The anomaly of the bronze gate raised the wariness of all the soldiers of the Nether World Watch. Even Elder Nether Spring, one of the best experts of the Blood Demon Sector, was also gazing at the twisted embossments without blinking.
The tombs and relics of ancient experts were the favorites for both Cultivators and demons. If they could find a few legacies inside the bomb, they might be able to make a significant breakthrough in their training. However, such places were mostly full of traps, and the explorers might get killed should they be careless.
However, the studies of the specialists and the prospecting over the last few days had reached the same conclusion—the Mausoleum of Chaos was closed because of an extremely gory accident in which everybody inside the mausoleum was instantly killed.
Maybe, it was because the leakage of a very tough virus that caused the mental derangement and mutation of the researchers, who killed each other until none remained.
Under such circumstances, Chaos died a rather hasty death, and there were not many followers who could finish setting up the traps for him.
It was also one of the reasons why Elder Nether Spring dared explore the place in person.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
The sounds of spinning gears and rubbing chains behind the bronze gate sounded closer and closer. At first, they seemed to be from the core of the planet, but right now, they were echoing right inside everybody’s ears, making the explorers feel that it was not just the bronze gate that was being twisted but also their internal organs.
Before the gate was fully opened, some of the relatively weak specialists were already gagging.
Huala!
The next second, the bronze gate suddenly collapsed.
“Aim all the fireflies and searchlights at the bronze gate. Everybody, retreat ten meters!” Elder Nether Spring commanded.
Dozens of searchlights captured and smuggled from the Heaven’s Origin Sector, with crystals as cores and enhanced by hundreds of light-concentrating rune arrays, were aimed at the bronze gate at the same time. In the meantime, countless bugs that were much larger than normal fireflies and had crystals embedded in their heads and bottoms flew to the top of the bronze gate, too.
The radiance generated by them illuminated their surroundings like daylight. Even so, the brightness was still heavily refrained above the bronze gate, as if the black fog that was flowing out of the bronze gate was devouring all of it.
With the help of the light that had been suppressed to the minimum, one could vaguely see that the bronze gate had descended about five meters. Then, it revolved anticlockwise three times and clockwise two and a half times. In the end, after a ‘clang’ sound, the pivot of the gate seemed to have opened, and the bronze gate split apart like a blossoming flower, retreating into the depths of the rocks.
The bronze gate was no more. The pathway below the gate extended deep underground, vertically like a shaft. Naturally, nobody was able to tell what was down there when they were standing aside.
“Hundred Feet, explore the environment!” shrieked Swirl, the butterfly demon.
One of the soldiers of the Nether World Watch immediately walked out of the team. There were barely any features of human beings on his body. He was more like a hybrid of an enormous spider and a centipede. He had two long limbs in front of his body, and more than ten red, complex eyes were grown among the villus and the end of the limbs.
Hundred Feet extended his limbs. They seemed to have been refined by special genes for the purpose of reconnaissance. When his limbs, which were almost three meters long at first, were fully unfolded, they became more than ten meters long. Connected by more than ten joints, he could move his limbs freely in the most complicated tunnels.
Hundred Feet extended his limbs that were brimming with complex eyes into the dark hole on the ground.
Despot and Swirl, the two captains of the Nether World Watch, both placed their hands near the head of ‘Hundred Feet’ and connected to his brain with synthesized neurons, sharing his vision.
“Judging from the soundwave detection in the beginning, the pathway is at least twenty kilometers long, with many footholds on the wall to help everybody go in and out. But the wall of the hole is extremely smooth. It is impossible for ordinary people to go inside without the help of tools.”
“Dark fog is everywhere inside the pathway. Although the complex eyes of ‘Hundred Feet’ have been specially refined and trained, it is impossible to see more than a hundred meters away.”
“Huh. What’s that sound?”
At the end of the pathway, deep down the underground, deafening noises that sounded like a surging hurricane suddenly flooded up like a spring!
“Watch out! Don’t get hurt!”
Swirl tackled Hundred Feet to the ground while a cluster of ball lightning was quickly expanding between the two enormous horns on the head of ‘Despot’.
Almost at the same time, the sound of the hurricane had already reached the entrance of the hole. After a boom, a large cluster of black gas charged out like a volcanic eruption!
“Ahhh!”
The last section of the limbs of Hundred Feet had not been pulled out of the shaft yet, which was hit precisely by the black gas. He screamed miserably, and his complex eyes suddenly bulged like abnormal tumors, only to explode one by one a moment later!
Hundred Feet screamed in the excruciating pain.
Swirl was quick enough to react. She waved her butterfly wings, and a stream of colorful brilliance circled around the swollen limbs of Hundred Feet. The limbs were immediately cut off, but like vipers whose heads had been chopped off, they writhed violently on the ground before they finally melted into a pool of pus!
The black gas soared up and enshrouded most of the fluorescent fireflies. The brightness of half the fireflies immediately died down while they withered and fell into the shaft like hailstones.
In the meantime, the other half of the fireflies were shining even more brightly than before. Amid hissing sounds, their wings and limbs grew crazily, and they significantly expanded in scale, turning from the size of a thumb to the size of almost a palm!
The enlarged florescence fireflies were like flash bombs that had grown wings. They turned extremely brutal, bloodthirsty, and hungry. With earsplitting shrieks, they dashed to the soldiers of the Nether World Watch through various directions!
“The fireflies are out of control!” one of the explorers exclaimed.
Most of the subordinates of Elder Nether Spring belonged to the Insect Clan. As their name suggested, they were all experts in manipulating insects. All the insect-type demon beasts were like arms and fingers under their control.
But right now, the fluorescent fireflies, which were refined with the blood of the soldiers of the Nether World Army and were essentially part of their organs, would not listen to their commands!
At the critical moment, ‘Despot’, the Hercules beetle, bellowed and blew out a ball of lightning between his horns. It was then detonated in the middle of the mutated fluorescent fireflies, turning into an enormous electric web more than ten square meters large. The mysterious blue electric arcs confined all the florescence fireflies inside!
Zi! Zi! Zi! Zi!
Despite the boundary of the intense electric arcs, the florescence fireflies were not killed instantly. They were still struggling hard and almost tore apart the electric web several times.
“Huh?”
Despot’s shell was shaking and producing rattling noises. The demon cores that were embedded into his body were glittering, and the electric arcs that he released turned from deep blue into crimson!
Under the surging crimson electric arcs, most of the florescence fireflies were finally electrocuted into dry corpses and blown into ash, but some ten fireflies that were particularly vigorous were not electrocuted. Instead, they further mutated in the electric arcs, with sharp thorns growing out of their body and their mouthparts expanding into what seemed to be shining caltrops!
“What?”
Despot seemed to feel humiliated. Bloody steam was popping up from his face that was covered in black armor. His arms bashed each other brutally like two rushing crystal trains. The super demon core at the center of his breastplate that looked like a mirror suddenly shinned, changing the electric arcs that he was letting out from crimson into pale white.
Finally, all the mutated fluorescent fireflies were killed.
“Spray the stabilizing drugs, now!” Swirl commanded anxiously.
A few soldiers of the Nether World Watch that were like rice-puddings quickly moved forward.
They were all wearing multiple layers of fully-enclosed protective suits, even including the anti-poison equipment from the Heaven’s Origin Sector. They were also carrying several huge, silver, high-pressure bottles on which a lot of rune arrays were shining brilliantly.
Pu! Pu! Pu! Pu!
Dark green foam spurted out of the high-pressure bottles and formed a solid barrier around the black gas.
The moment the dark green foam touched the black gas, it immediately simmered and enveloped the black gas, neutralizing it and generating a huge amount of harmless, bright green gas that was spreading afar in the room.
“The black gas that sank to the deepest part of the tomb of Chaos seems to have the effect of overly stimulating the activity of cells. Any living creature that touches it will turn extremely crazy, and their vitality will be drained in an instant!
“Thankfully, the structure of the ancient black gas is relatively simple. It can be neutralized by our stabilizing drugs.”
One of the poison specialists was operating a few local artifacts of the Blood Demon Sector and several pieces of air examination magical equipment from the Heaven’s Origin Sector, while he observed quickly, “The black gas has been sealed inside the tomb of Chaos for forty thousand years. During the forty thousand years, because of the tectonic movement, the air pressure inside the tomb changed a lot. That’s why it is spurting out. I estimate that it will all disperse in five minutes.
“However, inside the tomb of Chaos, there might be residue of the black gas. It is suggested that we spray stabilizing drugs into the cave and neutralize the gas before our exploration.”
As he predicted, three minutes later, the black gas was spurting much less forcefully, like a spring that had lost pressure. Five minutes later, there was no more black gas.
Even so, Elder Nether Spring still asked the Nether World Watch to wait half an hour, and he told the specialist to send a piece of air examination magical equipment deep into the shaft with a long, narrow rope.
The rope was ten kilometers long. The result was that no constituents of lethal poisons were detected ten thousand meters into the hole.
Since the tomb had been sealed for forty thousand years, the air was naturally not suitable for breathing. However, since the demons did not have a high demand on the air quality like humans did, and they were all carrying highly-compressed oxygen cylinders, there would not be a problem.
During the half hour while the black gas was being mediated, the Nether World Watch worked on the shaft and established a temporary lift with a solid chain.
However, due to the restriction of the hardness of the material, the chain was only five thousand meters long. If it were any longer, it would collapse because of its own eight.
Many experts of the Nether World Watch could fly and float in midair. Those who could not were mostly able to slither on the wall of the cave like lizards. The lift was mainly prepared to deliver assets.
They planned to establish such a lift every five thousand meters below the shaft. With such a relay system, they would be able to extract all the items of value inside the tomb.