Chapter 382 Cleaning Up

A swarm of autonomous machines was installing hundreds of anti-gravity devices all over the black warship, preparing to lift it out of the water. This warship was much smaller than the space fortress they had dragged back from Izhaks's old home, and its structure was full of protrusions suitable for mounting attachments, so the whole construction process was very fast. Before long, all the anti-gravity devices were in place. Then, the surface of the black warship began to shine with twinkling lights, as if awakening from death, shuddering slightly as it left the seabed.

The Landcrawler was towing this behemoth upwards, and its speed was increasing. The scene of a small spaceship only a few hundred meters long pulling this metal monster, which was more than ten kilometers long, looked a bit strange, but the whole process was not difficult: anyway, the anti-gravity devices were at work, and the towing ship's responsibility was only to be responsible for the traction of the course.

The black warship quickly escaped the deep sea under the tow, rushing towards the surface of the sea. At the same time, Hao Ren and Izhaks had driven the engineering machine to the other end of the Ivaduran city ruins. They successfully met up with Shakyra and Sorma on the way, and found the place where the siren queen was calling according to the tracking signal of the communicator.

The engineering machine emitted a faint blue light, anchoring itself in the water. The water flow nearby was turbulent, and filled with strong energy field interference, obviously close to the most serious position of the world's distortion. Hao Ren came out of the machine and looked around, and saw that there was indeed a huge vortex-like phantom not far ahead. Although it was just a phantom, it had an amazing presence.

But there was no trace of the siren queen nearby.

Hao Ren was immediately nervous, and quickly called out in the communicator: "Katrina, we're here, where are you?!"

"I see you," a slightly dull voice came from the communicator, "I'm standing on your left, see that big rock? I'm crouching behind it—there was a torrent here just now, I hid."

Hao Ren turned his head to look, and was immediately stunned: behind a big rock not far away, there was a mantis shrimp as big as a tank, tiptoeing and crouching. The mantis shrimp grabbed the seabed with its claws and raised a pincer to wave hello, indicating that she was the siren queen Katrina...

Hao Ren slapped his forehead: "Your Majesty... please change back quickly."

The mantis shrimp waved its pincers, and in a wave of water light, it returned to the form of a deep-sea beauty, but the shape just now could not be erased from Hao Ren and Izhaks's minds. She twisted her body charmingly and swam to the crowd, looking at the strangely shaped engineering machine in surprise: "Wow... you have a lot of weird things, is this a carrier-based aircraft on the spaceship?"

Hao Ren squinted at the siren queen: "I'm just curious, how did your aesthetics develop... Don't you think it affects your image to become a mantis shrimp or a sea crab?"

The siren queen shrugged: "Anyway, there are no men, so everyone just grows casually."

Hao Ren: "..."

It turned out that in the eyes of the sirens, there was really no difference between the beautiful girl form and the mantis shrimp form!

Izhaks, as the person on the scene who could least pursue his appearance, did not pay attention to the issue of aesthetics at all. He just frowned and looked at the huge portal: "The situation near this vortex is even more unstable than Nasaton. The water flow and energy here are very chaotic... But in theory, the energy levels at both ends of the portal should be the same, right?"

"The energy levels of the portals are the same, but the endurance of the two worlds is not the same," Hao Ren said while operating on the surface of the silver-white cubic bomb, setting its detonation energy level and remote control program. "Now you can see it, the Dream Plane is more fragile than the Surface World. I heard from Raven 12345 that this universe is not very 'healthy'. Its rules are not perfect. After the wall of reality has loopholes, the reaction here will be more intense than in the Surface World."

A slight humming sound came from the bomb, and the detonation program was set up.

Hao Ren patted the bomb's shell: "We don't need to worry about these complex theoretical problems, in short, just blow this place up... Let's go."

A stream of light flowed on the surface of the cubic bomb. Its alloy guard plates opened, revealing the blue-glowing charging tubes inside. Then, the entire bomb detached from the engineering machine and slowly floated towards the center of the vortex. The surrounding water was turbulent, but this did not affect the stability of the bomb's movement at all: as a "household cleaner" whose selling point was "accurate descaling and pinpoint cleaning," this thing came with three sets of stabilizers, so there was no need to worry about it being swept away by the water.

Hao Ren still felt that there must be something wrong with the bomb's manual...

After the bomb was anchored in the center of the vortex and sent a ready signal, Hao Ren dragged Izhaks back to the engineering machine, while greeting the other three sirens: "Everyone, stay away! There should be a bit of a torrent when the vortex collapses!"

The three sirens immediately swam over and wrapped their tails around the metal supports behind the engineering machine. Shakyra waved her hand: "Tie tight, let's go!"

These three were quite lazy.

The engineering machine dragged the three hitchhiking snake girls and rushed into the distance in a puff of smoke, stopping only after running several kilometers: although according to the data terminal's calculations, most of the explosive power would be absorbed by the vortex itself, it was still necessary to stay away for safety. After hiding behind an ancient city wall, Hao Ren monitored the vortex situation in the distance while connecting to Nasaton: "Vanessa, Vanessa, Hao Ren calling siren general..."

A burst of interference came from the communicator, and then Vanessa's voice came: "Received, received, is it time to detonate?"

"The bomb here is already installed," Hao Ren said, looking up at the siren queen, "Your Majesty is watching. How is your situation? Is the reading within the threshold?"

Before leaving, Hao Ren had given the remaining sirens in Nasaton a series of readings to be tested to determine that the vortex portal could be safely detonated. At this time, Vanessa confirmed with the technicians around her: "Everything is normal, you can detonate at any time."

"Okay, tell your people to retreat to the city, I will remotely detonate the two bombs in ten minutes. I wish you all the best."

Soon after, the data terminal also sent a communication from space: "Boss, it's done here too—the sample has been docked in synchronous orbit."

"Received," Hao Ren confirmed the time and nodded to Shakyra and the other two, "Get ready, we're detonating soon."

The three sirens immediately intertwined their tails and tied them together without saying a word, and nodded to indicate that they were tied tight: their way of preparing was full of siren characteristics.

Hao Ren counted silently in his heart, and pressed the detonation button.

Izhaks leaned out and looked into the distance, and saw a point of light suddenly burst out from the center of the towering vortex, like the morning star appearing in the night sky. The next second, the light suddenly burst into a huge ball of light, and the vortex tore violently under the illumination of this light ball, collapsing towards the center in an extremely distorted state. This scene was like a black hole devouring everything, or like the galaxy shrinking. The entire vortex shrank into a fuzzy sphere in a few seconds, and finally shattered with a bang.

A moment later, the huge sound and a strong surge of water crashed into the place where everyone was hiding.

The three sirens opened a barrier to help resist the impact of the water, and the deep-sea rubble and building debris swept rapidly outside the barrier like fallen leaves in a storm. This lasted for half a minute before gradually stopping. After everything was quiet, there were only bursts of muddy water wandering around.

The huge vortex in the distance had disappeared.

"I knew it was good to stay away," Hao Ren curled his lips, "Looks like it's done... easier than expected."

Soon, news came from Vanessa that the portal above Nasaton had disappeared smoothly, and according to instrument detection, the interference between the two worlds was also rapidly receding.

"Phew... finally there were no twists and turns," the siren queen exhaled and spat out a string of bubbles, but soon she frowned, "Wait... why is the water flowing faster and faster here?"

The turbid water around everyone did not disappear with the passage of time, but began to become more and more, and faster and faster, at a speed visible to the naked eye. At the same time, Hao Ren also felt a strange chill coming from the water. This chill gathered from all directions as if it were conscious, and in the chill, he seemed to vaguely hear a roar full of anger and hostility.

In that brief tenth of a second, countless inexplicable fragments flashed through his mind.

A strong sense of crisis surged into his heart.