When Ke Xun woke up, the faint light of a few cell phones illuminated his vision, and the low voices of Mu Yiran and Zhu Haowen could be heard from not far away.
A throbbing pain shot through his head, and Ke Xun couldn't help but turn over. He heard Wei Dong's weak voice beside him: "You're awake?"
Ke Xun sat up, realizing his clothes were already soaked with sweat, clinging coldly to his body, and his hair was also damp, strands sticking to his face.
Brushing his hair back with his fingers, Ke Xun looked up and first at Wei Dong's face. In the dim light, he couldn't make out anything, but seeing him sitting slumped against the wall, he asked, "How are you? Where does it hurt?"
"My whole body and head hurt, but everything else is fine," Wei Dong said weakly. "Luckily, Boss Mu knocked me unconscious a few times later, otherwise I would have dared to bang my head against the wall and die first."
"A few times later?" Ke Xun asked.
"You don't know?" Wei Dong glanced at him. "You're so lucky. The first time, the baby cried, and after a while, the sound stopped. I thought that would be the end of it, but then the sound came back after a while. I knocked on it for a while, and the baby cried again. It was like this over and over again. The second time, I couldn't take it anymore. I was about to bang my head against the wall to prove my chastity when Boss Mu knocked me unconscious. Then the sound woke me up again, and Boss Mu knocked me unconscious again... Anyway, I just managed to get through it. I was thinking that if it happened a few more times, I would either go crazy from the sound or become mentally disabled from knocking myself unconscious so many times..."
Ke Xun looked at Mu Yiran, who was holding a phone and examining something with Zhu Haowen. He saw that Mu Yiran's clothes were also soaked with sweat and stuck to his body. His white shirt was now covered in dust, but it did not affect his outstanding temperament at all. He still had a calm and serene face and was meticulously searching for clues.
Ke Xun stood up, a sharp pain shooting through his head again. A few flashes of white light appeared before his eyes. He stood there for a while to recover before feeling a little better. He walked over and stood next to Mu Yiran, tilting his head to look at the things in front of them: "These are the things 'they' used to make the sound?"
"Yes," Zhu Haowen replied, pointing to the hammer and awl lying on the table, along with some other metal objects. "But these things alone couldn't possibly produce such a penetrating and harmful sound. Therefore, we believe that the sound last night was exaggerated to the point of being lethal to us. But it's very likely that the sound they could actually produce was just the kind that's sharp, piercing, and uncomfortable in reality."
Last night? Ke Xun took out his phone and glanced at the time; it was already past five in the morning.
Rubbing his still-aching temples, Ke Xun braced himself against the table to support his somewhat exhausted body, and looked at Mu Yiran and Zhu Haowen: "So what about the baby last night?"
Everything in this laboratory seemed quite incongruous—various metal instruments used to produce sharp noises, a baby, a cage for small animals—three completely unrelated things crammed together. What kind of experiment could they possibly conduct?
Mu Yiran glanced at Ke Xun's hand supporting him on the table, looked away, turned off his phone's flashlight, and spoke calmly in the darkness: "Judging from last night's events, the purpose of the sound seemed to be to make the baby cry. Shortly after the baby stopped crying, the sound would start again, continuing the process of inducing the baby to cry a second time. I also can't understand the intention behind this. What kind of research would require such a method that could be considered child abuse?"
Ke Xun tilted his head, looking at him in the darkness. Although he couldn't see anything at the moment, he intuitively felt that Mu Yiran was also looking at him.
Ke Xun felt that Mu Yiran seemed different, somewhat unlike before.
For example, in the past, he probably wouldn't have said "I don't understand either" to him so calmly.
It was like... crushing the shell of a nut to show you the equally solid, but most real, flesh inside.
Was Boss Mu slightly out of his mind from the sound? Ke Xun thought, but didn't dare ask, afraid of getting beaten up, so he pretended not to react.
"No matter what kind of experiment it is," Zhu Haowen said coldly, "this method is inhumane."
"No wonder the laboratory is underground," Ke Xun raised an eyebrow, "this kind of experiment is inhumane, truly perverted, of course it has to be conducted in secrecy, so it can't be openly displayed. From this, we can infer that the experiments in the other three laboratories are probably not much better." "Let's go take
a look." Mu Yiran said, paused, and then asked, "How are you?"
"Huh?" Ke Xun was taken aback, "Ask me? I'm fine. Why..." Why ask that?
Ke Xun swallowed the second half of his sentence in time. If he really asked, he felt that Boss Mu might just walk away.
Although he didn't know why the boss's attitude towards him had suddenly thawed, Ke Xun thought it was for the best, so he decided not to enlighten him, lest this proud young man get angry and beat him up.
So after "why," Ke Xun quickly changed the subject: "Why are there no movements in the other labs? Let's go check them out."
He turned his phone back on and went to help Wei Dong, who had also recovered quite a bit. He leaned against the wall and slowly followed them out. In fact, Zhu Haowen wasn't much better off; everyone was walking unsteadily.
After leaving Lab A, the four of them went to Lab B across the hall. They knocked on the door, and it took a while for Qin Ci to open it. Seeing that Qin Ci's face was a little pale, he looked at the four of them and managed a weak smile: "You guys made it through too, thank goodness."
"How are you?" Ke Xun used his phone's light to look inside and saw that the doors to the four small labs were open. Xu Zhen, Huang Pi, and Qi Qiang were slumped on the floor, seemingly still breathing.
"Fortunately, there were no casualties," Qin Ci shook his head, looking somewhat distressed. "But if another night like this had happened, I can't guarantee what would have happened."
"What happened last night?" Mu Yiran asked him.
"Around midnight," Qin Ci said, "suddenly, most of our senses disappeared."
"What do you mean?" Wei Dong understood, but found it hard to believe.
"Hearing, touch, smell, sight, taste," Qin Ci's breathing became slightly heavier. "Even breathing, we couldn't feel the air going in and out of our mouths, noses, and trachea. It felt like suffocation—although there was still air for you to inhale, you couldn't feel it. You just felt like you were suffocating. The psychological fear would trigger a physiological stress response, making it feel as painful as real suffocation."
The four people in Lab A fell silent.
Although the noise was already unbearable, thinking about the suffocation and loss of sensation suffered by the people in Lab B, they felt that they were a little luckier than them.
Qin Ci seemed to know what the four were thinking, and couldn't help but smile again: "You think just suffocation is hard to bear? Actually, most people don't know that losing touch, sight, smell, taste, and hearing is worse than death. In an absolutely silent, zero-decibel environment, you can't see, feel, or smell anything. Maybe... you're floating in an endless black hole, never dying, never living—that's what it feels like."
Wei Dong shuddered violently and quickly waved his hands: "Dr. Qin, Dr. Qin, please stop talking. I'm about to throw up. I'm still feeling weak."
Qin Ci smiled and indeed didn't say anything more. He turned to look at the other three members of his group who were still slumped in the room, and said to Mu Yiran and the others: "Let them recover first. Let's go check on the people in the other two labs."
Mu Yiran nodded, and Qin Ci headed towards Laboratory C.
Ke Xun glanced at his somewhat tired back, then quietly leaned on Mu Yiran's shoulder, whispering in his ear. Mu Yiran instinctively wanted to turn his head away, but for some reason, he didn't move, letting Ke Xun's warm breath gently brush against his ear.
"Don't you think Dr. Qin's condition is a little strange?" Ke Xun said in a very soft voice.
Mu Yiran nodded slightly, and with that movement, his earlobe accidentally brushed against Ke Xun's lips.
Ke Xun straightened up and started walking normally, his eyes fixed on Qin Ci.
Mu Yiran remained silent for a long while before finally asking softly, "What are you thinking about?" *
Thinking about why you were unusually critical of me earlier...* But how could I possibly say that out loud? Are you possessed by something, boss? Why have you been acting so strangely this morning? This makes me so uneasy. Are you really the way I imagine you are? Good heavens, I'm actually thinking about this at a time like this! I must be an idiot, right? Right? Right?
Ke Xun, without looking at him, gave a curt "Mmm."
Mu Yiran: "..." He was asking what he was thinking, not whether he was thinking about anything.
"Perhaps it's because of last night's experience that he had some lingering negative reactions," Mu Yiran steered the conversation back to Qin Ci, keeping his voice as low as possible.
Ke Xun: "Hmm."
Mu Yiran: "This seems to be a sensory deprivation experiment."
Ke Xun: "Hmm."
Mu Yiran: "...Are you listening?"
Ke Xun: "Hmm."
Mu Yiran: "...What did you hear?"
Ke Xun: "Hmm."
Mu Yiran: "..."
Qin Ci knocked on the door of the C-zone laboratory, but no one answered for a long time. The group exchanged glances, a bad feeling creeping over them.
Unable to get in, they turned to the D-zone laboratory.
Only Cai Xiaoyan was in the D-zone laboratory; she was considered the first unfortunate person most likely to die last night.
They knocked on the door, but it opened quickly from the inside. Cai Xiaoyan, looking bewildered and terrified, rushed out as if relieved, hugging the nearest person and sobbing uncontrollably.
Wei Dong, barely supporting his weakened body to avoid being knocked to the ground by the sudden embrace, patted Cai Xiaoyan's shoulder and comforted her, "Don't cry, it's alright, you're alive, that's all that matters."
The group checked the D-zone laboratory and found nothing different from when they arrived yesterday. Mu Yiran then asked Cai Xiaoyan, "Did anything happen last night?"
Cai Xiaoyan replied in a hoarse voice, "I heard someone open the door and come in…and people talking, but I couldn't hear what they were saying. I was so scared…I fainted from fright, and you all arrived shortly after I woke up…"
The group exchanged glances again.
This situation was clearly somewhat unexpected. They thought the person who was alone had survived, while the people in the C-zone laboratory remained completely silent.
This situation was even more bizarre and strange than they had imagined.