It is extremely cold all year round, and the underground soil is frozen hard.
He Kun carefully descended along the climbing rope - after his persuasion of Gu Qiongsheng and the others failed, he insisted on taking the lead, so that even if there was danger below, Gu Qiongsheng behind him would be safer.
Gu Qiongsheng couldn't persuade him, so he had to follow the young soldier closely, holding the healing spell in his hands and staying alert at all times.
The climbing rope swung back and forth, and the soles of my boots rubbed against the rock wall, making a rustling sound.
After the events of the previous college league, Wei Lan speculated that the candidates' mental fluctuations had stimulated the Zerg, affecting their awakening and hatching speed. Therefore, during this dive, Gu Qiongsheng specifically requested that everyone use ordinary equipment as much as possible and avoid releasing mental energy.
They dived nearly ten meters and finally stepped on a stone platform.
Not far away was the blue mineral that Gu Qiongsheng vaguely saw in the residual light of the burning stick. She held her breath, approached carefully, and turned on the flashlight.
In the dim environment, the deep blue ore emits a faint cold light.
It looks like a swollen abscess or a stone tumor in the earth's veins, bulging outwards abruptly, highlighting its strong presence.
"What the hell is this?"
He Kun looked at it in surprise and hesitantly stretched out his hand, wanting to touch it.
If we ignore the wary looks of Gu Qiongsheng and the others, to be fair, He Kun thinks the ore in front of him is very beautiful.
The deep color and the fluorescent flickering reminded him of his hometown which he had not returned to for a long time, and the starry sky and melodious cicadas in early summer there.
What's even more peculiar is that even though he has restrained his mental power, he can still faintly feel a slight fluctuation in front of this ore.
It was as if the ore in front of him was a living thing.
He Kun's fingertips were about to touch the ore when Gu Qiongsheng suddenly grabbed his hand and said, "Don't move!"
She had confirmed that the ore in front of her was exactly the same one she had seen on the planet Weilun, but it was larger and had a richer breath of life.
The overwhelming and overwhelming feeling of fluctuation made Gu Qiongsheng breathe rapidly and alarm bells rang in his heart.
What appeared on the planet Weilun were larvae.
So what about this one in front of you?
Could such a strong fluctuation of vitality be the result of a Zerg that has fully grown and is about to hatch normally?
Gu Qiongsheng grabbed the flashlight and scanned it a few more times deeper into the cave.
The scene in front of her made her shoulders stiffen slightly, and a chill instantly spread up her back.
——Under the faint light, the depths of the cave are densely packed with azure life minerals!
The dark blue surface refracted faint light under the flashlight, and the fluorescent light flowed like dense fireflies, making Gu Qiongsheng's scalp tingle.
Zhou Qing next to her couldn't hold on any longer and came over to hold her hand.
"Sister Qiongsheng," the girl's voice trembled slightly, "all these, so many, are they?"
Gu Qiongsheng nodded with difficulty.
This is not Yalan Star at all, it's clearly a bug nest!
It was so strange. Gu Qiongsheng retreated cautiously, leaned close to He Kun's ear and whispered in a low voice: "Brother Kun, in which year was Yalan Star recaptured?"
"How many years have you been on Yalan? In all these years, haven't you noticed any strange changes?"
Her voice was so soft, even her breathing was gentle, as if she was afraid that the faint wind would wake the ore in front of her.
Although He Kun was puzzled, he still replied quietly, "It's been seven years since the recapture. I came here four years ago. In these years... there haven't been any strange changes. Does the temperature getting lower count?"
Gu Qiongsheng's mind moved slightly.
She had a vague idea in her mind, but it was still just a rough outline.
"What about the migration of snow beasts?" Gu Qiongsheng's breathing quickened. "Are they also increasingly converging towards the ground?"
He Kun pondered for a moment and nodded: "That's right."
"Snow beasts were rarely seen before; they lived deep underground. But in recent years, they've been seen more and more frequently. Now that you mention it, it seems to be true. They've been spreading toward the surface..."
Gu Qiongsheng's voice was slightly cold. "Because the underground space is constantly being occupied, the range in which they can move is getting smaller and smaller, so they gradually move from underground to the surface."
"Wild animals have a keener sense of smell than humans. This time, too, they sensed the impending danger early, which is why they left their gathering place en masse."
He Kun frowned: "But when we were on patrol before, we accidentally entered caves and rock caves, and we never saw this thing."
"That's because these things are constantly growing," Gu Qiongsheng explained. "They might have been very small at first, buried deep underground, and no one could find them."
"But as they continue to absorb energy, they gradually grow and expand... They may even undergo a metamorphosis similar to a pupa or tadpole, where their size changes significantly in a short period of time. That's why there's no trace of them before, but once you discover them, they've already exploded."
He Kun was horrified.
He could hear that from Gu Qiongsheng's description, the blue mineral in front of him was indeed a kind of life.
But what exactly is this?
Why does it appear deep underground on Yalan Star, and how does it absorb energy and achieve individual growth?
Gu Qiongsheng saw He Kun's doubts.
She lowered her head and uttered a few words in a very low voice.
"These are all... Zerg."
Zerg?!
There are Zerg on the planet Yalan?
He Kun's whole body froze. He stood there in a daze, his eyes subconsciously shifting to his right hand that was holding onto the rock beside him.
He immediately retracted his hand as if scalded, and stood stiffly in the middle of the ground, not daring to touch any rock again.
What happened on Weilun Star is confidential. Wei Lan and his Starry Sky Research Institute are working overtime to study the secrets of life minerals, so this matter has not been announced to the entire network, and He Kun is also unaware of it.
He was just extremely shocked and worried.
——If what Gu Qiongsheng said is true, and all these are Zerg, how can the thirty or so soldiers stationed on Yalan Star be enough?
And this was only the area scanned by the flashlight, not the distant depths of the earth, where who knows how many life-giving minerals were hidden, and how many insect eggs were greedily absorbing energy, waiting for the day of hatching.
And they don't know the exact time of hatching.
It could be next year, or it could be the next second.
"...Let's leave immediately!" He Kun suddenly grabbed Gu Qiongsheng, his expression extremely serious. "Go back to the base and spread the news. You all get on the spaceship and leave immediately!"
Gu Qiongsheng was pulled by him and his feet became unstable. He supported his right hand on the stone wall and his fingertips accidentally brushed against the dark blue ore.
The long-lost system prompt sound suddenly rang in my ears:
[Large energy mineral detected, should we collect it?]
…
Gu Qiongsheng remembered very clearly that there was no such life skill collection in the original game.
She was stunned for a moment, and after thinking carefully for a long time, she finally remembered - this was probably a variation of the game's idle dispatch system.
In order to attract players to log in regularly and to prevent many game characters drawn by players from being kept in the bottom of the box, many mobile games come with infrastructure and dispatch systems, allowing many game characters to perform nominal "collection" and "processing" while players are offline, generating a small amount of experience and probabilistically producing game props, even krypton gold props.
Of course, the probability of producing krypton gold props is less than 1%.
But as long as it's free, there will be players who enjoy it. Even though many players look down on the small profits brought by idle dispatch, there are still many who set alarms and log in on time every day to "collect the harvest."
For them, this is part of the fun of the game.
Gu Qiongsheng never expected that the life ore that now envelops the Zerg would be recognized by the system as a "collectible" energy mineral.
Perhaps it’s because the Zerg in front of us haven’t hatched yet, so between life and ore, we are more inclined towards ore?
After all, her innate vision cannot detect unhatched Zerg. Perhaps to the system, these things in front of her are indeed soulless.
No matter what, the system prompts that I’m home, I have to give it a try!
Gu Qiongsheng whispered to He Kun, "Wait a moment," and then touched the ore with his right hand, took a deep breath, and said silently in his heart: "Collect."
[Beep, entering collection and dispatch mode...]
[Please note that during the collection and dispatch period, the characters cannot be retrieved or moved, otherwise the collection will be terminated.]
Gu Qiongsheng was stunned for a moment.
Then she felt as if her whole body was fixed by something. She could only stand there motionless, keeping her right hand raised.
Fortunately, my lips can still move and I can still speak.
"Brother Kun, wait a moment," Gu Qiongsheng called out to the anxious He Kun and whispered, "I have a way that might be able to get rid of these bugs..."
As she spoke, a mysterious energy gathered silently and flowed into her palm without a sound.
It is huge, hot, and contains surging life energy, like a blazing flame or boiling magma, submerging everything.
Suddenly, Gu Qiongsheng understood something.
——The energy that these Zerg rely on for growth and hatching actually comes from the center of the earth.
That's why every time they invade a planet, when they leave it's as if they've hollowed out the entire planet; that's why the temperature on Yalan gets lower year by year; that's why the Zerg always appear underground, suddenly emerging from deep in the cracks of the earth.
They need extremely huge amounts of energy to hatch more Zerg warriors, and on a planet, what energy is hotter and more surging than the earth's core?
This is the Zerg's way of fighting to support war - invading a planet, killing all life, plundering the core energy, hatching more Zerg, and then abandoning the planet that has lost everything and become useless, and turning to conquer the next star.
It truly is worthy of being called the "locust" in the universe.
Gu Qiongsheng became more and more frightened.
She held her breath, maintaining an unchanged posture, allowing the system to absorb the huge amount of energy in front of it.
Previously, there were only a few scattered insects on Weilun Star. Perhaps the system looked down on them, or perhaps the system judged that they did not meet the definition of a "mining area", so no prompt popped up.
But at this moment, Gu Qiongsheng truly felt the power of the system - massive amounts of energy flowed in continuously with her palm as the fulcrum, flowing through her body like a tide, and then rushed to a certain place in her mind.
It was as if a gap had opened in the void, and something opened its mouth greedily, madly absorbing energy.
These energies circulated within Gu Qiongsheng's body, using her as a transit point, leaving only a tiny trace. But even this trace, transformed into system prompts, continued to pop up in front of Gu Qiongsheng:
[Dispatching... Gaining Experience +8]
[Dispatching... Gaining Experience +10]
[Dispatching... Gaining Experience +6]
【……】
Every 3 seconds, Gu Qiongsheng will receive a reminder of his experience gain.
Although the number is small, the advantage is that it lasts.
With Zhou Qing and He Kun guarding her, Gu Qiongsheng had no worries, even though she couldn't move. She just had to suck, suck hard, until she completely absorbed all the "locusts" that brought only destruction and death!
He Kun actually didn't understand what Gu Qiongsheng was doing.
He was extremely anxious, and every minute and every second he stayed underground was extremely tormenting.
But along the way, he could feel Gu Qiongsheng's cautious character. Since she said there was a way, there probably was a way.
Although He Kun racked his brains but couldn't figure out how a thin girl could deal with the huge number of insect eggs in front of her?
He waited anxiously and wanted to speak several times, but when the words came to his lips, he swallowed them back.
After a while, just when He Kun's patience had reached its limit, Zhou Qing suddenly uttered a soft "Huh?"
The two were surprised to find that the fluorescence on the dark blue ore in front of them was gradually dimming, as if covered by a gray curtain.
The breath of life was fading, and the mental fluctuations that made them restless and uneasy were like a flood that had been released. After it flowed away, only an empty shell was left.
Maybe it was an illusion, but He Kun and Zhou Qing even vaguely heard the dying cries of the Zerg cubs.
“Crack.”
"Crack..."
Something was struggling in the rock, trying to break open the shell, but it hit too hard, and He Kun faintly heard the sound of the rock cracking.
“Crack, crack!”
More than one bug was struggling.
The entire stone wall in front of him began to tremble slightly, and the countless protrusions on the ore shook and undulated, which was creepy to look at!
Gu Qiongsheng was also secretly shocked.
The risk of doing this is greater than she imagined. The Zerg are not dead creatures and will not stupidly allow her to take away their life energy.
Her actions would disturb the hatching Zerg, activating them to recover from hibernation faster. Now she was racing against time with the Zerg to see whether she could absorb faster or the Zerg could recover faster!
Realizing the seriousness of the problem, Gu Qiongsheng held his breath and focused his attention more.
She didn't dare to interrupt the system's "collection" immediately. After all, some Zerg had already awakened. If she stopped, those insects would most likely break out of their shells immediately and surround them deep underground.
This is a race for life.
She must win!
…
The mountains are vast and the caves are deep.
The underground passage was also crooked, as if it had been dug out by large earthworms secretly. If it weren't for the cold weather that froze the mud and sand solid, such a passage would be almost impossible to walk through.
Grasping chisels and ropes, the six pirates struggled to descend into the tunnel. Dark and silent, even the sound of wind and snow gradually faded away. Deep underground, only the muffled, rapid breathing and footsteps of a few people could be heard.
"...Fuck," someone cursed softly, "It's really tiring."
"How far is it?"
"What's hidden here?"
The third brother, who was walking in front, turned around and said cheerfully, "Don't worry, it shouldn't be far away—right, sixth brother?"
The young man responded muffledly from behind.
His voice was a little low, as if mixed with moisture, and mixed with the cold air on the ground, it reminded people of wet, muddy sand.
"This underground is quite beautiful," the third brother said, shining a flashlight on both sides, admiringly, "Look, aren't these stones beautiful?"
The dark blue rocks, shimmering with fluorescence, look like a dream in the dark underground.
This really suited Lao Wu's aesthetic taste, so she sighed with emotion and gently stroked the rock with her slender fingers. "It's quite beautiful. What kind of mine is this?"
"I've never seen one before. It's probably a rare species. If we have time, we can dig some up and take them away. Maybe we can even sell them for a good price."
As she spoke, she raised her hand and grabbed it. Her mental power condensed into a blade in her palm and was about to stab it at the dark blue ore.
“Swish!”
A hand suddenly reached out from behind and grabbed her wrist.
Lao Wu turned around in surprise.
The young man's figure was shrouded in darkness, the flashlight only illuminating his slightly pointed jaw. His face was blurred in the shadows, only his eyes were gleaming, with a faint blue light flashing in the bottom of his eyes.
In the pitch-black cave, it looked particularly terrifying.
Lao Wu was startled and subconsciously retracted his hand: "What, what are you doing?"
She was a little frightened - at that moment, when she met the young man's cold eyes, she felt like she was being stared at by a monster, whose gaze was cold and inorganic.
However, after letting go of her hand, Lao Liu took half a step back, and the feeling of oppression dissipated.
"Don't touch it."
His voice was soft and gentle, "This is very deep underground, and the geology may not be as solid as we think. If the support points are broken, I'm afraid the tunnel will collapse and bury us all."
When speaking, the young man was as shy and timid as usual, and after letting go, he even smiled embarrassedly at Lao Wu.
Lao Wu's heart palpitations gradually subsided.
She rubbed her wrist, feeling embarrassed and annoyed, and muttered casually: "I know, do you still need me to tell you?"
Just at this moment, the boss's rough voice came from the front.
"Hurry up!" he shouted, "There's something up ahead, that should be it!"
Hearing that they had arrived at their destination, the group immediately became alert, quickened their pace, and quickly caught up with the boss.
There was indeed something ahead.
It was a smooth stone platform, which looked out of place in the rocky cave. There was an obvious protrusion in the center of the platform. When the thieves got closer, they found that it was a sharp stone thorn.
The eldest brother walked around the stone platform several times, then stepped on the edge of the stone spike and twisted it hard.
The stone thorns did not move at all.
"What is this?" He was suspicious and confused. "Is there a mechanism?"
The eldest brother turned around and shouted to the back, "Sixth Brother, didn't the sponsor tell us how to open it?"
The young man hurried forward and whispered, "Speaking of which, the activation method is actually very simple. Just—"
"Sizzle!"
The boss suddenly felt a sharp pain in his chest.
Then came a chilly wind that blew across my chest.
He lowered his head in surprise and saw a slender, shell-like limb piercing his chest.
The man raised his head in disbelief, his eyes following the direction of the long limb. At the end of the limb was the young man's gentle smile. There was a hint of apology in his expression, but his voice was cold, like a cold wind piercing through the bloody hole in his chest.
"I'm sorry, boss," the young man whispered, "I need your blood and mental strength to activate the mechanism."
The author has something to say:
This chapter is quite long!
And today there will be an extra chapter of Schrödinger qwq The interview announcement will be released in the afternoon. If I succeed in making a comeback, I will work hard on another chapter to fulfill my previous promise!
But if there is, it will be in the evening. The time is not certain yet. Woohoo, my manuscripts are all gone. It depends on when I finish writing~
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