183: Chapter 183 Taking the Road Along the Way

Jiang Ming's main consciousness, like a monarch sitting on a throne, overlooked his newborn coastal empire that stretched for a thousand miles.

The Wall of Flesh and Bone growled low amidst the sea tides, the red Mist Lighthouses radiated ominous halos outward, and the Sea Fog Fortress under his control was like a beating heart, pumping energy and fear into this vast territory.

But he was not intoxicated by it.

A highly specialized "Infiltration Taproot", driven by his will, had long since left the coastal throne, sneaked deep into the continent, and began a silent expedition toward the Daylight Tower in the heartland of the continent along the abandoned underground fiber optic cable channel he had found in Chapter 180.

This fiber optic cable channel was one of the last relics of the old world's technological civilization.

It was buried hundreds of meters underground, and most of its sections had long collapsed and accumulated water, becoming a paradise for various small weird entities adapted to the dark environment.

The Infiltration Taproot, like a black-red giant python covered with metal barbs, sped through the dark channel at high speed.

Wherever it passed was a mobile feast.

A nest of "Tunnel Worms" with metal teeth that fed on fiber optic cables was pierced from the inside by the taproot the moment they sensed the intruder, and in the blink of an eye, they were sucked into hundreds of shriveled pieces of scrap iron.

In a collapsed area covered by a viscous, fluorescent fungal mat, the taproot did not detour, but instead directly swallowed the entire fungal mat along with countless corpses piled beneath it.

[Ding! Obtained new ability: Dark Environment Adaptability (Elementary)!]

[Ding! Obtained new ability: Fungal Camouflage (Elementary)!]

The cold system notification sound had now become a part of Jiang Ming's will.

Using the residual, almost negligible signals remaining in the fiber optic cable, he constantly corrected his forward direction, like a submarine navigating in the deep sea relying on sonar.

On his root-network map, the outline of the Daylight Tower was becoming clearer and clearer.

He discovered that this fiber optic cable channel had an intersection with the Daylight Tower's own much larger underground pipe network system at about one thousand kilometers away from the Daylight Tower's outer ring.

There would be the first breakthrough point for his infiltration.

...In the corner of the throne room of the Sea Fog Fortress.

Xu Baiheng and Lin Qiu, like caged pets, received the quantitative food and water "bestowed" by Jiang Ming.

Just then, Jiang Ming's cold and grand mental telepathy rang simultaneously in their minds.

"How many people can a tower protect?"

"When the tower's foundation rots away."

This cryptic remark made the two of them instantly feel chilled to the bone.

They understood that this tree had already cast its gaze upon humanity's last hope.

At the same time, the Daylight Tower.

- In the monitoring center of the Technology Department, a technician looked at a weak, fleeting abnormal energy reading on the screen and reported to a superior.

"Weak energy fluctuations have been detected in the deep layers of the continental plate, preliminarily judged as long-distance weird migration or geological activity."

The supervisor glanced at it and waved dismissively.

"Never mind it. Our 'Silent Field' is enough to shield all prying eyes. Under the tower's brilliance, all darkness is merely dust not worth mentioning."

Their arrogance once again became Jiang Ming's best cover.

In the underground passage a thousand miles away, while advancing at high speed, the infiltration taproot continuously left behind "spore anchors" that were extremely difficult for the naked eye to detect along the way.

These spores were usually dormant, but could be remotely activated by Jiang Ming for sensing, transmitting sound, or growing tiny roots at critical moments to destroy the channel structure, paving an absolutely safe retreat path for him.

In the temporary medical area of the Sea Fog Fortress, Lin Qiu was desperately analyzing those strange herbs sent by Jiang Ming.

She tried to find a way to suppress the activity of the blood spores from these creations of "gods".

She had already transformed from a healer who passively saved people into a scholar who actively studied the calamity.

As for Xu Baiheng, he was frantically sorting through all the clues regarding the "System", "Outer Gods", and "Vessels".

He had a strong premonition that if he still couldn't piece together the complete truth of the world before this tree arrived at the gates of the Daylight Tower, humanity would lose everything.

Several days later.

The infiltration taproot finally arrived at its first destination—the intersection between the fiber optic cable channel and the underground pipe network of the Daylight Tower.

That was a heavy, ultra-alloy circular floodgate engraved with the emblem of the Daylight Tower and dense energy circuits, emanating a powerful aura of purification.

Facing this door, the infiltration taproot did not choose any form of forced destruction.

It simply stopped in front of the gate, and the ends of its roots differentiated into hundreds of millions of spore filaments finer than dust.

These spore filaments, integrated with the "Fungal Camouflage" ability, like a silent, non-existent layer of dust, quietly attached themselves to every crack and every energy circuit of the alloy gate.

The infiltration had already begun.