The target Yang Ying chose for his retaliatory strike, a secret research facility, was made unmistakably clear in the report provided by the Ghost Agents; this place had been continuously conducting utterly inhumane human experimentation, using missing persons from various regions as test subjects.

Their objective was to create enhanced human warriors no inferior to the Awakened, or perhaps even artificial Awakened beings.

According to intelligence, this research facility had already yielded results applicable in practice. For instance, during the engagement where the Laurel Fleet, led by the Golden Flame, was involved, the Ghost fighter squadrons had encountered sniping from several powerful pilots. Although the Ghost fighters ultimately prevailed, those few Kaiser pilots had indeed posed a considerable threat.

The flying skills of the Ghost fighter pilots surpassed the limits reachable by ordinary humans, and they were operating while cloaked. Yet, they were still being predicted. Clearly, the skills of those Kaiser pilots also exceeded human limits, surpassing the standard of a Worrell-class pilot. The Ghost Agent unit followed the trail and finally uncovered this research facility.

Wiping out this research facility was merely the first step in the retaliation plan.

Yang Ying stood silently before the glass room for a while, his fists clenched tightly. After watching for some time, he could bear to look no longer.

That pool of black blood indicated that the cellular structure of these young men and women had undergone a fundamental alteration. Although it was unclear how vastly different it was from human physiology, it was obvious that reversing this change would not be a quick task.

After the first young girl was shot dead, alarms sounded in several more medical pods in succession. The two observing researchers diligently shot and killed the mutated young men and women, one by one.

Yang Ying retreated from this room and continued moving toward other areas.

Time on Mars operates differently from other colonies, using the Martian Calendar calculated by the planet's rotation cycle. One rotation takes approximately 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35 seconds, meaning a Martian day is slightly longer than an Earth day.

Many newcomers to Mars find it slightly uncomfortable at first, but once they adapt, it becomes routine.

It was two o’clock in the morning in Santos City, where Yang Ying was located, but according to the Standard Time universally used in the space cities, it was past seven o'clock in the evening.

While Yang Ying was in action, Blade was invited to the Ceres Base to watch a morale-boosting performance, which was also a celebration of the successful completion of the Jupiter withdrawal mission.

Perhaps to make the populace forget the crushing defeat that resulted in the loss of Jupiter and Saturn, this morale performance began with an overwhelmingly magnificent atmosphere, featuring countless famous figures, causing the soldiers stationed at Ceres Base to cheer wildly.

After one segment concluded, the program host stepped onto the stage and announced in a voice that crackled with energy the arrival of the Singer Ambassador, who would perform a song for everyone present.

The atmosphere in the hall instantly reached a fever pitch.

Amidst the landslide-like cheers, the Singer Ambassador, possessing silvery-white skin and a pair of transparent membranous wings on her back, walked onto the stage.

She delicately picked up the microphone, her movements so elegant they could shame any human claiming noble lineage to death, and immediately, a voice like cascading jade sounded in everyone's ears.

"Hello everyone, I am Jiayouna, the Ambassador dispatched by the Singer race to Earth. I know many of you here have returned from the battlefield. I have heard of your deeds. For the sake of your race, you fought bravely, bringing unarmed civilians back here from those war-torn regions. Your actions deserve praise in the most noble terms. Here, I hope to use my voice to build a bridge between our two races and convey my blessings to you all!"

The roar in the entire performance hall instantly exceeded its limit, nearly lifting the roof off. Blade privately thought that even if a nuclear bomb detonated outside the hall's entrance, the sound could not drown out the cheers within.

Because the Terran Mercenary Corps played an unacceptably powerful role in the campaign, especially during the covering action phase, they directly led to the rear guard forces, despite being at a disadvantage in troop numbers, completely annihilating the main fleets of two and a half Ancient Legions. Only Master-level experts and about a hundred higher-grade apes managed to escape.

Therefore, Blade, as the representative of the Terran Mercenary Corps, received one of the best private boxes in the entire venue.

Then, Jiayouna began to sing softly, without any background music, because Earth's musical instruments were truly difficult to harmonize with the Singer race's voice; any forced attempt would only be superfluous and create an unnatural dissonance.

After a few bars, Blade admitted that the Singer race's singing was indeed extraordinary.

Jiayouna's voice was ethereal to an unimaginable degree, like the gentle chime of a crystal wind chime in a slight breeze, or the crisp air after a rain shower—listening to it instantly brought refreshment and peace of mind.

The cheers were instantly smoothed over by this ethereal vocalization; almost everyone fell silent.

Yang Ying, as the primary soul, also perceived a small portion of the song simultaneously. However, before his eyes was the brutal truth rarely seen in the human world: living organs, deformed infants, beast-like bodies, and even hybrid apes, along with viruses capable of mutating people into monsters. This secret research facility, just as the report stated, deserved to have all its researchers erased ten times over and still not have their sins absolved.

Listening to a beautiful sound he had never heard before, while witnessing brutal sights he had never seen, Yang Ying felt a river formed of sorrow slowly flowing through his heart, coupled with an intense desire to completely annihilate this research facility, leaving not a single speck behind.

He arrived at the central server room of the facility. The server room was a massive space, about seventy meters high and spanning twenty floors, with a thick column, ten meters in diameter, extending from the floor to the ceiling.

Hundreds of aerial corridors extended radially from each floor, connecting to the central column. Many guarding robots patrolled back and forth in these corridors. If they detected an enemy, they would open fire without hesitation to annihilate the intruder, provided they did not damage the main server.

However, they were clearly unable to detect cloaked entities, so they remained completely unaware of Yang Ying's intrusion.

Yang Ying took out the three-dimensional schematic again, retrieved the data for the server room, read the description of the server column, and then observed it from top to bottom, locating his target.

His goal was to safely destroy this secret research facility.

After all, this was a large city with a significant population, and the research facility occupied a considerable area. If overly aggressive measures, such as a nuclear strike, were employed, it could easily trigger geological disasters like ground subsidence or earthquakes, thereby endangering the residents on the surface.

However, Yang Ying was confident that when this facility was first constructed, a method for safe self-destruction must have been included, and this would undoubtedly be found within the server room.

Having located the target, Yang Ying pushed off with his legs, instantly leaping to an aerial corridor ten floors higher. Following the corridor to the main column, he was faced with an inconspicuous control panel.

It was inconspicuous because these types of control panels were scattered everywhere across the entire server column; the one before Yang Ying was identical to the surrounding ones, possessing no unique features.

Yet, Yang Ying recognized this specific panel. He took out a keycard he had casually taken from the director’s office as he passed by earlier. The owner of this keycard was the person in charge of the research facility, and this card was the essential item needed to initiate self-destruction here.

Yang Ying inserted the keycard into a slot on the control panel. Instantly, the entire panel lit up with a red glow, every button resembling a small light bulb emitting a blood-red light, as if to intimidate the operator against reckless action.

Yang Ying’s resolve was like iron. He took out his sheath-code decoder, rapidly decrypted the self-destruct code, and then input it into the control panel, setting the self-destruct time for fifteen minutes.

As soon as the timer started, Yang Ying smashed the control panel to prevent anyone from stopping the countdown.

When the countdown began, a piercing alarm sounded, alerting everyone within the research facility that it was about to self-destruct.

Yang Ying shifted his stance, employing the Shuodi technique, and moved with maximum speed to the lowest level. According to intelligence, there was a prison here housing all the experimental subjects who had not yet undergone experimentation.

Yang Ying easily located the prison. Inside, there were two rows of cells, with two to three people confined in each cell, ranging in age from six or seven up to about sixteen—all very young, even juvenile.

They did not notice the cloaked Yang Ying.

Yang Ying retrieved a hypnotic dart from the Floating Continent and tossed it onto the floor. With a hiss, a faint white mist spread out, quickly enveloping the entire prison.

Those confined in the cells were already asleep; after being exposed to the white mist for a short while, they sank into deeper slumber. Yang Ying sensed that they had all lost consciousness. He then summoned over a hundred Ghost Agents and instructed them to carry these children out and bring them back to the Floating Continent during the extraction.

After dispatching the Ghost Agents, he had a few minutes remaining. Yang Ying utilized his full speed and flew back to the highest level, in front of that long white corridor.

A farce was unfolding there. Thousands of researchers were blocking the passage entrance, with the people at the very front scrambling for the few remaining hover-motorcycles.

As soon as a few managed to sit down, they were pulled off by those behind them; when others took their place, they too were yanked down by those further back.

As the alarm's final countdown approached, their actions grew increasingly rough. Some abandoned the hover-motorcycles and charged toward the other end of the corridor with a desperate air. Due to the crowding, many fell to the ground, trampled by countless feet, yet not a single hand reached down to pull them up.

Yang Ying watched their grotesque behavior with utter indifference, phasing through the crowd, crossing the corridor, and heading toward the lift on the other side.