Reborn As A Doomsday Villainess-Chapter 118: Captured(1)

Inside the shaft, Qingran wiped dust from her face and peered down through the slats. A long corridor stretched beneath her, with broken lights humming faintly and exposed wires hanging from the ceiling.

Two guards passed below. Their footsteps echoed, fading down the hallway.

Qingran exhaled slowly. "I see a maintenance panel. I’m dropping down."

She twisted, braced herself, and kicked the vent open. Metal clattered against the floor, and she dropped through, landing in a crouch. Within seconds, she had her gun out and was moving toward the nearest junction

Feng Yizhou joined her a moment later, his coat lightly dusted with rust.

"This area wasn’t cleared properly," Qingran muttered, gesturing toward untouched crates and scorched lab equipment. "They left in a hurry."

"There," Feng Yizhou said, pointing to a half-shattered door labeled Sector B. "That’s their bio-research wing."

Qingran nodded and approached it carefully. The keypad was broken, but the lock itself had been forced open from the inside. A bad sign.

She pushed it open, revealing a dark room filled with overturned tables, shattered glass, and the lingering scent of chemicals. Screens still blinked in standby mode, faint blue light casting eerie shadows across the floor.

Lingquan leapt up onto one of the desks, his claws tapping against the surface.

[This is where the bio chemicals were synthesized.]

"You’re sure?" Qingran asked, moving toward the nearest terminal.

[Positive. I can feel it in the air. The base compound was developed here before it was shipped out.]

Feng Yizhou stood watch by the door, his eyes scanning the hallway. "Work fast. We don’t have long."

Qingran nodded and started pulling files from the drives. She didn’t expect full records, but anything, formulas, shipment routes, even names could be a lead.

As she worked, her fingers flew across the keyboard, bypassing fragments of the old security systems.

"This wasn’t a government-run lab," she said under her breath. "This was privately funded. Disguised through five shell companies."

"Which ones?" Feng Yizhou asked.

She read off the aliases. Two were familiar. One of them had military ties.

Her blood ran cold.

"I think we just confirmed it," she whispered. "This was backed by the people who are still in control."

Feng Yizhou’s expression hardened. "Then we’re not just up against ghosts anymore."

Outside the hall, a faint beep signaled the guards’ rotation. Feng Yizhou checked his watch. "We should go. We’ve got enough to start connecting dots."

But Qingran didn’t move. Her eyes flicked over the screen again, then to the doors beyond the lab. "No," she said quietly. "This isn’t everything. This is just the surface, the failed trials, the dead ends. Where’s the operational data? The deployment models?"

She pointed toward a locked chamber tucked behind heavy glass, sealed off by a reinforced code panel. "There’s a deeper level behind that door. Look at the ventilation map. It links directly to the cold storage and restricted server racks."

Feng Yizhou followed her gaze, his jaw tightening.

"It’s risky."

"I know," she said calmly. "But we came for the truth."

He nodded once. "Let’s make it fast."

They cracked the panel and slipped past the final layer of the lab’s defenses.

Inside, the air was freezing and dry, a kind of dryness that made it hard to breathe.

Rows of servers still blinked with faint power. In the center of the room was what they were looking for, a secure archive terminal that was still active.

Qingran moved fast, her fingers flipping through the files. Information poured in: troop movement reports, civilian infection rates, communication between high-level officials... timelines.

And then she saw it: an exact date. The outbreak had been triggered intentionally, timed with the withdrawal of food distribution lines.

"That’s it," she said. "Thats how they planned everything. The shortages, the collapse, even the quarantine riots. All were orchestrated. The last day of the month isn’t when the apocalypse is starting, it has already begun, the last day is just when every chaos gets released."

But just as she reached for the final encrypted packet, an alarm blared overhead.

Feng Yizhou drew his weapon, but Qingran just closed the files and sent it all into the system space.

Within seconds, the archives was wiped clean.

There’d be no proof left for anyone to find.

Doors slammed open. Flashlights. Shouts. "Drop it!" barked a soldier from the hallway, their rifles raising.

Feng Yizhou didn’t flinch while Qingran raised her hands slowly. There was no chance of escape without blowing their cover or starting a bloodbath.

She leaned slightly toward him and whispered "Don’t say anything stupid."

Feng Yizhou huffed under his breath. "Was about to say that to you." They were surrounded within seconds.

Hands forced behind their backs, weapons confiscated, blindfolds pulled tight.

They moved down the narrow hall, their footsteps muffled by the thick carpet beneath them.

Qingran felt the pressure of her blindfold, her senses straining as the world around her blurred.

After a moment, they stopped. A door opened with a soft click, and the guards nudged them forward.

They were pushed into the room, where Qingran was quickly seated in a restraining chair, her hands forced behind her.

The cold metal bit into her skin as she was secured, and Feng Yizhou was placed beside her in a similar chair.

The room was quiet, the air still, and the only sound was the low hum of distant machinery. The sterile, controlled atmosphere of an interrogation room settled around them.

Qingran exhaled slowly, keeping her focus sharp despite the situation. She had what she needed.

The data was safely hidden in her system space. Even if they couldn’t escape right away, she wasn’t leaving empty-handed.

The door on the far side of the room creaked open, and footsteps echoed as a figure entered.

Dressed in a sharp suit, the person approached them with deliberate steps. The guards stiffened but remained silent.

"Let’s get this over with," the figure said, sitting down behind a desk and fixing their gaze on Qingran and Feng Yizhou.

The silence that followed felt like it stretched forever.

"Well?" The voice was cold and expectant.