met free Chapter 32: As long as I want to walk, the road is right beneath my feet.
Chapter 32: As long as I want to walk, the road is right beneath my feet.
Luo Lan lay on the familiar cave floor, and [Condensation] started spontaneously.
A chaotic aura surged from the air into every inch of muscle, and the parched cells swelled up again.
The damp, humid air unique to the underground palace rushed into the three lung lobes, and the [high-speed metabolism] began to rapidly absorb and replenish the nearly depleted biomass energy reserves from the surrounding thick, chaotic aura.
After lying on the ground and resting for a while, Luo Lan felt that the feeling of exhaustion that surged from the depths of her bones had subsided considerably. Her strength gradually returned to her limbs and bones.
[Tsk, we finally got to the outside world, but what happened...]
To say that Luo Lan has no negative emotions would be absolutely false.
Having just tasted the clean, fresh air from the outside world and glimpsed the magnificent and bizarre night sky of that otherworld, I was forced to crawl back in a sorry state, all my expectations turning into frustration.
Fortunately, Luo Lan was optimistic. Although exploring the outside world was his top priority, since he couldn't leave for the time being and the underground palace was far from being fully explored, he decided to continue exploring it.
As the energy within his body gradually returned, the beating of his two hearts in his chest became strong again, and Luo Lan regained his strength:
Have you not heard the saying, "Heaven never seals off all paths"? As long as I want to walk, the path is right beneath my feet!
Luo Lan firmly believes that he can find a way to stay active in the outside world for extended periods of time by using [Condensation].
Coincidentally, there is a road right under Luo Lan's "feet".
In this stone bridge cave, which had been utterly destroyed in the battle between Luo Lan and the giant centipede, the bottom of the cave walls were covered with countless dark tunnels dug by the giant centipede, which Luo Lan could then go down to take a look at.
Luo Lan chose the tunnel with the largest opening and some dried yellow liquid still around it, and strode in.
A giant centipede named the "Tunnel Weaver" has dug out a complex network of underground tunnels.
The cave walls were smooth and dense, scraped by the giant centipede's shell, but every ten meters or so, several narrow branch tunnels would branch out and drill diagonally into the cave.
With forks in the road, if you rely solely on your sense of sight and wander aimlessly in a place where all sides are similar mud, you'll definitely get lost.
Fortunately, Luo Lan had other ways to explore.
"Buzz—"
[Ultrasonic Sensing] is enabled.
The vocal cords vibrated slightly, spreading ultrasound waves from the skeletal head. The rebounding sound waves wove a line-frame map in the brain, showing several forks in the road and dead ends ahead.
In a cave environment, relying on this expertise derived from the giant centipede itself is the perfect way to find one's way.
After winding and turning for a while, weaving through various narrow side passages, Luo Lan finally stepped down to the end of the tunnel.
The sight that greeted Luo Lan as she stepped out of the tunnel made her pause slightly.
This is an extremely spacious, gourd-shaped, enclosed underground cave. It is completely different from the places outside, which are just rough, gray-white rocks.
The cave is densely covered with countless clusters of luminous crystals on all sides, from the dome to the rock walls on the ground.
Crimson, deep blue, emerald green, shimmering gold... these colorful, multifaceted crystals, some as thick and upright as stone pillars, others scattered like broken diamonds in the soft, humus-rich soil.
The brilliant light refracted from inside the crystals intertwined and reflected on the damp rock walls, illuminating the entire cave like a psychedelic kaleidoscope exiled deep underground.
This scene is exactly like the underground gemstone veins in a fairy tale on Earth.
[Wow! If we could move all of this out and sell it, we'd be rich overnight!]
Although Luo Lan had no understanding of the world's monetary system, the sheer number of dazzling crystal clusters, crowding the entire cave, made them appear incredibly valuable just by looking at them.
Luo Lan stepped forward curiously, reached out and grasped a cluster of red crystals, and glanced at it gently.
"Click."
A crisp sound came from between the fingers; the texture was not hard like a crystal should be, but rather excessively brittle.
The thin outer shell suddenly shattered and collapsed where Luo Lan applied force, and a jelly-like liquid, the same red color as the crystal surface, flowed out from inside, sticky and covering the entire hand, dripping down.
An extremely pungent stench, rising straight to the top of one's head, then burst forth from the viscous fluid.
In that instant, Luo Lan felt as if hundreds of stink bugs from Earth had simultaneously covered his nostrils.
"Ugh—if this isn't crystal, what is it?"
Luo Lan was so overwhelmed by the stench that she began to gag. Only by relying on the [Toxin Filtering] specialty of her third lung was she able to barely maintain her balance.
Driven by physiological instinct, Luo Lan disgustedly shook her hands, trying to get rid of all the incredibly smelly, jelly-like slime.
Realizing she had been tricked, Luo Lan immediately switched to [Thermal Vision].
The scene before my eyes had completely changed. The originally colorful and brilliant crystal clusters had lost all their brilliance under [thermal vision], and were all replaced by a uniform pale yellow. From the crystal pillars to the crystal branches, the outline of each cluster of crystals emitted a faint warmth unique to life.
These crystals are all alive.
Deeper still in the cave, several brighter heat sources flickered.
Following the guidance of [Thermal Vision], Luo Lan took a detour to explore the area.
A group of insects with iridescent, crystalline elytra were crawling around. They were only twenty or thirty centimeters long, and they moved quite nimbly among the clusters of crystals on the ground.
Some of them were burying their heads in small sips of dry, hard soil that resembled feces. Luo Lan recognized the texture and color of the soil—it was the excrement of the giant centipede that Luo Lan had just seen while exploring the tunnel.
Some insects expel smaller crystal embryos segment by segment from their abdominal cavity, the freshly squeezed crystals still carrying a warm, pale yellow luster.
Not far away, among several clusters of crystals that had grown to the length of an arm, one could clearly see the semi-formed rudimentary shapes of these insects, wriggling slightly within translucent shells.
These "crystals" are all insect eggs!
[So, it's a disguised decomposer?]
On Earth, there are similar creatures, decomposers at the bottom of the food chain, who disguise themselves as dead leaves or similar shapes to blend into the environment.
Luo Lan guessed that it was probably because these insects had evolved a pungent body odor or disguised themselves as crystals that the giant centipede did not eat them as snacks.
Instead, they multiplied in the cave by decomposing the giant centipede's excrement, and a small group of them thrived.
But Luo Lan wouldn't let these seemingly harmless little insects go, just like the giant centipede did.
In Luo Lan's eyes, these were all source materials.
"Go to hell!"
The casual exhalation was amplified, and the deep, hoarse roar was rapidly compressed within the throat, unleashing a visible multi-frequency sound wave that exploded within the sealed crystalline cavern.
[Sonic Shock Lv.2]!
"Bang bang bang bang!"
Wherever the sonic attack swept, the crystal clusters were the first to succumb to the shock. Their thin outer shells shattered one after another under the impact of the sound waves, and various colored jelly-like fluids gushed out from the cracks, splashing all over the cave walls.
The insect, with its crystal-like elytra, didn't even have time to react before its carapace shattered after a few violent twitches in the sound waves, and its turbid yellow fluid exploded into fine powder in the aftershocks of the sound waves.
The massive explosion of bodily fluids in the enclosed space had the direct consequence of fully arousing a foul odor, which clung to the entire cave without dissipating.
"Cough cough cough..."
Luo Lan squinted, choked by the mixed stench, and relied on [Turbid Poison Filter] to withstand the foul-smelling fumes that were comparable to biological weapons, and walked to the nearest pile of insect corpses.
Pick up a shattered insect corpse and activate [Condensation].
The debris disintegrated and dissolved into purplish-black particles, returning to the fluid.
[Chaos Essence +11]
[Current Chaotic Essence: 56]
The corpse of an insect only yielded eleven points of source essence, not much more than a young armored spider. It seems these insects are indeed very weak monsters.
With the mindset that anything is better than nothing, Luo Lan picked up a red "crystal" shard that was still faintly glowing.
[Casting - Assembly]
[Consumed Chaos Essence: 22]
[Current Chaotic Essence: 34]
The red "crystal" fragments transformed into a stream of particles, drilling into Luo Lan's palm and disappearing. This darkened the tips of his nails, giving them a subtle crimson crystalline sheen.
[Assembled: Broken eggshell of a Jewel Crystal Worm]
[Tier: Black Iron]
[Skill: Pale Light Crystal Cluster lv.1]
[Pale Glow Crystal Cluster lv.1: Consumes biomass energy to generate a glowing crystal cluster in the palm of your hand for a period of time. The color of the cluster can be freely determined. The intensity and duration of the light increase with skill level.]
Luo Lan looked at the faint crystalline light emanating from her fingertips and snapped her fingers.
A pale red crystal cluster, about the size of a thumb, emerged from the crevice in the palm, its surface smooth and emitting a faint, soft glow.
Its brightness is roughly equivalent to the highest brightness of a smartphone screen on Earth.
A lighting skill isn't exactly useless, but for Luo Lan, who possesses thermal vision and ultrasonic sensing, it's practically worthless.
[Forget it... let's kill them all.]
Having only Black Iron Rank skills, Luo Lan gave up the idea of continuing to try [Condensation-Assembly].
The insects' doomsday has arrived.