novelraw Chapter 344: The Eternal Mother, the Vacuum Homeland
Chapter 344: The Eternal Mother, the Vacuum Homeland
The underground reservoir was even more expansive and deeper than Lin Jie had anticipated.
Dim light projected down from the massive circular well opening overhead, with metal grates and drainage pipes covered in a strange, dark-red viscous fluid.
"Watch your step."
Lin Jie's voice was lowered to the limit. He didn't rush to squeeze out through the grate gap they had just pried open, instead pressing his body tightly against the inner wall of the pipe.
Just as he had surmised from outside, this was not an unguarded, abandoned place.
On the slightly drier concrete platform, three creatures of massive, somewhat distorted size were crouching in the shadows.
They were three half-human, half-beast monsters wearing tattered Qing Dynasty military jackets, yet bearing ferocious animal heads.
These creatures retained the alertness and cruelty unique to beasts.
The monster on the left with a lizard head was staring intently at the water's surface, its forked long tongue constantly flicking in and out, capturing the extremely faint scent of living humans in the air.
The monster in the middle with a black boar's head was grinding its teeth, emitting a grating sound.The leader on the far right, the largest in size with the head of a blue-faced, fanged mandrill, was anxiously scratching the ground.
"Take them out."
Lin Jie made a simple tactical hand signal.
In this enclosed underground space filled with echoes, any gunshot would trigger unpredictable chain reactions, so this had to be an absolutely silent slaughter.
Three figures shot out from the narrow drainage pipe almost simultaneously.
Nadia pounced toward the monster on the left with the lizard head and human body. The blade in her hand traced a silent arc through the air, precisely slicing into the fragile, soft flesh at the monster's neck where beast skin and human skin were stitched together.
Julian, meanwhile, pulled a glass tube filled with high-concentration corrosive acid from his waist and smashed it onto the face of the boar-headed monster in the center.
The strong acid instantly burned through the monster's eyeballs and nasal cavity. Before it could let out a scream, Julian's cane had already pierced through the festering eye socket into its brain.
As for the largest, seemingly leader-like mandrill-headed monster, before it could even roar, it was enveloped by a black afterimage.
Lin Jie's figure was unbelievably fast. He slid directly to the monster's side, the short blade in his hand effortlessly slicing open its chest.
"Fsss…"
An extremely faint sound of escaping air was heard.
The mandrill-headed monster convulsed all over before going limp on the ground. The spiritual force that sustained its ability to move was instantly consumed entirely by the law power on the blade's edge.
The entire process took no more than ten seconds.
Three guard dogs had become three corpses gradually turning cold.
"Clean it up." Lin Jie stood up, flicking the fluid off his blade. "Don't leave any blood scent. The ventilation system here could very well carry the smell upwards."
Julian quickly took out another bottle of chemical and sprayed a circle around the corpses. The pungent minty spray masked the original stench.
Everyone climbed upwards along the rusted, spiraling iron ladder.
As they ascended, the surrounding air began to change noticeably.
The humid, stuffy rainforest atmosphere disappeared, replaced by a bizarre, dry, cold smell, a mixture of formaldehyde and some strange incense.
That incense scent was not unfamiliar to Lin Jie.
It was the distinctive smell produced by burning top-grade agarwood mixed with cinnabar, often smelled in Eastern temples and Daoist monasteries.
But this sacred fragrance was now entangled with the smell of formaldehyde, representing death and preservation, creating an olfactory assault that was extremely unsettling.
"It's right above."
Lin Jie stopped at the top of the iron ladder. Overhead was a heavy manhole cover.
Evelyn activated her Echo Goggles. After confirming there were no moving objects above the cover, Lin Jie carefully pushed it open a crack.
A slightly harsh yellow light shot in.
It was the glow of lamps.
The four crawled out of the manhole, finding themselves in a storage room piled with wooden crates and pipes.
Lin Jie looked out through the storage room's dusty blinds, his pupils contracting sharply the instant he clearly saw the scene outside.
He had guessed this was a laboratory.
But he hadn't expected it to be such a grand, such a mad, and such a terrifying hall, filled with intense cultural conflict and visual shock.
Unfolding before them was a massive underground space that had been completely hollowed out and reinforced.
This place should have originally been an underground factory for processing spices for the plantation, but now it had been transformed into a biological hellscape filled with steampunk and Eastern fantasy elements.
Dozens of massive, five-meter-tall cylindrical glass cultivation tanks were neatly arranged on both sides of the spacious hall, like transparent coffins or totem poles for some evil ritual.
And suspended within these glass jars filled with pale green nutrient fluid were spine-chilling "experimental subjects."
They were people.
Beings that had once been human.
Most of them still wore the distinctive long braids of the Qing Dynasty, their bodies clad in tattered military jackets or martial arts uniforms.
But their bodily structures had been completely reshaped.
Some subjects had their arms replaced with some kind of feline beast's sharp claws, their muscle fibers showing unnaturally explosive bulges, their skin covered in black stripes and runic tattoos.
Some subjects had grown massive, bat-like membranous wings on their backs, their vertebrae protruding through the skin to form a row of sharp bone spikes.
Other subjects had their lower bodies completely transformed into snake tails or insect-like segmented limbs, their entire bodies curled up in the nutrient fluid like giant, unhatched monster embryos.
The bottom of each glass jar was connected to complex copper pipes and cables, while at the top was pasted a yellow talisman paper inscribed with cinnabar, bearing wildly cursive characters like "Divine Power," "Diamond Body," and "Flight."
This was not merely scientific experimentation.
This was the industrialized assembly line of the Zao Chu technique.
It was Black Lotus's mad attempt to combine Eastern arts with Western bioengineering.
"My god…" Evelyn covered her mouth, looking at the monster in the nearest jar that had a tiger's head but human limbs. That visual impact, violating ethics and natural law, made her feel a strong wave of nausea. "What… what are they doing?"
"They are manufacturing soldiers."
Lin Jie's gaze fell on the labels beneath the glass jars, neatly written in Chinese characters with the subject's serial number and enhancement direction.
"Impervious to swords and spears, possessing immense strength, capable of flight and earth-walking."
"This is what Yan Xilou wants."
Lin Jie turned around, looking at the Black Lotus cultists busily shuttling between the cultivation tanks.
These people wore pristine white Chinese-style robes with lotus patterns embroidered on the sleeves, with tall white hats on their heads.
They held wolf-hair brushes, peach wood swords, and various strange Ritual Tools in their hands.
They lit incense burners beside the precise steam pressure gauges, observing data while muttering ancient scriptures under their breath.
"Eternal Venerable Mother, True Void Homeland."
"The Red Sun tribulation ends, the White Sun shall rise."
This extreme sense of contrast made the entire scene brim with absurdity and terror.
"They truly believe in this." Julian watched those fanatical cultists, his voice trembling slightly.
"This is 'learning foreign strengths to control the foreigners.'" Lin Jie said coldly. "Except they've applied this 'strength' in the cruelest way possible."
"For the greater cause, sacrificing some people's lives, or turning them into half-human, half-ghost monsters, is an acceptable price."
Nadia didn't speak.
She stared fixedly at those glass jars, her hand gripping the knife trembling.
Among those twisted faces, she vaguely recognized a few familiar outlines.
They were her missing tribesmen.
Those Dayak warriors who had once run and hunted with her in the jungle.
Now, they had become specimens soaking in medicinal fluid, sacrifices under this madman's ambition.
"I'm going to kill him." Nadia's voice was low and hoarse, like a wounded beast roaring.
"You will." Lin Jie pressed down on her shoulder. "But not now, and not here."
"Our target lies deeper within."
He pointed toward the ten-meter-tall bronze door at the far end of the hall.
Above that door hung a massive plaque, inscribed with four powerful, vigorous characters: Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss.
Behind that door, a terrifying spiritual fluctuation, vast enough to be suffocating, was pulsating rhythmically.
"Take the ventilation ducts."
Lin Jie made the decision.
The four utilized Evelyn's lockpicking skills to silently climb up to the high ventilation pipe network.
The pipes here were much cleaner than the sewers, but still filled with the nauseating smell of incense and medicinal fluids.
They crawled for an unknown length of time.
The view ahead suddenly opened up.
Through a ventilation opening blocked by wire mesh, they finally saw the secret hidden in the deepest part of this Garden of Eden.
It was a circular space several times more magnificent than the outer hall.
The dome was transparent glass, allowing a direct view of the sky outside, but it was currently covered by a thick layer of black cloth.
Huge mirrors were embedded in the walls surrounding the space. These mirrors reflected the dazzling red light from the center to the extreme, enveloping the entire hall in an eerie, bloody glow.
And at the center of that bloody glow.
On a massive altar constructed from runic arrays, grew a colossal plant that was impossible to look at directly.
It was a Corpse-Scent Arum.
But it was far larger than any Lin Jie had seen in illustrated guides or legends.
Its main stem was as thick as a lighthouse, its surface covered in a fleshy epidermis resembling human skin, delicate and veined.
And at the center of its petals stood a golden-yellow spadix over ten meters tall.
That spadix continuously writhed and trembled, its top even connected to a massive glass cultivation tank hanging from the ceiling, filled with green nutrient fluid.
A curled-up figure floated within that cultivation tank.
That was the "Living Holy Embryo" that Black Lotus had poured all its efforts into, sacrificing countless lives to cultivate.
It looked like an infant.
But a row of spine-like protruding spikes grew on its back, its skin covered in fine, metallic-gloss scales, and a pair of not yet fully formed horns grew on its forehead.
Several transparent tubes were inserted into its body, the other ends connected to the massive Corpse-Scent Arum below.
That arum was acting as a "biological pump."
It greedily absorbed the mineral vein spiritual force converging from all directions, transforming it into pure life essence, then continuously channeling it through the tubes to the Holy Embryo above.
This was a symbiotic relationship filled with forbidden beauty and ultimate evil.
Using the demonic flower as the mother.
The dragon-human as the offspring.
The vitality of the entire rainforest as nourishment.
"That is the Ghost Mother…"
Julian looked at the massive plant, his voice filled with unspeakable fear.
"I've read in ancient texts that the Corpse-Scent Arum is the Bigan Flower connecting the realms of Yin and Yang. Its nectar possesses the divine effect of reshaping flesh and blood, even reviving the dead, but the price is that it must be nourished with vast amounts of fresh life."
"The antidote is right there." Lin Jie's gaze locked onto the massive nectar sac at the center of the arum's flower disk, filled with golden liquid.
Just obtaining that thing would save William.
But it wouldn't be easy.
Because standing before that altar, in the shadow of that demonic flower, was a person.
A man wearing a white robe, but unlike the others, not wearing a tall hat.
His hair hung loosely over his shoulders.
His face was lean and handsome, his eyes holding only extreme calm and focus.
Yan Xilou.
This overseas helmsman of Black Lotus, the formidable figure who had once crossed paths with Lin Jie in Egypt, now stood with his hands clasped behind his back, quietly gazing at the "Holy Embryo" slumbering in the cultivation tank.
He had no guards by his side.
In this domain, he was the absolute master.
"Increase the dosage."
Yan Xilou suddenly spoke. Several assistants immediately manipulated levers on the control panel.
"Fssss—"
With a rush of airflow, black liquid was injected into several pipes connected to the arum's roots.
The purplish-red petals instantly turned blood-red, the eerie red glow intensifying severalfold.
The Holy Embryo above also convulsed, its tightly closed eyes trembling slightly, on the verge of awakening at any moment.
"Fusion rate has reached ninety percent."
A member shouted excitedly.
"Soon…"
A smile appeared on Yan Xilou's face. He reached out, gently stroking the monster's face through the glass.
"It will be completed soon."
"Just a little more time, and we will personally create a true immortal."
"Then, whether it's the foreigners' warships or that decaying imperial court, all will tremble at our feet."
"We will establish a new order."
"A… terrestrial paradise belonging to us."
Lin Jie lay at the ventilation opening, coldly watching all of this.
"Ninety percent."
Lin Jie silently repeated this number in his mind.
This meant they had come just in time, and also meant they had no way back.
Once Yan Xilou completed all the steps, then in this confined space, no one would be able to stop a monster possessing the power of a Mythological Creature.
They had to act now.
They had to interrupt the ritual.
Lin Jie turned his head, looking at his teammates behind him.
Evelyn's hand was already on the switch of her Tesla Coil Glove, her gaze firm and resolute.
Julian had already set up Discipline, the muzzle locked onto that white figure standing on the altar.
Nadia had drawn her Parang, her body tense like a fully drawn bow.
"Ready?"
Lin Jie asked with hand signals.
The three nodded simultaneously.
"Then… let's begin."