Chapter 637 - 18: Slavic Tundra No. 13 Confession Room
"Raphael, are you crazy?"
Two warriors hit by bullets were bleeding out beneath them, starkly visible on the gray-white tiles.
The power of modern firearms is undeniable; in an environment filled with radiation, pollution, and unknown pathogens, such wounds are essentially a death sentence.
The remaining soldiers from the Alexander Legion outside the confession room evaded the gunfire from within while shouting curses loudly.
The lights that were just now neatly pointing forward became utterly chaotic.
In the stark contrast between light and dark, the angel relief at the top of the confession room door appeared particularly menacing.
Chen Zhou, holding only a rifle, immediately rolled to the side of the corridor upon noticing something off with Ivan.
The Frenchman’s cursing had just ceased when the soldiers inside the confession room responded with bullets.
In the cramped space, flames flickered; at the front was the Alexander Legion, Ivan’s direct followers in the middle, and the Vladimirovich Legion at the back instinctively formed three groups, with only Chen Zhou distancing himself in a relatively safe corner, watching with cold eyes.
...
Having experienced the baptism of war together, shared life and death for years, no one knew why a previously close companion would suddenly change their demeanor and open fire on them.
But faced with the threat of death, no one would sit idly by.
Attack, counterattack...
Gunfire echoed continuously, and the number of Alexander Legion members quickly dwindled by half.
Neither advanced drones nor mechanical dogs were of use; the communication channels were chaotic, with French, Russian, and English voices overlapping, occasionally mixed with Ivan’s maddened laughter.
...
Chen Zhou turned off his headlamp, crouched in the corner, and quietly observed everything.
His extraordinary sensory abilities fully activated for the first time, capturing every detail of the battlefield, even the traces of bullets in flight.
Amidst the sound of people’s heartbeats and pulses, he faintly heard the crackling electrical sound inside the confession room.
Then, he heard what Ivan called "singing hymns."
The sound seemed like thousands of children squeezing out with parched chests, intermittent yet mysteriously enchanting—
The bed of the deceased, I hear the whispers of death’s shadow,
They grind the bones and blood of the devout, shouting
"Forget the holy name of God!
Indulgence is the true essence of life!"
...
This eerie chanting, once it reached Chen Zhou’s ears, overshadowed all the sounds of battle on the field; even with his extremely disciplined hearing, he could hear the chanting—
It resonated within the brain, not merely within the ears.
Chen Zhou found the more he focused on the chanting, the clearer the sound became, and he found it increasingly difficult to suppress the urge to engage in the fight.
Fortunately, he wasn’t in the same initial state as when he first returned; nearly two years of extreme sports had significantly improved his control over his body.
As long as he wished, he could completely block out his hearing temporarily.
Although this couldn’t completely eliminate the chanting in his mind, it greatly alleviated its impact on him.
...
"The Confession Room..."
Watching the mercenaries turn on each other under the influence of the sound and recalling Ivan’s words to him, Chen Zhou quickly identified the anomaly—
Ivan said the base had four floors, with the negative first floor as the living quarters for most ordinary staff.
What he saw and heard upon entering the base largely matched Ivan’s description, but as he walked through, Chen Zhou always felt that the layout resembled an "underground simulation town" too much, with not much equipment related to transformation experiments.
It was only now that he reacted and conceived a bold hypothesis—
Perhaps the entire transformation base had no so-called living quarters; from top to bottom, it was a large experimental field built for human experimentation, and only the experimentation on the negative first floor was special, creating the illusion of a living area.
After all, even if the Soviets were significantly influenced by religion, it’s impossible they would build a single confession room in a secret base and lay lavish reliefs underground, increasing the area of the entire confession room.
If his guess was correct, the negative first floor could be the "Slavic Tundra 13 Confession Room" mentioned in the photos.
From what he had witnessed so far, this was probably a sound weapon that distorted minds.
It’s just unknown why it could still function normally after the base had been abandoned for years...
More concerning to Chen Zhou was the fact that someone like Ivan, whose hearing was clearly more susceptible to the "singing hymns," had left the base unusually and concealed the crisis on the negative first floor in his narrative.
What does this imply?
Unless Ivan truly had gone mad, doing such a thing meant he was completely untrustworthy now.
...
"Damn, we need to evacuate this hellhole immediately!"
The firefight had lasted a while; the shooter inside the confession room had taken several incendiary bombs and could no longer fire.
The flames emitted high temperatures, burning the bodies and detonating remaining ammunition and explosives.
The oxygen in the air was rapidly depleting, causing all the armored warriors to feel asphyxiated.
Vladimirovich’s subordinates, positioned at the very back, were the least affected, maintaining zero casualties so far, though injuries were inevitable with relentless gunfire.
While ordering his most vigorous subordinates to cover the injured during evacuation, Vladimirovich expressed his intentions unabashedly over the communication channel—
This operation was clearly not as simple as the employer claimed, with Ivan concealing too many dangers.