hsntnovel Chapter 31 Main Story Begins
Chapter 31 Main Story Begins
Just as Fatty and Wu Xie were looking disappointed because they couldn't break through the top of the tomb, and the atmosphere became somewhat tense, Zhang Qiling received a signal and leaped down, landing lightly on the stone slab in the center.
He walked up to the black, dried corpse, extended his two unusually long fingers, and carefully examined its abdomen.
After a moment, he withdrew his hand and said with certainty, "There's a mechanism inside, it's explosives, enough to blow open the top."
Wu Xie's eyes lit up instantly: "Explosives?! Great! There's always a way out!" He immediately started calculating, "We should be below the tide line right now. Judging by the time, there's still a while before the next low tide. Why don't we all rest and recover our strength, and then detonate it when the tide goes out? The water pressure will be the lowest then, and it will be the easiest and safest way for us to get out after blasting open the top."
The suggestion was unanimously approved; the continuous high-intensity adventures and battles were indeed exhausting, both physically and mentally.
Qin Yuan walked over to A Ning, whose eyes were still glazed over. To avoid any further trouble, he gently chopped her on the back of the neck, knocking her unconscious. Then, to the astonishment of Fatty and Wu Xie, he magically produced several self-heating hot pots, Coke, Sprite, and Harbin beer from his system space, and even a box of very tempting-looking poached chicken in a food storage container, and handed them to Zhang Qiling.
"Holy crap! Little Blackie! You're like Doraemon come to life!" the fat man exclaimed indistinctly as he eagerly opened the mini hot pot. "I love you to death, Fatty!"
Wu Xie was also starving, and thanked them repeatedly as he took the food. Even Zhang Qiling, looking at the box of poached chicken, had a slight flicker in his usually cold eyes, silently took it, and whispered, "Thank you."
The group sat together, replenishing their energy. The spicy aroma of the self-heating hot pot dispelled the chill of the tomb, and the warm food greatly relieved their fatigue and tension.
Fatty and Wuxie ate heartily, not forgetting to tear off pieces of tender chicken and carefully feed them to Qin Jiu, who was placed beside Qin Yuan and was now curiously observing them. The little guy accepted everything without hesitation, eating with relish, his big green eyes squinting contentedly.
Zhang Qiling sat quietly, gnawing on a chicken leg. Her gaze occasionally swept over Qin Yuan. This was the first time she had seen Qin Yuan's ability to conjure objects out of thin air so directly. After hesitating for a moment, she still whispered a reminder: "Try not to show this kind of ability to outsiders."
Qin Yuan knew he meant well, smiled, glanced at the fat man who was fighting over meat and Wu Xie who was teasing Qin Jiu, and said frankly, "I understand, but you're not outsiders."
Upon hearing this, Zhang Qiling said nothing more, only nodding slightly.
After eating and drinking their fill and resting for a while, they estimated that the tide was about to recede and got up to prepare for the blasting plan.
"We need to move this mummified corpse, along with the explosives, under that beam over there. That's where the structure is weakest, and the detonation will be most effective," Wu Xie said, pointing to the thick beam on one side of the tomb.
Just as he was about to step forward and make a move, Qin Yuan stopped him, saying, "Wait." As he spoke, he took out a bundle of sturdy climbing ropes from his spatial storage and handed them to Wu Xie.
"What?" Wu Xie asked, puzzled.
"Tie it up first," Qin Yuan pointed to the mummified corpse, his tone slightly teasing, "lest it think its chance has come when you go and jump up to give you a surprise, then run around the tomb with explosives, and we'll have a lot of fun."
Wu Xie's face darkened, feeling insulted: "Qin Yuan! You're slandering me! My constitution isn't that exaggerated!"
Zhang Qiling examined the dried corpse and said, "It has completely desiccated and there is no condition for it to rise." However, seeing Qin Yuan's persistent gaze and Wu Xie's unconvinced expression, he still took the rope and deftly tied the dried corpse tightly from head to toe.
The mummified corpse, bound like a rice dumpling, was placed below the designated detonation point. Wu Xie picked up a broken temple from the previous battle and handed it to Zhang Qiling, saying, "Little brother, it's up to you now. Make sure you calculate the distance carefully..."
Before he could finish speaking, the fat man next to him suddenly exclaimed "Huh!" interrupting him. Pointing to the mummified corpse's tail, he exclaimed in surprise, "Look! This mummified corpse... damn it, how come it's regressed to its ancestral form? It's grown a tail?"
Wu Xie turned around irritably: "Fatty, don't talk nonsense. How can a dried corpse be..." His words stopped abruptly because he also clearly saw that below the dried corpse's bound buttocks, there was indeed a long, thin tail that had been hidden by the shadows and had not been noticed before!
Not only that, the dried corpse's originally tightly closed and withered mouth suddenly opened slightly, the corners of its mouth turned up, outlining an extremely eerie and unsettling smile!
At the same time, the tightly bound body began to tremble, as if it were about to break free of its restraints at any moment!
"Holy crap! Is it really going to come back to life?!" Wu Xie's scalp tingled. Forgetting about studying the tail, he hurriedly shouted to Zhang Qiling, "Brother! Quick! Do it!"
However, before Zhang Qiling could even make a move—
"call out!"
A beam of blue light shot out from behind them like lightning, striking the dried corpse directly in the abdomen.
"boom--!!!"
A deafening explosion instantly filled the entire tomb chamber! A powerful shockwave, mixed with scorching flames, erupted from the mummified corpse's abdomen! The solid iron roof of the tomb was torn open by the concentrated explosive force, and icy seawater rushed in.
"Damn it! Bro, you're too fast! You didn't even warn me!" The fat man complained as he thrashed around in a mouthful of seawater.
Zhang Qiling steadied himself in the water and said coldly, "It wasn't me."
The group turned around and looked at the corner where they had previously placed Ah Ning. It was now empty; she had apparently woken up sometime earlier.
"That woman, Aning! She was faking it all!" the fat man cursed angrily. "She acted so convincingly! She even fooled me!"
"Stop talking nonsense! Hold on!" Qin Yuan shouted, quickly taking out several portable oxygen mouthpieces from his spatial storage and distributing them to everyone. "Bite down! Follow me!"
In the seconds before the seawater completely submerged the tomb chamber, Qin Yuan's gaze swept over the dazzling golden model of the Heavenly Palace on the Cloud Top. With a thought, he directly stored the entire model into his system space! Immediately afterward, he saw the fat man frantically gesturing to him in the water, pointing to several golden nanmu pillars that had been broken by the shockwave of the explosives and were falling down, his face filled with the message of not wasting anything.
Qin Yuan's lips twitched slightly, gaining a new understanding of the fat man's greed, but he still casually collected the several huge broken pillars as well. Seeing this, the fat man finally felt relieved, biting his breathing nozzle and giving Qin Yuan a thumbs up.
Without further delay, the group struggled to swim upstream through the gaping hole in the tomb's roof.
Just as Qin Yuan surfaced and took his first breath of fresh air, a system notification sounded in his mind:
[Ding! The main quest "Xisha Underwater Tomb" phase exploration is complete.]
[Rewards: 1. Super-fast regeneration (intermediate). Significantly increases the host's recovery speed after injury; non-fatal wounds can heal in a short time, enhancing survivability. 2. Empress's authority. A single dose of alien modification serum can be generated daily through the system. The host injected with the serum will directly generate an alien embryo within their body, which can emerge upon maturity. The offspring will completely obey the Empress's commands.]
The new player tutorial period has officially ended.
[Loading the main questline...]
[Mission Background: This world is suffering from the systematic erosion and distortion caused by "Ultimate," an unknown alien remnant. "Ultimate" is essentially a runaway legacy of an advanced alien civilization; its operational logic conflicts with the physical rules of this world, leading to continuous anomalies such as spacetime disorder and mutations in life.]
[The system bound to the host is a reverse-compiled version of the management program配套 (supporting) this alien creation. Its core instructions are: locate and shut down "Ultimate," eliminate its abnormal interference with the current world, and repair the world's underlying rules.]
Main Quest: Locate and enter the "Ultimate" core ruins located deep within the Heavenly Palace atop Changbai Mountain, and execute the shutdown procedure.
[Ding! A critical component of the "Ultimate" system and a high-threat source of contamination have been detected. A related side quest has been issued.]
Side Quest 1: Recover the backup energy core.
Target location: Deep in the Qinling Mountains, the ruins of the Bronze Tree.
Mission Description: The Bronze Tree is an early backup energy collection and conversion device deployed by the "Ultimate" System. Its core possesses powerful materialization capabilities and is currently operating autonomously at low power. If not retrieved, its unstable energy field will continue to distort the surrounding reality and may be reconnected and reactivated by the "Ultimate" main system.
[Mission Requirements: Enter the core area of the Bronze Tree, strip away and recover its energy core.]
[Note: This device has extremely strong psychological interference capabilities; you must remain steadfast in your mind.]
Side Quest 2: Clean up the biological laboratory.
Target location: Tamutuo, ruins of the Western Queen Mother's Palace.
Mission Description: The Queen Mother of the West's Palace was actually a biological adaptation research and gene modification laboratory established in the early stages of an extraterrestrial civilization. The laboratory has been abandoned due to energy depletion, but its remaining bio-creations (such as the Snake Mother, the Crested Snake, and variants of the Corpse Beetle King) have formed a highly dangerous ecological pollution zone, continuously producing mutated organisms and posing a serious threat to the native ecosystem.
[Mission Requirements: Thoroughly clean up the ruins of the Queen Mother of the West's Palace, destroy all active biochemical culture devices, and eliminate high-risk mutated organisms.]
[Hint: Early experimental records concerning "Ultimate" and extraterrestrial civilizations may be sealed deep within the laboratory, and these records may be valuable.]
[WARNING: This mission is extremely dangerous and concerns the survival of this world. Host, please improve your strength as soon as possible and proceed with caution.]
A flood of information rushed into Qin Yuan's mind. Floating in the sea, gazing towards the snow-covered Changbai Mountains in the distance, his heart surging with emotion. So that's how it is… the Seven Star Lu Palace and the underwater tomb in the Xisha Islands were truly just appetizers. The so-called "ultimate" was actually an alien relic, and his system was the key to shut it down?