Deep Sea Embers.

Chapter 717 The intersection of fiction and reality

Going down from the entrance, there is a narrow and low slope at first. The rough traces of manual excavation are clearly visible on the surrounding rock walls. However, after walking for more than ten meters, the path ahead begins to open up. The slope is also slightly gentle.

The green fire spread among the rocks, and the light it emitted illuminated the path ahead. Duncan looked at the corridor that continued to extend into the darkness, and his brows gradually furrowed.

"Did the cultists dig these out within a few days after the sun went out?" He couldn't help but look at Shirley, "Did they dig such a deep passage in such a short period of time?"

"No, they just dug through the entrance of this passage and dug out the bottom stone." Shirley shook her head. "The section of road under our feet seems to have already existed..."

"A passage that originally existed deep underground in this 'Holy Land Island'?" Morris frowned slightly when he heard this. He came to the rock wall in front and carefully observed the surrounding stones and the ground under his feet. Si Di said, "That is to say, before those cultists found this place, someone was digging here..."

He stopped suddenly and frowned in confusion. After a moment, he slowly raised his head and looked at the road ahead illuminated by the faint green fire.

"No, it doesn't look like it was dug manually...this 'originally existing passage' was created by something else..."

Duncan heard this and walked forward: "What did you find?"

"Look at the marks on these rock formations," Morris raised his finger and pointed at the surrounding walls, "these smooth undulating faults and regularly distributed ring patterns...it doesn't look like they were man-made."

Duncan immediately noticed the unusual marks on the surrounding rock walls that Morris had mentioned.

He saw that the rock wall of the corridor in front of him was smooth, and the hard black and gray stones showed a continuous shape as if they had been cut by something sharp. There was also a circle of ridges that could be seen every three meters or so. The structure is distributed in a ring throughout the entire passage, and the ground under your feet is flat and gentle. The large and small stones seem to have been carefully carved and tightly embedded in the entire ramp - this is certainly not the human tool of those cultists. Or the traces that their demonic spells can create are obviously not the "excavation results" of someone before this.

Even today's city-states do not have such underground excavation and construction technology.

Morris slowly stroked the flat and smooth rock walls on both sides with his fingers and whispered: "It's like we are walking inside a huge pipeline..."

"...At the beginning, some areas of the large hollows under the frost were in such a state... And in the end, scholars in the city-state could not explain how such smooth and flat faults were formed. They could only think that they were the work of Holy Lord Netherworld. The 'erosion holes' left after the flesh and blood fade away," Duncan whispered, "But this Holy Land Island...it is all part of the Holy Lord Netherworld, so why is there such an 'erosion hole' left in it?"

Shirley was listening to the exchange between Morris and the captain. Suddenly, she suddenly had an idea: "...Maybe this is the rectum of the Holy Lord Netherworld?"

As soon as these words came out, everyone was silent. Duncan and Morris's expressions suddenly turned darker than Shirley's aura. Duncan glared at the girl: "You even said it was a blood vessel?!"

Shirley shrank her neck subconsciously, scratching her hair while pretending to be calm and changing the subject: "Vessels seem to be very possible..."

Duncan did not continue to argue with Shirley, but frowned thoughtfully after blurting out a sentence just now.

Blood vessels... pipes in the body?

If this Holy Land Island is really, as Shirley described, "a piece of meat from an ancient god," will there really be so-called "blood vessels" and "nerves" in this piece of meat? If so...will they really look like the "channel" in front of me?

Duncan subconsciously thought about it and sketched in his imagination what kind of form and "physiological structure" the Holy Lord Netherworld had. But at this moment, he suddenly noticed that Alice had not spoken for a long time.

Normally, the doll girl who followed the captain to explore a strange environment would be chattering non-stop, but today she seemed particularly quiet.

"Alice," Duncan felt something was abnormal in his heart. He immediately looked at the puppet standing next to him who seemed to be distracted, "What are you thinking about?"

After calling twice in a row, Alice came back to her senses as if she suddenly woke up, and quickly turned around: "Hey...hey? Captain, what did you say?"

"Let me ask you what you were thinking about - you seemed to have been distracted just now," Duncan frowned slightly. He looked into Alice's eyes worriedly, "Did you see or hear something again?"

Alice looked around in confusion, hesitated for a while, and then said to Duncan cautiously: "I haven't seen anything yet... But I don't know why, after walking here, I had a feeling... A very familiar feeling.”

Duncan and Morris said in unison: "Familiar feeling?"

"Well, familiar, reassuring, like..." Alice gestured, thinking for a long time before finally finding the right description, "It's like lying in my wooden box."

As she spoke, she raised her hand and pointed to the darker depths of the corridor: "And in that direction, there is a stronger sense of familiarity, as if... I have been to this place a long time ago, or... I I have been in this place for a long time..."

Duncan listened to Alice's description with a serious expression, and nodded slightly after a moment: "Let's continue to go deeper - Alice, Shirley, Agou, if you see or hear anything unusual, tell me immediately. .”

With an increasingly cautious mood, the group began to walk deeper into this seemingly endless passage.

The flames spread slowly in the passage, and after advancing for an unknown amount of time, Duncan noticed that the surroundings suddenly became more open.

They seemed to have entered a huge underground cavity structure. The pipe-like passages on both sides suddenly expanded into spacious rock walls, and the ceiling of the cave above became more than ten meters high. The suddenly expanded underground space made the surrounding area It fell into a brief darkness, but in just a second or two, the green flames quickly spread to the surrounding ground and began to illuminate this spacious place. Shirley raised her head and looked at this underground cave like a huge assembly hall with an expression of wonder. Although she had briefly glanced at it in the "phantom", seeing it with her own eyes, she still couldn't help but marvel at this place. The spaciousness: "...fuck..."

"...I suddenly felt that it would be okay for Vanna to come over," Duncan touched his chin thoughtfully, "This place seems to be enough for her to take off..."

Morris remained silent. The old scholar's attention seemed to have been completely immersed in this strange and secret cave. He slowly walked forward along the path illuminated by the spiritual fire while observing the surroundings carefully. Then he suddenly stopped in front of a rock wall.

"There's something up here!"

Duncan walked over quickly, and a "relief"-like scene came into his eyes.

On the dark stone wall, a creeping creature with strong limbs and a slender body is lifelike.

Shirley and Agou also came over and looked at the "relief" on the wall with Duncan.

After a while, Duncan heard Shirley whisper: "...Is this the Dark Hound?"

"It seems... yes," Agou's voice was particularly uncertain, "But it looks different from me... This one looks like it has flesh and blood, and the body proportions are not right..."

Before it finished speaking, Morris's voice came from the front again: "There's more over here!"

Following Morris's guidance, Duncan saw a second relief.

It was a jellyfish-like creature floating in mid-air - however, it was not smoke, but had a solid body, a more delicate tentacle structure, and even what looked like eyes could be seen on the "head" organ.

Duncan slowly raised his head. In the cave illuminated by the spiritual fire, more reliefs were dimly inlaid on the rock wall, seemingly extending infinitely in his field of vision.

He frowned slightly and took another step towards another relief——

A flickering light appeared at the edge of vision.

Duncan stopped abruptly.

And almost at the same time, the light and shadow in front of him changed.

Everything seemed to suddenly turn into collapsed and scattered fragments of light and shadow. The dark caves and ancient mysterious reliefs silently disintegrated before his eyes. A moment later, the collapsed fragments of light and shadow circled and swarmed up again, reorganized, lit up, and appeared——

In the silent "roaring", he saw a hall, a hall that seemed to have no boundaries. It whizzed and reorganized in front of Duncan's eyes. He saw some unknown silver-gray substance extending into a solid ground in his field of vision. Mysterious lines emitting a dark blue glow are spread all over the floor. The high dome is brightly lit, and huge pipes and cables are intertwined in the dome like nerves and blood vessels.

In this hall, there are cylindrical platforms one after another.

Those platforms were emitting a shimmering light, and there seemed to be some kind of invisible force field above them, imprisoning various things that were stagnant in the force field - hound-like creatures with strong limbs, predatory beasts, various birds, As well as many creatures that he didn't recognize at all and couldn't see clearly.

The light and shadow in front of his eyes flickered, and the lights in the hall flickered on and off. In the blink of an eye, Duncan felt as if he had seen the dark cave again, and saw the "reliefs" neatly arranged on the cave wall——

But the next second, the dim cave collapsed into the hall again, and he saw something standing at the end in front of him. It seemed to be a huge machine, or some kind of... terminal. Countless pipes surrounded the complex structure. Black mud with a metallic luster surges in the prism, and the light on the core prism flashes, and there is something like a holographic projection floating in front of it, and lines of characters are constantly refreshed.

Those were unfamiliar characters, and Duncan didn't recognize that kind of writing - but just by glancing at it, the meaning of those words seemed to be directly reflected in his mind -

"...New Hope...the main system is offline...

"LH-01, Pilot One, the ecological reconstruction host... is in an abnormal state.

"LH-02, Pilot , data and master control host... are in abnormal condition.

"LH-03, Pilot , navigation host...offline.

"The spacecraft has disintegrated..."

(End of this chapter)