Chapter 1 Safety First

To ensure safety, Vivian threw down another little bat, this time with a small piece of protective crystal attached. Watching the tiny thing fly shakily into the tunnel with the crystal, Hao Ren worried it would crash into the wall. Fortunately, it made it to the bottom.

Below the metal pipe was a sprawling tunnel world, a complex structure like an ant nest. Vivian followed the traces of blood on the pipe to find the route the flesh golem had taken and discovered many monsters dead in the pipe. They were piled together, the skin on their upper bodies severely burned, the cause being the short-circuit malfunction of the black electric vests they wore. It seemed Hao Ren's electromagnetic pulse bomb had been very effective, not only destroying the mechanical controls of the metal pipe but also killing a large number of monsters trying to get out, blocking some of the exits.

But Vivian's little bats also found the sound of mechanical friction coming from some of the branch pipes, which might be gradually returning to operation. If the pipe system had self-maintenance and cleaning functions, then other monsters would soon find new exits.

Hao Ren decisively decided to rush in before those pipe systems resumed operation. To buy everyone enough time and cause more trouble for the underground facility, he threw several more electromagnetic pulse bombs down a pipe.

After a series of muffled sounds came from the depths of the underground, Hao Ren nodded. "All clear. Let's go down. I'll lead the way."

Uruk frowned. He had never seen anything like this before, and he instinctively felt an unpleasant aura coming from the depths of the tunnel. But he did not hesitate or back down. In any case, a group of unclean creatures had dug such a hole deep in the werewolf's sacred mountain, and he could not ignore it. The werewolf king beside him turned to look around. "You guys are going down? I don't have to go, right?"

Uruk glared at his mount. "How can you retreat at a time like this?"

The werewolf king bared his teeth. "Look at my four paws! How am I supposed to climb through pipes with these things?"

Uruk suddenly felt that his mount had a point, and he was speechless.

"You and the other war wolves guard outside," Hao Ren instructed the werewolf king. "I'll leave you a communicator. If there's any movement, notify us immediately, just speak into it. Also, the other soldiers should be arriving soon. Have them follow down, and we'll leave someone to meet them below—Aufra, is that okay?"

Hao Ren had gotten used to being the leader and habitually gave instructions. Only after he finished speaking did he remember that there was a real commander here. Aufra waved her hand indifferently. "Just do it that way. I've realized that you're familiar with the situation, and I wouldn't know where to start if I were to command."

Hao Ren hung the communicator around the werewolf king's neck. After confirming that everything was ready, he was the first to jump into the deep, dark mechanical pipe.

The pipe sloped downwards, but the gradient was still manageable, as long as one was careful not to fall. Moreover, the inside of the pipe was wider than imagined, adults could almost stand upright. Rather than a pipe, it was more like a cylindrical corridor. As Hao Ren walked, he observed the metal walls around him. The metal was clearly not something that could be cast with Holletta's local technology, and its fine structure far exceeded the technical level of this planet. The more he looked, the more alarmed he became. The existence of these high-tech things could only mean one thing: what was hidden in the sacred mountain was far more than just a nest of the Radiant Order!

Did a local indigenous cult need such a high-tech alien base?

"That brain monster has been lurking on this planet for at least several thousand years," Vivian said, thinking about a similar problem. "This underground base should be something it gradually built up, which means it has at least some industrial equipment at its disposal."

Hao Ren nodded silently, not saying anything.

The situation was far beyond his initial guess. He had originally thought that only a brain monster had coincidentally come to this planet and organized a group of local natives to form the Regression Order, and that all of this had happened in recent years. But now the facts were completely different from his guess: the brain monster had been dormant in this world for thousands of years, it had built an amazing underground base in this sacred mountain, and that Regression Order...

Was probably just an insignificant little group attached to this underground base.

"There's a very strong interference here," the data terminal's voice woke Hao Ren from his thoughts. "The source of the interference is deeper. But I don't know if it's the base's power source or something else."

Hao Ren replied casually, "Anyway, let's go take a look. There aren't any other options."

Izaak was bent over, following at the back of the group. Walking here was really difficult for him. Elizabeth, who was next to him, couldn't bear to watch anymore. "Dad, why didn't you make yourself a little smaller when you first transformed?"

Izaak replied in a muffled voice, "Who knew that when I first transformed into human form, I happened to meet a Kubis barbarian? I thought that was the standard human height... Now I can't change it even if I want to."

The team hadn't been moving for long in this strange alloy pipe when they encountered the first fork in the road that Vivian had discovered. Lily pointed to the intersection and shouted, "Look over there!"

Several foul-smelling flesh monsters were piled on top of each other in one of the pipes. The black vests on their bodies had burst open due to electrical overload, and their entire upper bodies were almost cooked. Around them, one could see traces of the pipe walls being eroded by strong electric arcs. This was the masterpiece of the electromagnetic pulse bomb.

Hao Ren endured the nausea and stepped forward to flip open the black vest of one of the monsters. The thing had shattered into pieces, and pieces fell off with the slightest movement. Hao Ren discovered that it was made of layers of material that resembled flexible plastic, with black crystals embedded in the outer layer and a large number of circuits in the inner layer. On the side that was worn against the body, one could see many needle structures that flashed with a metallic cold light. If he wasn't mistaken, these needles should have been inserted directly into the monster's muscles. They were the power source and control secret of these flesh monsters.

"A combination of biology and machinery, and it looks like an industrial product, made on an assembly line," the data terminal quickly judged. "It's not the same as the 'knight' we saw at the royal capital's banquet last time."

"The question is where the 'materials' for these monsters came from," Lily frowned, poking the arm of a flesh golem with Huo Zhi Fei Chang Gao Xing (Fire Very Happy). "It looks like they were pieced together from human organs, and many of the organs have been modified... That would require a lot of corpses, right?"

Nangong Wuyue muttered cautiously, "Could it be those missing cultists?"

Hao Ren's heart immediately skipped a beat. Recalling that he hadn't encountered a single member of the Regression Order since entering the mountain, he immediately felt that this possibility could not be ignored. "That... very likely!"

"Unbelievable," Aufra frowned. "That fiend actually made his followers into these monsters?"

"Humans are not his followers at all," Hao Ren threw away the vest fragments, stood up, and clapped his hands. "The brain monster and the First Born have the same belief, and that is that all life should die. It's just that the brain monster is smarter, it will try to make its prey kill each other first."

Izaak stepped forward and waved his hand over a flesh golem, and he saw a blurry, translucent thing appear in his hand. The thing struggled violently in his palm until it dissipated, and Izaak shook his head. "But these heretics were transformed into monsters consciously and willingly."

Everyone was silent for a moment, and in the end, Aufra could only sigh. "Incomprehensible beliefs."

Aufra left two soldiers at the first fork in the road to meet the follow-up team and then ordered to continue forward. The group avoided the pipe that might lead to the "flesh monster factory" and chose a direction that didn't have a bloody smell permeating from it. As they continued to go deeper, more lights appeared in the tunnel, which seemed to prove that the direction they were heading in was correct: they were approaching the deeper areas of this underground facility.

Just as the team arrived at another fork in the road, the sound of mechanical activity suddenly came from nearby.

Lily's hearing was extremely sensitive, and she immediately turned her pointed ears in the direction of the sound. "That way!"

Izaak immediately stepped forward. "Everyone—bang!"

Elizabeth looked up and found that her father's head was stuck in the ceiling. She sighed. "I'm telling you, Dad, why didn't you make yourself a little smaller back then?"

Izaak's voice came from behind a layer of steel. "Don't say anything, let me pull myself out first..."