Chapter 351: The Escape Begins

Chapter 351: Chapter 351: The Escape Begins

「The next day.」

Shi Lan acted as she usually did, but she kept a close watch on the Patrol Drone out of the corner of her eye.

Without her chip, she had no sense of time and could only judge the situation by the state of the Patrol Drone’s eye.

She had roughly estimated last time that the Patrol Drone’s reboot and repair cycle took about ten minutes. It was a short window, and every second was crucial. She had to watch it constantly.

Time passed without notice. It was still impossible to tell what time of night it was when Shi Lan saw the Patrol Drone’s eye close, though its mechanical body remained hovering in the air.

Her eyes lit up. She glanced at the nearby rose bush and the robot in the corner. She commanded the rose vines to entangle the robot’s body and sensors, ensuring it couldn’t see her. For good measure, she extended another vine to wrap around the Patrol Drone. Only then did she quickly transform into a small mushroom and slip out of the cage.

The robot had no surveillance equipment; it was a housekeeping model. It was currently busy struggling against the vines wrapped around it, while the Patrol Drone remained completely still.

Shi Lan spotted another open door nearby. She tossed the Patrol Drone inside, used a vine to pull the door shut, and then quickly phased through the wall and fled.

This was the first time Shi Lan had been outside her cell since she was imprisoned here a week ago. She discovered that this place was indeed an underground research lab. The overall design was very similar to the one of Ye Ming’s she had seen before, but not everyone walking around here wore a white lab coat. Some were dressed in casual clothes, and all of them were male.

Relying on the heightened senses of her transformed state, Shi Lan successfully avoided being discovered by them. However, there were other surveillance cameras outside, so she moved with extreme caution.

After passing through several walls, she suddenly noticed Donald standing guard outside a particular door.

Curious, Shi Lan phased through the wall to take a look. When she saw what was inside, her eyes nearly popped out of her little mushroom body.

’This... this... this... Why are there so many pregnant women?’

Inside were what looked like small, individual prison cells. These cells were decorated in a delicate, soft style, and inside each one sat or lay a heavily pregnant female.

In Shi Lan’s experience, pregnancy was a difficult thing for females to achieve. But as far as the eye could see, every female here was clearly pregnant—except for Bai Rao in the cell at the very end.

However, many of these females looked pale and emaciated, which only made their bellies seem all the more enormous.

The sounds of vomiting and suppressed sobbing echoed through the room from time to time.

As a pregnant woman herself, Shi Lan noticed that many of them were suffering from severe pregnancy symptoms. Their limbs were swollen, and none of them appeared to be in good health.

In a corner, Bai Rao, who had been quiet for a long time, finally couldn’t hold back any longer. "Crying, crying, crying, why are you all crying again? You’re already pregnant and your bodies look sickly. You should be saving your strength."

"With so many of us here, instead of crying, we should be thinking of a way to call for help."

As she spoke, Bai Rao herself grew agitated. She didn’t understand it either. One moment, she was perfectly fine on the Border Defense Star, walking toward the medical station after a meal. The next, everything went black, and she woke up imprisoned here.

During her days of captivity, she had pieced together the situation. The females here had all been forced to take some kind of drug and then made to have relations with males to get pregnant.

This drug supposedly increased the chances of conception. The lucky ones would get pregnant after just one dose and one encounter. The unlucky ones had to take it multiple times, and the side effects were severe.

Bai Rao knew that her fate would likely be the same as theirs, so she was in a foul mood.

One of the females retorted despondently, "How could we possibly escape? We don’t even have our chips. The males who have relations with us wear masks. To this day, I still don’t know who the father of the child in my belly is."

At the mention of chips, Bai Rao recalled that hers had been dug out too, but her hand showed no wound, suggesting it had been healed in a Treatment Pod.

With no way to call for help, and forced to listen to the others crying and vomiting all day, Bai Rao’s temper grew even worse. She couldn’t help but sneer, "The child’s father? Do males like that even deserve the title?"

"What does it matter if they don’t deserve it? We can’t even get rid of the babies. If we’re discovered trying, they’ll threaten to kill our entire families. These people are completely lawless; they stopped caring about the law a long time ago."

They had no idea how long they’d been imprisoned here. Treated as nothing more than vessels for pregnancy, their will to escape had been draining away day by day.

Hearing this, Bai Rao fell silent. After a long moment, she said, "Damn these males. If I ever find out who’s responsible, I’ll skin him alive."

’Even if I die,’ she thought, ’I will never let a lowly male touch me.’

Shi Lan listened from the side for a while, and the short exchange between Bai Rao and the other females made her blood run cold.

’It feels like I’ve heard one horrifying piece of news after another since being captured,’ she thought. ’I still haven’t been able to process it all.’

Shi Lan desperately wanted to rescue them right then and there, but unfortunately, she could barely fend for herself. The most important thing was to escape and find Ye Ming and the others for help.

With that thought, she continued phasing through walls, heading in one direction.

Sometimes, Shi Lan felt that her mushroom form’s wall-phasing ability was perfect for uncovering secrets. She passed through numerous hidden rooms. She saw a nursery filled with plump, fair-skinned babies. Despite how weak their mothers were, these infants all looked perfectly healthy.

She also nearly stumbled into the holding area for the Insect Clan. The cages there were swarming with them, and one almost casually scooped her up to eat her. Luckily, she reacted quickly, rolling out of the cage and phasing through the wall to escape.

In short, Shi Lan discovered that this underground laboratory was enormous, with so many rooms she could get lost, and it held many secrets. But now was not the time for exploring.

Furthermore, because it was built underground, some walls ended in solid earth, which she couldn’t phase through.

Her current transformation could last for over an hour, but she couldn’t just hide in the soil to avoid people. She’d probably suffocate when she turned back into a human. So, she could only strain her little mushroom body to look for an exit.

Finally, she set her sights on a ventilation duct.

Not long after she had hidden inside the duct, a piercing alarm blared through the underground lab.

Shi Lan’s first thought was that her escape had been discovered.

And indeed it had. After the Patrol Drone rebooted, it detected that its position had been moved and its surveillance target was no longer in its field of view, so it automatically triggered the alarm.

The underground lab instantly erupted into activity. The males gathered together, exclaiming, "Someone’s escaped!"

Donald instinctively opened the door behind him. He put on a mask, went inside, and checked on every female, confirming that all of them, including Bai Rao, were still securely imprisoned. He let out a quiet sigh of relief.

But for some reason, a shiver still ran down his spine. Thinking of the person the Monarch had imprisoned separately, he immediately suspected it was her who had run off.

Sure enough, when he led his men to that room, the cage was completely empty. A few petals from some unknown rose bush were scattered nearby, the Patrol Drone was trapped in another room ramming against the door, and the housekeeping robot in the corner was crouched on the floor, sweeping up something or other.

The whole scene was bizarre.