401: Chapter 398 Beneath the Ice

Lu Jianchuan glanced down.

Below was a bottomless abyss of darkness. As the light shone down, the beam was quickly swallowed, making it impossible to see the bottom. This hole was too vast—so large that he and Cynthia, standing on this ice wall, looked like two insects clinging to a wall. They had fallen from the edge and were now dozens of meters below where they had tumbled from, with no telling how much deeper it went.

The buzzing grew louder and louder.

It wasn't just a few; there were dozens. Those Mosquitoes with tentacled mouthparts were gathering from all directions, circling in the center of the cavern, their numbers increasing. They hovered in the darkness, their tentacles vibrating slightly as if they were tracking a target.

Lu Jianchuan gritted his teeth.

"Damn," he whispered, "it would be great if Shen Mingyuan were here right now. His dual pistols would definitely be able to hit them."

Cynthia stood beside him, one hand gripping a branch embedded in the ice wall to steady herself. Hearing this, she tilted her head to look at him.

"Speaking of which," she said in a flat tone, as if chatting about the weather, "how has Shen Mingyuan's marksmanship been lately? When I watched him fight before, most of the time he either missed or was blocked."

Lu Jianchuan froze for a moment, then sighed.

"What else can I say? It's definitely because the power is too great—anything that could hit is dodged, and the low-power shots that do hit can't break through their defense. Otherwise, if a high-power shot hits, it's hard for the author to keep writing."

He paused.

"His marksmanship is truly at rock bottom."

After listening, Cynthia fell silent for a second, then let out a soft sigh.

"Sigh."

Both fell silent at the same time, staring at the darkness below and the increasingly dense swarm of circling Mosquitoes.

"We need to move down quickly," Lu Jianchuan said.

But the bottom was nowhere in sight, and the ice wall was so smooth there was almost nowhere to step. How were they supposed to move?

Cynthia didn't speak. She raised her other hand—palm upward—and several fine cracks suddenly appeared on the surface of her skin. Slender branches with fresh buds sprouted from within. Those branches grew rapidly in her hand, intertwining and hardening, and in the blink of an eye, they transformed into a rough but extremely sharp Wooden Spike.

She gripped the Wooden Spike and thrust it forcefully into the ice surface beneath her feet.

Chii—!

The Wooden Spike sank deep into the ice, as steady as a driven nail. Grabbing the spike, she swung her body downward and began to slide down the ice wall. The Wooden Spike carved a thin line into the ice, her speed perfectly controlled—fast, yet not out of control.

Lu Jianchuan took one look and immediately reacted.

He switched back to his Normal Form. His silver-white armor became more streamlined. He tensed his five fingers and thrust them hard into the ice—his fingertips pierced the ice layer, and he too began to slide down the ice wall.

One after the other, the two descended rapidly down the massive ice wall.

The mosquito swarm below spotted them. Several larger ones flapped their wings and rushed up, tentacles spread wide, attempting to intercept them.

Cynthia gripped the Wooden Spike with one hand to steady herself and raised the other—her palm split open again, and several slender branches shot out, accurately piercing the bodies of those Mosquitoes in mid-air. The branches grew frantically the moment they entered, branching out and entangling, wrapping the Mosquitoes into wooden cocoons that plunged into the depths of the darkness.

More Mosquitoes rushed up from below.

Cynthia didn't stop. She slid down while gripping the Wooden Spike with one hand, her other hand constantly firing new branches like a mobile anti-aircraft turret. Those branches wove into a net in the air, blocking wave after wave of Mosquitoes in mid-flight.

Lu Jianchuan was not far above her, fingers dug into the ice as he slid down quickly. He watched the Mosquitoes being pierced by the branches, then looked at Cynthia's back as she continuously fired them, remaining silent.

The two continued downward.

The ice wall grew deeper and darker; the light from above had long since vanished. Only the boundless darkness below awaited them.

"Damn," Lu Jianchuan looked up while sliding, "are there really this many Mosquitoes?"

There were more and more.

It wasn't just the ones chasing them from above. There were some at the bottom too—in the darkness, more buzzing sounds were approaching. Those tentacle-like mouthparts glowed with a faint blue light in the gloom, like a swarm of swimming fireflies.

Lu Jianchuan's gaze swept across the area below and suddenly froze.

In the bottomless darkness, there was something.

It wasn't part of the ice wall; it was a protruding, regularly shaped... corner. A giant metal corner pointed diagonally into the depths of the darkness, its surface reflecting the faint light from Cynthia's passing branches.

"Cynthia, look, what is that?"

Cynthia followed his gaze, her pupils contracting slightly.

"Metal?"

"We'll know once we go over and take a look."

Lu Jianchuan switched forms. Dark red energy conduits lit up on the surface of his armor, and propulsion nozzles on his back and the back of his legs fired simultaneously. He grabbed Cynthia's arm, and the two of them dove diagonally, landing on that piece of metal.

A solid sensation came from beneath their feet. It was indeed metal. Cold and hard, not ice.

Lu Jianchuan crouched down and reached out to tap it.

Clang, clang, clang.

The sound was solid, echoing through the hollow ice cavern.

He pressed his palm against it to feel it—the armor was a part of his body, so the tactile sensation was clear. The texture was strange, unlike any metal he had ever encountered. It wasn't steel, aluminum alloy, or titanium. It had an... indescribable feeling of being 'alive,' yet it was definitely dead.

"This thing... doesn't look like something from Earth at all." He stood up. "At the very least, I've never touched this kind of metal in my life."

The buzzing overhead drew closer.

Cynthia looked up, casually flicking out several branches to wrap the nearest Mosquitoes into cocoons.

"Let's go, let's look further down."

The two leaped off and continued downward.

Lu Jianchuan stood on that giant metal finger.

Calling it 'standing' was an understatement; he and Cynthia were standing on the second joint of this finger, and there was more than enough space. The finger was slightly curved, and the protrusion of the joint was taller than a person. They stood in the hollow area like two ants perched on a mechanical behemoth.

He raised his head and looked up.

The wrist was far away. Further up was the arm, the shoulder, and that lowered, silent head. That head was so far from them that in the darkness it was just a blurry silhouette, like a mountain hanging over their heads.

"This thing..." he whispered, his voice carrying a shock he hadn't even noticed himself.

It was too big.

He looked down at the metal beneath his feet—dark silver with fine patterns on the surface, cold to the touch. That peculiar texture truly wasn't like anything on Earth. He stomped his foot; two clangs echoed far into the empty ice cavern.

Just then, the buzzing changed.

It was no longer the sparse, occasional sound of a few wings flapping. This time, it was an overwhelming roar surging from all directions—like a tide, like a storm, like something had been completely awakened.

Lu Jianchuan snapped his head up.

On the ice walls above, the originally smooth ice began to crack. Fissures spread from the inside out, and ice shards came showering down. At the center of the cracks, blue spots of light flickered.

Then the ice surface exploded.

One. Ten. A hundred.

Those Mosquitoes with tentacled mouthparts swarmed out from the ice, the sound of their wings merging into a deafening roar. They had been in a state of hibernation, sealed in the ice for who knows how many years. Now, they were awakened.

Intense hunger drove them.

They needed to find living things. The only living things here that weren't their own kind.

Blue points of light lit up densely in the darkness like an inverted sea of stars, surging toward Lu Jianchuan and Cynthia.

But not all the Mosquitoes rushed toward them.

A portion of them landed on the surrounding ice walls. They clung to the ice, their tentacle-like mouthparts opening and aiming deep into the ice at the creatures that had been preserved for countless millennia—

The tubes went in.

Those tubes were extremely thin and long, almost invisible under the light. They pierced through the ice and the frozen bodies like silent hypodermic needles, beginning to extract.

Inside the ice, the bodies of those ancient creatures withered at a speed visible to the naked eye. Moisture, fat, protein—everything that could be sucked away was being drained by those slender tubes.

Yet the outside of the ice remained perfectly intact.

Only the bloated abdomens of those Mosquitoes glowed faintly in the darkness.