"You disfigured your face just to fool Violent Bear, right?"
In the master bedroom on the second floor, An Zhanyu looked at Chen Gou, who was already wearing a mask, and directly sent a voice transmission with his mind.
They would all communicate this way afterward to avoid any spying devices in the room.
For the Blood Umbrella Organization, a branch of the Umbrella Corporation, such not-so-high-tech gadgets weren't even worth mentioning.
Chen Gou nodded. "That's right. When I transform into you, change into my clothes and wear a mask. Nobody will suspect anything as long as you refrain from talking."
"Very meticulous plan, but you must be glad we're about the same height."
With his hands behind his back, An Zhanyu looked through the window in the distance, where the lab was suspected to be. "It is said that the place over there is a lair scarier than hell and people either come out in pieces or become zombies… I'd really like to go in and see it."
"What do you want to see? Do you want to be injected with a virus or get sliced up?"
"You're wrong!"
A kind of perverted excitement surfaced on An Zhanyu's pale face. "I'd like to experience injecting a person with the virus, watch the complete process of becoming a zombie, and enjoy their terror and see them howling in misery.
"Slicing is quite interesting as well. It is said that they can cut off all the flesh on a person's body without letting them die. The most remarkable thing is that one can remain awake through the entire process…"
Chen Gou was speechless.
He was a complete pervert!
"Do you regret helping me?"
"I don't. I just feel disgusted."
"You're still okay, unlike other people who act differently in front of someone and behind their back."
An Zhanyu raised his head and said sadly, "I've enjoyed what I should've enjoyed and basically done all the bad things I should've done in this lifetime. My only regret is that I haven't experienced what it's like to be a good person… If I make it back alive, I'll give you a gift that you'll definitely like!"
"What kind of gift?"
Chen Gou felt interested at once. Given An Zhanyu's status, it had to be something extraordinary for him to say that he would definitely like it.
"The An Lan Talisman!"
"The talisman designed by the An Lan Clan?"
"You could interpret it that way. It can fuse two identical or similar skills and raise them to a higher grade!"
Skill fusion and grade elevation?
Did such a magical artifact even exist?!
The level of magic skills could rise alongside an Awakener's strength, but the grade was fixed.
If something was bronze-grade from the start, it would always be bronze-grade.
If an Awakener became stronger and was unhappy with the trashy skills that he had learned in his early years, he would only have two options.
One of them was to wash away his skills with an extremely precious magical artifact and empty a skill slot to learn other skills.
The other was to raise the grade of the skills.
For example, one needed 10,000 Merit Points for one drop of the Holy Flower Liquid in the Covenant instead of needing to fuse two skills like the An Lan Talisman. One could simply raise a skill below the platinum grade to a higher grade.
A bronze-grade skill could turn into a silver-grade one, a silver-grade one into a gold-grade one, and a gold-grade one into a platinum-grade one!
In this regard, the An Lan Talisman seemed to be no match for the Holy Flower Liquid…
"Are you thinking that the An Lan Talisman is not as good as the Holy Flower Liquid?"
An Zhanyu, who saw through Chen Gou's thoughts, said with a laugh, "The An Lan Talisman also has another flaw. The fusion isn't 100% successful. If there are two identical Skill Crystals dropped by the same magical creature, the success rate will be close to 100%.
"If they're different skills, the less similar they are, the lower the success rate will be. If you're unlucky enough, the two skills will absorb their respective flaws and perfectly forgo their strength, so… the grade of the new skill will go down instead of up!"
Chen Gou was speechless.
Are you kidding me? How is that going to make me feel absolutely satisfied?
"However, the An Lan Talisman also has one advantage: Once the strength of two different skills is absorbed, the new skill will not only rise by a grade, but it might also rise from the bronze grade to the gold or even the platinum grade!"
An Zhanyu said, "Therefore, if you want to be safe, fuse two completely different skills. You can definitely gain a grade.
"Of course, like the Holy Flower Liquid, you can only fuse any skills you learn once, and you can't do that with your innate skills."
When he heard that, Chen Gou's eyes lit up and he keenly grasped this important information.
"So that means there's more than one An Lan Talisman!"
"Of course. Do you think I'd give it to you if I only had one?"
An Zhanyu raised his head and pointed his nose at Chen Gou. "Why is the An Lan Clan a holy clan? Do you think it's just because of their bloodline? The An Lan Talisman was created through refinement. As long as you can provide those precious materials, you can theoretically have as many as you want."
Chen Gou's eyes constricted. "You know the method to refine it?"
An Zhanyu sneered. "Do you think that's possible?"
"Right." Chen Gou's expression returned to normal. "If I was an elder of the An Lan Clan, I wouldn't let a scum get hold of the supreme secrets of our clan."
"That's right. My mother secretly slipped me this one before she left… I don't have many years to live anyway. It would be a waste to use it. If you can fool the people of the Blood Umbrella Organization and make it back alive from the lab, make full use of it and try to go back one day."
"Go back? It's a bit far." Chen Gou naturally didn't want to go back.
He was doing well as an Abyssal Knight, so why did he have to be a reviled traitor and spend his days with b*stards and scumbags?
If he wanted to go back, he would have to at least do two things.
First, he had to combine the Progenitor Virus and the progenitor bloodworm and create a new virus capable of activating the angel bloodline.
Even if he couldn't achieve this goal, he had to at least obtain the origin of the virus bloodline, the Progenitor Virus.
Second, he had to clear his name.
If he went back as a traitor of the Blood Umbrella Organization, even if the commander of the Abyssal Knights believed that he had been forced, the other departments of the Covenant would not let him off easily, especially the tribunal, which was responsible for purging the Covenant internally.
"It would be good if we could get in touch with the Resistance."
"The information gathered by the Covenant shows that local forces are resisting within the abyss of zombies as well. Based on the description of their appearance, their leader is most likely the main character of the movie, Alice."
"That's probably the only power I can make use of, provided that I get in touch with her…"
Time passed as Chen Gou pondered this.
After half an hour, Violent Bear appeared on time in the living room on the second floor.
Then, the masked "Ksitigarbha" and the expressionless "An Zhanyu" walked out.
The latter nodded at Violent Bear and said, "Let's go."
The Morph Skill was very mysterious. It could transform one's voice as well.
Violent Bear took a closer look and found nothing unusual, nor did he suspect anything. He led Chen Gou, who was disguised as An Zhanyu, down the stairs and toward the lab building deep in the valley.
The lab building was the most heavily-guarded place in the entire valley base.
Violent Bear did not seem to go there frequently. The closer he got to the lab building, the more serious he looked.
It took five rounds of checks along the way before they finally arrived at the main entrance of the five-story, square-shaped lab building.
At that moment, the human guards around the building diminished and were instead replaced by a large number of patrolling zombies!