211: Chapter 210 A Steady Flow: Are the Old Ones Blocking the Gate?

Well then!

The bones were finished.

The skulls had been chewed clean.

The skeletal remains of an Old One, accumulated over forty-seven thousand years, had gone for a round in Godzilla's mouth and vanished into thin air.

Abaddon stood by the edge of the lake,

looking at the waters where their mortal enemy once slumbered.

The water's surface returned to a state of calm, the purple-gold radiance still flowing, though its area was nearly half of what it was before. The Old One's remains had vacated a massive amount of space at the bottom of the lake, but the natural sealing Formation that had once suppressed the skeleton had also disintegrated along with it.

In other words,

there was no longer anything being suppressed at the bottom of the lake.

The obstruction to the flow of energy had disappeared.

Certain spring vents in the depths, which had been inhibited by the sealing Formation for tens of thousands of years, were now slowly regaining their activity. Thin purple-gold energy seeped upward through the cracks in the rock.

The speed was very slow.

So slow that the change was almost unobservable to the naked eye.

But it was indeed recovering.

Abaddon silently noted this information.

Luo Yu noticed it as well.

The System popped up a prompt.

[Detected that the Abyss Core energy self-healing mechanism has been activated]

[The Seal on the bottom spring vents has been lifted following the removal of the Old One's remains]

[Energy backflow rate: Extremely low (approximately 10.2 tons/year of equivalent Origin liquid energy)]

10.2 tons of backflow per year.

Based on Luo Yu's visual estimation, the original total volume of this lake was likely at the scale of hundreds of thousands of tons. Godzilla had drunk half of it, plus what the Old One had dissipated, leaving...

Luo Yu did the math.

That is to say, without external interference, this energy pool would take approximately—to self-recover to full capacity—

Hmm.

Hundreds of thousands of years.

*Hiss.*

Godzilla looked down at the lake surface again.

It still wanted to drink.

The remaining half was still a massive amount of pure Origin energy. For a Planet-level Titan currently pushing for a higher stage of evolution, the attraction of these things was fundamentally no different from placing gourmet food before a starving person.

Its mouth opened.

Its head dipped down two inches.

"Wait a second." Luo Yu's hand patted the edge of the horn socket.

Godzilla stopped.

Its vertical pupils swept over, carrying a hint of confusion and even more reluctance.

"Don't eat anymore."

*Hiss??*

The tone rose, the tail-end upward.

Translation: Why??

Luo Yu stood up from the horn socket, walked onto Godzilla's snout, crouched down, and looked levelly into those golden vertical pupils.

"Godzilla, think about it. If you drink this place dry, where are you going to get such pure stuff the next time you're hungry?"

Godzilla tilted its head.

"The nuclear waste on Earth is already gone, and you've almost finished gnawing through the one on the Moon. High-dimensional creature eggs are hard to come by. This lake is currently the only known, renewable, ultra-high purity energy source."

Luo Yu held up a finger.

"Drink half, leave half. The half you leave will slowly recover. When it recovers to a certain level, you can come back and drink the newly grown part. It'll be a continuous cycle."

*Hiss?*

"Exactly. It's an unlimited buffet, but you can only eat half a portion each time."

Godzilla's vertical pupils blinked twice.

Golden light swirled in its pupils; it was thinking.

Then.

Its mouth closed.

*Hiss.*

The tone returned to a normal level, the matter-of-fact kind.

Translation: Fine, I'll listen to you. But don't stop me when we come back next time.

Luo Yu patted its snout. "Next time, eat as much as you want."

Through the mental link, every word of this conversation was received by The Three Kings.

Abaddon's seven broken horns stopped trembling.

Belial opened his tightly closed eyes.

Azathoth's six eyes... surprisingly, the three injured eyes on the right side were no longer leaking bodily fluids.

The Three Kings looked at each other.

There was no exchange of mental fluctuations, but the content in their gazes was highly unified.

They had originally prepared for the worst-case scenario: that this new Lord of the Abyss would drink every last drop of the core lake and then pat his ass and leave, leaving behind an empty shell of a world with depleted energy.

The Abyss's ecology would collapse. The Gravity anchors at the bottom would fail. The Spatial barriers would thin. Tens of thousands of low-tier giant beasts would die because they lost their energy supply.

They were even already calculating how to negotiate terms with Luo Yu: Could he drink a little less? Even leaving a third would be fine?

As it turned out.

The man stopped on his own.

Not because he couldn't eat more. Not because he was soft-hearted.

It was because of... sustainable development.

Abaddon suppressed a certain complex emotional fluctuation and sent a message through the mental link.

The signal was carefully modulated, removing all components that could be interpreted as fawning or flattery, retaining only the most neutral semantic meaning.

"Master, the bottom spring vents of the core lake have regained activity. We will conduct regular inspections of the seepage status to ensure the recovery mechanism is not disturbed by external forces."

Luo Yu didn't even look up.

"Mhm."

A single word.

But Abaddon understood all the meanings behind this word: acquiescence, recognition, and the embryonic form of a certain "I trust you to handle this" confidence.

For a former Abyss supreme who had just lost forty-seven thousand years of ruling power, this word was more effective than any promise.

Belial relaxed the tightened muscles at the base of his broken wings.

The mass of purple-black flames behind Azathoth, which had previously shriveled by half, quietly grew back to two-thirds of its height.

Gratitude was not something Abyssal Giant Beasts would say out loud.

But their actions would betray them.

And just in the interval while The Three Kings were silently relieved, Mothra had flown over the core lake at some point, her wings spreading to shed a layer of pale gold scale powder. When the power of light touched the purple-gold lake surface, there was no rejection reaction; instead, it produced a soft resonance, and ripples of extremely faint halos appeared on the lake.

Luo Yu took a few extra looks.

The System popped up a line of small text.

[Detected positive resonance between Mothra's Light Purification ability and Abyss Origin energy]

[Effect: Bottom spring vent recovery speed increased by 0.03%]

0.03%.

Better than nothing.

But better to have it than not.

"Little White is doing a good job."

Luo Yu praised Mothra.

Mothra's wings fluttered, and two more layers of golden scale powder fell.

She worked even harder after being praised.

Pandora slipped back from the lakeside and climbed onto Luo Yu's wrist, coiling into her bracelet form.

Her single eye peeked at Mothra. While she was eating the bone meal residue, Mothra had been preening her wings nearby; now that Mothra was doing serious work, she had run back to rest.

"Don't you be idle either." Luo Yu flicked Pandora's head.

*Hiss?*

"Your energy conversion ability can help perform secondary purification for the spring vents. Go lie at the bottom of the lake; don't just be an ornament on my hand."

Pandora sluggishly slid down from his wrist and slipped into the lake.

Once in the water, she swam quite fast. The small dark-green snake body turned a corner in the purple-gold liquid and dived toward the bottom of the lake.

Luo Yu stood on top of Godzilla's head, looking around.

The Three Kings stood around the lake in humble postures.

The two Ninth-Tier Giant Beasts that had survived the disaster huddled in the farthest corner.

Mothra was circling in the air, shedding light powder.

Pandora was working at the bottom of the lake.

Godzilla let out a yawn beneath his feet.

This scene looked somewhat ironic.

Forty-seven minutes ago, this place was still the top-secret forbidden zone of the Abyss World's highest power core, the lifeblood that the three kings of the abyss had jointly guarded for forty-seven thousand years.

Now, it had become Luo Yu's private ranch.

The communicator rang.

Su Qingxue's voice came through: "Luo Yu, intelligence from the Bridgehead direction. Abyssal Giant Beasts in various regions of the Abyss World are exhibiting large-scale abnormal behavior."

"What kind of abnormality?"

"They are retreating, a full-scale retreat. All life signals above the sixth tier are evacuating outward with the Bridgehead as the center. The advancement path has been completely cleared."

Luo Yu tilted his head and glanced at Abaddon.

Abaddon's dragon head lowered slightly: "I have already issued the order. All living beings in the Abyss World are not to take any hostile actions against the human Expeditionary Force."

Luo Yu: "When did you issue it?"

"When you were eating the second ninth-tier."

That was about twenty minutes ago.

In other words, before Luo Yu had even officially made any demands, Abaddon had already made arrangements on his own.

What do you call this?

This is called initiative.

Forty-seven years of management experience wasn't just for show.

"Sister Qingxue."

"I'm here."

"Have the Expeditionary Force deploy Collection stations along the advancement line. I'll extract the ore vein coordinates from The Three Kings via mental link later and send them all to you then."

"Specifications for the Collection stations?"

"Highest specifications. The energy concentration of Abyss Origin ore veins is hundreds of times higher than any nuclear facility on Earth. Standard collection equipment won't hold up. Have the rear air-lift heavy radiation-proof collection modules."

"Understood. One more thing—General Zhankuang has urged three times, asking when you're coming back."

"Tell him to wait a bit longer." Luo Yu glanced at the numbers on the System panel.

spiritual power value: 12,800,000,000,000.

Twelve trillion eight hundred billion.

evolution progress: 71.4%.

Next stage evolution requires 100%.

Short by 28.6 percentage points.

No rush.

Luo Yu turned off the communicator and sat down again in the horn socket.

Godzilla had already shrunk back to its compact three-hundred-meter form, lying by the lake with its front claws resting on the water's surface, occasionally taking a lick of the lake water with its tongue.

Luo Yu didn't stop it.

A lick wouldn't drink much.

"Zhiruo."

"Yeah?" Su Zhiruo walked to his side.

"After going back, the first thing is to have the Research Institute analyze those High-dimensional face mask fragments."

"The second thing?"

"The second thing is to tell Old Zhan to have Modu University reissue my graduation certificate. I'm a student there after all; let's follow the procedure."

Su Zhiruo's mouth twitched.

The youngest marshal in human history, the Lord of the Abyss, the controller of the king of the titans.

And he was still thinking about a graduation certificate.

Not far away,

Abaddon captured the semantic meaning of the three words "graduation certificate" through the mental link, but was completely unable to understand it.

It was silent for a few seconds before asking Belial through a private channel: "What is that? A weapon? Or some kind of credential of power?"

Belial's hawk head shook: "Not sure. The social Systems of low-dimensional creatures are too complex."

Azathoth's six eyes stared at Luo Yu and Su Zhiruo, who were chatting while squatting in the horn socket, for a long time.

Then it reached a conclusion.

The relationship between these two carbon-based organisms was essentially the same thing as the relationship between Godzilla and Mothra.

Mhm.

Mates.

Azathoth felt it was becoming more and more able to understand the low-dimensional world.

Above the lake,

Mothra was still diligently shedding light powder.

At the bottom of the lake, Pandora lay next to a spring vent, her single eye squinted, lazily performing energy purification.

Godzilla stretched, rested its head on its front claws, and its golden vertical pupils slowly closed.

It was dozing off.

The Abyss Core Area was quieter than ever before.

It wasn't the tense, undercurrent-surging kind of quiet.

It was the kind of quiet where all the characters had found their places after the dust had settled.

Luo Yu leaned against Godzilla's warm scales and looked up at this underground world without a sky.

The purple-gold lake light reflected on the crystal layer of the dome, casting mottled spots of light.

The silhouettes of three giant beasts were cast on the rock walls, quietly guarding the four sides of the lake.

"In the future, this place..." Luo Yu mumbled softly.

Su Zhiruo tilted her head: "What?"

"Nothing. Just thinking about what would be an appropriate price for tickets if I bring people here for tourism in the future."

Su Zhiruo glanced at him and ignored it.

A gust of hot air puffed from Godzilla's nostrils, wrinkling a small patch of the lake surface in front of it.

It was probably still eating in its dreams.

Five hours later,

the purple-gold lake surface was as smooth as a mirror.

Mothra landed back on the top of a crystal pillar, folded her wings, and the light powder stopped falling.

Luo Yu leaned against the scales, eyes closed.

Beside him,

Su Zhiruo lowered her head to adjust the communicator frequency band, the screen's glow illuminating her profile.

Godzilla below was sleeping soundly.

Between breaths,

the hot air from its nostrils pushed the lake water into circles of shallow ripples.

The Three Kings stood by the lakeside.

Abaddon buried his head under a broken wing.

Belial preened his neck feathers with his only remaining intact claw. Azathoth had five of his six eyes closed, leaving one half-open to stay on guard.

Everything was very quiet.

It lasted for twenty minutes.

The change came quite irrationally.

First, it was the sound.

An extremely low-frequency hum. It came from deep underground. This sound didn't travel through the air; it acted directly on physical matter.

A layer of fine wrinkles appeared on the surface of the purple-gold lake water.

Luo Yu opened his eyes.

Su Zhiruo stopped what she was doing and looked toward the center of the lake.

Azathoth's half-open eye snapped wide, and the purple-black flames abruptly shot up several meters.

"Something's there," Su Zhiruo said only three words.

The humming intensified.

The crystalline rock layer beneath their feet began to vibrate. The frequency was extremely fast.

At the center of the lake, the once-calm water surface suddenly collapsed. A funnel-shaped vortex formed, and the purple-gold liquid swirled as it poured downward.

Pandora shot out from the water.

The small dark-green snake drew a parabola in mid-air, landed with a *splat* by Godzilla's feet, and then scrambled up the scales, scurrying into Luo Yu's sleeve, refusing to show her head for anything.

Luo Yu tapped his wrist: "What's the situation down there?"

Pandora sent back a chaotic mess of mental fluctuations, all garbled code.

Translated, it meant only one thing: Hell if I know, run!

The vortex expanded.

Its diameter grew from ten meters to a hundred, then to five hundred.

The lake's water level dropped at a rate visible to the naked eye.

This wasn't the speed of Godzilla drinking.

This was the bottom leaking.

Abaddon pulled his head out from under his wing, his nine broken horns standing straight. He stared at the vortex, his body involuntarily taking half a step back.

Belial's hawk head reared high, a sharp hiss coming from his throat.

"What's going on?"

Luo Yu stood up from the horn socket and looked down at The Three Kings.

Abaddon didn't answer.

Extremely chaotic signals came through his mental link, mixed with unbelievable horror.

"It shouldn't be..." Abaddon's voice sounded in Luo Yu's mind, his tone completely changed. "The Old One's remains have been eaten, the Seal is lifted, and the spring vents should be regaining activity. Why would the bottom be leaking?"

"You're asking me?" Luo Yu countered.

Azathoth took over the conversation: "Master, we only understand the surface of the Abyss Core's structure. Forty-seven thousand years ago, when we killed the Old One, it sank itself into the bottom of the lake with its last breath. We always thought it wanted to use the Origin energy to resurrect."

"Was it not?"

Azathoth's six eyes stared fixedly at the growing vortex as he spoke shockingly: "Looking at it now, it sank itself into the bottom of the lake partly to resurrect, and partly... perhaps to block a door."