Beneath the sausage-shaped water cavern lay an even grander chamber, its form reminiscent of an upright olive pit—tapered and elongated at both ends, broadest at its center. Its greatest diameter exceeded 150 meters, with a towering height surpassing 330 meters. The detonation of over fifty tons of liquid explosives unleashed the force equivalent to a moderate earthquake, devastating the mountain's entire structure from summit to base in an instant. Subsequently, the immense weight of the collapsed cavern pressed down upon the sausage-shaped grotto below, hastening its inevitable collapse. This burden was compounded not only by the mass of the fallen debris but also by more than two hundred thousand cubic meters of water. After mere minutes of resistance, the upper rock walls of the olive-shaped cavern crumbled as if crushed by the hand of a deity. At the cavern's base, a fissure-formed watercourse once surged with relentless vigor, jetting through a fish-mouth-shaped outlet in a towering column exceeding seventy meters. Yet, as tens of thousands of tons of rock cascaded down, the very vent was instantaneously sealed beneath the rubble.
Previously, they had narrowly escaped being buried alive beneath tons of rock, thanks to a well-placed thrust of a steel spear into a crevice. But the deluge of 200,000 cubic meters of water now surging toward them was far more terrifying than falling stones.
To be crushed by rocks might still leave behind a mangled corpse—but the merciless compression of such a volume of water could very well dissolve them entirely.
Without a second thought, Li Zhui adjusted his posture, diving headfirst and feet-up, angling toward the rock wall with the immense downward force behind him. The steel spear pierced over a meter deep into the stone.
He knew with grim clarity that his arms alone would never withstand the force of the plunge. So in the instant the spear lodged itself into the wall, he clutched the shaft with both hands and feet, anchoring his entire body to it.
At that very moment, he distinctly heard the sound of bones cracking—like beans popping in a microwave, a relentless crackle echoing in his ears.
Not just his outer shell, but even the ribs of his true body shattered in an instant.
The spear shaft could not endure such violent strain—it bent with a sickening snap, and they were flung against the wall.
Though his hands still gripped the shaft in a deathlock, Li Zhui was already drifting into unconsciousness. In a daze, he saw his own body being stretched grotesquely—then torn in two.
The sight shook him to his very core. He released his grip—yet they did not fall straight down. Instead, after sliding ten meters along the rock face, they were abruptly s*ck*d into a side tunnel.
Where there is a jet, there must be an outlet—and that exit lay directly beneath them. Had Li Zhui not made that desperate, life-risking thrust to slow their descent, they never would have been drawn in.
But his ordeal was far from over. When the current swept them into the tunnel, he had been the last. Yet with the vortex's twisting force and ricocheting impacts, he—being the heaviest and most burdened—was flung to the front.
Powerless to resist, his head smashed violently into the rock wall, carving a shallow crater into the stone.
Fortunately, he wore a heavy steel helmet—hastily fashioned by Yongzi from a bulletproof shield before they descended into the abyss.
The current accelerated wildly, spinning faster and faster—60, 70, 80 kilometers per hour, and still rising. It was like being hurled into a washing machine set to a berserk cycle.
He was instantly swept into chaotic tumbling—head, shoulders, arms, back, hips, feet—all battering against jagged rock. His only protection: the steel helmet on his head and the waterproof backpack strapped to his back.
But more than that—he had become the shield for the two people behind him, and a swarm of salamanders. Bound together, each collision landed squarely upon him.
Before he could adjust, the impacts came again—second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth... In a mere thirty seconds, over thirty brutal collisions.
Any ordinary person from the Beiming Sphere would have perished under such punishment. But not him. He did not even lose consciousness.
When the velocity surpassed 120 kilometers per hour and his skull once more slammed into stone, he heard a strange and singular sound—the bone beneath his ear cracking open.
It was as though the heavens themselves had ruptured, crumbling piece by piece.
Then, he saw a giant—sharp-nosed, gill-cheeked, emaciated yet impossibly powerful—draped in a cloak of obsidian skin.
That was the final image he could summon—before his vision shattered like a monitor bursting into fragments, and all that remained was infinite darkness.
After racing downstream for over thirty kilometers, they were swept into an inverted funnel-shaped water chamber. The basin's bottom had an average diameter of seventy meters, narrowing at the top to an eleven-meter opening, with a maximum height of eighty-six meters.
The whirlpool within spun counterclockwise, its speed increasing with height. But overall, the violent turbulence had subsided.
At this point, only She Yaoyao retained enough strength to act. She unclasped the hook at her waist, detached Li Zhui's backpack and waist hook, and secured him to the rear line while she clipped herself to the front.
Now, she would lead the way.
She abandoned the two bags tethered to the search line. Then, swaying her serpent's tail, she began swimming toward the upper exit—only to immediately realize that Ma Yongxian was a heavy burden.
She turned back and unfastened Yongzi, letting him sink freely to the bottom of the cavern. There was not the slightest trace of guilt in her heart—for to her, Yongzi was little different from a stranger.
This time, She Yaoyao ascended smoothly. The water chamber, shaped like an inverted funnel with its exit at the top, narrowed as it rose—causing the water to accelerate as it approached the opening.
Soon, they broke through the mouth of the chamber. Though still submerged, the surrounding space had expanded significantly. After swimming upward another twenty meters, they finally surfaced.
It was a medium-sized karst cave, two-thirds of which was submerged in a tranquil pool. There were two passages: a dry tunnel to the north and a water-filled one to the south.
She Yaoyao carefully hauled Li Zhui onto a stone ledge on the western wall. He lay there motionless, entirely at her mercy. In truth, he had lost all sensation. The only awareness that lingered within him was the belief that he had ascended.
He soared far and high, bursting out from the Beiming Sphere, yet outer space was not as he had imagined—no dazzling stars, no asteroids, no cosmic creatures. Only boundless, suffocating darkness.
Though he could no longer perceive the world around him, he remained firmly convinced of his existence. Yes, I am still alive! he told himself. As long as a single thread of consciousness remains, I will not perish—let alone countless ones!
He began to gather those scattered threads of thought. They drew together with increasing speed, spiraling around an invisible axis. Soon, his incorporeal awareness began to spin into translucent filaments.
The axis itself began to rotate—counterclockwise. With its dizzying spin, the endless strands were swiftly wound into a massive cocoon.
Suddenly, sensation returned—sight, sound, touch—but none of it was tied to the outside world. Everything existed within his own inner realm.
He beheld strange microorganisms of unknown origin swimming through a viscous fluid. They busily dragged strands of silk—like spiderwebs, cotton fibers, and bamboo roots—interweaving them into myriad structures.
One after another, the microorganisms clung to the fibers, sprouting antennae or tendrils, forming an intricate lattice of life.
His memories and perceptions flashed before him like a high-speed montage, colliding like jumbled digital files—films of every genre, fragmented and intertwined.
A giant let out a crazed laugh. "Yes, yes, that's right! I am Cao Hailan! I killed your son on purpose! He Xiaoqiang—what of it?"
He Xiaoqiang? He Xiaoqiang? No! No! I am Li Zhui!
In a blur, he extended two fingers and, like crushing a flea, pinched Cao Hailan into oblivion.
The scene transformed. He now stood atop a nineteen-story building, roaring at the ant-like crowd below, "I am Li Zhui! I have returned!"
He attempted to move his head, but no matter how hard he tried, it refused to budge. His cervical spine had suffered grave injury—perhaps even a complete break.
She Yaoyao noticed his effort and removed his steel helmet and breathing mask. The pool had risen swiftly, already flooding the stone ledge. She cradled him in her arms, slithered into the dry tunnel, and gently laid him on a flatter stretch of ground.
At that moment, the humanoid salamanders also surfaced, each pair gripping Yongzi or a backpack with their clawed hands.
"Yaoyao… help me undress. Let me into the water," Li Zhui murmured softly.
Without hesitation, she set to work—thoroughly so, leaving him acutely embarrassed.
She lifted him once more and slid toward the pool. As they slowly descended into the depths, he noticed she was still holding him, which gave him a strange, uneasy feeling.
"Yaoyao… let me go. Go check on Yongzi," he urged gently.
But she only shook her head, and instead pressed her ear to his chest, listening to the rhythm of his heart. A curious sensation bloomed within her—was it… was her body heating up?
Li Zhui, meanwhile, felt a chill of apprehension—especially as her serpentine body pressed against him. Yet the hardest part was concealing his revulsion.
She Yaoyao's mind operated unlike any normal person's. To her, there was no why, only do or do not. Shame and awkwardness were foreign concepts—she had, after all, grown up unashamed and unclothed.
Gradually, Li Zhui's mind and body relaxed. His body slipped into a state of suspended animation, and deep restoration began.
Countless streams of gentle warmth flowed through him. Wherever they passed, damaged tissue and shattered bones began to mend with astonishing speed.
His body was like a skyscraper riddled with holes and cracks, now tended by an invisible army of diligent masons. And he, lost in the mists of healing, drifted peacefully into a dream.
Suddenly, a searing pain flared at the back of his head, sending violent tremors through his entire body. In that instant, it felt as though a swarm of killer wasps had burrowed into his brain—one of them a queen, its long, venomous stinger piercing straight into the core of his mind. Li Zhui jolted into consciousness—and this was no dream. Something was indeed invading his brain. The intruder was none other than the Ling-Infant cells. Over the past day, as his body endured repeated trauma, the entity had exploited each moment of healing to further its infiltration. It had already made its way silently into his internal organs, bloodstream, and lymphatic system. Yet, when it attempted to breach the nervous system, it met with ferocious resistance. Infiltrating the other systems had been deceptively smooth. The encasing cells of the Ling-Infant cloaked themselves in a mimicry of the host's antigens, forming a deceptive sheath on their membranes that allowed them to evade detection and destruction by phagocytes. But the nervous system was a different battlefield. The moment the two neural networks were forcibly connected, signal transmission became inevitable. The neurons of the Ling-Infant sheath, unable to correctly interpret or respond to the signals, were immediately marked as aberrant. The host's neural defense mechanisms responded with swift precision. Microglial cells transformed into voracious macrophages and began devouring the intruding neurons without hesitation. Meanwhile, astrocytes proliferated rapidly, morphing into new nerve cells to replace those consumed in the defense. It was akin to modern warfare's friend-or-foe identification: no matter the uniform, if the recognition system failed to authenticate the signal, the target would be treated as hostile and destroyed. Thus, all pretenses were cast aside. The silent infiltration erupted into a full-scale internal war—the true battle had finally begun.