Between Octopus's compound eyes, Li Ban spotted the corner of a glass bottle.
Just a corner. It seemed to be a skylight left intentionally, allowing others to confirm exactly where the creature's brain was located.
"Did you deliberately leave the bottled brains exposed on the outside?" the Director asked.
"Yes. That way, if they lose control, they can be killed as quickly as possible."
Li Ban raised an objection. "The modifications these monsters make to their own bodies are terrifying. If they lose control, I'm afraid they might just shift the position of their bottled brains."
Priest Lang Jiao nodded. "Therefore, once the bottled brain disappears, it means they have lost control and can be killed."
He said this right in front of the two bottle-people, yet the two creatures with monster bodies and human minds seemed completely numb, offering no reaction whatsoever.
Priest Lang Jiao introduced the next person to the Director and Li Ban.
"Chao Lu, come here."
When she pulled back her hood, Li Ban realized that this person named Chao Lu was actually someone he had met before.
Back when they ambushed the black-robed Xiao Suo in the Imperial City, this Chao Lu had been one of the people coordinating with Zhu Yao and Priest Chu Zhan.
She had been a Star Glow Priest back then. He never expected that the Recycling Station's Priest Chao Lu would end up as a bottle-person.
Priest Chao Lu still retained a human face, but her brain was not in her head. At the junction between her head and the body below, a piece of curved glass was exposed.
Chao Lu's body looked like an overturned bowl of jelly. It was fleshy pink and completely lacked hands, feet, or other limbs.
Inside her translucent body, there were only a few fine connections that resembled the veins of a leaf.
Unlike Octopus with his many slender arms, Chao Lu's current form offered no immediate clues about how she attacked.
The Director asked, "How does Chao Lu fight?"
"First she tracks, then she corrodes. But it would be better to let her demonstrate."
Lang Jiao stepped aside and gestured to Chao Lu.
One of the subordinates behind him immediately released a Rib Bird from a small cage.
The Rib Bird was covered in wounds. After flying out of the cage, it didn't try to attack anyone; instead, it flew straight up into the sky.
Li Ban, who had kept his eyes fixed on Chao Lu, saw her suddenly open her mouth wide. An organ resembling a frog's tongue—but longer and completely black—shot out.
It instantly wrapped around the Rib Bird's wings, yanking the little monster right back.
However, the black tongue didn't pull the Rib Bird to Chao Lu's mouth; it pulled the creature right against her body.
Her body possessed extreme elasticity. As the Rib Bird drew near, her body abruptly spread open like a giant net, then snapped shut, enveloping the entire Rib Bird along with her own tongue.
The Rib Bird continued to struggle, but its body was rapidly corroded by the fleshy-pink jelly.
In no time at all, the Rib Bird was truly reduced to nothing but a pile of ribs. The bones were still corroding, just not as quickly as the flesh and blood on its exterior.
"I've only ever seen this kind of corrosiveness inside the nests," Li Ban said.
"Priest Ban is correct," a priest behind Lang Jiao said with a smile. "This fleshy-pink substance is an improvement we developed using the corrosive black liquid from the nests."
"So the camps in the Continental Center have already improved upon the corrosive liquid," Li Ban marveled.
Out at the continent's borders, the camps still considered the nests and the corrosive liquid to be useless, so much so that they couldn't even be bothered to send people to clear them out.
"Different pursuits naturally lead to different values," the Director said through the voice tube.
"Indeed." Priest Lang Jiao smiled brightly; he seemed to like the Director's perspective very much. "While everyone else was calculating cost-effectiveness, I was earnestly scheming for survival."
"Every so often, I personally lead people into the monster nests. After decades of research, I finally found a weapon of this form by striking a balance between utilizing and isolating the corrosive liquid."
As Priest Lang Jiao spoke, Chao Lu completely digested the Rib Bird inside her.
She opened her mouth and used her tongue to put her hooded cloak back on.
The dexterity of her tongue was in no way inferior to a pair of hands.
As she put her outer garment back on, Li Ban also noticed that one side of Chao Lu's body must not be corrosive.
When she needed to touch objects that she didn't want to corrode, she would quickly wriggle her body to expose the non-corrosive side.
"Could you give me a bit of the corrosive liquid from her body to record and study?"
"Oh? Could it be that the Director wants something for nothing? Aren't you going to offer some secrets in exchange?" Lang Jiao said, his gaze falling upon the deliberately low-profile Li Ban.
"If the 'you' from the next progression comes in, I can show him all the records about you."
"Hahahahaha—"
Lang Jiao suddenly burst into maniacal laughter.
His exaggerated posture and booming voice immediately drew the gazes of people from the other camps in the distance.
However, seeing that Lang Jiao wasn't going mad and trying to kill anyone, the distant onlookers merely cast a few glances and didn't approach.
Lang Jiao laughed for a good two minutes before he finally had enough.
He abruptly put away his smile, his expression turning icy. "What does the 'me' from the next progression have to do with me?"
The Director immediately said, "Very well, then I won't record it."
"The Director is truly stingy, only taking in and never giving out." Lang Jiao glanced at Li Ban again. "Or does the Director think Priest Ban's secrets are far more valuable than my bottle-people?"
"You can ask anyone else; the price I offer is always the same," the Director replied, his words watertight. "Besides, the 'you' from the previous progression refused to trade as well."
Therefore, the Lang Jiao of this progression wouldn't receive any special treatment either.
Lang Jiao's expression darkened slightly, but ultimately, he raised a hand. "Take it. Compared to my other experiments, this is not worth mentioning."
He was determined to be different from the guy in the previous progression!
"Many thanks," the Director thanked him earnestly, then had Allen extract a bit of the fleshy-pink "jelly" from Chao Lu's body.
Priest Lang Jiao had thought the Director would need to borrow a container capable of holding the corrosive liquid, but to his surprise, the container Allen casually pulled out from his person could hold it safely.
But thinking about it, it made sense. The Director had been in the Recycling Station for who knew how many years; how could he not have studied the corrosive liquid from the nests?
At the thought that the fruits of his arduous research weren't actually all that valuable to the Director, Lang Jiao felt a wave of stifled frustration.
However, his face remained expressionless, concealing his emotions perfectly.
Li Ban watched as Chao Lu stood perfectly still under Lang Jiao's orders, and his lips parted. "Priest Lang Jiao, did they volunteer to become bottle-people?"
Lang Jiao revealed a smile once more. "As expected of a little White Robe, always liking to ask such meaningless questions. If I say they didn't, what are you going to do about it?"
Li Ban looked up at Lang Jiao, the corners of his own lips curving up. "I... wouldn't do anything about it."
At most, when the time came that Lang Jiao needed to be sacrificed, he simply wouldn't hesitate.
Priest Lang Jiao's hand twitched. For some reason, his heart skipped a beat.
He couldn't quite understand the sudden unease welling up inside him, though this intuition was one of his innate talents.
Before entering the Recycling Station, he had relied on this talent to evade the encirclements and ambushes of the white-robed priests multiple times.
After a moment of thought, Lang Jiao feigned nonchalance and said, "Forget it, for the Director's sake, I can tell you. Both of them volunteered."
"Octopus did it to become stronger. He was originally just an ordinary person—oh, an ordinary Spirit Practitioner—and now he can fight evenly against a priest who possesses spiritual rhinoceros. Doesn't that make him much more formidable?"
"As for Chao Lu."
Everyone's gaze landed on Chao Lu.
That human face was so calm it bordered on wooden; it seemed to have lost the ability to make expressions entirely.
With her brain transferred into a bottle, that human face had become nothing more than a mask.
It embodied the modifier's sick sense of humor in every aspect.
"Chao Lu also volunteered. It's just that she probably didn't care either way. After hearing that I needed a priest for an experiment, she sought me out and said that if there was no one else, she could participate."
"Oh, right, I forgot to mention, this Chao Lu is also the Chao Lu from our previous progression. The Chao Lu of this progression died before entering the Recycling Station. So when this progression of ours was deleted and sent into the Recycling Station, everyone around her was erased, and only she was left behind."
"Actually, I think she's quite lucky. Unfortunately, she doesn't see it that way. Heh, silly White Robe—"
Surprisingly, the Director also knew the Chao Lu from the previous progression. "She was very active in the last progression. But after the batch erasure, I never saw her again. I assumed she had been erased along with the rest."
Despite having become the sole survivor, she was now the one who had died the most thoroughly.
Now that she had been modified into a monster, even if she managed to leave the Recycling Station, she wouldn't be able to recover, right?
Although their experiences left one feeling helpless and resigned, the group could only look forward right now.
Those who remained stuck in the past could not survive.
"What is the probability of them losing control? In special circumstances, such as following me on an assault, will this probability increase?" Li Ban asked.
This time, Lang Jiao actually refrained from mocking him before answering. "Under peaceful conditions, they won't lose control for three years. If they engage in continuous, high-intensity combat for more than an hour, the risk of losing control will rise to thirty percent. If the high-intensity combat lasts for three hours, they will basically lose control entirely, unless they enter a deep sleep to rest for a long time."
He spoke these cruel words right in front of the two bottle-people.
"Of course, I've installed Spiritual Rhinoceros Explosive Devices on both of them, which I'll hand over to you when the time comes. When you feel they are about to lose control, just have them charge into the densest cluster of monsters, then detonate them."
Neither Octopus nor Chao Lu had any reaction to this.
Li Ban could understand Chao Lu's indifference, but Octopus—someone who willingly became a monster in order to grow stronger—was he really willing to die so easily as cannon fodder?
He felt that Octopus was likely a willing participant in becoming a monster, but Lang Jiao might not have told them all the consequences of doing so.
Nine parts truth, one part lie.
Or perhaps it was all true, just structured in a misleading way.
When many people were deceived, they too mistakenly believed they were willing participants.
"How many more people like this do you have?" Li Ban asked.
"Not many. The success rate for the bottled brains is still very low. Aside from them, there are two others. If you want them to join the assault team, I can bring them all over."
"More people isn't necessarily better. But I do hope to understand their abilities."
Lang Jiao raised a finger and pointed in the direction of Priest Li He. "I don't have a problem with it, of course, but you'd better discuss it with the people from Yongge Camp. Their thoughts might not align with yours."
Leaning forward and raising a hand to cover his lips, Lang Jiao feigned a whisper, "Why do you think they insisted on securing another spot on the assault team before the candidates were even finalized?"
"Control," Li Ban answered calmly.
Lang Jiao's smile grew much brighter. "As long as you know what you're dealing with. Well then, I'll be heading back first. Once the other two bottle-people arrive, I'll have them come see you."
He gave a light wave of his hand in the air as a goodbye, turned around, and walked away with a brisk step.
Allen stood blankly in place as the Director's voice sounded out.
"The Five Major Camps have always been like this."
"The fact that you could get them all to show up here is already very impressive, Director."
The Director chuckled softly. "Heh, that's because they know I will never leave this place."
It wasn't as if there hadn't been operations with a seemingly higher probability of leaving than this one, yet the Director had never once chosen to try to leave.
In the end, what he sought was never leaving the Recycling Station.
The two walked back shoulder to shoulder.
"Director, what do you plan to do if I fail too?" Li Ban asked without a trace of shame.
"Continue my original life. Observe, record, and wait for the next opportunity when I feel it is time to make a move."
"And if you grow weary of it during this process?"
For some people, life in the Recycling Station was practically a form of immortality.
It was just that many people, after experiencing true immortality, would come to believe that immortality was actually a curse.
Especially in a place like the Recycling Station, where there was almost no pleasure—only risk and an unknown future.
"If I really do grow weary of it, I'll leave the data to Allen and have him find a random person to hand it off to."
To Allen?
Li Ban turned his head to look at the mechanically walking Allen.
Allen, devoid of complex thoughts, was indeed suited to serve as the handover person for the next generation.
"Then when do you think you will grow weary of it?"
"Things in the future cannot be determined. I can only say that, right now, I don't have the slightest thought of growing weary."
A slight ripple appeared in the Director's voice; he seemed somewhat agitated.
But he quickly calmed down again.
Li Ban admired the Director immensely.
In this day-to-day existence, amidst successive failures time and time again, how did he maintain his focus and perseverance?
He blinked.
Could it be that when Zhu Yi split his spiritual body, he purposefully created a spirit entity that knew neither fatigue nor despair?
By the time they returned, Zhu Yao had also come back.
Seeing Li Ban, she shrugged. "We decided to act separately and establish two Spatial Guidance points."
This had its pros and cons.
The advantage was that they had gained an additional method to attack the monsters.
The disadvantage was that each Spatial Guidance Art required a 7th Tier Priest to maintain it, resulting in the instant loss of two combatants.
However, after Zhu Yao discussed it with Priest Dong Yi, they agreed that these could be activated when necessary as a means to break a deadlock. They didn't need to be maintained for long periods, so they could be operated simultaneously or in turns.
"What do we do next?" Tail hopped out.
This meeting was primarily an exchange between priests. Let alone a lone wolf like Tail, even the leader of Lanying Camp hadn't been able to get a word in edgewise.
"During this period, whenever I have free time, we will go clear out monster nests."
"Alright, I definitely don't want to go to any more meetings." Tail lowered her head and picked at her nails, then asked rather abruptly, "Do you guys think it's feasible to undergo beastification modifications like Black Beast Camp, or even... combine with monsters for modifications like Langhuan Camp?"