Under the cover of night, Xie Lingfeng and his team took advantage of the mercenaries' shift change to secretly infiltrate the lab.
Because the lab was heavily guarded and strictly confidential, access required a special entry badge. So they first tranquilized a staff member and used his ID card to sneak inside.
To maximize success, the team had split into two groups. Xie Lingfeng led a four-man squad into the lab, while the other five remained outside for backup.
Once Xie Lingfeng's group made it inside, they were instantly stunned by the scene before them:It was a human experimentation lab. They saw human organs floating in glass tanks, soaked in a mysterious blue liquid.
What made their skin crawl even more was that the researchers were fusing animal organs with human organs, creating a batch of monstrous hybrids.
Realizing the gravity of the situation, the team sprang into action. Xu Qiang, the tech expert, began copying the lab's data.
Everything was going smoothly—until a staff member suddenly walked in. The man reacted instantly, slamming the alarm button on the wall.
Though Xu Qiang had already looped the security cameras to show footage from a month ago, this unexpected variable caught them off guard.
Realizing they had been discovered, the team quickly knocked the man unconscious with a karate chop, grabbed the data, and made their escape.
It was clear: if these people dared to carry out human experiments, they must be backed by powerful forces.Getting the team back home safely would now be extremely difficult.
Sure enough, after regrouping with the outside team, they found themselves being pursued by a heavily armed squad of mercenaries.
Despite fighting back with all they had, they only managed to break out of the encirclement at the cost of one death and two injuries.
Though every mission carried the risk of sacrifice, and they had already written farewell letters to their families, watching a comrade die right in front of them still left Xie Lingfeng deeply devastated.
But there was no time to grieve. The remaining team members had to carry the injured and the fallen and rush back toward their homeland's border.
By the time they dragged themselves across the border, it was already the next afternoon.All surviving members were completely exhausted.
They had endured inhuman hardship while carrying a fallen comrade and helping two wounded teammates — it was a level of difficulty most people couldn't even imagine.
But the mission wasn't over. As soon as they crossed the border, they handed over the hard-won intel to higher authorities.
After reviewing the data, the national experts were horrified. The experiments conducted at the lab were so deranged that they posed a major global threat.
There had been good reason to deploy a special forces team:At the border, a bizarre attack incident had occurred involving a monster.The victim had died almost instantly — but then came back to life one minute later, driven purely by the instinct to attack.
The creature resembled a zombie, just like in the movies.
That's why the country had formed a top-tier investigation team and dispatched them to the neighboring nation — leading to Xie Lingfeng's mission.
Now that they had confirmed the truth, the relevant authorities decided the situation must be reported to global health security organizations immediately.
Due to the sensitive nature of the operation, the public was not informed, and all involved personnel were required to sign confidentiality agreements.
But half a month later, it was already too late.
Many countries had secretly been conducting experiments like this, all aiming to crack the secrets of human genetics.
Xie Lingfeng and the others were placed under quarantine at the border for a week before being allowed to return home for some rest.
In the original timeline, Xie Lingfeng had first visited the family of the fallen comrade.But when he returned home, the apocalypse had already begun. He spent the days after that searching for his sister with Papa Xie.
Unfortunately, Zhang Wenbin and Lin Yiyi, fearing that Xie Lingfeng would learn the truth about Xie Lingruo's death, used a mission at the base as an excuse to have him killed.
As for Papa Xie, without supernatural powers, he was driven out of the base — and his fate didn't need to be spelled out.
Of course, all this happened long after Xie Lingruo's death in the original story.When the current Xie Lingruo inherited her memories, she could only see events leading up to her past life's death.
In short — the original family suffered terribly, and all of it was deeply tied to Zhang Wenbin and Lin Yiyi.