TTAETSC Chapter 35.2 - Schrödinger's Fallen Vest

Ye Yunfan waited until the violent shaking gradually subsided before turning around to walk out. But right after, his steps paused, as if recalling something, and then he turned back again.

Three pink tentacles extended from his lower back, significantly larger and longer than before. Their tips were as thin as three fingers combined, while their bases were the diameter of a bubble tea cup.

The pink tentacles stretched out, searching inside the collapsed and deformed elevator shaft. Occasionally, they would consume some remaining eggs or pull out a few large blocks of stones.

[Eh?]

[Where, where?]

[It seems like it's right here.]

[Keep looking, keep looking.]

A few minutes later, Ye Yunfan heard the excited cheers of the little tentacles.

[Found it~]

[Found it, found it~]

The pink tentacles emerged from the ruins, their surfaces coated in dust and solidified mucus. They easily peeled off the grime and then applied a layer of clean, transparent mucus.

Having completed their self-cleaning, the tentacles emerged, one tentacle holding a familiar long knife and another steadily gripping its scabbard.

Ye Yunfan took a look and found that the handsome Tang knife was still as clean and new, without any dents or damage.

It looked extremely well-crafted.

Ye Yunfan sheathed the long knife and temporarily handed it over to one of the little tentacles to hold.

After confirming that nothing was left behind, Ye Yunfan adjusted Yuan Ye in his embrace and stepped over the broken stone debris on the ground, making his way cautiously toward the outside.

The road they had come from was mostly collapsed, forcing him to use his tentacles to move stones and dig out a small, winding path.

Ye Yunfan discovered that after transforming into a human form, his strength increased by more than ten times compared to the octopus form, and the strength of his tentacles also increased significantly.

He specifically went to check his current combat power value on the data panel.

[Combat Power: 90 (After transforming into human form, your combat power has significantly increased. Currently equivalent to a tough elephant. However, in human form, the stamina consumed will be four times that of usual.)]

From a tabby cat to an elephant in seconds?

Ye Yunfan felt that the fourfold increase in stamina consumption seemed very cost-effective.

Fortunately, otherworldly creatures were abundant here, and red little eggs could be seen everywhere. This meant that even during a tense escape, stamina could be replenished in time through the tentacles.

[Stamina +0.5]

[Stamina +0.5]

[Stamina +0.5]

"..."

Initially, when Ye Yunfan first saw these things, he found them disgusting. However, after his tentacles ate them a few times, he suddenly felt that the taste of those things was somewhat similar to caviar or the sago pearls in sago soup.*

*Sago soup or Sai mai lou is a type of tong sui dessert in Cantonese cuisine, which is also a variant of tapioca pudding.

They would burst with juice when the suction cups took a bite.

This analogy made Ye Yunfan silent: "..."

After becoming non-human, he found that he seemed to be gradually unlocking some incredible extreme taste preferences.

Ye Yunfan forbade himself from thinking further and focused all his attention on the present. Most of the main road had collapsed, leaving the interior pitch black with no light source. Fortunately, the tentacles' perception was extremely keen, preventing any situation like slipping and falling.

However, returning along the original path was now unlikely.

He needed to find another way out.

With this in mind, Ye Yunfan tilted his ear slightly, concentrating on carefully listening to the movements in this dark space. Besides the occasional rumbling sound in the distance and the faint trembling of the building structure, the most common sound was the rustling noise of various otherworldly creatures retreating.

Where are they going?

Ye Yunfan realized that the otherworldly creatures here were very different from those outside. Their primary goal was to capture humans to incubate their eggs, rather than to eat them.

Therefore, over the years, they had all been hiding inside and were unwilling to go out.

So now, after the dangerous collapse of this underground shelter, those otherworldly creatures should seek out a safe place to use as a nest for hatching their "eggs" again.

"Go."

Ye Yunfan suddenly said to his tentacles.

"Let's go look for something to eat."

[!!!!]

The pink tentacles, digging their way forward, paused and instantly became excited.

[Eat! Eat!]

[Look! Look for food!]

They immediately threw away the rocks they had been coiling around, quickly sensing the location with the most food, and soon had a direction.

[This side!]

[This side, this side!]

One pink tentacle pointed to the west, while the other two were already eagerly and impatiently clearing the way for him.

Ye Yunfan's lips curled slightly as he changed direction, following with Yuan Ye in his arms.

[Stamina +0.5]

[Stamina +0.5]

[Stamina +0.5]

"..."

The prompt panel kept appearing one after another, so much so that as they ate faster and faster, the panel seemed to freeze in front without ever disappearing.

The collapse of the corridor effectively restrained the attacks of the large tentacled otherworldly creatures, as they were firmly pinned beneath the collapsed rocks.

Ye Yunfan, without any trace of politeness, pulled out Yuan Ye's knife and stabbed a few holes in the food. The pink tentacles then happily burrowed in, feasting to their heart's content.

[Meat!]

[So much meat! So much, so much!]

[Stamina +10]

[Stamina +10]

[Stamina +10]

"..."

[Friendly reminder: Detected a large amount of energy intake, stamina limit +50.]

For a moment, this dangerous and terrifying underground monster nest, after the collapse, unexpectedly turned into a delicious buffet trip.

Ye Yunfan led the tentacles to eat their way through, eating on one side while digging on the other side, chiseling out a safe passage as they went.

Over an hour later, he found a door.

In this pitch-black darkness, Ye Yunfan could only rely on the tentacles' senses to observe.

It was a heavy iron door, equipped with a password lock. It was just like the high-tech locks seen in those fancy international spy movies, requiring passwords, fingerprints, iris recognition, and so on.

However, what was strange was that the door was half open, with traces of gunfire attacks on it.

Has there been a battle here?

It should have been a while, but not too long ago. Ye Yunfan groped using his tentacles and speculated that it must have happened about a month ago.

"A month ago..."

Although Yuan Ye has been here, he doesn't like to use guns and the like. Besides Yuan Ye, the two attackers today are also very familiar with this place.

Moreover, the smuggled weapons that accidentally ended up here also seem to belong to them.

So, in order to find out the whereabouts of the weapons, they had also entered this place before, which is why they were so familiar with the terrain of this underground shelter.

Perhaps the traces on this door were left by them.

Ye Yunfan explored with his tentacles while roughly piecing together the possibilities from the known clues.

There was no danger inside, only countless little otherworldly creatures that had run inside the place after the collapse.

After confirming this, Ye Yunfan walked in with Yuan Ye in his arms. He quickly "cleaned up" the otherworldly creatures inside and then began to assess the environment inside.

While feeling around with his hands, he accidentally touched a power switch.

Click.

The incandescent light turned on, illuminating the previously pitch-black room. With the light, visibility improved.

Ye Yunfan was somewhat stunned. He hadn't expected there to be a power supply for lighting inside this room.

He looked up at the ventilation duct, noticing a gentle breeze blowing from it. This indicated that the air ventilation system in this room was also functioning well.

All the details indicated that this room was not ordinary.

Ye Yunfan glanced around and noticed that this seemed to be a laboratory.

Ye Yunfan saw many huge instruments, the most conspicuous of which was a massive metal base with a glass egg-shaped container on top. Inside the container, there were many tubes, but the glass was shattered as if something had broken out from inside.

However, Ye Yunfan basically did not recognize most of those instruments. He only noticed many obvious signs of fighting around him, with firearms and ammunition scattered about. There was even a huge fist imprint sunken into the wall.

That was indeed a human fist imprint, but it was too big, as if it belonged to a giant.

"Wait... a giant?"

Ye Yunfan thought of the sneak attacker that Jon had blasted, whose ability seemed to be able to transform into a giant.

This discovery confirmed Ye Yunfan's earlier guess that the other party had indeed been here before.

Just then, he noticed a camera, next to which there was a screen similar to a laptop.

Ye Yunfan knew that in important experiments, relevant personnel would usually take videos to record the process. Unfortunately, the connected host seemed to have been deliberately damaged, so he could not verify his speculation.

But in the gap on the lower side of the host, Ye Yunfan discovered something else. A pink tentacle reached in and pulled out a dusty leather notebook.

—This is a diary.

But the owner had torn out many pages, leaving behind messy handwriting, upside-down and all in English. Luckily, Ye Yunfan's English proficiency was decent, so he could roughly understand some keywords.

"Blood... calamity, attracting a large number of monsters... Females are more susceptible to attacks by otherworldly creatures, and there will also be more exposure risks. Children have low resistance... Contamination rates remain high..."

"Gender ratio... newborn birth rate... extreme..."

Ye Yunfan gradually pieced together the context from the words on the page—

Because the otherworldly creatures crave flesh and are extremely sensitive to blood, women who cannot avoid their menstrual periods are more likely to become targets. Moreover, the soaring contamination levels when the otherworldly plane appears made it difficult for children to resist.

As a result, the number of women and children was sharply decreasing, eventually reaching the extreme point where it affected the reproduction of the entire human race.

Flip—

He turned the page again. There were no more messy notes, but there was a single sentence.

"For the reproduction of humanity, artificial wombs are an inevitable trend!"

The writer seemed very excited, to the point where the nib of the pen even tore through the paper.

Flip.

Ye Yunfan turned another page, and the notes here were much clearer—

"Approved! The company finally approved! They have given me a safe and hidden experimental area. I am right, I am right!"

"No! No, no, no!!!"

"They lied to me! They lied to me! What evolution! What mutants becoming the new human beings! This is contamination! Contamination starting from the embryo!"

"Madness! Madness!"

"It's not safe here anymore, it's already... damn it! They turned my human embryo cradle into a nest for hatching monsters!!!"

"I am a sinner... I am a sinner... I will kill them!"

"I have installed self-destruct devices in all the experimental instruments. When the time comes, I will personally end it all. I will make them pay for their ignorance and stupidity—!"

All the notes came to an abrupt end here.

Ye Yunfan finally discovered the reason why this shelter had become a nest for monsters. A tech company had been secretly researching artificial wombs, so they had spent a lot of money to own a secret experimental area in this shelter.

However, the researchers who naively thought they were only conducting research on artificial womb reproduction were deceived. The company's senior management wanted to create the so-called evolved new human beings.

Perhaps in this process, they injected some otherworldly creatures' blood or other substances into the embryos, leading to contamination.