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"Please let me go, my differentiation value is only at 26%! It's impossible for me to awaken, it's useless to force me!"
"Please spare me, I don't want to die! I still have a younger sister to take care of..."
"…"
Intermittent cries for mercy came from all directions. Song Shi's eyelashes trembled slowly, her consciousness broke free from the endless darkness, and her closed eyes suddenly opened.
The heat was stifling. Inside the massive glass enclosure ahead, flames raged and spread with alarming speed. Thick, black smoke billowed upward, blanketing the sky in darkness.
Song Shi took a closer look, and a cold sweat broke out down her back.
There were actually more than a dozen living people inside!
They were locked inside a glass cover and kept hitting the transparent glass, causing it to make a buzzing sound.
The fire burned their faces red, and the desire to survive in their eyes was hotter than the flames behind them.
They shouted for help as thick smoke poured into their lungs through their mouths and noses.
They hunched over and coughed so hard that their lungs tore at them, as if they were trying to cough out their internal organs.
Their faces turned purple due to lack of oxygen and their eyes were burned with tears, but the tears evaporated in an instant before they could fall.
No one came to rescue them.
Outside the glass enclosure stood a row of men in combat uniforms, gripping machine guns. Despite the desperate cries for help, they remained motionless, as unyielding as a mountain.
This is hell on earth.
Song Shi closed her eyes. She had been learning self-defense with her coach not long ago.
The coach swung his leg, and she quickly bent down to dodge. Just as she was about to evade it, her vision suddenly went dark, and a faint sobbing sound echoed in her ears. She struggled to open her eyes, taking in the scene before her.
She traveled to another world?!
The thought sent a chill down Song Shi's spine, raising goosebumps on the back of her neck. Instinctively, she took a step back, only to collide with something solid.
Her body stiffened. As she turned, a cold gun was suddenly pressed against her temple with such force that her head tilted slightly to the side.
"Anyone who escapes will be shot on the spot!" A tough voice sounded beside her.
Song Shi immediately turned back properly, but the feeling of something pressing against her waist remained.
Just now, when her head was hit, she caught a glimpse of something against her back from the corner of her eye. It was a spear.
The man holding the gun was dressed the same as the one guarding outside the glass cover, both in black combat uniform and with a scarf on their faces.
The other person was standing diagonally to her side, a position that was enough to see all her movements and take action at any time.
What was her identity? Why was she being so closely guarded?
In the previous glance, she also noticed that there were hundreds of people around her wearing coarse white clothes with yellow tints.
They looked very young, about seventeen or eighteen years old, both men and women.
Some of them were treated the same as her, with gunmen standing behind them or on the right.
What on earth is this place? Why is she being held at gunpoint? What are these people going to do?
Song Shi was full of doubts.
At this moment, the thick black smoke has filled the entire glass enclosure, and the view cannot be seen inside at all. One can only see the white palms stuck to the glass cover.
The people inside have not given up trying to survive, and they are still banging on the glass cover.
But it was of no use, the gunmen outside had no intention of letting them out.
Time passed slowly, and the clang clang sound of hitting the glass cover became sparse and not as strong as before. Only after a long interval could a faint sound be heard.
Song Shi's heart tightened with the sound of knocking on the glass. It was painful to face her fellow human beings dying in the fire, but she didn't dare close her eyes for fear of missing out on useful information.
Another three minutes passed.
Song Shi's heart had become numb.
The loudspeaker above her head buzzed for three seconds, and an emotionless voice came out, "The seventh stimulation experiment for the high-probability differentiation of water, ice, earth, and fire elements failed. No one has activated their superpowers."
Song Shi's vacant eyes slowly regained focus. Inside the glass enclosure, the thick smoke began to dissipate, thinning little by little.
The charred corpses lying on the ground gradually became clear. Their postures were twisted and strange, and it was obvious that they had suffered great pain before death.
All this is to stimulate super powers?
The humans in this world have super powers!?
Before Song Shi could fully process what she'd seen, a cold voice crackled through the loudspeaker, “The eighth experiment begins. Bring in the eighth group.”
Her heart sank. The eighth group? What if she was part of it? In a panic, she quickly glanced down at her clothes.
There was a number on the left chest of the white loose linen clothes, with the word two written in red letters.
Two?
The second group?
Now is the eighth group's turn. Has she already been experimented with?
She was still alive. Did it mean that the experiment was successful?
Song Shi felt a wave of relief, yet an inexplicable unease lingered. She couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that things weren’t going to unfold as expected.
And really, she was right.
"The first experiment on high-probability differentiation of the Contract and Berserk Departments has officially begun. The laboratory is prepared. Bring in the first group."
A gun was pressed against Song Shi's back, digging into her left shoulder, as she was roughly turned to face right.
So, she might be of the contract type or berserk type.
At the same time, everyone in the front row where she stood turned to the right and formed a line. A man with a gun led them forward, keeping a firearm pressed against each of their backs.
As Song Shi followed the group, she glanced to the side as they moved. She realized that only those in her row were being held at gunpoint, while others stood apart—some even gathered in groups of three or four.
Song Shi didn't think it through.
The line was very long. Although it was only one row, there were at least forty or fifty people.
After walking about twenty meters, the view suddenly opened up. They were on a barren mountaintop. The ground had been smoothed and there was not a single blade of grass.
Seven hemispherical glass enclosures of varying sizes came into view. The glass cover filled with burning black smoke that she had seen earlier was only medium-sized.
The situation inside each glass enclosure is different.
Whether by fire, water, or arrows, young lives are harvested.
Passing by a cliff, there was no glass enclosure and a row of young people were standing there.
They were facing the cliff, with one foot hanging on the edge, as if they would slip and fall if the wind blew. Guns were also pointed at their backs.
The gunmen urged them to jump.
Someone collapsed and begged for mercy, "I don't want to jump, I can't! Jumping will cost me my life——"
Bang!
The bullet flew past his ear, accompanied by a vicious threat, "If you don't jump, I'll kill you now!"
The smell of gunpowder exploded in the area, the crying sounds stopped abruptly, and in the extremely quiet atmosphere, a row of people disappeared one after another from the edge of the cliff like dumplings.
Song Shi glanced down. The cliff was filled with fog and she couldn't see the bottom. A cold wind blew up, blowing away the cold sweat on her body, leaving her with a slight shiver.
She was like a machine, moving forward with the team in heavy mechanical steps.
"Call……"
There was the sound of a flying object rising rapidly and breaking through the air.
Song Shi sensed something and turned back quickly.
A short-haired girl hovered one meter above the edge of the cliff where she had just fallen. Tear stains still marked her face, and the fear in her expression lingered.
“The fourth stimulation experiment of the high-probability flying-type differentiation: One person succeeded, level assessment: B.”
Seeing a human suspended in mid-air shocked Song Shi, shattering her understanding of the world after twenty years of life.
But as she pinched her palms, the sharp pain quickly brought her back to her senses.
"Go!" The guard pushed the muzzle of the gun at the back of her waist forward.
Song Shi averted her gaze and quickened her pace to catch up with the person in front of her. Ahead lay the battlefield she was about to enter.
It was the largest of the seven glass enclosures.
The main reason for its size was the massive, ferocious beast prowling within.
The first group had already been pushed inside.
The beast appeared starved, saliva dripping in thick strands from its jaws, its vertical pupils locked onto the new prey entering the enclosure.
Even though everyone in the first group was armed with sharp daggers, they were unprepared.
As soon as they were pushed inside, the beast lunged at them, sinking its bloody teeth into the neck of the leading human. Before anyone could react, it hurled him into the air and swallowed him whole.
The glass door slammed shut as a group of other experimenters fled in panic, while others pounded on the enclosure, begging to be let out.
But it was futile.
Song Shi's team had already arrived and lined up outside the glass enclosure, watching the horrific scene unfold inside as they waited for the first round of experiments to conclude.
The feeling of waiting to die was unbearable. Song Shi gritted her teeth in anxiety, knowing that she was in the next group and her turn would come soon.
There was no way she could match this ferocious beast, and she doubted whether she could even awaken.
Four people had already died inside the glass enclosure. Under the sheer size and razor-sharp teeth of the beast, humans seemed incredibly fragile.
Bright red blood splattered inside the glass enclosure. The high-probability differentiation players from the Berserk and Contract systems standing outside trembled beneath their loose clothing.
Bang!
The sudden gunshot startled Song Shi. She turned quickly to see a girl with the number two on her chest collapse, a bullet piercing her heart.
Blood quickly spread from the muzzle of the gun, soaking the number 2.
However, the color of the number was not only not covered, but was even brighter than the blood, which stung Song Shi's eyes red.
She glanced sideways at the gun against her waist, and her fingers hanging by her side trembled.
The gunshot acted as a signal. A man and a woman attempted to resist, trying to wrestle the weapon from the gunman. In an instant, the boy was overpowered and shot in the head.
The girl, clearly well-trained, managed to seize the weapon and successfully shot the gunman.
However, she didn't have time to escape before being riddled with bullets by other gunmen who rushed to support him.
The bodies of the three people were quickly dragged to the edge of the cliff and pushed over, while the body of the gunman was taken away.
The scene was quickly cleaned up and the smell of gunpowder was blown away by the wind coming up from the bottom of the cliff, as if nothing had happened.
"Every year, it's you Berserk high-probability differentiaters who cause trouble!"
The sturdy man who came to support swept his eyes over Song Shi's group, holding a pistol and fired a shot into the air, "I declare again, anyone who escapes will be shot on the spot!"
Song Shi lowered her eyes, and the thought in her mind disappeared.
The first group was completely wiped out.
"The first stimulation experiment of the high-probability differentiation of the Contract and Berserk Departments failed. No one has activated their superpowers. Prepare for the second group."
The first group of corpses required no effort to clean up; they had all been devoured by the ferocious beast.
It even licked the blood that had spilled on the ground and the glass enclosure. Afterward, it groomed its paws with its scarlet tongue, staring outside with its dark green eyes.
Aside from this, it made no other movements, but Song Shi couldn't shake the feeling that it was eagerly anticipating the next batch of food to be delivered to its mouth.
The glass door was opened from the outside, and two gunmen fired several shots at the beast. The beast slowly retreated and squatted at the back of the glass enclosure.
There is a large space in front of it, leaving room for the second group to move around.
Song Shi was immediately pushed towards the glass enclosure, and so were the other experimenters.
The door is very small and can only accommodate two people at the same time.
"Are you a Berserker with a high probability of differentiation?"
When Song Shi stepped into the door, the boy standing next to her asked quickly.
Song Shi hesitated for a moment and nodded.
In fact, she didn't know whether she was a Berserk type or a Contract type.
"I am a contract type. Let's form a team. As long as we kill this strange beast, we can survive."
That thing turned out to be called a strange beast.
They had already entered the glass cage, but the strange beast remained crouched in the corner.
Unlike with the first group, it didn't pounce on them immediately. Its green eyes swiveled in their sockets as it observed them.
Song Shi bent down and picked up a dagger from the ground, left by the previous group. She gripped it tightly, the cold, solid feel giving her a sense of confidence.
After casting a quick glance at the strange beast, she lowered her head, stood close to the glass enclosure, and whispered, "It doesn’t look easy to kill."
The gunman had fired three bullets in an attempt to repel the beast, all striking its head, yet it remained unharmed.
“What if one of us awakens?” The boy bent down like Song Shi and picked up a dagger. The handle was stained with blood, and he grasped it with two fingers.
At last, Song Shi met his gaze.
The boy had a fair complexion, and he lowered his head to wipe the blood off the dagger's handle with the corner of his shirt.
Once he finished, he looked up, his black-and-white eyes shining brightly.
“I’m very good at judging people. I think you have the potential to awaken.”
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