great-warnovel Chapter 172 Living Water Filters and Reverse Coordinates
Chapter 172 Living Water Filters and Reverse Coordinates
The Jiangnan Province Bureau of Extraordinary Immortals building has three underground floors.
The piercing red alarm lights turned the corridor into a slaughterhouse.
Lin Zhen slammed the military satellite phone he was holding onto the marble tiles. The special plastic casing shattered into pieces, some of which bounced towards the physical gate of the air-raid shelter.
"Are you all deaf?! Sound the highest evacuation alarm! Everyone within a three-kilometer radius of the air-raid shelter, even the dogs, get out!"
The dozen or so team members under his command looked at each other, none of them daring to move.
The elevator doors at the end of the corridor opened.
A middle-aged man in a sharp Zhongshan suit stepped out. He was Wang Jianguo, a special envoy from the Observatory Headquarters. He held a black magnetic card with the highest-level authorization mark in his hand, and was followed by four heavily armed bodyguards.
"Director Lin has quite the airs of an official. This is the Jiangnan branch of the Astronomical Bureau, not Lu Yuan's private garden."
Wang Jianguo walked up to Lin Zhen and twirled the magnetic card between his fingers.
"The equipment storage room at the bottom of the air-raid shelter is one of the three places that headquarters specifically requested be sealed off. It contains top-secret files from the early days of the People's Republic of China. Without this key, how can you expect to break open that half-meter-thick lead-core gate?"
Lin Zhen's chest heaved violently as he reached out and grabbed Wang Jianguo by the collar.
"Special Envoy Wang. Zhou Ming was just turned into a vegetable yesterday after his soul was searched, and you've already rushed here today with your inner guards to take over this door. You know better than I what kind of shady mess is hidden inside."
Wang Jianguo's face hardened, and he reached out to slap Lin Zhen's fingers away.
"Lin Zhen, watch your attitude. You've mobilized manpower without authorization and sounded the highest alarm, which is a serious violation of the bureau's discipline. Lu Yuan's troubles in Beijing are Beijing's business; this is Jiangnan. He made a few harsh words and you're scared to the point of blowing up the gate? Does he really think he's the Jade Emperor?"
I don't know if he is the Jade Emperor.
Lin Zhen wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and took two steps back.
"But he just said less than half an hour. Twenty-nine minutes have passed now."
Wang Jianguo let out a sneer.
"It's 1,200 kilometers from the capital to Jiangnan. Even if he took the fastest military fighter jet available today, it would still take at least 40 minutes. Could he possibly fly there in person...?"
Before he could finish speaking...
The half-meter-thick reinforced concrete load-bearing ceiling above them emitted a deafening cracking sound that made one's teeth ache.
There was no warning.
A black figure, carrying violent momentum, crashed through the building.
Cement fragments mixed with severed steel bars rained down. Several wrist-thick cables snapped in mid-air, bursting into bursts of blinding blue sparks.
Lu Yuan slammed his feet onto the reflective marble tiles.
The ground sank directly downwards, creating a spiderweb-like pit with a diameter of three meters.
His black windbreaker was covered in white salt crystals, left behind after the East China Sea water evaporated due to high-speed friction. The edges of the jacket still carried a faint smell of burnt metal, as if struck by lightning.
Ye Qingcheng landed right behind her. Her signature white dress was completely stained dark red with blood, and her face was deathly pale.
The temperature in the corridor instantly dropped to freezing.
Lin Zhen's knees buckled, and he knelt directly in the shards of glass.
"Mr. Lu! Eighty percent of the personnel have been evacuated! But this gate requires the headquarters password and is connected to a self-destruct mechanism..."
Lu Yuan didn't even glance at Lin Zhen, and walked straight towards the special lead-core gate that was said to be able to withstand bunker-buster bombs.
Wang Jianguo's mind went blank.
He stared at the young man, who reeked of the sea and burnt smell, and his jaw trembled uncontrollably. He simply couldn't comprehend how someone could cross 1,200 kilometers in half an hour.
But the black magnetic card in his hand gave him a last bit of confidence.
"You're Lu Yuan? Halt! This is a top-secret national site. Forcibly breaching the gate will detonate fifty tons of high explosives buried underground!"
Wang Jianguo spread his arms to block the door, and the four guards gritted their teeth and pointed their guns at Lu Yuan.
Lu Yuan stopped in his tracks.
The Mahayana stage divine sense directly swept over Wang Jianguo's mind.
"Zhou Ming's brother-in-law. A collateral branch of the Wang family in Beijing. He received 300 million yuan in overseas remittances from the S.H.I.E.L.D. consortium, just to guard this door and prevent anyone from getting in."
Lu Yuan had no interest in even making a move, and released his Mahayana stage pressure without reservation.
Before the four guards could even scream, their rifles were crushed into metal discs, and they were pinned to the floor by this invisible force, their bones cracking under the strain.
Wang Jianguo collapsed to the ground, a yellow stain appearing in his crotch.
Lu Yuan walked to the gate.
The detonation circuits for fifty tons of explosives were densely buried around the door frame.
"Using gunpowder as your trump card. Your understanding of power is pathetic."
Lu Yuan raised his right hand.
He clenched his fist. Without any preparatory force, he slammed it directly into the center of the door.
boom!
The door, with its half-meter-thick special lead core, didn't even have time to sound the alarm.
An incomprehensible surge of kinetic energy flowed from Lu Yuan's fist directly into his body. The seemingly indestructible lead core, now barely harder than tofu under the crushing force of the true energy, was forcibly torn apart from the middle.
The entire door panel, weighing over ten tons, caved inwards and flew backwards into the dark passage with a loud bang, crashing into a load-bearing wall dozens of meters away.
As for the detonation circuits and sensors, they were completely reduced to powder within 0.1 seconds of contact with the true energy.
The entrance to the air-raid shelter was open.
A strong, nauseating stench wafted out from inside.
The smell was like a dead fish that had been exposed to the sun for three days, mixed with the stench of fermenting sewers, and also contained a deadly aura from severely polluted earth veins.
Lu Yuan stepped on the pebbles on the ground and walked inside.
There wasn't a single light in the passageway. The walls were covered in a thick layer of black mold, and the puddles underfoot were so sticky they stretched like threads.
Ye Qingcheng suppressed the churning in her stomach and gritted her teeth as she followed behind.
After walking about 500 meters underground, the view suddenly opened up.
This is an underground cavity the size of half a football field. Thick, black engineering plastic pipes are strung haphazardly across the walls. At the end of these pipes, they all converge on a huge cylindrical glass container in the center of the site.
The container was filled with a murky, black liquid.
That wasn't ordinary water at all; it was stagnant water from the abandoned waterway beneath the Lock Dragon Well in the old town.
A person is suspended in the center of the glass jar.
Engineer Zhou.
The technician from the Astronomical Bureau was now completely soaked in the stagnant water; his clothes had long since been corroded away. His skin was swollen and pale like a bloated sponge, and more than a dozen transparent medical tubes were crudely inserted directly into his carotid arteries, lungs, and spine.
His chest was still rising and falling at an extremely faint frequency.
He was used as a living filter. The water from the Dragon Locking Well, which contained strong corrosiveness and the death energy of the earth's veins, was poured into his body through the pipes above. It filtered out impurities through his internal organs and finally turned into streams of dark red blood, which flowed into the bottom of the container through the main pipe under his feet.
"Master, what is he offering sacrifices to?"
Ye Qingcheng pointed to the black IV tube at the bottom of the container, which was thicker than a thigh.
Lu Yuan looked in the direction the pipe led.
In the deepest corner of the air-raid shelter, there was a huge iron cage.
A lump of rotten flesh lay inside the iron cage.
This thing had no fixed shape; it was just a pool of foul-smelling, blood-red mud. The surface of the mud was covered with dense, pale white bone spurs, and dozens of eyeballs without eyelids were moving around erratically.
The stagnant water from the Dragon Lock Well, mixed with Zhou Gong's essence and blood, was continuously poured into this lump of rotten flesh.
At the edge of the iron cage, an emaciated old man was chained.
The old man was barely clinging to life, with three blackened silver needles stuck tightly in his chest. Black blood was still seeping from his gouged-out left eye socket.
It was Tao Xuan, who should have disappeared.
Every few minutes, this lump of rotten flesh would extend a tentacle, sucking away a mouthful of vital energy from Tao Xuan's withered body.
"Using living people as water filters. Treating well keepers as snacks."
Lu Yuan flipped his wrist.
The divine consciousness of the Mahayana stage transformed into an invisible guillotine, directly severing all the flexible tubes connecting Zhou Gong's body.
The glass container shattered with a crash. Tons of black liquid mixed with shards of glass spilled onto the ground.
Zhou Gong's emaciated body fell into the mud and twitched twice.
Lu Yuan flicked his finger, and half of the flawed Nine-Turn Rejuvenation Pill transformed into a stream of light and entered Zhou Gong's mouth. The domineering medicinal power forcefully protected his collapsing heart meridian.
The lump of rotting flesh in the corner, deprived of its nutrient supply, let out a piercing scream.
The air buzzed from the high-frequency sound waves. The rotting flesh was suddenly ejected from the iron cage.
It split open a huge mouth full of interlocking fangs in mid-air, dozens of eyes fixed on Lu Yuan, and with a foul pressure that faintly reached the half-step Golden Core stage, it bit straight at Lu Yuan's face.
"Trying to raise a cross-species biological organism using just a few tons of wastewater. How pathetic."
Lu Yuan didn't retreat even half a step.
He stretched out his right hand and thrust it into that gaping maw full of fangs.
The true essence of the Mahayana stage erupted without reservation in the palm of his hand.
Those mutated fangs, which even depleted uranium armor-piercing rounds couldn't penetrate, crumbled inch by inch the moment they came into contact with true energy, more fragile than dry tree branches. Lu Yuan's arm was unstoppable, piercing directly through the core of the rotting flesh.
The rotting flesh let out a piercing scream, desperately contracting its body, trying to melt Lu Yuan's arm with its corrosive bodily fluids containing strong acid.
Lu Yuan snorted coldly.
"Get out of here."
He clenched his fist tightly.
The Samadhi Fire ignited directly from inside the rotten flesh.
The ghastly green flames instantly engulfed the massive, mutated mass of flesh and blood. Along with the polluted spiritual energy and foul, greasy odor it emitted, the flames burned violently in mid-air, crackling and popping.
Less than three seconds.
This half-step Golden Core level monster, which had been nurtured with countless efforts in the Sirius Star Region, was burned to a pile of grayish-white powder.
pat.
A palm-sized, jet-black jade pendant fell from the ashes into the puddles.
This thing actually withstood the scorching heat of the Samadhi True Fire.
Lu Yuan withdrew his hand, walked to the ashes, and picked up the jade pendant.
The jade pendant was engraved with half of a complex star coordinate system. This aura originated from the same source as the Sirius Starfield complete coordinate key in his storage ring.
but.
The patterns on this array are completely reversed.
Lu Yuan scraped off a layer of black ash from the surface of the jade tablet with his fingers.
This is not a coordinate key used to guide the Sirius army to descend. This is a detonator used to reverse the spatial channel and forcibly drain the energy from Earth's side.
"The dragon bones at the bottom of the East China Sea are an illusion. The Heavenly Thunder Formation at the Capital Martial Arts Arena is also an illusion."
Lu Yuan held the jade tablet in his hand and turned to look at Tao Xuan, who was lying half-dead in the puddle.
"These insects never intended to bring their true forms here from the beginning. With Earth's spiritual energy depleted, they don't even look down on this wasteland. They want to detonate the earth's veins and take away the last bit of Earth's essence, soup and all."
Ye Qingcheng walked to the iron cage and helped Tao Xuan remove the silver needles from his chest.
Tao Xuan coughed up a mouthful of black blood, gripped Lu Yuan's trouser leg tightly, and stared wide-eyed with his only remaining right eye.
"Master Lu... Master Lu..."
Tao Xuan's voice was as hoarse as a broken bellows.
"Behind this wall of the air-raid shelter... the earth's eye for the Dragon-Locking Well... they've dug it out..."
Lu Yuan looked in the direction Tao Xuan pointed.
There is a very well hidden crack in the load-bearing wall at the deepest part of the air-raid shelter.
From deep within the crack, a very regular pulsating sound emanated.
Thump. Thump.
This is not the heartbeat of a living creature. This is the rhythmic pulsation of the earth's veins.
Lu Yuan walked over, raised his foot, and kicked the entire wall to pieces.
There was no soil behind the wall. It was a bottomless shaft. At the bottom of the shaft, a spiritual vein, faintly glowing with a dark red light, was twisting and throbbing wildly.
This is the core of the remaining incomplete dragon vein after Lu Yuan forcibly drained the spiritual energy of Jiangnan Province. It is also the earth's eye that the Dragon-Locking Well truly suppressed.
And directly above the Earth's Eye.
A huge countdown hourglass, made entirely of viscous blood, floats in the air.
The blood in the upper part of the hourglass had dwindled to a thin layer.
At the rate of dripping, the blood will completely drain away in at most twenty-four hours. Once the countdown reaches zero, the earth's veins throughout Jiangnan Province, and even most of China, will be completely detonated under the pull of this reverse coordinate.
"This is their real trap."
Lu Yuan looked at the blood-red hourglass.
A layer of tangible killing intent, as cold as winter, finally surfaced in his eyes, which had remained calm until then.
"They're treating my territory like an ATM, and even planting a time bomb inside."
Lu Yuan tossed the reverse coordinate jade tablet into his storage ring.
"You want to blow up my fishpond? Then I'll climb over this internet cable and dig up your ancestral graves in the Sirius Star Region."