Fantasy Game: Infinite City

This set of broken diving equipment could not have appeared here out of thin air. Someone must have been here before Han Zu and Gloria arrived at this underwater cave.

Judging from the use of diving equipment, no matter who arrived at this place, they must be different from Han Zu and Gloria who can breathe underwater, and must use these equipment to move underwater. In this case, Gloria inferred that it must be more than one person who came to this location, because they did not find drowned bodies around, and it must be someone else who brought extra diving equipment. After all, based on the size of this set of diving equipment, it would be very inconvenient for a single person to carry two sets of this equipment.

Han Zu carefully observed the damaged parts of the diving equipment. According to the degree of damage and the location of the gap, the diving equipment was damaged because of the turbulent flow of the underground river outside the cave. The flow rate was too fast, causing the original owner of the diving equipment to hit a reef somewhere.

This flooded underwater cave is a place with strange water flow. The underground rivers on both sides of the cave entrance flow in the same direction, and the water flow is very fast. Without underwater propulsion equipment, it is difficult to move forward against the direction of the water flow. Therefore, unless an underwater propulsion device can be found, no matter who comes to this place, it will be difficult for them to leave the underwater cave.

This means that there must be some secret exit at the location of this seemingly closed underwater cave.

However, due to the luminous minerals on the rock walls around the cave, this underwater cave is full of light pollution. It is not easy to find an exit from this side. So Han Zu used his tentacles to drill through the rock wall and reached a place without water. From there he observed the possible exit locations. After a few minutes, Han Zu found a possible exit location.

During the observation, Han Zu noticed that there was a whole rock blocking the entrance to the underwater cave. The reason why he could find this was because water was seeping out from the cracks on both sides of the rock. Han Zu retracted his tentacles, found the location of the rock, and then lifted it up from the bottom to open an exit. Then, together with Gloria, they used this exit to leave the underwater cave and arrived at a relatively dim underground cave.

After leaving the water, Han Zu explained to Gloria about his discovery of the rock. Gloria lit a fire and carefully observed the rock, and found some traces of human work on it.

"The edges on both sides are very neat. Someone used tools to cut them. It is very likely that the owner of the damaged breathing device underwater must have cut out a piece of rock from another location in the underground cave according to the shape of the underwater cave entrance, and then blocked this place. If you were not strong enough, we would not be able to come up from below even if we found this."

Gloria used the flame to illuminate the underground cave and found similar cutting marks on a rock wall about ten meters away from the cave entrance.

"The two locations are more than ten meters apart. The cut position is aligned with the top of the rock blocking the cave entrance. There is no place to stand below. The rock is not broken at a height of four or five meters, which means someone caught the rock. I tend to think that at least two people worked together to complete the cutting."

"There may be more people. There are traces of the rock wall being penetrated at that location. They may have been left when the climbing equipment was fixed at that location. Judging from the height of those traces, someone climbed up the rock wall to the top of the rock and then completed the cutting. There must be someone below to continue."

"How heavy is that rock blocking the cave entrance?"

"A rough estimate is that it should be around two tons. So I am more inclined to believe that there should be more than two people."

"why?"

"If one can catch a two-ton rock from a height of four or five meters without getting hurt or breaking it, it means that the person who caught it, if alone, must have a strength at least five times the weight of the rock, or about ten tons. With that strength, he can completely offset the impact of the underground river flow and return the same way, and even bring one or two people with him."

"It doesn't sound impossible, but why do you think this is not the behavior of a single person?"

"Because there are no signs of collapse or fragmentation on the ground, it means that the impact of this two-ton rock was dispersed when it hit the ground. Look at the ground on your right. That place is not just a complete rock ground, but some minerals in it. The surface of the minerals has signs of fragmentation, proving that it has been under great pressure."

"And this position is a corner below the original location of the rock... So there are at least five people? One person cutting at the top, four people at the bottom, each catching a corner?"

"This should be."

"But why did they block the entrance to the underwater cave in this way? If there is no other exit from this underground cave, wouldn't they be trapped in this place? Even if they have cutting equipment, it is still inconvenient, and no one is chasing them."

"That's not necessarily true. That diving equipment is not a civilian version, but at least it has been modified. People who can afford that kind of equipment will never waste time doing something that seems to be unnecessary. So it is very likely that they are hiding from something, and this thing is in the underground river, and it should be able to move out of water, so they blocked the entrance to the cave."

"Hisssssss~~~~"

"What's that sound? Did you hear it, Han Zu?"

"Huh? I didn't hear anything."

When the two were discussing why the cave entrance was blocked, Gloria suddenly heard a sound, like the hissing sound of a gas leak, but Han Zu did not hear this sound. However, due to Gloria's special evolution, Han Zu was sure that Gloria must have discovered something, so he kept quiet.

Gloria walked behind Han Zu and listened to the sound that had just appeared. She found that the sound was getting closer and closer. It came from the entrance of the underwater cave opened by Han Zu in the distance. Gloria raised her palm, lit the fire and observed, but saw nothing.

“Tsk~~~”

But Gloria heard the sound of something moving rapidly toward her.

“Sizzle~~!!!”

At this moment, a gust of cold wind blew straight into Gloria's face. Gloria suddenly found that beside the heat wave emitted by the flame in her palm, something transparent was rushing towards her face. Gloria immediately made a move similar to a fadeaway jump shot, but what she threw out was the black fireball that had changed its shape in her palm.

"His !!!"

The black fireball really hit something and began to burn violently and continuously. Based on the outline of the flame, Gloria discovered that it was some kind of thing that looked like a mixture of a water snake and an electric eel. And because it was transparent, if it weren't for her extremely sensitive hearing, she probably wouldn't have been able to spot it.

"despair."

“Hoo-boom~~!!!!”

Han Zu, who was watching Gloria's movements, also moved very quickly. At the same time that Gloria's fireball hit the transparent monster, Han Zu took a big step and turned around. He grabbed Gloria's shoulder in mid-air with one hand and pulled her behind him. Then he opened his mouth wide and spewed compressed black flames towards the transparent monster and the direction of the underwater cave entrance. It directly formed a fan-shaped black fire wall, burning the entire area in front of it into a sea of ​​fire. The temperature was so high that the entire fan-shaped area covered turned into magma, and even the water surface leading to the underwater was evaporated a lot.

"boom!"

“Shhhhh!!!”

Han Zu took two steps at a time, pulled out a huge rock from the rock wall next to him, rushed into the area covered with magma, stuffed the rock into the entrance of the cave, then scooped up some magma next to it with his hands and smeared it on the gaps on both sides, completely blocking the entrance to the underground river.

"What it is?"

"I don't know, but I think we found out why those people blocked the entrance."

"Wait a minute, Han Zu! There seems to be something reflecting in the lava pool at your feet!"

"This looks like... leather?"

At Han Zu's feet, in one of the magma pools, there was a half-broken transparent object reflecting light. Han Zu picked it up and found that it seemed to be a transparent skin of a creature. Han Zu shook it and found that there was a lot of ash in it. It should be the flame he had just used that burned the inside of the creature, but for some reason, this half of the skin was left behind.

"Its toughness and feel are like water snake skin, but it is transparent like a jellyfish. But it smells like grilled eel."

"Why did your hand suddenly change color? Now... it's back to normal. Does this mean that this thing is poisonous?"

"I don't think it's a toxin. Have you ever seen something burnt to the point of leaving only the skin? How could there be any toxin left?"

Han Zu was very confused about the piece of creature skin in his hand, because after checking, Han Zu found that this piece of skin was the only thing left that was not burned by his flames. What was the reason that allowed the skin of this creature to resist his flames? This made Han Zu very curious.

"I've never seen anything I can't burn, but it's never appeared in front of me. This is the first time."

"show me."

"Be careful. Whatever caused my palm to change color for a moment, it can't be a good thing."

"It's okay. You are still here."

Gloria took the half biological skin from Han Zu's hand and observed it carefully. She found that there were scales on the skin, but the scales were very small and dense, so they could not be seen at first glance.

"There seems to be a wound here, but I can't see it clearly. You should be able to see it clearly."

Gloria found that at one location, some scales seemed to be in an abnormal position, but it didn't seem to be caused by Han Zu's flames. However, she couldn't see clearly, so she returned the creature's skin to Han Zu and pointed out the abnormal location. Using his powerful visual ability, Han Zu noticed that at the location pointed out by Gloria, the small scales of this creature had a tiny gap cut by something, and there was actually some tiny crystal powder inside.

Han Zu grew a very small tentacle, drilled into the tiny gap, and took out the crystal powder inside. It turned out that this crystal powder actually contained the same energy as his own power, and there was no impurity, and the purity was very high. However, because there was too little crystal powder, Han Zu, whose perception ability was malfunctioning, did not notice these things at all.

"call."

“Tsk~~~”

After the crystal powders were taken out of the skin, a small flame burned the skin into ashes.

"This creature must have been scratched by a crystal with the energy of the Gift of Death. Some crystal dust with residual energy was left in its skin, so it was not burned. It seems that we have come to the right place. There must be what I am looking for here."

"But there are actually some burn marks around the skin. I think if you used a high-pressure flame to burn it, we might not be able to detect this."

However, compared to aimlessly tracking those transparent creatures, both of them believed that it was more important to keep up with the mysterious people who had arrived before them. After all, they had a precise purpose, otherwise they would not have been able to carry diving equipment and cutting equipment and use them accurately where they should be used.

"Although this underground cave is large, it seems that there is only one way to go. Maybe if we keep moving forward in the direction of the cave, we can find the people who sealed the underwater cave in the first place."

After about half an hour of walking along the underground cave, the two came to a dead end. This seemed to be the end of the underground cave. After careful inspection, there was no natural exit. It seemed that there was no way out.

"I didn't hear any sound of air flowing, so there should be no exit to the outside world. How are you? Can you see anything strange with your perspective?"

"There are traces of climbing equipment here. Judging from the direction, it should be heading upwards, but my perspective ability does not reveal any passage there."

"Perhaps there are some unknown minerals that can block your ability to see through things?"

"It's possible, but that's not the question."

"What else did you find?"

"That group of people seems to have separated. You come here."

Following Han Zu, the two came to the rock wall at the end of the cave, and Han Zu pointed to the wall in front of them.

"This isn't rock or mineral, it's an emergency gel used in construction. If it's not damaged by external forces, it can last for a year or so, and it's very strong before it expires."

"Tuk-tuk."

"boom."

Han Zu knocked on the "wall" in front of the two people, then punched it through, revealing another cave passage behind it. Gloria took a look at the fragments on the ground and found that what Han Zu said was right. This was indeed a man-made emergency building gel.

"There's one here, and another at the end of the wall on the right, so I think the team split up."

"But in this situation, it's not wise to go separately, right? Why do they have to go separately? And they have to block the retreat route?"

"I don't understand it either."

"So what do we do now? Choose one and follow it?"

"Don't worry, I'll go check out the traces of the previous climb. Maybe there's an exit there."