In the desert, only the wind remained—along with the ragged, heavy breathing of everyone present.
Reed looked at the clear burn marks on his arms, then looked again at the bald man who had crushed the sand crocodile's skull with his bare hands and was now flicking his hands like he found them dirty. Reed pushed up his glasses, his face full of shock and disbelief. In the face of that absolute strength, scientific common sense suddenly felt pale and powerless.
After dealing with the sand crocodile, Saitama lifted his head toward Reed and Sue and asked again, "So… where exactly is the archaeology team's rest area?"
The sand crocodile's death didn't end the danger. Right where it had fallen, the pyramid's base split into an even wider fissure. A colder, stale wind carrying a musty, rotten scent blew out from within, forming a stark contrast with the desert's scorching heat.
Enduring the burning pain in his arm, Reed Richards cautiously extended his neck toward the edge of the crack and peered down inside. Sue followed close behind, opening a faint force field just in case.
"There's something in there…" Reed's voice turned grave. "A strong life-sign, but it's… very weak. Like it's in hibernation. And there are a lot of… energy readings—same origin as that sand crocodile."
He retracted his neck, then spoke sternly to the workers who were still shaking from fear. "Everyone, pull back to a safe distance immediately! Sue, contact headquarters. We may need a higher-level containment and cleanup protocol."
What Reed feared was that the sand crocodile wasn't an isolated case. Deep inside the pyramid, there might be its nest—or… an incubation pit. If they didn't eliminate the source, similar monsters could keep appearing.
As he urgently weighed his options—risk going in to investigate, or wait for reinforcements and conduct a large-scale demolition—the bald man who had just crushed the crocodile's head also wandered over to the fissure, leaned forward, and looked down.
"Mm. Something's moving down there. Rustling and scraping." Saitama rubbed his ear. "Kinda noisy."
Reed was just about to stop this mysterious stranger from taking such a risk, when Saitama without the slightest hesitation stepped right into the dark fissure.
His figure was swallowed by the darkness.
"Wait! Sir! It's dangerous down there!" Reed shouted, hurriedly stretching his body like a rope and sliding down after him. Sue, worried, followed as well.
The fissure led into a massive underground space that had originally been buried by sand and stone. This was clearly the pyramid's subterranean section. The air was thick and murky, filled with a sickly sweet, rotten stench. And when Reed and Sue, aided by a small sphere of light Sue created, finally saw the scene before them—even with Reed's vast experience, he couldn't help sucking in a sharp breath.
At the center of the chamber was a huge "egg pool" made of a viscous, semi-transparent substance. Packed tightly within it were dozens basketball-sized egg sacs! Each sac gently squirmed, and faintly, you could see the curled outlines of small sand crocodile embryos inside! The sac walls glimmered with a weak energy light of the same origin as the sand crocodile's core, as if feeding the embryos nourishment. On the surrounding stone walls, ancient murals seemed to depict prehistoric humans worshipping these sand crocodiles.
This was a sand crocodile hatchery nest!
And most of the egg sacs were close to maturity. Some shells were so thin you could even see tiny crocodile claws scratching at the inner membrane, producing that scalp-numbing "rustle… rustle…" sound.
(End of Chapter)
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