Mou Xuan's mechanical knuckles made a crisp clicking sound on Shen Yao's belt, and the calcification pile under the two of them suddenly cracked into spider-web-like patterns.

The gnawing sound coming from the water pipe in the distance seemed like some kind of urging. The fragments of Chen Yao's ice mirror condensed into a tiny ice raft on the surface of the sewage, carrying the Sand of Time and drifting to the southeast.

"Replace the breathing valve with a three-stage filter element." Mou Xuan pulled open the front of his combat uniform, revealing a bronze timer embedded below his collarbone.

When Chen Yao's Ice Mirror Armor recondensed, the scattered sands of time suddenly hovered in mid-air, refracting the contents of the seven urgent messages into floating holographic projections.

When water quality inspector Hu rushed in with a portable spectrometer, he saw Engineer Qu hitting the alarm icon with a wrench. "This thing is noisier than my leaky water heater!" Half of the old radio antenna was exposed in the pocket of his overalls. "A substance similar to pepsin was detected in the rock samples on the southeast side, but our test kit... Hey!"

Chen Yao's ice spikes suddenly pierced through the puddle at his feet, freezing the melting rubber soles.

Mou Xuan's timer made a sound of gears meshing, and a translucent time projection appeared in front of the three people - it was the cross-section of the water pipeline that had been purified two hours ago.

"Reverse calibration." Mou Xuan's pupils glowed with metallic luster, and the water flow in the projection suddenly began to reverse.

Chen Yao's fingertips quickly traced the ice surface, marking the abnormal fluctuations in time reversal as scarlet spots of light.

When the sixth light spot lit up at the No. 3 fork, Engineer Qu's oily index finger suddenly twitched: "Here!

The titanium alloy lining that was replaced last week has a corrosion rate three times higher than the standard! "

As the inspection vehicle rolled over the icy asphalt road, Chen Yao was replacing the condenser tube for Mou Xuan's robotic arm.

Strange fluorescent green snowflakes were floating outside the car window, and when they fell on the bulletproof glass, they made a sound like nails scratching a blackboard.

Inspector Hu put his face on the sampling bottle and watched the sediment at the bottom of the bottle wriggling like a living thing: "This is not a normal pollutant at all..."

The rock formations on the southeast side of the reservoir appear to have psoriasis, with grayish-white mucus oozing out of every crack.

As soon as Mou Xuan's combat boots stepped onto the slime layer, the anti-slip pattern on the sole was corroded into a honeycomb shape.

Chen Yao immediately threw out an ice chain to wrap around his waist, but when she pulled back her strength, she heard the crisp sound of ice crystals shattering.

"The pH value is changing in real time!" Inspector Hu's spectrometer suddenly started smoking. He hurriedly pulled off his tie and wrapped it around the hot sensor. "It jumped from pH 2 to 9 in 13 seconds. This doesn't match any known chemical reaction..."

Engineer Qu suddenly snatched the tester and smashed open the casing with a wrench.

Five colored wires were held in his mouth, with the exposed circuit board directly attached to the surface of the mucus. "You want data, right?" he yelled incoherently, his slimy fingers leaving charred marks on the screen. "Damn it!

The dielectric constant fluctuation curve looks like a fucking electrocardiogram! "

The gears on the back of Mou Xuan's neck made a sharp friction sound, and three grains of time sand fell into the mucus.

Chen Yao's ice mirror armor instantly covered her entire body, and the mirror surface reflected observation images from seven different angles.

As the sand dissolved into golden vortices in the mucus, everyone saw that the cracks in the rock were slowly... shrinking.

"It's not secretions." Mou Xuan suddenly grabbed Chen Yao's wrist and stabbed the tip of her ice spike into the center of the vortex, "It's digestive fluid."

The ice crystals formed strange coral-like structures in the mucus, and each branch was wrapped with tiny metal fragments.

Engineer Qu poked the sample with a radio antenna, and rust-like fluff immediately grew on the tip of the antenna: "These debris... are the filter materials of the water purifier that was just replaced yesterday!"

Chen Yao suddenly turned around and threw out thirty-six ice mirrors, which formed a multi-faceted reflection tower above the reservoir.

The midday sunlight was focused into a beam of blazing white light, but it scattered into a rainbow the moment it penetrated the mucus layer.

The gears of Mou Xuan's timer were spinning frantically, recording the changes in the light path as jumping bronze runes.

When the seventh rune emerged, Inspector Hu suddenly pointed at his sampling bottle and screamed.

The sediment at the bottom of the bottle was swimming in the mucus, and tentacles as thin as hair stretched out of the bottle mouth and gently touched the bulging blue veins on the back of his hand.

"Close the lid!" Mou Xuan's mechanical arm ejected a micro spray gun, and the dark blue flame burned the tentacles to ashes.

Chen Yao's ice mirror array turned at the same time, forcibly twisting the scattered rainbow light into a spiral spear of light.

The mucus layer churned violently under the strong light, and light golden lines similar to a vascular network emerged.

Engineer Qu suddenly ripped open his work clothes, revealing a pocket watch-style Geiger counter pressed against his chest. "The radiation value hasn't changed, but..." His pupils suddenly dilated, and the glass of the dial reflected the strange pattern forming on the surface of the mucus - that was clearly the three-dimensional structure diagram of their alliance safe house.

Two rivets suddenly flew off the gear on the back of Mou Xuan's neck, and Chen Yao's ice mirror armor exploded.

In the falling ice crystals, everyone saw that the golden lines were reorganizing, gradually outlining a molecular structure that they had never seen before.

Two grains of time sand are suspended in the center of the structure, resonating strangely with the unknown substance in the slime.

(Continuation)

The moment the ice crystals fell into the mucus, there was a crisp sound like glass beads falling on a plate, and Mou Xuan's mechanical knuckles suddenly tightened.

Chen Yao staggered half a step, and the heel of her combat boots crushed a crystallizing coral-like structure - the branches wrapped in metal debris curled up like living things.

"Don't touch it!" Engineer Qu suddenly stuck an old radio on the surface of the mucus. The harsh noise of the electric current was mixed with a sound similar to grinding teeth.

Inspector Hu was hurriedly pouring baking soda into the sampling bottle, but suddenly a fist-sized bubble appeared at the mouth of the bottle, and a rainbow-colored oil film floated on the surface.

My dear, there is more to this chapter. Please click on the next page to continue reading. It’s even more exciting later!