184: Chapter 184 Technology Corridor

The bronze gate closed behind them.

The outline of the door seam vanished immediately.

The edges of the door melted instantly, and molten crimson metal flowed down the frame, coating the entire wall in the blink of an eye.

Zhao Mengmeng turned her head; the ruined crossbow in her hand had been raised halfway before dropping limply again.

The liquid metal cooled rapidly.

The original bronze gate was gone.

In its place was a solid, seamless wall of dark silver alloy, leaving not even a crack behind.

Their retreat had been sealed off.

"This damn place is truly terrified of us going back." Zhao Mengmeng's voice was dry and hoarse.

She was left with only half a bronze rod and a broken crossbow.

Lin Ye stared straight ahead.

It was a straight, silver-gray corridor.

It stretched out into a bottomless abyss, its end swallowed by a cold, ghostly blue light.

Dense, transparent thick pipes were embedded into the alloy walls on both sides.

Azure liquid circulated within the pipes, and tiny bubbles gurgled as they rose.

Dozens of four-meter-tall cylindrical incubation pods were lined up along the base of the walls.

Inside, they were filled with murky, yellowish preservative fluid.

Distorted remains, half-metal and half-flesh, floated within them.

Some had nothing left but half a spine connected to mechanical ribs.

Others had three deformed arms, their forearms completely modified into blackened alloy blades.

Zhao Mengmeng's gaze fell upon the nearest incubation pod.

Inside that severed chest cavity, a dim core was glowing.

"Brother Lin, did we switch channels?"

This place was completely outside the savage style of the first nine layers of the Void Sea.

Lin Ye glanced at his right arm.

The Dark Weaver's casing was completely scorched black, its main spindle snapped.

That traction crystal core, which had once saved his life, was now silent—it was ruined.

Zhao Mengmeng's Wind-Chasing Claw had all three claws jammed, with only half of the retrieval slot barely hanging on her waist.

Equipment cleared.

"Don't touch the pods, don't lean against the walls, and only step where I step on the floor tiles."

Lin Ye's voice was very soft.

Zhao Mengmeng swept a glance at the floor.

The alloy floor tiles were perfectly fitted together.

They were so smooth that one couldn't pick out a single flaw.

"Your rules sound like they have neither head nor tail."

"This place doesn't follow basic laws when it comes to taking lives."

Inside the Great Xia Live Stream.

After a brief silence, the live chat was flooded with messages.

[Where the hell is this? An alien base?!]

[We just crawled through a volcanic primeval forest, and now we pass through a door and enter a cyber morgue? Does the Void Sea not even care about the timeline anymore?]

[Brother Eye and Sister Mengmeng's equipment is all busted! How are they supposed to fight mechanical monsters with half a stick!]

Lin Ye showed no signs of panic.

His Left Eye widened quietly.

The colors of the environment faded rapidly from his retina.

Inside the interlayers of the hard alloy walls, blood-red energy beams were crisscrossed.

Beneath the floor.

Every two floor tiles, a pressure sensor red dot, glowing so intensely it turned black, lay in wait.

The seams in the ceiling were also filled with ultra-fine cutting apertures.

This was a death trap.

A single inch of error.

And everything would be destroyed.

Lin Ye raised his gaze.

To the left at the end of the path, there was a half-open bulkhead door.

A rich, dark gold halo was seeping out through the gap.

Right next to the dark gold was a ball of soft, pure green light.

Supplies.

And high-level Luck resources.

The muscles at the corner of Lin Ye's eye twitched slightly, and he quickly closed his eyes.

His brain rapidly reorganized the safe landing spots he had just memorized.

"Follow me closely."

"How?"

"Step exactly where I step."

Lin Ye took the first step.

His landing point was angled to the front left.

Half his foot was suspended in the air, landing precisely on the center line of the gap between two floor tiles.

On the second step, he twisted his body and cut horizontally to the right.

His toe was forced onto the edge of the third tile.

Zhao Mengmeng followed behind, keeping the half-rod pressed tightly against her thigh, not daring to let it stick out even a millimeter.

They had just moved two meters.

A floor tile half an inch behind them suddenly collapsed slightly.

Click.

A faint sound of machinery.

Cold light erupted instantly from the gaps in the alloy plates on both sides of the corridor.

Three high-frequency incandescent laser beams swept across the tiles in a scissor-like motion.

If they had taken normal steps.

Their knees and spines would have already been sliced into pieces.

The hairs on the back of Zhao Mengmeng's neck stood on end.

"These landmines don't even have a fuse sound?"

"It did."

"Where?"

"There isn't a single bone left on the ground."

Zhao Mengmeng stopped talking.

The Great Xia Live Stream was in an uproar.

[Holy crap! Was that a laser grid just now?!]

[Indiscriminate cutting! You can't even see the emitter holes!]

[How did Brother Eye know those were safe zones? Those awkward steps were all perfectly placed in the blind spots!]

[Where are the trolls from the foreign sites? Open your eyes and see what god-tier prediction looks like!]

Lin Ye didn't pause.

His pace suddenly increased.

Left turn, lateral shift, forward dash.

Seven consecutive, bizarre strides that completely defied human biomechanics.

The two wove through the traps, constantly on the brink of disaster.

Every time they landed, a deadly incandescent light grid would spring from the floor tiles behind them.

The light grid shredded the air.

It even grazed Zhao Mengmeng's back, slicing the wooden splinters of the broken crossbow that had fallen to the ground into black smoke.

Inside the nearest incubation pod on the right.

The mechanical limb in the murky preservative fluid moved.

That arm, modified with a sickle, slammed against the glass.

Thud.

The dull thud struck directly against their eardrums.

Zhao Mengmeng instinctively wanted to turn her head.

"Don't look! Keep your eyes on my heels!" Lin Ye barked.

Zhao Mengmeng forced her neck to stay stiff, her right foot slamming into the tile gap Lin Ye had just vacated.

The lasers behind them grazed past them once again.

Lin Ye forced his Left Eye open for another half-second through the intense, aching strain.

Ten meters ahead.

The bulkhead door was getting closer and closer.

But the density of the red light beneath the tiles was increasing exponentially.

At the same time.

The energy pipes at the bottom of the dozens of incubation pods on both sides of the corridor were rapidly turning from blue to red.

The cores of those stiff, dead limbs began to light up one by one with a grayish-white deathly glow.

The dormant array had been activated.

"Speed up!"

The soles of Lin Ye's boots scraped sparks directly from the steel plates.

He took five strides in a row, leaning forward to rush into the half-open bulkhead door.

Zhao Mengmeng ducked and dove into the door gap.

The half-bronze rod stuck at her waist scraped against the door frame, emitting a piercing, sharp screech.

Entering the room.

The space was quite cramped.

Several rows of dusty metal crates were stacked against the wall.

Large patches of withered and cracked conduits hung down from the ceiling.

In the center lay an oval-shaped metal machine covered in conduit slots.

A ring of energy ports surrounded the base, all of them a dull, faded color.

A light screen popped up.

[Abandoned Nano-Reforging Instrument]

"A Reforging Instrument? Can it fix my claws?" Zhao Mengmeng reached for the remains of the Wind-Chasing Claw at her waist.

Lin Ye walked up to the machine in the center.

He briefly engaged his Left Eye.

The casing emitted a safe, pale green glow; there were no high-dimensional gray spots.

It was usable.

He raised his right arm, bringing the already ruined Dark Weaver bracer close to the base.

He attempted to compare the interface specifications to find a way to activate it.

Unexpectedly, the traction crystal core inside the Dark Weaver, which was on the verge of shattering, inadvertently leaked a faint glimmer of residual energy.

Beep.

The dead-silent machine base suddenly captured an abnormal high-dimensional fluctuation.

The patterns on the base overloaded, lighting up with a blinding red glow.

The backup lights in the entire preparation room turned scarlet in the same second.

A shrill and oppressive alarm hummed within the metal walls.

In the corridor outside the bulkhead door.

A series of loud crashes echoed as glass shattered.

Crash!

A large amount of viscous preservative fluid slammed onto the corridor floor like a waterfall.

A wet, heavy, and extremely oppressive sound of metal dragging was approaching.

Zhao Mengmeng braced one foot against the edge of the bulkhead door and held the half-bronze rod horizontally across her chest with a backhand grip.

"Something outside woke up!"

A large mechanical foot, dripping with dark green corrosive fluid, stepped heavily onto the boundary of light and shadow outside the door.

It was over three meters tall.

Half of its metal head was exposed, and a scarlet locking beam pulsed within its single eye.

At the ends of its two arms, it dragged heavy, one-meter-long alloy sickles.

The sickles scraped against the floor tiles, emitting a piercing screech.

A light screen popped up.

[Type IV Bladed Scavenger]

It tilted its half-metal head, locking its gaze onto the two people inside the door gap.