1869 Infected Ruins

With Battle God Lei Zongchao’s guidance, everyone continued their descent.

Even Wu Haibo, who had been talking non-stop earlier, became much quieter.

The head of the Ancient Ruins Research Center did not have more information to give because they were now seventy to eighty meters below the rift’s exit.

In the past, even the audacious and insane Blood Alliance had only driven the ordinary citizens to explore the areas between fifty to seventy meters deep.

They rarely stepped into the area where Meng Chao and the others had constantly descended.

This was not because the Blood Alliance cherished human lives.

The “deep divers” who had reached such a depth would be unpredictable even if they could return safely. They would more or less mutate once they got to the surface.

The worst case in the Blood Alliance’s record described a deep diver who had apparently returned to the laboratory safe and sound. He was observed for forty-eight hours, and he received a full-body scan that was a hundred times more intensive. After confirming that not a single cell of his had mutated, he was partially unshackled and released back to his small dormitory.

However, just one minute after those forty-eight hours, plenty of tentacles with sharp teeth, as well as thorns, suddenly sprouted from the deep diver’s throat and attacked everyone in his field of vision.

There were more than a hundred ordinary citizens who had been captured and forced into the ancient ruins, as well as a few of the Blood Alliance’s scientists and powerful security personnel. They were all tragically killed by the deep diver’s tentacles, and they turned into monsters similar to him.

In the end, the Blood Alliance had no choice but to completely seal off the area where the monsters wandered. They injected a large amount of viscous fuel and created a sealed fire that lasted for several hours to burn the area to ashes. Only then did they stop the monsters from wreaking havoc.

After this incident, even the inhumane Blood Alliance dared not easily travel past the “death threshold” that was seventy meters below ground…

Well, to be more precise, this was not the most serious damage that a deep diver had caused the Blood Alliance.

This was because Battle God Lei Zongchao was also a deep diver.

Moreover, he was one of the few lucky divers who never mutated at all.

The internal collapse caused by his counterattack was the most serious damage that the Blood Alliance had ever experienced.

Perhaps, like the deep diver who attacked indiscriminately with his tentacles, the Battle God’s mind had long been eroded by the mysterious power in the ruins.

However, his incubation period might be longer. Perhaps it was not forty-eight hours but nearly half a century?

Beep!

At that moment, Meng Chao heard a sharp buzzing sound beside him.

He swept his searchlight across the area and found a Battle God Palace disciple who was attached to a nearby rope. The disciple’s eyes were unfocused, his face was ashen, and his chest was heaving weakly. It was as if his lungs were being squeezed by an invisible hand and he could not breathe at all.

The bracelet that detected his physiological parameters was emitting an abnormal orange light.

Meng Chao quickly grabbed the disciple’s wrist and injected a stream of spirit energy into his body.

The Battle God Palace disciple was like a drowning man grasping at straws. He took a deep breath, and a layer of gray, sticky sweat formed on his forehead. Finally, his expression improved slightly.

“Just now-just now…”

He stammered and looked around, still in shock. “While I was climbing down just now, I felt as if I was crawling into a darkness that was as thick as ink. When I looked left and right, all of you were gone!”

This was one of the most common illusions people experienced when exploring the ancient ruins.

However, the hallucinations that could be categorized as “extreme claustrophobia” were also the most likely reasons for people to go mad, dance, fall into the abyss, and lose their lives.

Fortunately, his bracelet alerted him in time, and Meng Chao immediately saved him.

His mind was not greatly affected since he could still answer the questions in his notebook when he performed a second self-examination.

Everyone took the opportunity to rest and adapt to the heavy pressure brought by the endless darkness at a depth of nearly a hundred meters.

They also scanned their surroundings to gather more useful information.

Meng Chao noticed that at this depth, the rock walls on both sides of the crevice showed increasing signs of artificial restoration.

The large rock walls were as smooth as mirrors and even smoother than metal plates that had been punched into the ground. There was almost no friction.

The material that made up the rock walls did not look like metal or alloy, but more like crystal clear jade.

Within the translucent “jade,” there were crisscrossing, glittering routes that constituted mysterious, three-dimensional mazes.

Such a structure was naturally not the work of nature.

Meng Chao had once seen similar structures in the memories of the monster mastermind.

It was a city built by the Ancients, and all the buildings inside seemed to be made of crystals. Thousands of gold and silver threads were embedded into them to form a magnificent piece of art.

‘So, this ancient ruin, or rather, every ancient ruin site, is the work of the Ancients?

‘If that’s the case, then it makes sense that there are a lot of ancient treasure troves and advanced technology in this place.

‘However, judging from the monster mastermind’s memories, although the Ancients reached the peak of perfection and were already evolving into pure energy lifeforms, they still possessed rationality and logic. In a sense, they could communicate and even predict the future.

‘If Dragon City’s transmigration to the Other World was truly orchestrated by the Ancients with the purpose of selecting the best Earthlings to inherit their legacy and restart their civilization, then the tests in the ancient ruins could be extremely difficult. However, they shouldn’t be illogical and purely based on luck without any “correct answer.” They shouldn’t just trample on human beings until they become unrecognizable monsters that return to the surface and kill wantonly!’

Meng Chao shook his head.

He discovered the differences between the ancient structures in the depths of the ancient ruins and the crystal city he saw in the monster mastermind’s memories.

No, it was not as simple as the ruins being shattered and dull.

The structures in the ancient ruins had not only been torn apart by the drastic changes in the geological structure brought about by the passage of billions of years.

They had also been eroded by the surrounding rocks, which left ugly lumps of swelling and scars.

There were also many fossilized creatures that resembled withered vines and dried earthworms in plenty of places. They spread out from the depths of the rock layers and seeped into the structures along the broken ancient complexes.

As such, the solemn, orderly passages and spacious, bright rooms in the ancient structures turned into twisted cracks and cavities that looked like monster organs.

‘The ancient ruins seem to be…infected?’

All of a sudden, a strange thought popped up in Meng Chao’s mind.