Chapter 71 The Spaceship

Izhaks pulled his head out of the duct with a bang, bringing down a shower of metal fragments and stones. He spat them out, saying, "I don't want to fight in a place like this. It's easy to accidentally collapse the entire tunnel."

Uruk twisted his head to look at the super-sized man with a strange expression, finding that the latter was almost squatting at this moment. "Can you even fight like that?"

Nangong Wuyue grunted. "Don't underestimate big guys. He could beat everyone here even if he was lying down."

Hao Ren waved his hand. "Stop muttering, be careful of your surroundings."

The mechanical sound came from a branch pipe on the left, but after everyone was on guard, they found no enemies appearing. The sound seemed to be just some transmission device operating. Nangong Sanba cautiously went over to take a look, then waved to everyone: "There's a gate here!"

Everyone quickly followed and saw a brighter light at the end of the pipeline, and the mechanical sound was coming from that direction. This seemed to be an exit.

After confirming that there were no traps, Hao Ren held up his shield and walked in front, leading the team out of this long tunnel. The group crawled out of a circular gate and found themselves in an unusually wide and tall corridor. The corridor was square, solemn, and grand, more than ten meters wide and more than ten meters high. Looking up at it almost made one feel dizzy. The corridor was brightly lit, and the walls were cast with some kind of grayish-white metal. Where the metal did not cover, exposed rock could be seen—this seemed to be a place that had not been completely completed.

Izhaks stretched his arms, feeling good to be out of the narrow pipeline. "Finally don't have to be cramped… uh, but this place is a little too wide."

This huge corridor was obviously not prepared for creatures of human size. Hao Ren immediately thought of the giants he had found on Planet Ieu—he knew very well that the brain monsters were the result of the giants' mutation. But the brain monster had already lost its body, did it still need to live in a nest of this size?

Uruk stared at the scene in front of him, dumbfounded. "The Holy Mountain… there's something like this deep inside the Holy Mountain?!"

"It was probably here before you came," Vivian glanced at Uruk. "I can understand your feelings. In a sense, the brain monster and his servants should be the original inhabitants of this place. You only moved here thousands of years ago."

Uruk waved his hand, obviously not wanting to talk about this topic. Ophra ordered the knights around her: "You few, go ahead and scout, and return within an hour. The rest of you rest here for now, and wait for the follow-up soldiers to arrive before taking action. The situation here is unknown, so we'd better not go too deep too quickly."

Hao Ren agreed with Ophra's arrangement, but the scale of this underground fortress made him feel a little anxious. He held up the data terminal and shined it around. Lily asked curiously, "What are you doing?"

"The space here is surprisingly large," Hao Ren looked at the results fed back by the data terminal. Although the strong energy interference in the mountain reduced the terminal's accuracy, it still obtained some data as they went deeper. "There's a giant cavity a few hundred meters away from here… can't detect its boundaries."

Lily stuck out her tongue. "Could this mountain be hollow?"

Hao Ren was about to say something when he suddenly heard shouts and the sounds of weapons clashing from the end of the corridor. The kingdom knights who had gone to check the situation earlier retreated from the corner of the corridor while fighting, and those combination monsters that they had seen on the ground were fighting with them!

When Ophra saw this, she drew her sword and stepped forward without saying a word. The long knight's sword was burning with holy flames. The female marshal's figure flashed through the air like a phantom, and several stitched monsters were burned to ashes by the holy flames before they could react. Several rescued knights reported loudly before they could catch their breath: "There are many monsters coming out of various gates in front, they seem to be sealing off this place!"

Before the knight could finish speaking, a piercing alarm sounded in the corridor, followed by一阵阵mechanical friction from all corners, sounding like more mechanical doors opening. Everyone immediately understood what was happening: the controller of the base had sounded the alarm and started releasing those stitched monsters to stop the invaders.

The piercing sirens rose and fell, the entire underground fortress's defense system was activated and quickly locked onto the invaded location. Gates were slowly being lowered, and the counterattack exits arranged throughout the corridor were opened one after another. A large number of stitched monsters roared out of some biological modification factory hidden deep underground. At the same time as these defense systems were activated, a chorus of voices also came from the pipeline behind everyone: the follow-up knight troops had finally arrived.

"Just in time," Ophra nodded to Elson, who was the first to jump out of the gate. "It seems the defenses here have been activated. All that's left for us is to charge in. Take your men and follow me."

In fact, Hao Ren was not surprised that the defense system was triggered, because this was inevitable: that brain monster with mental powers could not have been unaware that someone had invaded its territory. The only thing he found strange was why the alarm had only sounded now. The brain monster's sluggish reaction made him feel very incredible. In his estimation, everyone should have been fiercely counterattacked as soon as they entered the underground fortress—but the counterattack was delayed until now.

"Terminal, navigate as much as possible," Hao Ren temporarily put aside his doubts and threw the data terminal into the air. "Take us to the depths."

The data terminal would not waste words in this situation. It let out a whizz and then rushed forward.

Everyone immediately followed this streak of lightning-fast blue light. The knights raised their long swords, the mages were surrounded by the light of magic, and the priests held up holy objects and Bibles high. This "purification force," driven by faith and a sense of justice, ignored the strange and bizarre alien base environment and charged towards the end of the monster-blocked corridor after throwing all doubts behind them.

The data terminal tried its best to eliminate the ubiquitous energy interference in the fortress, tried to depict a route map to the depths of the cave, and led the team to quickly pass through one monster-blocked gate after another and one gate-sealed passage after another. Sometimes its navigation would have some deviations: a certain automatic system in this fortress seemed to be aware of the existence of the data terminal, and it was consciously using strong interference to affect everyone's route. But this deviation did not seem to be of much use to Hao Ren's gang, who were used to violently breaking through. When they saw a thick wall in front of them and the road ahead was on the other side, they would not find another way at all—

Elizabeth held up a super hell lava ball that was two sizes larger than her entire body, threw it out with a bang, and solved all problems with one explosion. The wall was gone.

That's right, the only way Hao Ren and his friends could navigate the maze was to find a direction and then blast their way through. They didn't care about gates and obstacles.

As time went on, more support soldiers stormed into this place through several tunnels. Ophra ordered the newly arrived soldiers to divide into several groups to sweep away those stitched monsters, and also to reduce the pressure on the main force. Soon, the underground fortress was filled with the sound of explosions and shouts of killing everywhere. However, the other teams did not have the advance speed of Hao Ren's gang of explosion maniacs, so most of them stopped in the outer corridor area blocked by layers of alloy gates. In the end, only Hao Ren's wave of people stormed into the core of the fortress.

Monsters kept crawling out of various nooks and crannies. The knights formed a defensive line on the flanks to resist these monsters and ensure that the ranged professions in the team could maintain the rhythm of a bombing barrage and quickly advance. Elsa and Nangong Wuyue, as powerful healers and barrier masters, constantly healed the knights' injuries and dispelled the poisonous stench brought by the stitched monsters. They looked at the way Izhaks and his daughter were blasting their way forward, and couldn't help but worry: "What if we collapse the Holy Mountain?"

"Do you think the brain monster would not know to reinforce the outer frame if it dug such a big hole in the Holy Mountain?" Hao Ren replied loudly in a series of explosions, "The Holy Mountain has been standing empty for thousands of years, it won't collapse!"

As soon as he finished speaking, a loud bang suddenly came from under everyone's feet, as if the sky and the earth were collapsing. In an instant, the earth shook and the mountains swayed.

"Landlord, your mouth…" Lily shouted immediately.

Hao Ren was also startled, but he quickly realized that something was wrong. "Wait, the mountain hasn't collapsed! This doesn't sound like an earthquake…"

The roar only lasted for a few seconds, and the tremors around everyone quickly calmed down, but after a while, a similar tremor and roar came again!

Just as Hao Ren said, this movement really didn't sound like the Holy Mountain was about to collapse, but it was definitely not a good sign!

A series of stitched monster roars came from the front. Hao Ren saw that a thick gate at the end of the corridor seemed to be having problems and was swaying and unable to close. He immediately raised his spear and strode forward: "Hurry up!"

After passing through a few more gates and turning a few corners, the surrounding space seemed to be getting wider and larger, making people even suspect that the entire main peak of the Holy Mountain had been hollowed out. The strange vibration sound continued to ring regularly, sounding like some super-huge equipment was warming up and preparing to start. A thought suddenly flashed in Hao Ren's mind, and almost at the same time as this thought flashed, he found that the corridor had come to an end.

The end of the corridor was a platform suspended in mid-air. In front of everyone was a mountain cave so huge that it was shocking, and the thing in the center of the cave was stunning.

Hao Ren knew what the brain monster had been doing in the Holy Mountain for thousands or even tens of thousands of years.

"He's been repairing this spaceship…" Lily looked up and said blankly, "It's been repaired…"

"Gun" also looked up, and simply formed a small ball at Hao Ren's feet: "I'm going to die, meow!"