Chapter 48.1
Gu Xiyu suddenly understood why Xie Mingan had asked that question earlier.
The brooch did not belong to the original owner but belonged to an imperial admiral named Caesar. No matter how the original owner got it, to the people of the empire, the holder might be the fiancé of that admiral.
Xie Mingan beside him was soon called away by the staff, and on the other side of the testing checkpoint were several men in silver and blue uniforms, standing erect as if waiting for him (Xie Mingan). A general with almost white hair suddenly appeared from behind them, and they made way for him.
Xie Mingan handed over a cloth bag of stuff: “The crashed warship of the beast race was found in the same place. All were dead, and these are some things I found there that might be useful.”
Even though they were speaking in lowered tones, Gu Xiyu could clearly hear their conversation.
“What about the boy? Are you sure he’s not one of the beasts?” The topic suddenly came to him.
Xie Mingan said, “I’m not sure; we’ll know after the test. According to what the empire has learned about the beasts over the years, they are the least aggressive towards humans and can only take the form of beasts, so the chances of him being a beast race should not be high.”
The older general frowned and stroked his beard, saying, “Not necessarily. It is said that the king of the beasts can take full human form.”
“Didn’t you say the other day that their king was on their home planet? Besides, the ages don’t add up…” Xie Mingan said as he completed the tests. His identity was confirmed as safe, and there were no symptoms of infection by any particular alien race. He claimed his cloak as he and the older gentleman, who looked like he was also a lieutenant general, walked further away.
“Here, please remove your body armor first.” The staff member in charge of the test walked up to him and began to give him instructions.
Gu Xiyu had just carefully observed the movements of the people around him and was already aware of the testing process, so he obediently followed the steps without revealing any flaws.
They injected a tiny amount of clear liquid into him, and he only had to wait a minute or so before he could pass through the metal door frame. If he was not human, the strange liquid would react with the blood in his body, and the changes would be detected by the device.
A minute was soon up, and the calm staff member pointed towards the testing device: “Go through.”
Gu Xiyu let out a soft breath without making a sound.
If his identity was not that of a human, then the device would make a piercing alarm as he crossed over.
He stood in front of the apparatus for a few seconds and slowly took a step.
Whirr—!
The ear-piercing alarm suddenly blared out in the testing center, and the people who were impatiently waiting to be tested stopped their movements and conversations and looked toward the device that was flashing a red light.
Immediately afterward, there was a high-decibel shout from the crowd.
The staff around him suddenly turned serious, and even took out the weapons they carried on their belts.
Gu Xiyu lowered his head and withdrew his foot, which was almost about to cross over, and followed the sound to see a man dressed like a white-collar worker clutching his head with a pained expression. His body started growing in size in front of everyone and only stopped when the top of his head was about to touch the ceiling. With a shudder, he shed his human form and became a dark green monster with a large, long head, hard, smooth skin, and hands that looked like scythes.
The monster raised its hand and chopped off the heads of several people who were too late to react in front of him.
The scene caused panic among the crowd, especially as several other men behind it also turned into a shape very similar to his after a loud shout.
Clearly, they were his companions.
In a panic, the people in the testing center instinctively fled in every direction that led to the outside. The gates to the city were ordered to be closed, so people could not care about anything else but to run back the way they had come. Gu Xiyu’s body looked thin and weak in this world, so he was pushed aside by the crowd in a matter of seconds. The staff at the testing center couldn’t care less about him, grabbing their weapons and running against the flow of people towards the dangerous monster, while at the same time evacuating the innocent people around.
Before Gu Xiyu was pushed out of the testing center, he saw Xie Mingan and the generals following him already trying to subdue the monster, forgetting about him completely.
This was good too. He had a premonition that if he crossed that device, something would happen.
Just as he was thinking, Gu Xiyu, who had been pushed into a corner by the crowd, suddenly felt some discomfort in his body. The repulsive soreness ran from the soles of his feet up to his head, and his vision instantly went black for a second.
His limbs gradually lost their senses, and he pressed himself against the wall. He was surrounded by the crowd that kept fleeing into the distance, so no one noticed his abnormality. But even if they had, they would have had no time to care about his state because they were only trying to stay alive.
Around the corner ahead was the public toilet, and Gu Xiyu strained to hold onto the wall and walk in.
With the monster in the testing center, the toilets outside were naturally empty. The inside was clean, the floor was made of dark yellow frosted tiles, and a faint fragrance much like violet flowers wafted in the air. He endured the increasingly irritating pain in his body, opened the door of the innermost cubicle, and stepped inside.
The moment he locked the door, he blacked out without warning and passed out.
When Gu Xiyu regained consciousness, the noise that could still be faintly heard outside the toilet had disappeared. The surroundings were eerily quiet, with only the tap on the sink emitting a steady sound of water dripping.
The pain and unpleasantness in his body had disappeared, and there was even a sense of comfort and liberation that he had never felt before.
He moved his body and stopped again.
……It felt different, his body moved differently than it had before.
He blinked in confusion, and when he looked up, he realized that the perspective had changed too. The door to the cubicle had suddenly become so high that even looking at the toilet beside him required looking up.
For a whole minute, Gu Xiyu’s head was blank. He just kept his head up in a daze until his thoughts came back together, and he silently lowered his head to look at his hands.
Gone were the human hands with the five long fingers that he remembered, replaced by small, furry claws. Half confused, he copied the movement he used to make when he was human to unfold his fingers, only to have his tiny fleshy palms protrude with sharp nails that stuck out from underneath his palms.
He froze, and as he closed his palm, the sharp nails were hidden again.
The habit was particularly similar to that of a cat, but then he noticed that his current body had a pair of long ears, much like a rabbit’s, dropping left and right. The fluffy fur on his body was light yellow, and behind his buttocks was a tail about half a meter long, thin and long, about the same color as his body’s fur. The end of his tail was bushy and dough-like, and a dark brown color.
So the original owner really wasn’t human. It was probably the drugs injected for the test that stimulated his body, making it so uncomfortable that he changed back to his original form.
He wanted to look in a mirror to see what he had become and was just about to go out of the cubicle when the toilet door was suddenly kicked open, making it bang on the wall with a heavy thud.
Gu Xiyu stopped his movement to go out and looked at the entrance of the toilet warily.
There was a gap about ten centimeters high at the bottom of each cubicle, and he only had to bend his body to see if it was a man or some kind of demon that had entered.
Army green claws soon leaped into view, looking much larger than his furry little palms. The hard, rough outer skin and long, sharp, cream-colored claw tips looked very lethal.
He recognized the color and the outer skin as belonging to the alien race that had appeared in the testing center.
He must have been unconscious long enough for the danger to be completely cleared.
The monster’s panting gave the silence an inexplicable sense of terror and tension. If it were normal, Gu Xiyu would not be so worried because he had confidence in his fighting abilities. But he had now turned into a rabbit-like animal the size of a small doll, and he didn’t know what to do to regain his human form.
In this state, he could not guarantee that he would be able to fight the monster outside the door.
The monster’s senses seemed to be strong, and the ugly fellow soon detected his presence through his scent. It plopped right down on the floor and reached out through a gap in the cubicle towards the inside.
The sharp scythed hand almost swung at him, and his body instinctively jumped to try to avoid the attack, not expecting that he would easily leap onto the toilet seat.
The chances that he was a rabbit species were a little higher again.
Leaving directly through the front door would definitely not work, and having discovered that he had a strong jumping ability, he began to look higher up for a place to leave.
The green-skinned monster was still making unpleasant, shrill cries to attack him when the sound of hurried footsteps suddenly came from outside the toilet.
“Lieutenant General Xie, there’s another one here!”
Thanks to Xie Mingan and his troops, who happened to be on the scene, the accident in the testing center was quickly resolved. Although many were injured and killed, the rebellious aliens were quickly eliminated, minimizing the casualty rate. However, the scene was so chaotic that a few of them inevitably slipped through the net, so they sealed off the entire Testing Center building and were doing a final sweep.
When Xie Mingan arrived at the toilets, he met the green-skinned monster standing at the end with its teeth bared at them. It also had a very long tongue, and the saliva dripping from it carried a certain degree of corrosive power.
“The RDE-81 alien race can be wiped out outright.”
The green-skinned monster’s epidermis was extremely defensive, and even with half a squad, they fought it for quite a while before finally killing it.
Xie Mingan walked up and confirmed its death before instructing the squad members, “Carry its corpse back.”
In order to defend themselves against the attacks of other alien races, the humans did not spare any resources that could be used. Green-skinned monsters were among the species whose skin could be reused after death; the skin on their bodies was strong enough to make defensive suits.
Xie Mingan watched his subordinates carry the green-skinned monster’s body away and was about to leave when he suddenly noticed the cubicle the green-skinned monster had just approached. Unlike the other cubicles in the toilet, this door was locked.
He stared at the door for a few seconds in contemplation, then lifted his foot and kicked the door open.
It was empty, and there was no other living thing in sight. This compartment was no different from the others, except that the entrance to a ventilation pipe at the top was open.
Xie Mingan lingered there for a moment and pressed his earpiece as he turned to leave: “We can’t rule out other accomplices, probably not of the same race. Open the second layer of protection in the city and make sure no other alien has slipped into the main city.”
Outside the toilet, a subordinate jogged up to him and reported, “Report, based on the playback of the monitor, this one should be the last one for now.”
Xie Mingan nodded slightly and said, “Tell the people from the testing center to hurry up and tidy up the place, and rearrange the inspection for those entering the city.”
After giving an account of what needed to be taken care of, he headed towards the spaceship the military had prepared for him, and suddenly remembered Gu Xiyu: “Where is the boy who came back with me?”
“He probably scattered with the crowd. I’ll ask them to help keep an eye out when the testing center gets back in order and let you know when he is found.”
“No need.” Xie Mingan said, his voice inexplicably colder, “Since he is Caesar’s man, just send him directly to him.”
On the other side, Gu Xiyu, who had narrowly escaped, was still walking around in the metal ventilation tube. His body was not light by any means, but with a good command of special techniques, it was very convenient to jump around without making any noise.
The ventilation ducts run in all directions, and there are so many diversions that he didn’t even know where he’d gone. As he dragged his furry body through the narrow passageway, his stomach occasionally felt a pinching sensation. He reached out with his little paws to feel it, only to discover a hidden pouch under the thick fleece, containing the black bracelet of his weapon and the silver flying eagle brooch.
Fortunately, the key items were still there.
But now, how was he going to get out of this place? And where was he getting out from?
After staggering around for a while longer, light suddenly appeared on the plane ahead. As he drew nearer, the sounds of laughter and conversation became clear.
It looked like a group of people who’d gathered for a meal.
“I heard from those in the research department saying that the data indicates that the passageway is getting bigger.”
“Ugh, what do we have to do to block this thing up?”
The conversation suddenly turned serious.
“Speaking of which, is Lieutenant General Xie back? How’s the matter of the Blue Mine Planet coming along?”
“The planet has been snatched back for now, and the ultrasonic protection apparatus has been successfully reactivated, so the aliens shouldn’t be able to take over that place for a while. It’s not a total victory though; they were reportedly attacked on the way back and only Lieutenant General Xie was left alone in the entire team ……”
“This matter is really still too dangerous, we should have let Admiral Caesar carry it out in the first place. Maybe the whole team could have returned safely.”
“Yes, after all, Admiral Caesar is our constant victor.”
“Come on, today is the Admiral’s birthday, let’s toast him!”
The light was coming from a metal slab secured with screws. It had slits, so one could see through them to see the situation below.
Gu Xiyu didn’t need to look closely to know that this was not a proper exit.
He jumped intending to pass by the place silently, but to his surprise, he had just landed gently on the light-transmitting metal slab when his feet suddenly passed through, followed by a weightless falling sensation.
On the large round table was a plate of steak and mashed potatoes that hadn’t been touched yet. When the metal slab above suddenly fell and the little rabbit-like creature landed on its butt on the plate of food, everyone fell silent, maintaining the motion of rising and raising their glasses with stunned expressions.