Chapter 421

Chapter 422: Crystal Graveyard

Foxy held a chicken drumstick in each hand and walked out of the Door, grinning.

Then she offered one to Yu Sheng and said: “Benefactor, have a drumstick!”

Foxy looked full and clearly in a great mood.

Yu Sheng took the drumstick and took a bite, then pointed toward the “main excavation pit” not far away: “The crew Engineer Sun brought are digging down. When you finish eating, go help them.”

Foxy answered cheerfully: “Okay.” Then she quickly finished the rest of her drumstick, meat and bone, took a few steps, flopped forward, and in a blink turned into a huge silver-white Demon Fox. Trotting happily, she ran to the edge of the pit.

With the hard work of the civil crew, the main excavation pit had been widened again, big enough that Foxy, with her massive body, could jump in and start digging. At the fresh bottom, wide swaths of crystalline structures had been exposed.

Inert crystal branches crisscrossed through rock and soil like a giant root system. Even though the workers had expanded the pit many times outward and downward, they still had not found the “source” of the crystal limbs. The deeper they dug, the higher the ratio of crystal became, and farther down there seemed to be a much thicker main trunk.

Engineer Sun looked curious as he asked: “What exactly are we trying to dig up? Are we really going to unearth the whole crystal structure under this crater?”

Yu Sheng shook his head slowly, then said: “No. I’m looking for its heart.”

Engineer Sun’s eyes changed as he blurted out: “…Heart?!”

Yu Sheng explained in a calm voice: “This thing is a huge living body. In the fight earlier, I used some methods to learn its layout. There should be large hollow chambers below that hold its core. I don’t even know if ‘heart’ is the right word, since it isn’t a normal lifeform, but a large crystal in the central cavity is definitely its most important part.”

Xu Jiali spoke under his breath, sounding uneasy: “This takes me back to digging out a bug hive on Taronim-7… thinking about it now gives me goosebumps.”

Irene, perched on Yu Sheng’s shoulder and unusually quiet until now, suddenly piped up: “Such a huge thing lying under this pit for a thousand years, so how did nobody find it?”

Hearing her, Yu Sheng frowned slightly and nodded: “Right. I’ve been wondering the same thing. It’s a little off.”

He swept his gaze around.

The pale, eerie crystal clusters weren’t all buried deep. When they first arrived, many clusters were already exposed at the surface. The branches underground linked straight into the surface clusters. The shallow parts weren’t far down. Even without digging, with basic scanning, people should have noticed the massive “foreign body” hidden under this crater.

A thousand years ago, Yun Qing Zi fell here. A primeval powerhouse dying suddenly on the Border was no small matter in Featherwing. From the later handling and records, the Grand Void Spiritual Axis clearly took it seriously and sent people here to do a careful cleanup. Yet in the intel from Xuan Che, there was no mention at all of a buried crystal structure beneath this battlefield ruin.

[Did the crystals stay dormant and get written off back then as harmless leftover ore? Or did they not break the surface at the time and only grow to this size over a thousand years?]

[Either way, something here is very wrong.]

Garrison-3 is extremely remote and barren, so no one visiting for centuries is normal. But even if the Grand Void Spiritual Axis forgot this backwater, what about the nearby Sentinel Silence?

This place sits right under the Sentinel Silence’s nose. Do their Youth Form Warden patrols really not check the nearby vassal worlds every year?

While Yu Sheng was puzzling through this, the crew at the main pit pulled themselves and their equipment back.

Foxy’s digging made too much of a ruckus for anyone to stand close.

The huge Nine Tailed Fox had her whole body down in the widened pit, head low and digging fast. She never looked up, just kept raking with her paws. Dirt, rocks, and shattered crystals flew out again and again. Dust swirled for dozens of meters around, and for a while even the machines couldn’t match her speed.

Just then, while she was going full tilt, Yu Sheng heard a dull cracking noise from the bottom of the pit.

He didn’t even have time to react before Foxy’s body sank. With a startled yowl, the giant Demon Fox vanished before everyone’s eyes.

Yu Sheng exclaimed: “Whoa!” Then, breaking into a cold sweat, he sprinted toward the pit.

The pit’s floor had broken open into a hole, as if the structure holding up the “ceiling” of an underground cavern had snapped and collapsed. Beneath the hole yawned a dim, open cavity. Faintly glowing crystals coated its depths, and in the gloom they could just make out a silver-white figure.

Irene leaned out from Yu Sheng’s shoulder and shouted down: “Silly Fox, are you okay?”

Foxy called back from below, sounding lively: “I’m fine, but it gave me a scare! It suddenly collapsed. Benefactor, it’s really spacious down here!”

Yu Sheng traded a look with Irene and Luna, then said: “We’re going down. Toss a tail up.”

At his words, a burst of fire rose, and a silver-white tail swept up from below to float in front of him.

Engineer Sun stared, stunned. Bell, trailing behind Xu Jiali, jumped back several steps the instant a fox tail flew up. The Gyproian’s pupils went wide. She showed sharp caution and the urge to hiss at the flaming fox tail, then finally stammered to Xu Jiali: “Boss, th-this is kind of spooky, meow!”

Xu Jiali looked a bit blank as well, but with the times he’d dealt with Yu Sheng, he recovered quickly and soothed his attendant: “It’s fine. Things around Yu Sheng are usually pretty spooky. You’ll get used to it.”

Yu Sheng was used to people making a fuss over small details like this. He didn’t mind. He swung Irene up more securely and climbed onto the fox tail, then nodded to Engineer Sun and said: “It’s unknown down there. Engineer Sun, keep your people up here. We’ll go take a look.”

Xu Jiali stepped forward and offered: “I’ll go with you. Bell and I have experience with this kind of task.”

Yu Sheng thought for a moment, then asked with a small smile: “Alright… do you two need a tail?”

Xu Jiali waved fast and answered: “No need. My gear can manage short flights, and Bell can fly by herself.”

Yu Sheng nodded and said nothing more. Riding the fox tail, he headed for the hole. Beside him, Luna took a step and turned into flickers that flashed between shadow and reality as she followed.

Xu Jiali watched with a complicated look, then signaled to Engineer Sun as the thrusters on his Powered Armor roared to life and he jumped from the edge.

Bell had been staring, wide-eyed, at the spooky scene of Yu Sheng riding a fox tail and reacted a beat late. She lifted off in a hurry and called: “Boss, wait, meow!” As she rose, her mechanical sphere floated from her hands and helped carry her after Xu Jiali.

The group quickly slipped through the big hole Foxy had made.

The light dimmed, then as their eyes adjusted, Yu Sheng began to see the astounding layout below. First he saw a huge junction like a crossroads. All around this wide underground space, many cave mouths led to other areas. Crystalline matter of all sizes appeared everywhere: clusters wedged in rock seams, networked veins that crossed like giant roots, pillars that held up the caverns.

Crystals were everywhere, filling this endless underground world like bones, blood, and organs.

The fox tail lowered slowly. At the center of this “crystal cave,” Yu Sheng found the fallen Foxy.

She had already taken human form again. Sitting on a big rock, she held a fresh drumstick and waited for Yu Sheng while she ate, looking perfectly at ease.

Seeing him come down, Foxy ran over and called out: “Benefactor!”

Yu Sheng ruffled the fox’s head with a grin, checked that she was fine, then focused on the surroundings.

Crystals filled his view, making him frown without thinking.

Irene, on his shoulder, drew in on herself, and Yu Sheng could feel the little doll’s whole body go tense.

Irene muttered, voice small and tight: “The feel of this place makes me really uncomfortable,” then added: “Ugh… it’s like crawling inside something’s corpse, a kind of… stench.”

Yu Sheng didn’t reply. He quietly raised his guard and, following a faint link inside his chest, searched the crystal-built maze for its core.

He narrowed his eyes.

The vast and tangled crystal world flashed through his mind like glowing bones in the dark.

He pointed ahead and said: “This way.”