Wasteland Border Inspector

Wang Kang and Garcia continued to lead the team in advancing construction. Luokuke, after finishing his meal, didn’t rest much either, and immediately rushed to the riverbank to prepare for the next underwater exploration.

Cheng Ye wandered around the town, ensuring that infrastructure and epidemic prevention were progressing smoothly, then returned to the truck laboratory.

Instruments were still humming, analyzing the composition of the tentacles while testing their specific abilities.

Seeing the progress bar on the screen standing at just 45%, Cheng Ye wasn’t anxious. He closed the lab’s compartment door, sat down on the alloy stool, and with a thought, opened the panel.

The charging value at the top right corner was already full. He directly navigated to the biological catalog page.

After three consecutive underwater harvests, the various characteristics of the Demon Eye Sponge had significantly increased, even the previously slow-progressing Water Element Cotton Pattern and Earth Element Cotton Pattern broke through 5%.

"Extracting characteristic: Cotton Room, direction set to intelligence." Cheng Ye silently recited to the panel.

[Collector detected to have chosen the "United" route, initiating intelligence direction choice option]

[Please Collector determine specific intelligence direction; if not selected, a random direction intelligence will be extracted]

"Characteristic extraction can specify a direction like searching for intelligence?"

Cheng Ye was taken aback for a moment, then quickly composed himself, saying in a deep voice, "Direction confirmed as Cotton Room rules."

As soon as the words fell, the space suddenly became static.

50% of the charging value on the panel was instantly deducted. As before, during intelligence searches, the surroundings began to disintegrate into the most primitive pixel points, quickly reconstructing into a new scene under the energy’s pull.

Glug...glug...

Clear blue seawater appeared first; it was obviously not the White Water River beside Dapo Town.

The perspective quickly lowered, as if traversing a time-space tunnel, Cheng Ye suddenly found himself deprived of perspective control. His view was attached to a small goldfish, only able to observe by following its swimming direction.

Since he couldn’t pause or switch the view, Cheng Ye immersed himself in, proceeding through the water along the goldfish’s vision.

Interestingly, this attached view was not affected by the underwater environment; despite the depth, everything around remained clearly visible.

Soon, a piece of blue sponge, completely different from below White Water River, appeared by the seaside cliff.

Its form was similar to the Cotton Room of the Demon Eye Sponge, but lacked protruding tentacles, only featuring a central volcanic-like depression. Embedded at the front of the depression was a massive eye, roughly ten meters in diameter.

Noticing the golden little fish approaching, the giant eye slowly surveyed the area before splitting open a seam in the middle.

The little fish swiftly accelerated and slipped through the seam, swimming forward for a few meters before Cheng Ye’s view unbound, restoring his control.

However, before he could manipulate the view to observe, the goldfish ahead suddenly underwent a dramatic transformation.

Its body rapidly elongated, scales shed and reassembled, finally transforming into a golden mermaid.

With a human torso and fish tail, her face was gentle and elegant, almost indistinguishable from a human except for those golden pupils!

"What the hell, is this transformation!?"

Cheng Ye was utterly astounded.

But the following scenes further challenged his worldview. The inside of the Cotton Room resembled a bustling disco hall, rotating blue lights flashing everywhere, crowded with mermaids of various shapes.

Some were handsome males, others were gracefully postured females.

The two sides seemed to have come for a party, dancing elegantly with the light’s rhythm inside the Cotton Room, with an atmosphere so relaxed it was nothing like a source of infection.

Cheng Ye attempted to move the view outward, but once he tried to go beyond the Cotton Room’s range, the vision plunged into darkness, evidently exceeding the coverage of intelligence.

He had no choice but to refocus his attention inside the Cotton Room, and after careful observation, he quickly spotted several critical details:

Firstly, the giant eye at the entrance. Behind its eyeball, tiny runes were densely engraved, cryptic and hard to understand, looking like chaotic scribbles yet faintly carrying a certain order.

Whenever new mermaids wanted to enter, before the giant eye opened, a batch of runes would light up first, emitting a faint blue glow.

After verification, once the mermaids entered, when the giant eye closed, another batch of new runes would light up.

"Truly fascinating, could these runes be its underlying operational principle?"

Cheng Ye widened his eyes, trying to remember the rune sequence lit during the opening, but quickly discovered a frightening truth!

Those runes, which left an impression in his mind a moment earlier, would completely disappear as if wiped away once he shifted his gaze.

Not only couldn’t he recall the complete patterns, even the general direction of the runes was impossible to remember.

"Even rote memorization can’t achieve this; it’s directly cutting off humanity’s ability to use runes through memory..."

After repeated attempts ending in failure, Cheng Ye had to temporarily give up.

Despite his naturally good memory, the eerie features of these runes evidently surpassed conventional memory capacity, leaving only characteristic analysis or intelligence matching as means to uncover their secrets later.

Following this train of thought, as he continued searching within the Cotton Room, he soon discovered two large runes in the corner.

Contrasting the tiny runes on the eyeball, these two runes were as large as well covers, with clearer patterns, and astonishingly, as soon as he looked at them, an information line appeared in his mind:

[Fishman Transformation Rune: Causes targeted transformation of biological forms, applicable only within the Cotton Room, affecting all creatures entering, with effects disappearing upon leaving the Cotton Room]