Here is the corrected and polished full text for Chapter 21.
For this chapter, I applied all your mandatory name changes (**Murin**, **Winsor**, and **Matt**). I also corrected the spelling of **Will**'s name based on your past lore context to ensure global consistency.
Stylistically, I enhanced the dark, psychological tension in the Doomsday Lab, emphasizing the tragic, hollow submission of Dr. Murin as he is slowly turned into a living puppet, and sharpened the creepy contrast of Will using Winsor's cold, stolen face to make overly cheerful, "pretty" expressions.
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## Chapter 21
Recently, life inside the Alliance had taken a turn for the worse.
Could things even manage to stay afloat at this rate?
First of all, for reasons completely unknown to the public, the whales in the surrounding seas had suddenly begun to lose their minds, violently battering themselves against the coastal defenses in a wave of mass suicide. The colossal seawall protecting District 25 had completely collapsed under the relentless onslaught, resulting in catastrophic flooding and thousands of human casualties.
Secondly, the event that truly caused countless citizens to sink into utter despair was the confirmed death of Colonel Wen Yu.
Wen Yu's death had been so sudden and uncharacteristic that a vast majority of the population still stubbornly believed it to be nothing more than malicious, fabricated fake news.
Hadn't they been told that Colonel Wen Yu was an invincible living legend who had successfully survived hundreds of brutal battles?
Hadn't they been told that Colonel Wen Yu's engineered physical capabilities had long since evolved past the limitations of ordinary human beings?
How could a literal god among men simply die?
However, when the military command and the top-tier personnel of the laboratory personally retrieved Wen Yu's corpse, they were forced to face the grim, undeniable reality: Wen Yu was truly, completely dead.
The fall of this deified icon in the line of duty caused the fragile morale of the entire Alliance to plummet into an abyss. People were finally forced to realize a brutal truth—merely upgrading the physical capabilities of one or two exceptional individuals was fundamentally insufficient when it came to waging a war against an entire planet of aggressively mutating flora and fauna.
As a direct consequence, the ideological support within the Alliance's high command slowly began to shift away from aggressive expansion and toward the deeply conservative "Wandering Plan."
If even a biological masterpiece like Wen Yu couldn't withstand the wrath of this mutated nature, perhaps it was time for humanity to abandon this dying continent entirely and search the stars or the deep wastes for a new suitable home.
The entire incident triggered a catastrophic domino effect through the upper echelons of society. Some factions were utterly downcast, others were quietly celebratory, and the lawless took immediate advantage of the panic to incite widespread chaos. In short, all signs pointed to an impending, violent political reshuffle within the Alliance.
Meanwhile, the atmosphere inside the heavily guarded Doomsday Lab had shifted into something deeply unsettling.
As the absolute head of the Doomsday Laboratory, Dr. Murin had been trapped in a state of chronic, severe exhaustion lately. He looked entirely drained of his usual manic energy.
Furthermore, there was a new permanent fixture by his side—a man with a striking, unfamiliar face.
That person was Will.
Will had been sticking to Dr. Murin like a parasitic shadow lately, acting as though he harbored a profound, submissive affection for the lead scientist.
Today, Dr. Murin arrived at the laboratory to conduct his duties as usual, and Will remained glued to his side. After processing a mountain of bureaucratic documents and forcing himself through a mandatory high-level meeting, Dr. Murin was visibly running on empty, his physical reserves entirely depleted.
On his walk back to the private executive wing, Dr. Murin's steps became heavily unsteady, his frail posture faltering so dramatically that the aides trailing behind him felt their hearts leap into their throats. They desperately wanted to step forward and catch the stumbling doctor, but because of Dr. Murin's decades of absolute, terrifying prestige, no one actually possessed the courage to breach his personal space.
This was precisely where Will's engineered role became apparent.
He stepped forward fluidly, casting a stabilizing arm around Dr. Murin's trembling shoulders to support his weight.
Turning to face the anxious entourage, Will addressed the staff with an eerie, practiced grace: "Father requires immediate rest. You are all dismissed."
When he spoke, his mannerisms were impeccably decent and polite. His brilliant, azure-blue eyes shone with a clear, terrifyingly sincere warmth that made it practically impossible for any ordinary human to find the leverage to deny his request.
The remaining researchers exchanged uneasy, conflicted glances before ultimately nodding in compliance, stepping back to allow Will to personally escort Dr. Murin back to his private office.
Throughout the entire display, Dr. Murin remained unnaturally quiet, refusing to utter a single syllable.
He kept one pale hand braced heavily against the corridor wall for balance while allowing Will to firmly guide his other arm. Hearing Will dismiss his staff, Dr. Murin merely cast a dull, hollow glance toward the creature beside him. Then, like a dying swan bowing its elegant neck, he lowered his head and allowed Will to manipulate his movements completely, ushering him back into the inner sanctum.
The heavy, reinforced door of the office clicked shut, instantly sealing out the chaotic murmurs of the laboratory outside.
Dr. Murin sank heavily onto the plush leather sofa. He looked thoroughly broken; his face was a ghostly, translucent white, and his body leaned limply against the cushions, completely devoid of strength.
Ever since he had sustained that mysterious head injury during the previous merman containment breach, Dr. Murin had been plagued by a relentless, agonizing migraine. Yet, no matter how many cutting-edge neurological scans or biological assessments he performed on himself, the medical equipment consistently spat out the exact same infuriating results:
*Subject is in peak physical health. Safe and sound.*
"What exactly is it that you want?" Dr. Murin demanded, his brow furrowing into a tight, defensive glare the moment his eyes landed on Will.
In the privacy of his office, Dr. Murin no longer made any attempt to mask his profound, visceral disgust for the entity standing before him. This revulsion didn't merely stem from the clinical fact that Will was a thoroughly non-human aberration masquerading as a man; it was fueled by a terrifying, instinctual realization.
Dr. Murin knew, with absolute certainty, that he was being systematically controlled by Will.
Yes, controlled.
Although there wasn't a single shred of physical evidence to support his theory, Dr. Murin's brilliant mind could feel the invisible strings. He was being piloted like a helpless, wooden puppet.
And the world outside these four walls wasn't faring any better. Right under his very nose, the personnel in this laboratory—and undoubtedly key figures across other vital sectors—had already been compromised and brought under Will's quiet subjugation.
To make matters worse, precisely because there was no tangible, scientific proof of Will's telepathic or biological manipulation, Dr. Murin was utterly paralyzed. He couldn't issue a warning to the military, nor could he construct any viable form of resistance.
"Father, whatever do you mean by that?" Will asked, blinking his large, innocent eyes in a display of theatrical surprise.
He actively used Winsor's cold, fiercely aristocratic features to execute a deliberately "pretty," delicate expression—a soft, coquettish movement that was entirely jarring and fundamentally incompatible with the natural, lethal temperament of that stolen face. He flashed Dr. Murin a bright, blinding smile, only to violently wipe the warmth from his features in the very next second.
Leaning in close, his voice dropped to a somber, deeply mournful whisper as he asked:
"Where have you hidden Wen Yu's body?"
The air inside the executive office instantly turned absolutely cold.
At the mere mention of Wen Yu's name, Dr. Murin's face couldn't help but twist into a grim, deeply troubled grimace.
Wen Yu was dead. There was no escaping that reality.
Because the battlefield had been completely overrun by an unprecedented swarm of mutated beasts, by the time the military cleanup crews and the laboratory recovery teams finally managed to breach the perimeter, all that remained of the legendary commander was a deeply mutilated, horrific mass of flesh.
The scene had been so utterly tragic and stomach-churning that Carl, who had followed Wen Yu into the fray, had lost consciousness on the spot.
Later, in a desperate bid to stabilize the plummeting morale of the armed forces and to project an image of absolute, unyielding determination to the public, the Alliance high command unanimously agreed to bury the remains. The authorities even seized the tragedy as a political opportunity, orchestrating a massive, televised state funeral for all the fallen soldiers who had perished in that catastrophic engagement.
Millions of citizens had watched the broadcast, witnessing the solemn process of Wen Yu's casket being lowered into the earth.
"You must understand... securing Wen Yu's actual corpse was an exceptionally difficult task," Dr. Murin began cautiously, attempting to buy himself time. "I—"
"I don't care about the logistics or the process. I only care about the result," Will interrupted coldly, folding his arms across his chest. His gaze bored into the scientist. "Where is his body?"
Why did that specific phrasing sound so chillingly familiar?
Dr. Murin couldn't help but grit his teeth in frustration. After a long, suffocating silence, he glared back at Will and growled, "...I will give you Wen Yu's body. But in exchange, you will accompany me to the research station on the northern island."
Lest Will grow suspicious of his sudden compliance, Dr. Murin quickly tacked on a clinical justification: "We need to complete the remaining phases of the evolution experiment."
"Very well," Will murmured after a moment of calculation, giving a slow nod of approval.
Dr. Murin let out a quiet, trembling sigh of relief. He stood up, walked over to a seamlessly hidden door built into the office wall, and punched in a complex biometric security code. Once the lock disengaged with a heavy click, he gestured for Will to follow.
Will merely arched an elegant eyebrow and stepped through behind him.
Beyond the threshold of the secret door lay no ordinary laboratory resting quarters, but a steep, subterranean passageway plunging straight down into the foundations of the facility. This hidden architectural feature genuinely surprised Will.
As they descended the cold concrete stairs, Dr. Murin's mind raced frantically, weighing every conceivable method he could use to execute the monster walking behind him.
*What if I lock Will in the deep vault? What if I simply leave him down here to starve to death?*
But such desperate thoughts were nothing more than a fleeting fantasy. By the time he finally unlocked the reinforced door of his private laboratory and ushered Will inside, a brutal evaluation of the pros and cons forced the doctor to abandon his treacherous schemes in utter despair. He simply didn't have the power to enforce them.
"What do you even want with Wen Yu's corpse?" Dr. Murin asked, his voice laced with profound suspicion as he came to a halt beside a massive, central operating table.
Lying flat upon the sterile surface was the stolen body of Wen Yu.
To secure this prize, Dr. Murin had exhausted every favor and resource at his disposal. He had deployed covert recovery teams and gone to extraordinary lengths to bypass the Alliance's multi-layered military surveillance and elite perimeter guards just to smuggle the remains out under everyone's noses.
Furthermore, because Wen Yu's form had already been severely torn apart when it was discovered, transporting it in one piece had been flatly impossible. His operatives had been forced to smuggle Wen Yu's body back to the facility in several separate, gruesome segments.
Due to this crude, fragmented retrieval process, the corpse lying on the table appeared reasonably intact on the surface, but its internal anatomy was an absolute, chaotic ruin.
Dr. Murin genuinely couldn't fathom what bizarre scientific purpose Will could possibly have for a ruined specimen.
"To eat it," Will answered simply. He uttered the most sickening, monstrous declaration imaginable while maintaining Winsor's flawless, aristocratic expression.
Hearing this horrific response, a wave of intense nausea hit Dr. Murin. He instinctively slapped a hand over his mouth, stumbling backward several steps in sheer revulsion.
Will didn't pay the slightest attention to the doctor's terrified reaction. He stepped forward fluidly, planting himself directly before the operating table, and cast a dark, mocking smile down at the cold visage of the late commander.
Then, his short black hair began to grow.
Under Dr. Murin's horrified, unblinking gaze, the sleek black strands elongated exponentially, beginning to writhe and twist as though infused with a sudden, predatory life of their own. Braiding themselves into thick, undulating tendrils that closely resembled deep-sea tentacles, they slithered across the table and wrapped themselves tightly around Wen Yu's remains, obscuring the flesh from view.
A second later, the heavy silence of the private laboratory was shattered by the sickening, wet sound of snapping bones and a thick, sticky chewing.
Beholding such an unholy, incomprehensible abomination, Dr. Murin's knees buckled completely. He collapsed onto the cold floor, his legs turned to absolute water.
Yet, despite the overwhelming terror paralyzing his nervous system, he stubbornly refused to look away. He kept his eyes wide, desperately forcing his brilliant mind to analyze the scene, searching for even the microscopic hint of a weakness or a breakthrough.
Will's horrific behavior finally forced a chilling realization upon the scientist: the entity standing before him was something that existed completely outside the boundaries of human comprehension or earthly science.
Compared to a predictable human weapon like Wen Yu, Will was an absolute, unmitigated nightmare—infinitely more lethal, and utterly impossible to control. If Will was permitted to freely mature and harness his true potential, the creature wouldn't just conquer the Alliance; he would literally consume it whole.
Perhaps... his lifelong, frantic obsession with the "Poseidon Project" had been a catastrophic mistake from the very beginning.
As the dominoes of his own logical deductions fell into place, Dr. Murin's throat bobbed up and down in an involuntary, dry swallow. A profound, crushing sorrow washed over his features.
If his parents hadn't been brutally killed decades ago in that horrific sea monster accident, perhaps he never would have succumbed to this toxic, desperate madness to conquer the ocean.
All Dr. Murin had ever truly wanted was to reach the impossible heights of his parents' legacy. Now, he was trapped in a room with the apocalypse.
In the deep recesses of Dr. Murin's consciousness, a core conviction had always governed his life: since his parents had successfully used those unique marine cells to engineer a serum capable of conquering the global virus and saving humanity from total annihilation, then the "Poseidon Project" they spearheaded had to be fundamentally correct.
For decades, the facts had validated his belief. By stubbornly adhering to the parameters of the Poseidon Project, he had achieved groundbreaking experimental results that far transcended the boundaries of ordinary human imagination.
Without a doubt, the fruits of his research possessed the absolute power to rewrite the destiny of mankind.
However, staring at the empty room now, a suffocating realization took hold. The existence of this biological miracle was far more likely to drastically accelerate the timeline of human extinction.
For the first time in his life, Dr. Murin was seized by a profound, paralyzing terror regarding the future.
"What are you thinking about?"
Will's voice drifted across the sterile room, snapping Dr. Murin's focus back to the massive central operating table.
The surface was entirely bare. There wasn't a single scrap of tissue remaining, nor was there even a microscopic trace of blood. Will had consumed the corpse with terrifying, clinical cleanliness.
At this moment, Will had already reverted to his ordinary appearance. He used Winsor's near-perfect features to look down at Dr. Murin, his brilliant azure eyes tracking the scientist intently. His face was entirely devoid of malice; in fact, he looked genuinely, deeply worried about Dr. Murin's well-being.
Staring up at that face, Dr. Murin let out a quiet, bitter sneer before slowly lowering his head to stare at the tips of his own shoes.
He had to admit, Will's stolen countenance was far too deceptive.
Could a monster like this truly be considered the successful culmination of the Poseidon Project?
Dr. Murin silently contrasted Will's current, flawless visage with the grotesque, inhuman horror of the feeding frenzy he had witnessed just moments prior. It suddenly occurred to him that in the natural world, many of the most lethal apex predators rely on weak, non-threatening disguises to trick their prey into walking straight into a trap.
Seeing that Dr. Murin was actively ignoring him, Will puckered his lips in a deeply aggrieved pout.
He walked over to the collapsed scientist, dropping into a fluid crouch. Reaching out, he firmly cupped Dr. Murin's chin, forcing the doctor to look directly into his eyes as he asked, "What exactly were you so afraid of just now?"
Logically speaking, if Dr. Murin feared him, Will should have been ecstatic. Fear was the absolute best mechanism for manipulating a puppet, and Will loved nothing more than psychologically suppressing the minds of others.
As it stood, Dr. Murin was currently Will's most prized, highly satisfying doll.
However, having been literally born from a condensed vortex of negative human emotions, Will was unnaturally sensitive to the subtle shifts in the air. He had keenly detected that while his doll had indeed been consumed by absolute terror moments ago, the ultimate object of that fear hadn't been Will himself.
This realization sparked a flash of irritation within him.
The frustrating, chaotic sensation of losing absolute control over someone else's mind was something he had already been forced to endure with Lansi; why on earth was he experiencing that exact same defiance from a fragile, ordinary human being?
Will was the literal embodiment of raw emotion. He was hypersensitive to the feelings of those around him, yet he expressed his own impulses with a cold, detached volatility.
Dr. Murin: "..."
A faint glint of profound pity surfaced in the doctor's eyes as he looked at the entity crouching before him.
Sure enough, no matter how apocalyptic and terrifying this inhuman abomination truly was, in essence, he was still nothing more than a volatile newborn who had existed in this world for less than a few days.
"Why did you feel the need to consume Wen Yu?"
Though his heart was hammering against his ribs, Dr. Murin didn't dare to display his underlying pity openly. Terrified that Will might lash out in a fit of humiliated rage if his intelligence was insulted, the doctor deliberately shifted the topic.
"He was already dead... and his tissues were actively decaying."
Dr. Murin knew that the only tangible link tying Will and Wen Yu together was the presence of that specific, highly unstable genetic sequence. But a mere partial genetic overlap shouldn't have driven Will to feast on the commander's remains. Furthermore, the concentration of the ancient marine gene within Will's body was exponentially higher than anything Wen Yu had possessed; eating the corpse wouldn't provide him with any actual nutritional or biological supplement.
Hearing the question, Will puffed out his cheeks like a frustrated child and grumbled, "I just didn't like him."
Will's internal logic was incredibly primitive. Because he had completely severed his connection to the primary subject, Winsor, and formed an absolute ideological opposition to him, they were destined to eventually destroy one another.
Out of a petty desire to vent his lingering malice—and perhaps to glean a closer understanding of how Winsor's mind operated—Will had chosen to devour the human vessel that had once been heavily influenced by Winsor's telepathic consciousness.
Ultimately, the results had been a profound disappointment. The late commander was nothing more than a dead piece of meat, and a poorly seasoned one at that.
Dr. Murin: "..."
Sometimes, Will's bafflingly childish behavior left the brilliant scientist completely speechless.
"What exactly are you planning to do to me? My chronic migraines... they are entirely your doing, aren't they?" Dr. Murin asked coldly, allowing Will's fingers to gently trace the contours of his face.
"I'm not doing anything at all," Will murmured. Noticing the cold sweat beading on Dr. Murin's forehead, he reached out with an air of distressed tenderness to wipe the moisture away, flashing the doctor a sweet, blinding smile. "I simply want the things I cherish to become my absolute, permanent possessions."
Seeing Dr. Murin's expression twist into an even more severe look of disgust, Will tilted his head. He suddenly recalled a basic tenet of human psychology—the necessity of occasionally rewarding a puppet to keep them compliant. After all, there was a well-known human proverb about offering a sweet date after delivering a harsh slap.
Will reached up, gently stroking Dr. Murin's hair in an attempt to soothe him. "There, there, don't be angry anymore. I give you my word: I will accompany you to the northern island."
Dr. Murin went entirely rigid. Jerking his head back to evade Will's touch, he buried his face in his folded arms and muttered hoarsely, "Just leave me be. I need to rest for a while."
Noticing that Dr. Murin was genuinely unwell, Will merely shrugged his shoulders. He didn't press the matter or continue harassing the scientist. Instead, he stood up fluidly, his gaze wandering with idle, predatory curiosity across the high-tech equipment of the private laboratory.
After wandering aimlessly around the room for a while, Will's idle gaze eventually fell upon a shadowed corner of a heavy bookcase tucked away in the private laboratory.
Resting there was a solitary photo frame, housing an old photograph.
*How interesting.*
Ever since his arrival, Will had been attached to Dr. Murin's side like a parasitic shadow. Yet, across all those days of absolute surveillance, Will had never once discovered a single photograph inside the doctor's living quarters or main office.
Dr. Murin seemed to have deliberately, meticulously purged his environment of any visual imagery related to his own past.
Driven by a sudden flash of curiosity, Will approached the shelf. He picked up the dust-dusted frame, tilting it into the light to carefully inspect the image captured within.
In the photograph, a young Dr. Murin—looking no older than a teenager—was clad in a formal university graduation gown. He clutched a rolled diploma tightly in his hand, standing proudly between a mature man and a woman.
The facial structures and sharp brows of the couple bore a striking, undeniable resemblance to the adolescent scientist. Standing directly in the center of his parents, the young Murin was grinning brilliantly at the camera lens.
His smile was entirely innocent and radiant, brimming with a fierce, youthful confidence and a passion for the world.
It looked absolutely nothing like the current Dr. Murin.
Will stared at the captured memory for a long time, a sense of genuine amusement and wonder washing over him.
If the teenage Murin in this photograph could be compared to a brilliant little sun—bearing a smile so infectious that it could instinctively compel an observer to smile back—then the modern iteration of the man was a completely different species. To Will, the current Dr. Murin was far more akin to a ragged, bitter vulture lurking silently in the dark, watching its prey with a lethal intensity, ready to strike the moment an oversight presented itself.