57: Chapter 57 Spiritual Treasure Spirit? Talkative Crab

Spiritless Ruins, Underground Second Level, Security Center inner chamber.

Stepping over the corpse of that armored Aberration, Gu Shen pushed open the thickest refined iron door deep in the hall.

What met his eyes was an extremely spacious secret room. There were no bones, nor were there any monsters. On one side of the room's wall stood a massive metal long table, embedded with several pitch-black glazed square plates (monitors), as well as some strange iron disks arranged with dense bumps (keyboards).

Gu Shen grasped the thunder pattern gold-slaying blade, his Divine Sense sweeping across like water waves.

There was no Spiritual Qi fluctuation. It was dead silent.

He walked to the long table, his gaze falling on a refined iron storage box to the side. With a flick of the blade tip, the lock snapped.

Inside were three bottles of pure water and ten hard black-faced dry rations (compressed biscuits).

After putting the mortal rations into his Storage Ring, Gu Shen's gaze turned to the largest black glazed plate.

Just as he approached.

Hum—

Inside the originally dead-silent glazed plate, an extremely faint blue ghostly light suddenly flashed. Immediately following, a harsh electric current sound similar to nails scratching iron sheet erupted in the secret room.

Gu Shen instantly retreated thirty feet, green light surging on his body surface, the Wood Armor Technique tightly protecting his entire body, long saber held across his chest.

"Warning... Backup energy is less than one percent... Carbon-based life signs detected..."

An extremely stiff, dried-up voice that could not distinguish gender came from the iron box behind the glazed plate.

Gu Shen's eyes narrowed slightly.

No signs of life, no soul fluctuations. This iron box could actually speak?

Before Gu Shen could probe, that dried-up voice suddenly raised a pitch, the original mechanical feeling instantly disappearing, turning into an extremely excited, even cracking roar:

"Holy crap! A living person?! A living person without Aberrations and with a complete genetic sequence?! Heavens, this master has been dormant for who knows how long, finally seeing a breathing bipedal beast!"

A blue light flashed on the glazed plate, countless strange lines rapidly outlining, finally turning into an extremely vivid blue light-shadow Crab waving two large pincers.

Gu Shen's pupils shrank.

"Able to detach from living things, reside in dead objects, and possess complete autonomous intelligence..." Gu Shen's mind felt like a thunderclap had exploded, instantly matching a certain extremely ancient and terrifying legend in the Great Yu Cultivation World.

Spirit Treasure!

Only supreme treasures that transcend the category of Magic Treasure, and which even Nascent Soul Stage old monsters can barely touch, can give birth to a true artifact spirit!

Gu Shen's breathing suddenly became heavy, but he was not blinded by greed. He could not feel a trace of Spiritual Pressure from this artifact spirit; it was so weak it felt like it could dissipate at any moment.

"Your Excellency is the Protector artifact spirit of this Ancient Sect?" Gu Shen's voice was cold, not relaxing his vigilance.

"What artifact spirit? I am the central artificial intelligence of this Shelter No. 7! You can call me Crab."

The blue Crab on the screen waved its pincers, its voice filled with an extremely human-like helplessness, "Back then, Chief Engineer Li loved eating steamed hairy Crabs the most, so he insisted on writing my underlying image code into this ghost-like appearance."

Gu Shen sneered in his heart.

Although he didn't understand what artificial intelligence and code were, this did not hinder him from using the common sense of a cultivator to understand.

"Ancient experts have eccentric tempers; giving an artifact spirit a lowly name like Crab actually conforms to common sense." Gu Shen thought to himself.

The Crab on the screen didn't know what Gu Shen was thinking at all. Having finally seen a living person, it seemed to want to pour out all the words it had suppressed for countless centuries:

"Brother, it's a miracle you've survived until now! The outside world has long been completely destroyed. Global nuclear explosions, tens of thousands of nuclear bombs plowed the surface into glass; that terrifying high temperature and radiation, the outside is simply a dead zone!"

"Originally, our underground Shelter could have lasted a few more hundred years, but unfortunately, a major earthquake cracked the main shielding layer of the Thirteenth Underground Level reactor. High-intensity radioactive dust poured back along the ventilation ducts, and everyone in the Shelter was radiation-contaminated, genes collapsed, and they turned into the kind of Aberration monsters you saw outside..."

The Crab's voice grew weaker and weaker, and the blue light on the screen began to flicker uncertainly.

Gu Shen listened quietly, but in his mind, he was rapidly translating these terms into the cruel truth he could understand.

"Global nuclear explosions... tens of thousands of nuclear bombs washing the ground... It really is some kind of world-extinguishing poisonous light Formation that fell from the sky. The reactor on the Thirteenth Floor? It really is that out-of-control thunder pool hub. Radiation is that invisible poisonous gas that causes the Physical Body to aberrate."

"Brother, don't just stand there." The Crab's image began to distort, "My emergency backup battery is about to run out completely. Once it shuts down, the last layer of bottom-level defense code for the entire Shelter will also lock."

Click.

The iron sheet below the glazed plate popped open, spitting out a palm-sized, pure black thin iron plate (tablet terminal).

"I have transferred my core consciousness into this mobile terminal. It comes with micro-solar and kinetic energy recovery, which can barely maintain my extremely weak dormant standby."

The Crab's voice carried a sense of desperate determination, "Take me with you! You will absolutely not survive alone in this Hell full of Aberrations. As long as you can kill your way to the Thirteenth Underground Level, find the control room, and manually restart the backup reactor generator set..."

"As long as the power is restored, I can retake control of the entire Shelter System! By then, the hidden armory, soilless cultivation farm, fully automatic defensive machine guns, all of them will be yours!"

"Is it a deal, living brother?"

The voice stopped abruptly. The glazed plate on the wall went completely dark, turning into a piece of lifeless black glass.

The secret room fell back into dead silence.

Gu Shen looked down at the black thin iron plate lying quietly in the iron groove.

"Restarting the Thirteenth Floor thunder pool... using thunder-magnetic power to awaken this massive spatial Spirit Treasure, in exchange for the heritage and treasury of the entire Ancient Sect."

Gu Shen silently sorted out this transaction in his heart.

This was absolutely an extremely long, and filled with countless life-and-death murderous traps, open scheme. The Thirteenth Underground Level, the deeper you go, the more terrifying the Aberration monsters become.

But he had no choice. What he lacked most right now was a guide in these Ancient ruins.

Gu Shen put away his long saber and reached out to pick up the black mobile terminal.

It felt extremely cold to the touch, neither metal nor jade.

He did not directly store it on his person, but instead took out a Low Grade Talisman that isolates Qi from his Storage Ring, wrapped it tightly, and then tucked it into his bosom.

The iron law of the Dao of Cowardice: Even if it is a lingering artifact spirit, one must not be without suspicion of others.

"The Thirteenth Floor, I will definitely go. But not now."

Gu Shen turned around and took one last look at this extremely safe security secret room.

With this hidden stronghold, with the Golden Light Sword Talisman Treasure he had just obtained, and with a sleeping artifact spirit who understood all the secrets of this underground palace.

Next, he would begin his long and cruel hunting and closed-door cultivation on this Underground Second Level, utilizing those intricate Qi vein passages.

True cultivation is never about flowers and moonlight, but about chewing bones and swallowing blood in the ruins and mountains of corpses, climbing step by step toward the Peak.