pdf-ebookys Chapter 33: The Vanished Relics
Chapter 33: The Vanished Relics
The blood-red triangular fighter jet stopped above the global headquarters of the Extreme Martial Arts Academy. Before the hatch was fully opened, two figures disappeared into the cabin as two afterimages, one black and one purple.
Hong was in front, and Lei Shen was behind.
The two men's expressions were more solemn than ever before.
The invisible pressure emanating from Hong made the staff along the way feel as if a mountain was pressing down on their heads, making it hard to breathe. They all hurriedly moved aside to make way for him.
Thor followed closely behind, his usual playful expression completely gone, replaced by confusion and anxiety.
He tried several times to ask what was going on, but Hong's pace was too fast, so fast that he couldn't find a chance to ask.
The highest monitoring center of the Dome of Light.
The atmosphere inside the door was even more oppressive than the battlefield on Kirishima, where the battle had just ended.
Dozens of top-notch technicians in white uniforms stood around the central control console, looking completely dazed and pale.
Upon seeing Hong and Thor enter, the leading technical supervisor barely suppressed his fear. He straightened his white uniform, forced himself to remain calm, and walked over, trying to control his slightly trembling fingers, to guide Hong and Thor to look at the enormous holographic screen in the center.
On the screen, a constantly updated deep-sea sonar topographic map is displayed.
In the very center of the image is an absurdly large, pitch-black void, like a scar that has been forcibly dug out, appearing abruptly on the seabed, with the surrounding lines seemingly distorted by this void.
Thor stared at the bizarre image, his brow furrowing. He stepped forward and blurted out a question.
"What the hell is this? Is it... a giant crater at the bottom of the sea?"
"What happened? Tell me slowly."
Hong's deep and steady voice gave everyone present a sense of security, and the technical director adjusted his mood and spoke.
"Master, this is a real-time sonar image from deep within the Pacific Ocean."
"Just a few days ago, following your latest instructions, we turned all the deep-sea monitoring arrays up to maximum power to scan and monitor energy responses in all ocean areas around the world, and then... and then we discovered this anomaly."
His fingers flew across the control panel beside him, bringing up another, relatively clearer file photo.
It was a vast expanse of broken spaceship wreckage stretching for hundreds of kilometers along the seabed. Various oddly shaped metal fragments and fractured hull structures formed a veritable steel graveyard.
"This is an unnumbered ancient civilization site located at this coordinate point that we have previously recorded. According to early preliminary explorations, the main body of the wreckage is a giant transport ship that disintegrated during interstellar travel. The damage rate is over 90%, and it has almost no exploration value, so we have not conducted any in-depth investigations."
The technical director's voice trembled violently again as he spoke.
"But just now... this ruin was inhabited by tens of thousands of sea monsters, including many king-level beings. Their life energy... in just a few days, plummeted from an extremely high energy peak that we recorded, and now... now there is basically no life reaction at all!"
"and……"
He abruptly waved his hand, switching the main screen back to the image of the massive underwater pit.
"Even that hundreds-of-kilometers-long spaceship wreckage... has vanished! We used all of the Dome of Light's deep-sea detection arrays, conducting hundreds of repeated scans to confirm... There's nothing left, not even a palm-sized piece of metal! All that's left is this... this bottomless crater!"
"What?!"
Thor spoke.
"Are you kidding me? What could possibly wipe out such a huge pile of scrap metal, along with tens of thousands of monsters around it?! And clean it up so thoroughly, not even a scrap of metal was left?"
Hong remained silent, staring intently at the huge empty space on the screen, his clenched fist betraying the turmoil in his heart.
Golden Horned Beast!
Moreover, it is a golden-horned behemoth that has already begun to devour the ruins!
In the original story, the first official landing and attack by the Golden Horned Beast on Earth was against humanity's steel fortresses. It fed on metal, yet never once touched the scattered, deep-sea remnants of ancient metal civilizations!
"Did my arrival trigger the butterfly effect?"
Hong muttered to himself.
This golden-horned behemoth's evolutionary trajectory, or rather its behavioral patterns, has undergone an unknown change!
The bottomless underwater crater in front of them shattered Hong's greatest information advantage!
Hong Yuan believed that with his current Heng-level strength, coupled with his understanding of the domain far exceeding that of this era, his power had already far surpassed that of Hong at the same stage in the original work. He was even comparable to the Heng-level golden-horned behemoth that had just landed on Earth in the original work.
But now... what he is about to face may no longer be the giant star beast that follows the original evolutionary trajectory.
A damaged interstellar transport ship might be just an appetizer for it, but there are many similar wrecked spaceships on Earth. If it were to devour them all, to what extent would the Golden Horned Beast evolve? How much stronger would it be than in the original story?
For the first time, a tremendous wave surged within Hong's heart. He felt as if the thread of fate he had always held tightly in his hand had been completely snapped by a brute force.
Just as he was feeling a sense of unease, several figures appeared again through the open door of the monitoring center.
The three bodyguards, Enchanting, Iceberg, and Beast, strode in. Their combat uniforms were still damp and exuded a strong aura of menace, indicating that they had just emerged from the bottom of the lake on Mist Island and rushed straight back to headquarters.
Yao Rao glanced around the monitoring center, walked straight to Hong, and began to report in a deep voice.
"Master, the Kirishima exploration mission is complete, and all discovered Mokuya Crystals have been successfully recovered. However..."
"We...we can't contact Luo Feng anymore."
"Um?"
Thor's questioning voice rang out.
"We can't get in touch with Luo Feng?! What happened? Wasn't that kid searching for treasure at the bottom of the lake with you guys?!"
Standing behind the alluring figure, the iceberg stepped forward and added, his voice carrying a hint of bewilderment.
"When we met at the agreed location for the final rendezvous, he didn't show up. His communicator was unreachable, and we couldn't sense his presence at all. Yao Rao, Ye Shou, and I searched the entire bottom area of Kirishima Lake, including all the depths of the rock layers, three times over, but we found no signs of a struggle."
"He...it's like he vanished into thin air."