Chapter 100: The Storage Room for Energy Crystals

The group found themselves packed into a small, sealed chamber, and they could clearly feel that this enclosed space was moving at high speed toward some unknown, and very likely perilous, destination.

“Break out!” In the face of the crisis, the leader shouted. The team, which had been somewhat disorganized moments before, somehow fell miraculously calm. They quickly formed a line, leaving about half a meter between each person, and began searching the inside of the chamber’s shell.

“What are they doing?” Du Yun watched their movements in astonishment. In a situation like this, ordinary people would already have been stunned senseless by the sudden change. How could they possibly think to break out?

“They’re probably looking for a weak point in the shell,” Du Zhi answered in Du Yun’s mind. Under these circumstances, the leader and the others’ rapid response and immediate search for an opening was enough to make anyone think highly of them.

“Let’s help too,” Du Yun said, steadying herself. The huge chamber before her eyes became clearer and clearer in her sight.

Her gaze slid from one wall of the shell to the next, and at once she discerned its strength and whether it had any weakness, as though she were a scanner.

“There!” Du Yun’s eyes suddenly locked onto a point. She pointed and called out to the leader.

It looked like an entire slab of solid metal, exceptionally sturdy, but in that brief scan Du Yun had discovered that the metal plate of the shell was actually hollow, and there was a chance to exploit it.

“Report, over here!” One of the team members searching this section of the chamber also discovered something was wrong and reported it to the leader.

The leader strode over, reached out, and tapped the metal plate a few times with his fingers. He nodded. “Heavy weapons. Attack here.”

“Yes!”

At his command, everyone answered at once. They swarmed toward the other side of the shell, and in an instant the heavy weapons in their hands roared to life, all firing toward the weak point they had found.

If that metal plate had been made entirely solid, it would have been unimaginably tough. But once it had been made hollow, it was nothing more than two not-very-thick layers of metal skin. Under the force of heavy fire, it was quickly melted through, leaving a hole large enough for two people to pass.

“Withdraw!” Opportunity was fleeting; who knew where the chamber would be in the next second? After the leader decisively gave the order, the nearest members threw themselves through the hole and rushed outside.

The leader reached out, seized Du Yun, and held her tightly in his arms. Then, through the still-warm opening, he too dashed out.

Da Zhuang reached out to help Lia, but she shook him off and charged for the hole on her own. Thin Monkey turned back, hoisted Peach onto his back, and hurried out after her.

Then came Dong Tiechui and the others. Though each of them was trembling in the knees and terrified, being crushed to death was still better than being flattened into energy crystals. One after another, they rushed out as well.

By the time the rear guard had finally emerged from the chamber, rolled a few times on the ground to bleed off the impact and come to a stop, what he saw nearly made him cry out.

Not long after he jumped clear, the chamber abruptly stopped at the end of the corridor, then vanished with a flash, just as suddenly as when the group had first been trapped inside.

But that was not what frightened him. What frightened him was that a vast stretch of corridor, now exposed, suddenly erupted with searing flames. It lasted only an instant, but even from more than ten meters away he felt as if his hair and eyebrows were about to be scorched away.

And that was not all. When he gathered his courage and stood up to look, he saw that at the corridor’s far end there was a massive pit, dozens of meters across and more than a hundred meters deep. The bottom of that pit was covered thickly with something other than earth or stone: energy crystals, piece upon piece of them, beyond counting.

“Leader! Leader!” The rear guard stumbled back the way he had come. This discovery was far too shocking; he had to report it to the leader at once.

“Ha, that kid Chong Tou is back!” Thin Monkey said with a grin. After surviving such a narrow escape, everyone needed somewhere to vent their emotions, and laughter was a good way to do it. Hearing Chong Tou’s shout, he could not help laughing. “That boy was on rear guard duty. No idea if he got spooked.”

“Over here!” Thin Monkey took a few quick steps toward Chong Tou’s direction. Seeing that Chong Tou had returned with all limbs intact, his grin widened. But the moment he noticed Chong Tou’s ghostly expression, along with his scorched hair and eyebrows, the smile froze on his face.

“What’s wrong?” Thin Monkey hurried over and grabbed Chong Tou.

“That place, that place is a storage chamber for high-temperature, high-pressure energy crystals!” Chong Tou was only a young man in his early twenties. Startled nearly out of his wits, he spoke in broken fragments, but he still managed to get the key point across.

“A storage chamber for energy crystals?” Hearing this, the leader’s expression also turned strange. After all, everyone had heard where the starship’s energy crystals came from, even if they had never seen it with their own eyes: from countless zombies instantly vaporized and condensed into these things. To face that directly all of a sudden was enough to make anyone’s heart start pounding.

“Let’s take a look,” the leader said, and led the others forward. As they walked, Chong Tou finally explained the whole situation clearly.

“Be careful of the heat. Keep your distance.” Just as the leader and the others cautiously approached the storage chamber, Du Yun’s mental power had already moved ahead and taken in the full view.

Ahead, more than ten meters away, was a colossal pit enclosed by metal plates. It was dozens of meters across and over a hundred meters deep. Just looking down from above made one dizzy and lightheaded.

At the bottom of the pit, Du Yun sensed an intense surge of energy. Energy crystals, red as fresh blood, covered the entire floor of the pit, like the most beautiful rubies—but they radiated a ferocious, violent energy that even made Du Yun’s scalp prickle.

How many zombies would it take to compress into so many energy crystals? And all those zombies had once been living, breathing human beings.

Du Yun was shaken to the core, and she increasingly felt that the world’s transformation from normalcy into apocalypse had been a conspiracy. And the profits from that conspiracy might well be connected to the densely packed energy crystals covering the hold below.

After a long while, Du Yun finally recovered from her shock. When she once again used her mental power to probe those crystals, she suddenly discovered something unusual.

“These energy crystals seem different from the ones we dug up.” The crystals they had excavated themselves emitted a calm, slow fluctuation, carrying only concentrated energy. But these crystals, perhaps because of the cruel method by which they were produced, seemed faintly enshrouded in a vicious aura.

Even from far away, merely observing them gave Du Yun the dangerous sensation of being surrounded by anger. If such energy crystals were used, what would the consequences be? It seemed that these crystals could not be used directly after all. Du Yun’s heart sank a little further.