Yang Zicang quickly closed the book, and only then did he feel better.
–This thing must be quite a valuable treasure.–
Though he couldn’t understand it, he was certain that this object contained precious knowledge from another world; otherwise, it wouldn’t have been crafted from such material.
Every single character was inlaid with silver wire, a testament to the immense effort the artisan had poured into it—especially the magic circle at the end, which was practically a miniature functional array recorded within the book using various materials, complete with a few small gems.
After stowing the book away, Yang Zicang turned his gaze toward a rusty little door on the wall.
He pushed it, and the tightly shut, rusted iron door creaked in protest. Fortunately, it didn’t harbor any traces of Chronos.
After some effort to break its lock, Yang Zicang pried off a cluster of faintly glowing magic crystals and, using their light as illumination, carefully entered the somewhat narrow passage.
The air was stifling. After walking for about ten minutes, he encountered another door ahead—but it stood wide open. Beyond it, in the pitch-black hall, an eerie wind stirred, gusting wave after wave against the young man’s face.
Yang Zicang hurried toward that door, but when he was still three or four steps away, a sudden sense of dread seized his heart.
He involuntarily paused, as if hearing faint, intermittent sobbing sounds.
It sounded like a woman’s voice, but… it was weak and feeble, yet it echoed unceasingly like an ancient presence.
Suddenly, an overwhelming sense of terror gripped him.
His scalp tingled, and without a moment’s hesitation, he whirled around and bolted back the way he came.
[Council Member No. 41 has marked for me a discarded mother host of the ‘Monster Bloodline’.]
[**Monster Host (Abandoned), Ability: Unknown. Discoverer: Yang Zicang. **]
[If I eliminate it, Council Member No. 41 will bestow upon me his primary bloodline sculpture.]
Bloodline? Yang Zicang was stunned for a moment, then felt a chilling presence creeping up from behind.
The sound seemed distant yet near; far away as if at the edge of the sky, yet near enough to whisper right into his ear!
Screw the bloodline, screw the host.
Yang Zicang ran like a madman.
[Council Member No. 41 expects me to engage the ‘host’ in battle.]
Thump, thump, thump.
The corridor seemed endless, the sound growing clearer and closer with each step until, finally, Yang Zicang felt as if a shadowy figure was beside him, fleeing in frantic haste.
{Dad?}
Beside his ear seemed to be the anxious breath of a tender maiden, yet it was a bone-chilling aura of dread.
{Are you taking me to see Father… Ask him, what is it he has made his daughter carry within her…}
{Why am I so cold… Why do the villagers fear me… Am I not the mother of the divine envoy… Truly, am I…}
{Why, when A-Lang merely touched me, did he die…}
Countless eerie voices echoed from left and right, and what terrified Yang Zicang was that he could actually understand her words.
{Why does it feel like an eternity has passed…}
{Father, after all these years, what are you still researching over there…}
Ahead, the sight of a door appeared, and the woman’s weak voice grew a little more animated, as if a long-awaited expectation was about to become reality.
Was that skeleton her father?
Yang Zicang gritted his teeth, abruptly burst forward out of the room, and turned back to close the door.
But in that instant, a chill surged through him as he discovered that the other side of this door was precisely the gloomy, sinister hall he had seen just moments ago.
The passage had vanished.
At this moment, the hall was flooded with faint, hazy blue light, and amidst it, suspended within silver-white iron chains plastered with talismanic runes, hung a figure utterly exhausted.
The clothes on this figure were tattered and worn, as if eroded by a thousand years of time.
Her belly was swelling, more exaggerated than a pregnancy at full term, the skin stretched thin as a cicada’s wing, with veins crisscrossing her skin like dark magic runes.
Within that translucent skin lay a curled-up figure, no larger than a child of ten or so, human-like in overall form, yet growing from its form was a crimson tail coiled around itself.
The moment Yang Zicang’s gaze fell upon it, the –person– curled up within the belly—its face buried—opened a single blood-red compound eye.
[I have been seen by the –Defender.-****]
Yang Zicang felt an instant surge of some deeper power from the halo on his chest.
An intense craving for violence and bloodlust flooded his brain like an addiction; his eyes burned, and his mind felt as though it might explode.
A faint trace of red light emanated from the ring on his chest.
Bang!
Yang Zicang mustered every ounce of strength and slammed the rusty iron door shut.
{Just let me through…}
The harrowing voice quickly faded away, and all the eerie, sinister presence vanished without a trace.
Yang Zicang gasped for air, panting heavily.
Only now did he realize how deceiving this seemingly fragile iron door was, capable of blocking out such a forbidding aura.
He wiped a handful of rust off the door with his hand, revealing fine gold threads embedded in it below. Continuing to wipe a few more times, he uncovered the complete pattern—a magic rune array.
Though it didn’t seem all that impressive at first glance, Yang Zicang knew in his heart that this array was no simple matter.
The moment he tried to memorize the pattern, a dizzy spell hit him so hard he nearly passed out.
{Brother Yang, are you okay?}
–I’m… still holding up…–
Yang Zicang turned his head away and said, –Now I finally get why those monsters were chasing me like mad—they were trying to stop me from getting here.–
Even that gap was probably deliberately cut open.
At this moment, Liang Xi also realized that the only reason he was still alive was that he hadn’t approached that half. Otherwise, facing those monsters, he wouldn’t have survived even a few seconds.
{That guy just now must have been something formidable.}
The young man murmured, a chill creeping into his gut.
After resting for a moment, Yang Zicang found a stone to wedge against the door.
He thought it over and, still uneasy, picked up a stray piece of scrap metal and laboriously inscribed a warning on a small stone slab:
—The woman on the other side of the door has incubated the –Monster Matrix– for at least centuries; she will contaminate the Moxel. Do not enter lightly!!
He hoped this would serve as a warning for those who came after.
Quad’s somewhat eerie telepathic voice rang out:
[Evaluation Committee Member No. 41 regrets my cowardly choice.]
What’s there to regret? That bastard just took a peek from inside a woman’s body, and my Moxel nearly underwent some strange changes.
[Evaluation Committee Member No. 41 initiates a sanction vote against me, counting down from ten minutes.]
Sanction? Yang Zicang suppressed the urge to curse this unknown existence.
With a nervous heart uncertain of the unknown punishment, he glanced at the ring on his chest—the red had faded, but traces of a faint orange glow now mingled with its original silvery-white sheen.
He couldn’t even begin to imagine what would become of him if he didn’t have Moxel in this world.
On the other side, Liang Xi’s heart thumped wildly.
His dream of earning Chronos here had shattered; he was purely there out of good luck. If he stayed any longer, he could die at any moment.
[Bro, what do we do? Do you have any other way out?]
Yang Zicang swept his gaze across the dimly lit room ahead.
–I think I sense the flow of wind. Let me check if there’s a path out through that pipe we came through.–
He glanced at the demon stones and asked, –What can these things be used for?–
–They can be used to make equipment. Also to build houses. Combined with the headquarters’ blueprints, it’s said that houses made from them make it harder for nightmares to spawn. As for other uses, I don’t know.–
As vague as what Yao Chiming said. It seems the application of this stuff isn’t something ordinary people can grasp. I don’t know the grade of this luminescent ore here, but at least there’s enough quantity to fill a large chest.
Yang Zicang snapped back to focus, raised the luminescent ore, and walked back the way he came.
This time he moved very slowly, taking one step at a time, then closing his eyes and pausing to sense the airflow around him for a moment. Before long, he actually managed to locate the direction from which this faint, elusive breeze was blowing.
–It’s here, isn’t it?–
The young man in the faint light raised the luminescent ore and looked up at a broken iron sheet up high, where there was a dark, gaping hole.
–That hole is too small, Brother Yang.–
Without Liang Xi needing to say it, Yang Zicang had already seen it clearly: a normal person simply couldn’t pass through that tiny hole.
–This is trouble. There are monsters ahead, and pursuers behind.–
He hadn’t brought any food or water because Yang Zicang had planned to come in first to test the monsters’ strength.
The density of monsters Liang Xi encountered had fooled him.
–You’ll have to eliminate them all to get back out, Brother Yang. You can do it, right?–
Liang said, full of anticipation.
[The voting for my sanction has concluded. Votes in favor: 5. Abstentions: 40. Result: Effective.]
–What? This passes just like that? And so quickly too, only three or four minutes.– Yang Zicang looked on in bewilderment.
Suddenly, the mental link that Liang Xi had been maintaining was severed.
The glow of the Moxel on his chest automatically expanded, dispersing into the surrounding air and vanishing.
Yang Zicang tensely waited, but after more than ten seconds, there was still no Invest or Syn-Link transmission from anyone.
This time, there was zero feedback or notification.
He couldn’t help thinking, what was going on? What exactly was this so-called sanction?
BOOM… RUMBLE…
An eerie noise came from where the rat monsters had gathered.
Yang Zicang nervously crept toward the tunnel entrance. One glance later, his hair stood on end.
When he had left, around seventy or eighty rat monsters had rushed this way. Now, their writhing, twisted bodies clogged every inch of that space.
However, as soon as Yang Zicang appeared, almost as if they possessed intelligence, they fell back in unison, hiding their forms out of sight.
–A commander?–
A hint of gravity darkened Yang Zicang’s gaze. Besides that thing earlier, a leader with intelligence lurked inside this monster nest.
But then? These monsters had no idea he could make attacks veer around corners.
Just as Liang said, this is indeed a good opportunity.
Based on the standard calculation of about a dozen Chronos for ordinary creatures and three to four decades of Chronos for the upright-standing ones that Liang Xi encountered, the underground space below holds at least a millennium’s worth of Chronos waiting to be harvested.
Yang Zicang hurled the faintly shimmering silver pebble in his hand downward.
Bang!
The stone traced an arc, darting straight into the pipe tunnel before slamming into an invisible barrier.
[Chronos Consumption: 500N.]
Yang Zicang’s heart tightened.
That pebble had just used five hundred amplified Chronos, yet it was entirely nullified.
Suddenly, Moxel’s telepathic voice rang out.
[Penalty Objective: Survive for fifteen minutes.]
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