Hu Li, holding a chicken leg in each hand, walked out of the door with a grin.
Then she imdiately handed one of the chicken legs to Yu Sheng: "Savior, have a chicken leg!"
Hu Li, having eaten her fill, seed to be in quite a good mood.
Yu Sheng casually took the chicken leg and pointed to the "main excavation pit" not far away: "Sun’s team is digging down there; once you’re done eating, go and lend a hand."
"Oh."
Hu Li happily agreed, quickly gnawed clean the remaining half chicken leg, both at and bone, in her hand, walked forward a few steps, laid down, and in the blink of an eye transford into a gigantic Silver White Demon Fox, excitedly trotting to the edge of the excavation pit.
With the concerted effort of a bunch of construction workers, the main excavation pit had been expanded quite a bit, allowing even Hu Li’s massive form to jump in and dig—at the freshly uncovered pit bottom, one could see a large expanse of crystal structures exposed.
The inactive "Crystal Branches" crisscrossed in the rocks and soil like a massive root system, intertwined together; despite the workers having expanded the pit several tis in all directions and downward, they still hadn’t found the "source" of those crystalline branches, only the deeper they dug, the more they discovered these crystalline materials occupying a larger proportion. Moreover, further down seed to have an even sturdier "main trunk" structure than the surface layers.
Sun was a bit curious about Yu Sheng’s persistent and apparently very specific excavation directive: "What exactly are we digging for? Are we really going to excavate the entire crystalline structure underneath this crater?"
"No," Yu Sheng slowly shook his head, "I’m looking for its ’heart’."
Sun’s eyes imdiately changed: "...Heart?!"
"This is a massive entity; during a previous battle, I managed to understand its structure using... certain thods. There should be so large cavities under it containing its core parts—though I’m not sure whether it should be called a ’heart,’ as it’s not a typical ’creature,’ but the large crystal located in the central cavity is, without doubt, the most crucial part of its body."
Sun listened, bewildered, while Xu Jiali muttered thoughtfully: "This reminds of digging out a worm nest on Tarolnim-7 back then... Damn, even thinking about it now gives goosebumps."
Sitting on Yu Sheng’s shoulder, Erin, who had been unusually quiet (quite rare for her), suddenly chipped in: "How has such a big chunk of thing been buried here for a thousand years without anyone noticing it?"
Hearing Erin’s ponderings, Yu Sheng slightly furrowed his brows and gently nodded.
"Yes, I’m pondering over that question too—it feels a bit off."
His gaze swept around the surroundings.
Those eerie pale Crystal Clusters weren’t completely buried underground—when they arrived here, a considerable part of the clusters were exposed on the surface, and the "branch" structures underground were directly connected to the surface clusters; their surface parts weren’t buried deeply, even without digging down, so probing thods should be able to detect the enormous "foreign object" hidden beneath the crater.
A thousand years ago, Yun Qingzi perished here, an ancient strongman suddenly dying at the border wasn’t a minor affair in the Feiyu Star Domain. From the subsequent handling and records, Taixu Spirit Hub seed to have paid much attention to the matter back then and sent people to carry out the aftermath thoroughly—but in the intelligence provided by Xuan Che, there is no ntion of the crystalline structure buried beneath this battlefield ruin.
...Was it because these crystals were dormant, leading the personnel back then to deem them as so harmless "residual mineral"? Or was it because these crystals hadn’t erged from the surface at the ti, growing to such a scale only after a lengthy thousand-year period?
No matter which possibility, there’s an enormous inconsistency behind this matter.
Guard-3 is extrely remote and barren; it’s normal for the place to go unvisited for hundreds of years, but even if Taixu Spirit Hub neglected this desolate spot, what about Shuji nearby?
The place is right under Shuji’s nose—didn’t the Star Guardians from Shuji check here during their annual patrol of the neighboring subsidiary planets?
While Yu Sheng was deeply pondering, the construction workers at the main excavation pit retreated along with all their equipnt.
Because Hu Li’s digging movents were too intense, they couldn’t stay beside her...
The massive Nine-Tailed Demon Fox burrowed entirely into the expanded pit, digging quickly with her head lowered, paws tirelessly tossing dirt, rocks, and shattered crystals out of the pit, creating a chaotic scene within a radius of dozens of ters, making even the machinery’s efficiency pale in comparison...
But just when she was digging with enthusiasm, Yu Sheng suddenly heard a heavy breaking sound from the pit bottom.
He didn’t even have ti to react before seeing the fox girl, who was digging, suddenly sink downward, accompanied by an "ouch" sound as the gigantic demon fox vanished before everyone’s eyes in a blink.
"Oh no!"
Yu Sheng broke out in a cold sweat and sprinted towards the excavation pit imdiately.
At the bottom of the big pit, a hole had broken open—as if the structure that originally supported the "do" of an underground cavern sowhere had collapsed. Below the big hole was a dim, vast underground cavity, vaguely visible with many faintly glowing crystal materials covering its depths, and in the gloom, one could just make out a silver figure.
Erin lay on Yu Sheng’s shoulder, poking her head downward and shouting loudly: "Silly fox, are you okay down there?"
Hu Li’s voice quickly ca from below, sounding quite spirited: "I’m fine, but I got startled! It suddenly collapsed—Savior, it’s a very spacious place down here!"
Yu Sheng turned and exchanged a glance with Erin and Luna.
"Let’s go down and take a look," he turned his head and shouted down the pit, "throw a tail up!"
As soon as he finished speaking, a blaze of fire rose from below the pit, followed by a large silver tail flying up from within, hovering in front of Yu Sheng.
Sun, watching from the side, was dumbfounded, and Lingdang, who was following Xu Jiali, jumped back several steps upon seeing a fox tail fly up—this "Jipulo Girl," who usually seed uninterested in her surroundings, had her eyes wide open, showing great wariness and a hissing impulse at the fox tail spewing fire. After holding back for a while, she stamred out to Xu Jiali: "Boss, there’s, there’s sothing wicked about this nya!"
Xu Jiali’s expression was also a bit dazed, but having dealt with Yu Sheng many tis, she quickly reacted and reassured her "attendant": "It’s okay, things around Yu Sheng are basically quite strange, you’ll get used to it."
Yu Sheng, long accustod to people around him being startled by such trivial details, didn’t take it to heart. He simply hoisted Erin onto the fox tail and nodded to Sun: "The situation down there is unclear, so you all stay up here. A few of us will go down and check it out."
"I’ll go down with you," Xu Jiali stepped forward, "Lingdang and I have experience with this kind of task."
Yu Sheng thought for a mont: "That works... Do you need the tail?"
"No, no need," Xu Jiali quickly waved her hands repeatedly, "I have equipnt that allows short-range flying, and Lingdang can use her flying skill."
Yu Sheng nodded without saying much and rode the fox tail down toward the bottom of the pit. Beside him, Luna took a step forward and her body transford into a series of phantom images flickering between shadow and reality, following him.
Xu Jiali watched the scene with a subtle expression, turned and waved to Sun, and the thrusters of her power armor roared to life, leaping down from the edge of the pit.
Lingdang, staring wide-eyed at Yu Sheng’s bizarre sight of riding a fox tail, reacted a mont too late, quickly catching up: "Boss, wait up nya!"
Before she finished speaking, the chanical ball in her hand floated up from her grip, and she herself floated lightly into the air, quickly catching up with Xu Jiali’s figure.
The group soon passed through the large hole that Hu Li had dug out.
The surroundings gradually darkened, and after so ti as their vision adjusted, Yu Sheng began to see the astonishing structure below—he first saw a giant junction point, like an "intersection," where vast underground spaces connected to nurous cave entrances leading to other areas. Throughout the entire underground structure, large and small crystals could be seen everywhere, whether like crystal clusters in rock crevices or intricate network structures like enormous roots, or columns supporting the entire cavern...
The crystals were everywhere, like bones, flesh, and organs, filling this boundless underground world.
The fox tail slowly descended into the center of this "Crystal Cave," and Yu Sheng saw Hu Li, who had fallen earlier.
She had already returned to her human form, sitting on a large rock, holding a new drumstick in her hand, nibbling while waiting for Yu Sheng, looking quite at ease.
"Savior!" Seeing Yu Sheng co down, Hu Li happily ca up to greet him.
Yu Sheng cheerfully ruffled the fox’s head, confird she was okay, and then focused on the surroundings.
Crystals of various forms everywhere instinctively made him frown.
Erin, sitting on his shoulder, noticeably shrank her body, and Yu Sheng could even feel the little puppet tense all over.
"The atmosphere in this place... makes uncomfortable," Erin mumbled, "It feels like we’re inside sothing’s corpse, with a sense of... ’stench.’"
Yu Sheng said nothing, rely heightened his alertness, while using the faint connection in his heart to search for the core structure of this crystal-forged underground labyrinth.
He squinted his eyes slightly.
The vast and complex crystal world flickered through his mind like dimly glowing skeletons in the dark.
"This way."
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