Chapter 1094: Excavator 114
The two exchanged a glance, both seeing the shock in each other's eyes: the sound really was coming from underground!
"Could it be something else mutating!"
They quickly leaped into the air, listening to the increasingly closer noise with their hair standing on end. But just as they felt the underground thing was about to dig through the surface, the sound suddenly stopped.
A long, oppressive silence filled the jungle.
Pu Gaoshan gestured to Wang Mo, and the two turned and fled, abandoning even the instruments they had deployed.
Not far away, Xu Huo and Zhou Yuanzhu also heard the sound. Unable to identify what it was, they too silently slipped away, just like Pu and Wang.
Avoiding Wang Mo's micro-monitors without being detected was a bit troublesome, so Xu Huo changed direction and headed toward Zhao Xiaofang and Cao Zheng, who had gone the other way.
Like Wang Mo, Zhao Xiaofang and Cao Zheng were also placing something into the mutant nest—a specially made poison capsule.
They were indeed using mutant offspring to divert the attention of the mutant swarm and prevent a beast tide from directly hitting Xiaohe City, but not by capturing the offspring alive as they had described.
"I don't know whether to call them stupid or foolish," Zhou Yuanzhu couldn't help but complain. "If we really did catch an offspring and went to meet up with them, do they think they could just abandon us and run?"
"Maybe they think we'll die in the process of stealing the offspring," Xu Huo said.
"They're all muscle-bound simpletons. Otherwise, they wouldn't have ended up as wanted criminals," Zhou Yuanzhu said, noticing Xu Huo looking at her. She added, "I'm not looking down on the people of Xiaohe City, but I just find it strange that scum like them haven't died sooner. Instead, they've gathered here. Is the survival rate for random high-risk instances really that high? Or does this place have a fixed coordinate, making it a sanctuary for fugitives fleeing the original wormhole points?"
"Don't be so irritable," Xu Huo said, pointing his chin toward the people setting the bait ahead. "Wait until they leave, then steal the bait. Without the offspring to delay them, the mutant swarm might reach Xiaohe City soon. Without enough materials, how will they build a second safe city?"
Zhou Yuanzhu was silent for a moment. "There's no need to go that far. Besides the players, Xiaohe City has two to three hundred ordinary people."
"Sympathy for them?" Xu Huo raised an eyebrow. "They might not sympathize with you."
"Did you see the women on the streets when you entered Xiaohe City?"
Oppressing the weak—this is a phenomenon that exists in any civilization, not just in the game.
Compared to players, ordinary people are the weak. But compared to ordinary men, ordinary women are even weaker. The kind of inhumane treatment they might suffer is imaginable. Compared to men at the very bottom of society, their situation is far more tragic.
Perhaps there are innocent people among the ordinary folk of Xiaohe City?
Zhou Yuanzhu didn't speak, but Xu Huo continued, "Xiaohe City probably has more than just the few women you saw. The back half of the commercial building might be holding many more. Don't even mention ordinary people—even players could be among them."
Zhou Yuanzhu was slightly stunned, finding it hard to believe. "They lock women up in the back to..."
She didn't finish her sentence, her expression filled with indescribable anger. After a moment, she cursed, "A bunch of animals!"
After a pause, she couldn't help but look at Xu Huo. "Did you force this out of the Xiaohe City players?"
More or less, Xu Huo nodded.
Zhou Yuanzhu said admiringly, "You're really something."
The people of Xiaohe City were all heinous criminals. Even if they were controlled, they might not reveal the truth. Uncle Guan was a B-rank player, and even without falling out with the Xiaohe City players, he had no better way to gather information. After all, ordinary hypnosis items or truth serums weren't easy to use on players.
"Do you know anything else?" Zhou Yuanzhu pressed eagerly. "Share it with me."
Xu Huo glanced at her and pointed at the ground.
"That sound again," Zhou Yuanzhu refocused. "It's dug over this quickly?"
"Should we change places again?" she asked. "There are mechanical warhawks made by Ruan Qiyan here. We just need to put them in; we don't have to go down ourselves."
Xu Huo nodded and followed her method.
But not long after they followed Zhao Xiaofang and Cao Zheng away, they heard the sound again.
Zhao and Cao fled at top speed, and Zhou Yuanzhu also lost her composure. "Don't you think this thing is following us?"
Xu Huo felt the same way. He signaled Zhou Yuanzhu to fall back. After they separated, the sound didn't stop but continued "thump-thump-thump" toward him.
"Gentleman's Poise" lifted Xu Huo ten meters above the ground. He draped himself in the invisibility cloak and looked down.
Seeing the soil begin to tremble as the digging approached, they realized the underground passage might be much larger than they had imagined. Because when the rock beneath the soil was pierced, a pit nearly six meters wide appeared in the forest!
It was confirmed that the ground below had been hollowed out, but the falling dirt and vegetation covered whatever was supposed to break through. After a few seconds without the expected mutant emerging, Zhou Yuanzhu grew tense. She looked up at Xu Huo, only to find him descending instead. He said to the pit, "Come up." The piled-up vegetation stirred, and then a dust-covered mechanical hand emerged, followed by a metal head with no facial features.
"114!" Zhou Yuanzhu recognized it, both surprised and delighted. "How is it here!"
Before arriving at Xiaohe City, they had found tire tracks not far from 114's footprints. They had all assumed 114 had been taken by the Xiaohe City players.
"It might have run in the wrong direction," Xu Huo said, calling 114 up. The tool robot climbed up using its hands and feet, turned around to shake off the dirt, and then walked up to him, reporting that its task was complete and playing a fragment of the mission content.
Ruan Qiyan's final command was to find living people and buildings. Because it had run in the wrong direction, it hadn't found any buildings, but it had found living people—Zheng Da and Jiang Wenzhang, who had gone into the underground nest to find mutant offspring.
Xu Huo opened the mission accident log on the projection and discovered that this thing had been carried off by a mutant as a toy halfway through.
The mission had failed at that point, and since it couldn't return after the time limit, it had been left here.
Zhou Yuanzhu found it unbelievable. "It can even dig through rock layers. How could it not kill a few mutants?"
You're asking too much of a robot.
"Its name is Excavator 114," Xu Huo defended his labor tool. "But it's not completely without gains."
In the accident footage, he discovered a mine. Besides intact ore, there were some particularly vibrant-looking fungi.
"What were Zheng Da and Jiang Wenzhang saying at the end?" Zhou Yuanzhu was watching the mission footage, but the distance was too great to pick up the audio, so she switched the feed to Xu Huo.
(Chapter End)