Chapter 673: The Underground Stronghold

To keep it safe, Vivian threw a little bat down there again. This time, she allowed the little bat to fly down with a small piece of protective crystal. Looking at the little one flying unsteadily into the passage, Hao Ren worried that it would hit the wall, but luckily, it reached the bottom smoothly.

There was an interconnected tunnel world under the metal pipe, which structure was as complex as an ant’s nest. Vivian found the chimeras’ route based on the traces of blood on the pipe and she also discovered a lot of the monsters that died in the pipe. They died together with their upper bodies all burnt and the cause of the burning was a short circuit fault in their black electric vests. It seemed that the electromagnetic pulse bomb thrown by Hao Ren worked. Not only did it blow up the mechanical control parts of the metal pipe, it also killed a large number of monsters that were rushing out, and blocked some of their exits.

But Vivian’s little bat also found the sound of mechanical friction coming from certain branches of the pipeline, which might be gradually resuming operations. If the pipeline system had the ability to maintain and clean itself, then other monsters should soon find new exits and gush out.

Hao Ren decided to dash in before those pipeline systems resumed operation. And in order to give everyone enough time and to cause more trouble to the underground facility, he threw several EMP bombs into another pipeline.

After the bombs exploded in the depths of the underground, Hao Ren nodded and said, “It’s cleaned up, let’s go down. I go first.”

Uruk frowned. This was something he had never seen before. He instinctively felt that there was a nasty smell coming from the depths of the tunnel, but he did not hesitate and flinch. Anyway, a group of unclean fellows dug a hole deep in the depths of the werewolf’s sacred mountain, and he could not leave it alone. The wolf king looked around and then asked, “You all ready to go? I don’t have to go down there, do I?”

Uruk stared at the wolf king and asked, “How can you get cold feet now?”

The wolf king bared his teeth and said, “Look at my four claws! What do you want me to do with them?”

Uruk felt that what wolf king said was quite reasonable, and he had nothing to say.

“You and other wolves just guard outside,” Hao Ren told the Wolf King. “I give you leave a communicator, immediately inform us if anything happens, just speak to it. The other soldiers should reach here soon, let them come down. Someone will be waiting for them. Ophra, is that all right?”

Hao Ren realized that there was a real commander here when he finished speaking. Ophra did not mind at all. She waved her hand and said, “Let’s do it. I know, now you are familiar with this situation, and I don’t know what to start with if you let me do it.”

After Hao Ren hung the communicator on the wolf king’s neck and made sure everything was ready, he jumped into the deep, dark mechanical pipe at once.

The pipe sloped downward, but it still allowed them to walk and would not tumble down as long as they walked carefully. The pipe was more spacious than imagined and that allowed them to stand upright. It looked actually more like a cylindrical corridor than a pipe. Hao Ren was observing the metal wall around him while walking. The metal used was obviously not made by the technology of Holletta, and its fine structure was far beyond the technical level of this planet. The more he looked, the more he was startled: the existence of these high-tech things could only explain one problem, which was, what was hidden in the sacred mountain was not just the lair of The Disciples of Glory!

Did a cult formed by the locals need such a high-tech base?

“That brain monster has been lurking on this planet for at least thousands of years.” Vivian was also thinking about a similar question. “The underground base was probably built slowly by it, which means it has at least a certain amount of industrial equipment on hand.”

Hao Ren just nodded silently.

The situation was far beyond his speculation in the beginning. At first he thought that there was only one brain monster had come to this planet by coincidence and organized a group of locals to form the Cult of Origination, all of which probably had happened in recent years, but now the fact was in the opposite way: the brain monster had actually been dormant in this world for thousands of years. It built an astonishing underground base in this sacred mountain, and the Cult of Origination…

Might just be a small, insignificant group that came with the underground base.

“There is very strong interference here.” The voice of the data terminal awakened Hao Ren from his thought. “The source of interference is still somewhere deeper. But I don’t know if that’s the power of the base or anything else.”

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“Let’s go and have a look, there’s no more option anyway,” said Hao Ren.

Y’zaks had to stoop to walk here and it was really hard for him. Y’lisabet could not help saying, “Dad, why didn’t you just shrink the body a little bit smaller at the beginning?”

“When I transformed into human form for the first time, I met a Quibiss tribesman. I thought it was the standard height of human beings… Now I can’t change it even if I want to…”

Soon they reached the first fork that Vivian had ascertained. Lily pointed at the intersection and shouted, “Look over there!”

Several foul-smelling flesh monsters were lying dead in one of the pipes. Their black vests burst from the overload of the circuit, and their entire upper bodies were almost cooked. The surrounding walls also had traces of strong electric arc ablation. This was the masterpiece of the EMP bomb.

Hao Ren found them disgusting but still, he went and turned over one of the monster’s black vest. The thing had broken into pieces, a little flip would make it fall off. Hao Ren found that this thing consisted of layers of materials looking like flexible plastic. Its outer layer was inlaid with black crystals, and the inner layer was a large number of wires. There was also a shiny needle structure on the other side of the body. These needles were probably pricked directly into the muscles of the monster and they were the source of power and control of these flesh monsters.

“Biological and mechanical combination, and looks like an industrial product, mass-produced.” The data terminal quickly made a judgment. “It’s not the same ‘knight’ that we saw at the king’s banquet last time.”

“The question is, where did the ‘materials’ of these monsters come from?” Lily frowned and poked the arm of one of the chimeras with Flamejoy. “They seem to be pieced together by human organs, and many organs have been modified… It’s going to take a lot of bodies, right?”

Nangong Wuyue muttered cautiously, “Would it be those missing heretics?”

Hao Ren immediately remembered that he did not meet any heretic since he entered the mountain and felt that the possibility could not be ignored. “This is… very likely!”

“I can’t believe it,” said Ophra, frowning, “The devil has made his followers into such a monster?”

“The brain monster didn’t treat humans as his followers,” Hao Ren said, threw away the vest fragments, stood up, clapped his hands and continued, “the brain monster and the Firstborn have the same belief, that is, all life deserves to die, but the brain monster is smarter, it will try to let his prey kill each other first.”

Y’zaks stepped forward and waved his hand over a chimera, and saw a blurred, translucent thing in his hand. The thing struggled in his palm until it dissipated. Y’zaks shook his head and said, “But these heretics were transformed into monsters in a conscious and voluntary state.”

All of them fell silent. Ophra could only sigh and said, “What an incomprehensible belief.”

Ophra left two soldiers at the first fork, and then they continued to move forward. They avoided the pipeline, which could lead them to the ‘flesh monster factory’, and chose a direction with little smell of blood. As they went deeper, more lights appeared in the pipe, which seemed to prove that they were on the right path: they were approaching the deep part of the underground facility.

Just as the team arrived at another fork, a mechanical noise suddenly came from somewhere nearby.

Lily had sensitive ears. She immediately turned her pointed ear to the direction of the voice and said, “Over there!”

Y’zaks immediately straightened up and said, “Everybody—” Bang!

Y’lisabet looked up and found that her father’s head was stuck in the ceiling. She sighed and said, “So dad, why didn’t you just make yourself smaller?”

Y’zaks’s voice came from behind a layer of steel. “Stop it. Pull me out first…”