strength, as if his cells were rapidly dividing. His earlier exhaustion vanished completely.
But Shen Feng knew this was all temporary. Soon, his skin would melt and peel away, his muscles would break down, and he would become a skinless monster.
'I have to be fast!'
"We're going up!"
Shen Feng let out a low growl. He shouldered his backpack, rushed to the window, and scrambled out. Using his hands and feet, he gripped the ledges and exterior pipes, climbing toward the floor above.
Spurred on by the potion's side effects, his movements were even more nimble than an ape's.
Kuafu glanced at the door, which was about to be smashed open, then followed Shen Feng out the window.
BOOM! With a tremendous crash, a dozen apes smashed through the barricade. Clad in body armor and armed with guns, they charged in and immediately spotted the open window.
"They climbed out the window!"
Several apes rushed to the window, sticking their heads out to look up.
Three dark muzzles were aimed down at them from the floor above.
Shen Feng and Kuafu fired simultaneously, instantly taking out the apes who had leaned out. They turned, bolted from the room they had entered, and sprinted down the hallway to the stairwell, continuing their ascent.
Stone Eye had put great faith in his hounds, so most of the pursuers were still on the floor below. Shen Feng and Kuafu encountered surprisingly little resistance.
"After them! Now! They're... going for the top floor!" Stone Eye roared, seeing his subordinates' headshot corpses.
He had spotted the empty Skin-Stripping Potion vial on the floor. He instantly understood: the human was infected with the Stone Statue Virus, and the final outbreak was imminent!
He didn't know why Kuafu had teamed up with the human, but without the human, Kuafu was a sitting duck.
His target was Kuafu. The human was irrelevant.
On the stairs, Shen Feng was moving at an incredible speed. He copied Kuafu, grabbing the handrail and vaulting up an entire flight of stairs.
Fueled by the searing effects of the Skin-Stripping Potion, his movements were almost inhuman.
He shot one of the pursuers, then clenched the pistol between his teeth and pressed on.
THUD! Kuafu knocked down an ape blocking their path and stared at the human youth, utterly shocked.
Having studied a vast amount of material on Petrification Disease, he knew exactly what the Skin-Stripping Potion meant.
If the boy couldn't get the vaccine before the potion's effects ran their course, his skin would peel from his body, turning him into one of those horrifying, pitiable Skinners.
The tenacity humans displayed in the face of annihilation was truly terrifying to the apes.
Staring into the boy's nearly emotionless eyes, Kuafu vaguely recalled the old fear of being dominated by humankind.
The barking of dogs echoed from the stairwell below. The pursuers were closing in fast.
WHOOSH! Shen Feng did a flip and landed with a heavy thud. His body was wreathed in steam; his system was running in such high gear that the moisture in his body was rapidly evaporating.
Kuafu, panting, also found his footing and looked at the number painted on the wall of the landing:
50.
They had reached the top floor!
Shen Feng took out his last bottle of water, drained it in one go, and tossed his empty backpack aside. "Lead the way," he said.
He didn't know if something was wrong with the Skin-Stripping Potion, or if it was because he had been in the final stages of Petrification Disease, but the changes in his body were happening far faster than anything recorded in the diaries and lab notes.
In just a matter of minutes, his skin had turned crimson, as if it were burning from within.
Kuafu immediately shot the chain off the corridor door, and they charged toward the far end.
There, at the end of the hall, was the National Academy of Sciences' highest-level virus research laboratory!
Hundreds of human stone statues lined the long corridor. All wore white lab coats, their faces frozen in joyous smiles, as if they had just left their stations to celebrate something right before they were petrified.
The top floor's solar power system was still operational. Triggered by the sound of their footsteps, the remaining emergency lights flickered on one by one, bathing the dim corridor in light.
The man and the ape didn't have time for a closer look. They scrambled to the door of the virus lab, only to find it sealed shut and locked down.
"Were all the Skinners here cleared out?" Shen Feng asked, frowning.
Kuafu's expression was grim. He nodded.
"Yes... We could get in by brute-forcing the wall, but that would take days."
He had never imagined he would one day need to get into the lab so desperately.
Now, not only did Shen Feng need the medicine inside, but Kuafu himself needed this sanctuary to escape Stone Eye's assault.
The thick alloy walls of this top-tier lab were missile-proof. It was strong enough for him to wait safely inside for Wuzhiqi and his other subordinates to arrive.
Shen Feng's body burned, but his mind raced. The schematics for the disease control center he'd seen before flashed through his mind's eye, as if he were leafing through the actual documents. His thoughts suddenly froze on a specific blueprint.
The schematics for the Qi City Disease Control Center's access control system!
'The architecture of these disease control centers is all very similar. The access control systems should be, too.'
Shen Feng took a deep breath, walked to a corner beside the alloy door, pressed his muzzle flush against the wall, and fired four times.
His strength was now immense, allowing him to hold the muzzle steady enough to prevent any ricochets.
BAM... CLATTER... A palm-sized metal plate on the seemingly seamless alloy door fell away, revealing a tangle of complex wiring.
The sound of barking echoed from a distance. The pursuers had reached their floor!
"Hold them off for a bit! I need to focus on these wires!" Shen Feng said to Kuafu without looking back. "Use the statues to build some cover!"
Kuafu knew this was a life-or-death moment. He immediately dragged over a dozen human statues, piling them up to form a barricade in front of the door. He couldn't resist a dry remark:
"I'm about ninety percent convinced you're from another world now. You really don't see these old humans as people, do you?"
Shen Feng replied mechanically, his eyes racing over the wiring.
"They're already dead. They're a pile of stone corpses. Even if they did somehow become a silicon-based life form, they'd be a completely different species from what they were. Besides... I'm no saint. I just want to live! If I live, maybe my own world won't turn into this miserable Hell!"
Kuafu finished setting up the barricade behind Shen Feng. He lay prone in front of it with the remaining guns and ammo, his eyes fixed on the far end of the corridor. He nodded.
"Fair enough. I once read the records of humanity's great wars. During the Battle of Stalingrad, the two warring sides even used the frozen bodies of their comrades for cover. I still remember the chilling feeling I got reading that... They're here!"
A chaotic mess of footsteps, ape-like roars, and barking hounds erupted from the far end of the corridor as dozens of pursuers charged toward them!