IABI – Chapter 94 The Truth of the Jungle (7)

Chi Xin’s pupils constricted. She shook her head hard, trying to fling away the dizziness.

Shadows spread toward her—those were the approaching clones, reaching their hands out as they drew near.

Chi Xin tried her best to stay calm, but faced with so many clones, she still couldn’t suppress a flicker of panic.

If every one of them possessed the strength of the originals, then no matter how confident she normally was, she didn’t believe she could defeat this many “Lou Chen” and Jing Xiubai!

Because of the dizziness earlier, she was still half-squatting on the ground. One “Lou Chen” took the chance to grab her by the neck.

Chi Xin took several deep breaths. Her gaze sharpened. The long blade in her hand swung out in a huge arc, slicing off the legs of the entire circle of clones in front of her!

The clones fell to the ground with loud thuds, revealing behind them a “Jing Xiubai” with a dark, unreadable face.

Chi Xin tilted her neck ever so slightly, dodging the ice spike aiming for her temple. Looking at its expressionless face, a thought flashed in her mind.

She abruptly flipped her body. One hand pressed against the floor as she vaulted upward. Her movement was as fluid and beautiful as a dance. Her toes hooked onto the high ledge above, pulling her entire body up.

All the clones surged forward, frantically stretching their arms to grab her ankle. From above, the sight was no different from a swarm of zombies.

No. For Chi Xin, this was worse than being surrounded by zombies.

At least zombies were easy to handle—and they didn’t all have the exact same face. The uncanny-valley effect from these clones was enough to make anyone’s skin crawl.

Chi Xin gave them a glance, then pressed her earpiece to connect a private line: “Jing Xiubai.”

Not even a second passed before the other side picked up. “Chi Xin?”

“How are you all doing?” Chi Xin was still more worried about their situation.

“We’ve escaped. I saw that Han guy leading people to chase us.” Jing Xiubai’s voice was slightly breathless.

The earpiece was designed as an ultra-mini in-ear device. Aside from the speaker’s voice, all background noise was reduced to a hazy blur.

Even through that blurred mess, Chi Xin picked out the oddity. “You’re already fighting?”

What she had heard was unmistakably gunfire.

Jing Xiubai paused. “Mm. Did you finish handling your side?”

Chi Xin’s heart tightened reflexively, but hearing how calm he still was, she guessed things on his end weren’t too dire. She temporarily set aside the task of dragging Vera back.

“Jing Xiubai, let me ask you something.” She lowered her head and looked at the “Jing Xiubai” below who was stretching up to reach her. “What’s the side effect of your ability?”

A moment of static-filled noise passed before Jing Xiubai’s voice came again: “I told you before—I don’t have—”

“Do you know who’s chasing you?” Chi Xin interrupted. “It’s Norton Hughes.”

Chi Xin didn’t know who that old man was, but Jing Xiubai—who grew up in this world—certainly did. The moment she said the name, he fell silent.

Chi Xin added fuel to the fire: “He’s the inventor of the ability-enhancement serum.”

Jing Xiubai sighed softly. “So you already know.”

“Yeah. If not for him, I really wouldn’t have realized it. There is no such thing as a perfect enhancement serum. Louis was fooled. And you—the so-called ‘perfect specimen’—didn’t even know?” Chi Xin tightened her grip on her blade, her voice cold. “If I never found out, how long were you planning to hide it? Until your side effect erupts—and you die in front of me?”

There was no mirror in front of her, so she couldn’t see her own expression.

It was a mix of anger, shock, and fear—a complexity she had never shown before, not even back when she had been terrified and forced to collapse in helplessness.

Jing Xiubai didn’t speak.

Chi Xin was about to say more when the “Jing Xiubai” she had been staring at suddenly looked up. A flash of blue light crossed its eyes.

The ground beneath her instantly turned into slick ice.

She lost her balance and slid down. Her hip crashed against the frozen surface, drawing a muffled groan from her.

“Chi Xin!” Jing Xiubai’s voice immediately grew urgent. “Where are you? I’ll come find you!”

As Chi Xin slid down, the long blade in her hand transformed into a heavy, dark Gatling gun. She aimed downward. Bullets sprayed out at extreme speed.

RATATATATATATATAT!

The “Jing Xiubai” that had used the ability was instantly turned into a sieve.

Seeing its ruined state, Chi Xin felt some of the suffocating pressure in her chest unexpectedly ease.

Jing Xiubai was running now—he must have broken away from his group and was trying to reach her. Chi Xin leapt onto the top of another cryo-pod, holding the gun in one hand. She blasted open the ice wall that had formed around the barrel.

She glanced at the gun, then at the shattered ice, and let out a soft, surprised “Huh.”

“Chi Xin?” Jing Xiubai panted.

“There’s a group of your clones here. They can use abilities, just weaker than yours.” Chi Xin explained quickly. “Don’t come over. If you want to help me, then tell me your side effect. I’ll handle the rest.”

“Clones, huh? That does sound like the kind of thing those people would do—completely devoid of morality or ethics.”

Chi Xin didn’t have the luxury to respond. She slammed a fresh magazine into the Gatling. The long, heavy clip nearly brushed the floor.

She lifted the gun, ready to fire again— but froze at the sight in front of her.

The remaining Jing Xiubai clones had learned from the fate of the previous batch. The moment she raised her weapon, they preemptively formed a transparent ice wall between themselves and Chi Xin.

At the same time, Lou Chen’s clones coordinated seamlessly. Chi Xin felt as if invisible hammers were pounding into her head from all directions, striking her mind directly.

“Pfft.” She dropped to one knee, a thin line of blood sliding from the corner of her lips.

“Chi Xin?!” Jing Xiubai immediately sensed something was wrong—his voice even changed pitch.

“Hold on, I’ll be right there.” He started running again, the usual calm orderliness in his tone completely gone. He even started rambling in panic, “What you asked just now—right, dealing with ‘me’ is actually very easy. Although they call me the most perfect test subject, there’s a flaw that’s fatal to me.”

He panted, his voice trembling, “My powers are strong, but constrained by their usage method. I can only use one form of ability at a time—like an ice wall, ice spikes, or freezing. If I want to switch to another one, it requires a different cooldown interval. If I force it, my body could explode and I’d die!”

“If those clones haven’t reached my level yet, their limitations will only be greater… Chi Xin, are you still there? Are you okay?!”

Jing Xiubai suddenly stopped his two mechanical legs mid-stride. Turning his back on the battlefield, he ignored stray bullets that nearly hit him. He pressed the earpiece again and again, expression blank and lost.

“Chi Xin…?”

“…”

A few seconds later, a faint exhale finally came through the earpiece.

Jing Xiubai’s breath stopped altogether. A fear unlike anything he’d experienced flooded his chest. The world around him suddenly became noisy again—as if everything he had ignored moments ago came crashing back at once.

“I understand.” Chi Xin’s tone sounded completely normal—calm and sharp as always. “You don’t need to come here.”

And with that, she cut the connection.

Between the two of them, he was always the one reacting, always passive.

Jing Xiubai suddenly thought of something—of the situation Chi Xin might be facing right now. He couldn’t even muster a bitter smile.

He looked up, eyes fixed on the top floor of the laboratory, gaze turning resolute.

For some decisions, he didn’t need permission or approval. Once made, he would carry them out to the end.

If one chooses to be a moth drawn to the flame, one cannot blame the fire for burning.

Jing Xiubai’s mind snapped back into clarity. Countless pieces of information wove themselves into a complex web in his mind. He analyzed rapidly, then sprinted toward the fifth floor of the laboratory.

It was he who had told Chi Xin that if she went upward, “he” would definitely be there.

—

On the other side.

A mental attack was indeed the one thing Chi Xin could not defend against effectively. The sudden psychic blow forced her to spend one or two minutes adjusting herself.

After obtaining the information she wanted, she didn’t hesitate—she hung up the earpiece. To her, this battle belonged solely to her.

Chi Xin raised her eyes at the clones gathering around her. She lifted her arm and wiped the blood from her lips with the back of her hand.

The streak of blood dragged into a long line across her cheek—far from marring her appearance, it added a chilling, killing sharpness.

“So you can’t switch powers midway, huh?” Chi Xin slowly stood up. The machine-gun-like weapon in her hand—crude and bulky—felt as natural as an extension of her own body, not affecting her agility or precision in the slightest.

“Da-da-da!”

A dense, clean burst of gunfire rang out. The formation in front of her began to shift noticeably.

Chi Xin noticed that although the clones were like puppets on strings—almost certainly without independent thought—the human genes in them must have granted them a basic instinct for survival. They actually understood how to avoid danger.

Wherever the counterattack was strongest, they would move away and strike from weaker angles instead.

So Chi Xin seized on this, using subtle adjustments to her firing angles to herd all the clones into one concentrated area in front of her.

“And you over there—don’t even think of escaping!” She saw a few on the left wing attempting to slip away and immediately fired, forcing them to regroup with the rest.

When she saw all the clones packed together in a tight mass, a faint smile curved at her lips.

The ones she guarded against most were not Jing Xiubai’s clones but Lou Chen’s elusive attacks. But she was lucky—these clones were far weaker than their originals. During the time she spent clustering them together, the mental attacks never returned.

Since that was the case, there was nothing to fear.

Her eyes sharpened. She raised the heavy machine gun again and aimed at the dense sea of heads.

Then she unleashed absolute, wild destruction.

Facing such overwhelming gunfire, the Jing Xiubai clones followed instinct. They raised ice walls in unison as shields. Only now did Chi Xin notice—not every clone could properly form an ice ability. Some flickered with weak blue light, and then nothing at all.

Da-da-da, da-da-da.

After a prolonged, fierce barrage, Chi Xin abruptly stopped firing.

She tossed aside the now-empty machine gun and spread her arms wide toward the clones.

“Come on,” she said. “I no longer have a weapon. Do your best—attack me.”

The clones stared blankly at her. Without consciousness, how would they know about power-usage limits?

Instinct told them only one thing: Now was the best moment to attack.

And so, as Chi Xin planned, the instinct-driven clones failed to remember they had just used ice walls. Ice spikes lifted into the air one by one, filling the entire space above them like a giant, deadly net.

In the same moment, all the ice spikes shot toward Chi Xin!

“Pfft.”

“Pfft.”

The first sounds were not Chi Xin’s screams but the clones coughing up blood one after another.

Chi Xin, relying on her extreme skill and boldness, bent down sharply the instant the ice spikes moved and threw herself directly into the center of the clone group!

The most dangerous place was the safest. The clones wanted to attack her—self-destruction was not in their instincts.

That was her original thought.

But the moment she landed, she felt the sudden swelling of energy from all around her. She cursed herself for her stupidity. With no time to think, she rolled desperately and flung herself behind the farthest cryo-pod.

“Boom—!”

The next instant, the “Jing Xiubai”s erupted like lit firecrackers.

After the explosion, the area was in ruins. When Chi Xin peeked out, she found not only the Jing Xiubai clones but even the Lou Chen clones had been blown to pieces, unable to dodge in time.

Excellent. That saved her trouble—and the persistent mental attacks vanished as well.

Having seen countless battlefields, Chi Xin only spared the wreckage a cold glance, then turned toward the sealed metal doors.

She stopped before the thick metal gate, staring at it.

The televisions around her lit up again with Dr. Hughes’ voice: “Chi Xin, you are indeed far stronger than the early-stage clones. My expectations for you are much higher. But I advise you to stop resisting. Clever tricks alone can’t overcome—”

Clang!

Before he finished, Chi Xin kicked the door cleanly in half.

She turned back, frowning in confusion. “What did you say?”

The screen dissolved into static.

“Too weak,” Chi Xin muttered softly. She flicked her head and stepped out the door. “How could he ever think a door could stop me?”