Chapter 140 - 106: Underground City
Another two days passed. The excavation was nearing its end, and the team at the bottom was gradually approaching the target.
By now, the roof of the building beneath the ice layer was clearly visible.
"Keep it up! We’re almost there!" Yuan Xiaobo shouted encouragingly as he hacked away at the ice.
At the bottom of the ice pit, only Lin Kong and Mirus weren’t digging. Everyone else was working hard, their pickaxes glowing with dense energy.
For some unknown reason, the ice was incredibly hard. Without infusing their pickaxes with Spiritual Energy, it was impossible to make a dent.
Lin Kong had too little energy in his body to dig for long, so he was assigned to stand watch up above.
Mirus, on the other hand, was too small and lacked the strength to dig, so she could only stay with Lin Kong.
As the excavation continued, the roof of the building below was finally exposed.
CRACK~~
A soft cracking sound came from the roof. The unusual noise immediately caught everyone’s attention, and they focused their digging on the spot it came from.
Soon, they had dug a hole in the roof.
Yuan Xiaobo squeezed through the hole and was thrilled to discover that the building’s interior wasn’t filled with solid ice. Since the structure itself was relatively well-sealed, there were only a few blocks of ice that had made their way in through the windows.
Hearing the cheers from below, Lin Kong, who was still up top, activated the Illusion Generator to create a simple camouflage. He left behind an alarm device, then ran down the carved steps to the bottom of the pit.
"Are we through?"
"Yeah, Captain Yuan went down. We don’t know what it’s like inside."
"I..."
"You can’t go down. We have to wait for Captain Yuan to confirm the situation."
As a clone who wasn’t afraid of death, Lin Kong wanted to risk going down for a look, but Lin Yan flatly stopped him. So, he had no choice but to wait helplessly with the others.
After about ten minutes, Yuan Xiaobo finally came out.
"How is it?"
"Did you find anything?"
...
Everyone started asking questions at once, but Yuan Xiaobo didn’t say much. He just told them to get their gear ready to go down and explore together.
***
TAP~ TAP~
A few light sounds echoed in the building beneath the ice.
Lin Kong descended into the building and found that the structure was very well-preserved. Perhaps the solid ice outside had protected it, leaving it completely undamaged.
"This place... why is it so clean?"
Lin Kong looked around. This building, filled with an exotic atmosphere, was completely empty and unnaturally clean. He found it rather strange.
"It is clean. So what? Is there something wrong with it being clean?" Mirus asked, blinking her big, curious eyes. As a little pixie who was a neat freak, she quite liked the spotless environment.
"No, being clean isn’t the problem. But for this place to be *this* clean... that’s what’s wrong."
"Look at the size of this place, and the layout. It should have been full of things. But now, they’re all gone."
"Didn’t you say a disaster happened here? The residents who lived here probably moved everything out."
"Right, they moved out. And they did a very thorough job—moved out calmly and even tidied up the place."
"What do you mean?" Mirus didn’t understand.
"It means the original inhabitants knew all about the disaster that froze the world. This wasn’t some sudden catastrophe; they were prepared for it."
"They most likely built a shelter and moved there," Lin Kong concluded.
"Everyone, come quick! Lin Kong made a new discovery!" After hearing his analysis, Mirus flew up to the others to announce the good news.
Hearing Mirus’s words, everyone immediately stopped exploring their surroundings and gathered around Lin Kong.
"What did you find?"
"But there’s nothing here. How could you find any clues?"
Amidst everyone’s questions, Lin Kong repeated his analysis once more.
"So, where do we go to find these original inhabitants?" Yuan Xiaobo’s question left Lin Kong speechless. ’If I knew where to find them, would I need to be here exploring?’
"Let’s go check out that Energy Source first. Maybe we’ll find something there."
...
The group took the stairs down and arrived in front of a large door.
They pushed open the door, and a strange hall appeared before them.
The hall was filled with various instruments. In the very center, a sphere covered in cryptic patterns was suspended in mid-air.
This spherical object was the Energy Source discovered by the Energy Detector.
"See, that’s the Energy Source. I was afraid of breaking it, so I didn’t touch it." Yuan Xiaobo pointed at the sphere in the air.
"Alright, let’s get out all the detectors and see what this thing is up to!" Lin Kong took a deep breath, signaling for everyone to get to work.
The team took various instruments from their backpacks and began scanning the sphere.
The Energy Detector, the Life Detection Device, the Magnetic Field Detector... everyone took out every instrument they had brought with them.
Finally, an electromagnetic wave detector picked up that the surrounding instruments were periodically emitting electromagnetic waves.
Lin Kong was no stranger to electromagnetic waves. ’This is a low-level technology I’m familiar with. In my past life, electromagnetic waves were the primary means of wireless communication.’ It was obvious this entire room was a radio transmission chamber.
"So it’s for communications? And here I was thinking it was something special! I’ll just go grab it, then," Niu Armor said after hearing Lin Kong’s explanation, already moving to take the sphere down.