113: Chapter 113 Twenty Times Gravity Crushing the Matrix!

Chen Chen tossed aside the pulse cannon components and stood up.

"Xiaoqi, eat the cores. Jiang Yanxue, pick up the materials."

Su Xiaoqi hopped over and squatted in the pile of wreckage to rummage, using her thumb and index finger to pick up a blue mechanical core and pop it into her mouth.

She took a bite, wrinkled her nose, and spat it out.

"Tastes terrible! It tastes like iron scraps!"

"Eat it even if it tastes bad. The energy density of mechanical cores is lower than mutant cores, but they'll still fill you up if you eat enough."

Su Xiaoqi stuffed the core back into her mouth with a pitiful expression, chewing it with a crisp crunch.

Jiang Yanxue found over a dozen recyclable damping alloy parts and an intact hydraulic rod in the wreckage pile.

With a single touch from Shen Wanxing, these items could trigger a critical strike.

Blood Rose squatted by another pile of wreckage and kicked a flattened hound's head with the tip of her boot.

The ice-blue mechanical eye was shattered, but the optical lens was still there—she pried it off with a dagger and twirled it in her hand.

"This is a high-precision targeting lens. Give it to your sniper; it's better than the one on her current gun."

Chen Chen took it.

Indeed, the optical transmittance and refraction parameters were significantly superior to the standard lens currently equipped on Qin Hongye's gauss rifle.

"Keep it."

A string of system notifications popped up in his mind.

The Abyssal Plunderer affix was active throughout, and the drops from the forty-eight hounds were all tripled.

damping alloy parts, mechanical cores, coolant pipes, electromagnetic coils—they filled nearly half the space.

Chen Chen pressed his communicator: "Wanxing, come down and collect the goods. Bring storage boxes."

Shen Wanxing trotted down from the upper passage, clutching two folding storage boxes in her arms.

She saw the floor covered in metallic ruins and gaped.

"This... you crushed all of this?"

"Stop talking and start touching."

Shen Wanxing squatted down and touched the drops one by one.

First set of damping alloy parts—double critical strike, quantity doubled.

Third set of mechanical cores—triple critical strike, quantity tripled.

Seventh set of electromagnetic coils—no trigger.

Ninth set of coolant pipes—five-fold critical strike.

The entire process lasted over ten minutes.

Shen Wanxing's fingers moved from the first pile to the last, golden light flashing six or seven times in varying sizes.

The storage boxes were stuffed to the brim.

Su Xiaoqi wasn't idle either, picking up and stuffing cores into her mouth as she went.

She complained they tasted bad, but there were plenty; after eating a dozen or so, the golden energy halo on her body brightened significantly.

"That's enough."

Chen Chen clapped his hands.

"Move the stuff back to the car, then we continue down. Target—the bottom-level sealed warehouse."

Shen Wanxing ran back clutching the storage boxes.

Su Xiaoqi was still chewing the last core, mumbling a "Let's go."

The passage continued to extend downward.

Minus one hundred and twenty meters. One hundred and fifty meters.

The temperature was dropping, and the humidity was rising.

Water began to seep from the walls, and a thick layer of white stalactite-like alkali flowers had formed.

The sour, rotten smell in the air grew stronger; Su Xiaoqi covered her nose with her sleeve.

Jiang Yanxue walked two meters to Chen Chen's right, holding the Shadow Instant-Kill Blade across her chest.

Blood Rose was three meters to his left.

Her long boots were steady on the slippery rock surface; at one hundred and eighty-two centimeters tall, she had to hunch over to avoid hitting the increasingly low ceiling.

"Sister Bing, how much further to the bottom?"

"About forty meters. The passage ahead narrows, only allowing two people to walk side-by-side. Heat source—"

Shen Wanbing paused again.

But this time, it was only for a second.

"No heat source. The bottom level is currently clear, but my Radar penetration has dropped below twenty percent. There are large blind spots."

Chen Chen reached the narrowing of the passage.

Two meters wide, two meters high—just enough for him to pass through sideways.

He let Jiang Yanxue and Su Xiaoqi go first, with Blood Rose following and himself bringing up the rear.

After thirty meters in the narrow passage, the area ahead suddenly opened up.

Minus one hundred and eighty meters.

The bottom level.

Lights?

No, not lights.

Dozens of fluorescent ores of various sizes were embedded in the rock ceiling, emitting a faint, cold green light.

The light was dim but sufficient, allowing them to see about ten meters around them.

This was a storage space converted from a natural cavern.

The four rock walls had been artificially leveled, and a crude layer of cement had been poured on the ground.

The skeletons of several large industrial machines stood in the center—judging by their shape, they were likely the remains of an automated production line.

Directly opposite.

A door.

A three-meter-thick lead-silver alloy door, its surface polished to an extreme smoothness, glinting coldly under the green fluorescence.

In the very center of the door was an emblem half a meter in diameter—a gear, a shield, and crossed rifles.

A top-secret mark.

"We're here."

The sealed warehouse Yi Chang mentioned.

Grade A equipment, a material refining furnace, and the Snake-Scale Race Heritage Pebble. All behind this door.

Chen Chen stepped forward and placed his right hand on the surface of the alloy door.

Cold, heavy, and with extremely poor thermal conductivity.

lead-silver alloy itself was a radiation-shielding material; the military's use of such a door meant that whatever was stored inside was either radioactive or extremely valuable.

Or both.

"Sister Bing, what can you scan inside the door?"

"Almost nothing. The electromagnetic shielding rate of lead-silver alloy exceeds ninety-nine percent. I can only confirm there's a sealed space of about two hundred square meters behind the door, nothing more."

Chen Chen stepped back two paces and detached the void-rending ship-slaying blade from his waist.

Mental Power poured into the blade.

Purple patterns lit up from the hilt to the tip as the micro-gravity module entered a state of resonance.

The blade edge vibrated, emitting a low hum.

Three-meter-thick lead-silver alloy.

It might not be possible to crush it with the gravity field alone—the compression resistance of lead-silver alloy was extremely high.

But if Fatal Lock triggered true damage—

He raised the blade.

Jiang Yanxue, Su Xiaoqi, and Blood Rose instinctively retreated two steps.

Just at the moment the blade was about to strike—

Creak—

A sound of metal grinding came from inside the door.

Everyone froze simultaneously.

The alloy door was moving.

A line of light appeared in the center of the three-meter-thick lead-silver alloy door.

The line of light slowly widened—the door was opening from the inside.

It opened automatically.

The gap grew larger, from one centimeter to ten, then half a meter, then a meter.

A ghostly blue light shone from behind the door.

It was cold.

Chen Chen did not lower his blade.

He stared at the widening gap.

The door opened completely.

Inside was a sealed warehouse that was cleaner than expected.

The four walls were coated with anti-radiation paint, and the industrial light tubes on the ceiling were actually still on—a faint blue emergency lighting, low power, but enough to see the entire warehouse.

Against the left wall was a half-person-high material refining furnace, its shell intact and the control panel still in standby mode.

Against the right wall were three standard-issue alloy storage cabinets.

The cabinet doors were tightly closed, with electronic locks hanging from the latches.

In the very center.

An inactive grade a nuclear reactor.

A dark gray cylindrical body, just over two meters tall, with a base diameter of one and a half meters.

The shell was covered with cooling fins and maintenance interfaces.

The reactor's status indicators were all dark, in a state of complete dormancy.

A person was sitting on top of the reactor.

The one in the White Robe.

Thin and tall, in a white lab coat.

The hood was removed.

Silver liquid neural cords writhed slowly on its face, weaving the outline of facial features—no eyeballs, no lips, only the rises and falls formed by the intersecting threads.

Its right hand was tossing something.

A silver-gray scaled pebble, palm-sized, with naturally formed spiral patterns on the surface.

Each time it was tossed up and fell back into the palm, the pebble emitted an extremely faint hum.

The Snake-Scale Race Heritage Pebble.

The item Yi Chang wanted.

The White Robe sensed Chen Chen's footsteps. The "face" woven from silver threads turned toward him.

It had no expression.

But Chen Chen could feel it was "smiling."

That synthetic mechanical voice exploded in his mind again—

"Welcome, Heretic."

The silver-gray pebble spun once in the White Robe's palm.

"I have been waiting for you for a long time."