The Chef Rules the Last Days
Chapter 201 - 199: Jiang Zhou

Chapter 201: Chapter 199: Jiang Zhou

"Come here, little girl"

The voice wasn’t very far, but it was eerie.

Su Mo held her knife across her chest, and turned to go in that direction.

At the end of the corridor, there was a brightly-lit door. Inside, under the bright lights, she could vaguely see a figure seated on a chair.

Su Mo glanced behind her. Lu Chen and the others hadn’t come down; the fighting must have been fierce upstairs.

Now, she could only rely on herself.

As she stepped into the underground control room, only half of the person sitting on the chair was visible behind a square table, while on the monitor above, an intense battle was being displayed.

In the footage, Lu Chen, covered in blood, was fighting against Lu Jin, who still had plenty of fight left in him.

Su Mo’s heart tightened, and she immediately turned her attention to the person in the chair, "Dr. Jiang, they all came to rescue you. There’s no need to fight each other to death."

"Hehe" Creepy laughter emanated from the chair as the person on it gradually turned around.

Su Mo could see his full appearance and immediately, horrified, took a couple of steps back. The person in front of her, wearing broken glasses, had half a human head and half a soft, sac-like structure. The junction between his torso and head was torn open, revealing several large octopus tentacles, their suckers quivering.

This was her first time seeing such a half-human, half-octopus creature.

Seeing her stunned, Dr. Jiang’s intact half of the face curved into a smile, "What’s the matter, scared?"

Su Mo stayed on high alert, noticing a segment of human leg exposed behind the desk, "Did you experiment on yourself?"

"Yes, but a small error occurred—someone tampered with my data," Dr. Jiang nodded and struggled to stand up from the chair, steadying himself with the tentacles.

Su Mo pursed her lips, controlling her facial expressions to appear less horrified as she slowly approached him, "Do you mind talking about it?"

"Of course, I can. It’s been a long while since I’ve talked to anyone," Dr. Jiang’s smiling grimace widened as he, propped by his tentacles, sat back down.

Su Mo fought to stop her legs from trembling. Her peripheral vision caught a microphone placed in front of him with an off button next to it, clearly switched off.

Without a trace, she moved close to the button and sat down on the table,

"I saw a report upstairs, which stated that your team had detected the meteorite two years ago."

In the chaotic laboratory upstairs, through the speakers, Su Mo’s crisp female voice and the man’s dull conversation could be heard.

"Indeed," Dr. Jiang nodded, his torn skin crinkling together.

"Why didn’t the government issue a warning earlier? The meteorite carried a virus; it clearly could have prevented more deaths," said Su Mo, her voice tinged with anger.

"Who told you the virus came from the meteorite?" Dr. Jiang laughed heartily, his half-sac-like head pulsing like nauseating jelly.

Su Mo was stunned.

Seeing her expression, Dr. Jiang blinked his intact eye at her, "It’s just a national decoy. They meticulously planned for two years, just waiting for the day it would come down."

Su Mo felt her heart drop into an ice cellar, her lips turning deathly pale, "The virus was man-made? It was just timed to coincide with the falling meteorite?"

She shook her head and denied his words, "That’s not possible, mutations take time."

"The night before the meteorite fell, the atmosphere had already been injected with a wave of poison using special techniques, just waiting to be brought down by the meteorite," Dr. Jiang seemed to be relishing the spectacular scene from that night, "It was beautiful."

Su Mo’s hands began to tremble, her mind rapidly connecting everything together—why the national headquarters had disappeared overnight, why Lu Chen had received the intel so late, why the rain was black. She now had answers to it all.

So, the meteorite’s fall was merely a physical act of destruction, her voice trembling slightly, "Why do this?"

"You should have already experienced it," Dr. Jiang displayed patience with her string of questions, his intact fingers tapping rapidly on the computer in front of him, eventually displaying a line of pre-apocalypse temperature control data, "Take a look?"

The temperature lines were all red. Su Mo knew that temperatures before the apocalypse were abnormally high, with forty degrees Celsius almost a norm.

"The Earth was no longer viable; human pollution was too great. Coupled with the strike from the meteorite, world leaders pooled all resources to develop a medicine for human evolution. Of course, it had side effects. Survival of the fittest, natural selection—this world had thousands of such labs,".

Dr. Jiang seemed a bit thirsty as he spoke, taking out a small red glass bottle from a nearby cabinet and taking a big gulp.

Su Mo smelled the faint blood scent emanating from the bottle, and she tightened her grip on the knife without a change in expression.

"Fortunately, the results were pretty good. Look at the weather, the temperature has come down, fewer people, resources have all been freed up."

"So, where are the national leaders? Where have they gone?"

Dr. Jiang’s face lost some of its smile, one eye growing dark, "They’re hiding underground; most of them dare not face the evolved virus, so they’ve been waiting for our results."

Recalling some terrible memories, he suddenly stood up, breaking the table beside him with a snap.

Su Mo leapt down from the platform in a flash, dodging the flying debris.

Upstairs, the people who had stopped fighting were drawn by this broadcast. Lu Chen was kneeling on one knee, several of his ribs broken, and his cold, pale lips already bleeding profusely.

Jianxiong was not faring well either; his leg was scorched black, with Fang Xia’s body lying beside him, both factions suffering heavy casualties.

Meanwhile, Lu Jin seemed to have heard something amusing. He glanced disdainfully at Lu Chen, withdrew his killing move, and jumped down from the elevator shaft.

Lu Chen tried to stand up to follow, but his body collapsed to the ground; his bones nearly piercing through his chest. He knelt there, his gaze fixed on the elevator shaft; he could not die yet!

"Boss!" Jianxiong limped over to support him, his dark face twisted with pain.

Lu Chen’s eyelids grew heavier, the flame in his heart nearly consuming all his consciousness, and finally, with a thud, he collapsed onto Jianxiong.

"Boss!" Jianxiong’s voice carried panic, and in an instant, a dazzling light radiated from the man’s body.

With most of it figured out in her mind, Su Mo suppressed her fear and looked once again into Dr. Jiang’s eyes, "The evolution data, you’ve completed it, haven’t you?"

"Yes, I completed it. I was the first experiment! But they stole my results, tampered with my data, and made me become like this!" Dr. Jiang held a USB drive in his intact hand while his tentacles flailed continuously on the other side.