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The courtyard in the rainforest resembled a forgotten graveyard.
The air was humid and viscous, clinging tightly to their skin, carrying the heavy scent of mixed earth and decaying plants.
The four had just crawled out of that living Hell-like passage, and their nerves were still taut from the extreme nausea and terror they had experienced.
Leon S. Kennedy was breathing heavily, trying to cleanse the lingering stench of decay from his lungs with this relatively "fresh" air.
Krauser irritably wiped his stained tactical vest, muttering curses under his breath, his stern face filled with physical revulsion.
Manuela slumped onto the ground, her body still trembling slightly and uncontrollably. Her hollow eyes scanned the place that was both familiar and strange.
This had once been the backyard where she played as a child, but now, only weeds and decay remained.
Noah was the only one who remained composed.
His gaze quickly swept across the courtyard, finally settling on a massive glass structure not far away.
It was a plant greenhouse.
"Where is Javier?" Leon S. Kennedy's voice was hoarse. He walked over to Manuela and crouched down.
Manuela's lips parted a few times. She raised a trembling hand and pointed toward the greenhouse.
"I... I don't know..." Her voice was as faint as a dying candle in the wind.
"But, that place... he never let me go inside..."
Leon S. Kennedy followed the direction of her finger, and his eyes sharpened.
"Let's go look there." He stood up, his tone somewhat cold.
The four people crossed the overgrown courtyard toward the massive greenhouse.
The glass walls were covered in moss and grime, making the view inside blurry.
Pushing open a rusty iron door, a blast of hot, humid air, mixed with a strange, cloyingly sweet fragrance, rushed out.
Inside the greenhouse, it was like a tropical jungle grown to the extreme.
All sorts of bizarre plants grew wildly, their gigantic leaves blocking out the sun, fragmenting the already gloomy daylight.
And in the very center of the greenhouse, an enormous, unparalleled plant commanded everyone's attention.
It belonged to no known plant species; its main stem was like a twisted column of flesh, covered by a waxy, translucent membrane, through which countless dark veins could be seen slowly pulsating.
The enormous flower bud was tightly closed, emitting that dizzying, sweet fragrance.
"How strange." Krauser's voice echoed in the silent greenhouse.
He was crouching next to several corpses, using the tip of his dagger to pry open the blood-soaked collar of one body.
The corpse was wearing a white lab coat, stiff and decaying, but beneath the collar, a red and white Umbrella-shaped logo was clearly visible.
"It's someone from Umbrella." Krauser's tone held a mixture of confusion and vigilance.
Leon S. Kennedy walked over, his expression grave.
The shadow of Umbrella was like a maggot attached to the bone; no matter where he went, it lingered.
The state of these Researchers' deaths was strange; they hadn't died from gunshot wounds or monster bites, but seemed to have had their Life Qi drained, their bodies shriveled like cured meat.
Noah's gaze, however, fell upon the massive, bizarre plant.
He could sense that the Researchers' vitality seemed to have become nourishment for this plant.
Passing through this eerie greenhouse, they found a large warehouse connected to the back.
The warehouse was filled with stacks of wooden crates and equipment, and the air was thick with the smell of dust and motor oil.
Several zombies wearing warehouse uniforms, having caught the scent of the living, staggered out from behind the shelves.
"Bang!"
Krauser didn't waste a single word. His assault rifle immediately spat fire, and the furious bullets shredded the chest of one of the zombies.
Leon S. Kennedy and Noah also opened fire simultaneously, using precise bursts to quickly eliminate these scattered threats.
The fight ended within seconds.
Manuela led them to a heavy iron door at the deepest part of the warehouse.
This door was the place Javier had forbidden her to approach.
Her hand rested on the cold doorknob, and her body trembled violently from memory and fear.
Finally, as if having made a certain resolution, she gritted her teeth and forcefully pushed the door open.
Behind the door was a brightly lit room.
Completely different from the decay outside, this place was full of modernity and technology, yet it exuded a bone-chilling coldness.
In the center of the room was an operating table with a metallic sheen, still bearing remnants of dark brown bloodstains.
Next to it, various unknown medical instruments flashed with eerie green indicator lights.
One wall was occupied by a huge vertical freezer cabinet.
"Where did all these human organs come from..." Krauser walked up to the freezer cabinet and looked inside through the glass window, his voice full of confusion.
Inside the freezer cabinet, rows of transparent containers held various fresh human organs preserved in formalin.
Hearts, livers, kidneys... they were neatly stacked like products on a supermarket shelf.
"Is Javier running this kind of business?" Krauser's brow furrowed into a knot.
Noah ignored Krauser's speculation. His gaze fell upon another door beside the operating table, one that was much heavier, like a vault door.
He walked forward and turned the heavy wheel-style handle on the door.
With a muffled "clunk," the large door slowly opened.
A blast of cold air, mixed with the scent of disinfectant and death, surged out from within the door.
The scene behind the door caused everyone present to instantly stop breathing.
It was a massive morgue.
On rows of freezing beds lay the silent remains of young girls.
They all looked quite young, their expressions peaceful, as if they were merely asleep.
But their pale skin and lifeless bodies silently attested to the fact that they had long since perished.
Leon S. Kennedy's pupils contracted to the extreme in an instant.
In his mind, the missing persons posters of the vanished girls instantly surfaced, along with the desperate and sorrowful faces of the Villager.
"...They are all the missing girls." His voice was dry, every word squeezed out through clenched teeth.
"They must all be here..."
"Ah—!"
An utterly piercing shriek erupted from Manuela's throat.
She looked at this scene, which resembled Hell on Earth, watching girls her own age, who should have had beautiful lives, now displayed here like objects.
Immense guilt and terror swallowed her whole like a tsunami.
Her legs gave out, and she collapsed onto the cold floor, covering her face with her hands and letting out a heart-rending wail.
"No... no..."
Immediately afterward, a violent pain erupted from her right arm without warning.
"Ah ah ah!"
She clutched her right arm, which was covered in blue veins and keratin, writhing and howling in pain on the floor.
The veins on that arm seemed to come alive, writhing wildly. The tissue beneath the skin emitted an eerie green light, as if something was trying to burst out.
"Manuela!"
Leon S. Kennedy rushed forward and pulled the suffering girl into his arms.
"What's wrong? Pull yourself together!"
Just then, a huge monitor on the adjacent wall suddenly flickered and lit up.
Javier's expressionless face appeared on the screen.
He looked down at his daughter struggling in pain on the floor, his eyes devoid of pity, holding only a morbid, clinical assessment.
"To relieve your suffering, we must continuously replace various organs."
Javier's cold voice resonated through the room via the loudspeaker.
"The virus assimilates the replaced organs, which makes the work of finding organs a lot easier."
"What the Hell are you talking about?" Krauser spun around abruptly, roaring in fury, the muzzle of his gun practically aimed at the screen.
Javier's gaze briefly swept over Krauser's face, carrying a hint of disdain.
"This is the only way to prevent the virus from running wild," he continued in that matter-of-fact tone.
"But even so, it will take fifteen years."
Fifteen years.
This number weighed heavily on everyone's hearts.
To maintain his daughter's life for fifteen years, this man had turned countless innocent girls into cold corpses in this morgue.
"I... I should have died a long time ago..."
In a lull between the intense pain, Manuela used all her strength to let out a desperate sob.
"If I had died... these girls wouldn't have..."
"I won't let you die." Javier interrupted her coldly.
A chilling smile even appeared at the corner of his mouth.
"They are merely consumables. Do I need to compensate them?"
Consumables.
He used this word to describe the lives he had brutally murdered.
Noah had been standing silently to the side. At this moment, he slowly raised his head, his black eyes coldly watching Javier on the monitor.
"You're treating human life like grass!" Leon S. Kennedy roared at the screen, holding Manuela, who was nearly fainting in his arms.
"It doesn't matter now." An expression almost like condescension appeared on Javier's face.
"To thank you for bringing my daughter back, I will ensure you die a fitting death."
As soon as he finished speaking.
"Boom—Rumble—!"
An incredibly violent tremor suddenly came from the ceiling!
The entire room shook violently, and dust and debris rained down from the ceiling.
Above them came the heavy, enormous sound of metal grinding, along with a low rumble indicating some massive object was moving.
Something was about to descend.