Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

It had been a long time since Hao Ren last saw such a monster. The last time he saw it was when he helped solve the sirens’ problem in Nasaton. A brain monster had occupied the city of the deep sea. It had an exchange of spirits the siren queen. It took Hao Ren and his team a while to catch the monster, but it got away from the high-security monitoring of the Petrachelys by uploading its consciousness. The escape had bothered Hao Ren for a long time.

After the incident, he had never seen the terrible creature, which was mutated from the brain of the guardian giant. It just disappeared out of thin air all together from the deserted planets and space in the Plane of Dreams.

Never had he expected to see it here, on a planet that the minions of the Mad Lord ruled.

Vivian’ use of Night Veil spell was a wise move. Under the cover of powerful magic, the brain monster in the room was not aware of the foreign breath above it. The brain monster just lay on the round metal pedestal like a mollusk with its tentacles—which were in fact nerves—connected to the holes around the base. It produced a mumble that sounds as if mud was squirming on the ground while issuing instructions to the different instruments in the room.

Had it not been for the previous encounters, no one would have associated this horrific meat with the guardian giants.

“It does not notice us.” Nangong Sanba quickly stepped back just after a glance. “The sound of this thing is disgusting. Please do not tell me that it is singing a song popular among the festered army.”

“Brain monsters are one of the highly intelligent mad creatures.” Vivian’s brows knitted together. “Could it be that these brain monsters are the ones controlling festered monsters?”

“You mean that this planet is actually the lair of the brain monsters?” Lily blinked. “Are you sure? We have only seen one so far. Maybe it is just a coincidence.”

“No, perhaps this is not the only one.” Hao Ren noticed the small details in the room. “Did you see the instrument and the pedestal? Those things have a bioelectronic connection with the nerves of the brain monsters. Other than that, there is no other control interface. It only means that these equipment are specifically designed for the brain monster, not for other controllers. If the brain monster is just an individual little potato among the festered army, how do you explain the existence of these specialized instruments that no one except the brain monster could use?”

“We cannot rule out that the pieces of equipment are only meant for the brain monsters,” Nangong Wuyue said in a whisper. “What if it is the head here?”

Hao Ren thought for a moment. He could not rule out the possibility. “I cannot say for sure. Let’s see if we can find more of these brain monsters.”

Lily bared her fangs at the thing below the floor. “What should we do about it? Should we take it out?”

Hao Ren pondered and then shook his head. “Don’t cause unnecessary trouble. And don’t forget that the brain monsters have psychic abilities; it may be able to alert the others through telepathy. In case we fail to kill it at once, we will be in deep sh*t. There is no way to capture this thing nor make it confess anything using torture. It is a low-value target.”

Others agreed with Hao Ren’s view. Lily was a little disappointed and could only follow Hao Ren from behind as the team moved deeper into the underground facility.

Thirty minutes later, they passed through the outer zone of the great temple and entered the underground area.

The team was now in the vicinity of the control center, which was a rather massive facility on the planetary fortress. It consisted of a skyscraping temple and an underground structure that looked like a subterranean city. The underground part was larger than the structure on the surface. During the adventure on Naqdal, the sprites led Hao Ren and his team directly to the server room. But here, they had to maneuver through the sophisticated ventilation system to find their way to the target. This had significantly slowed them down.

“Salaman has sent a message: the sporadic exchange of fire in space has ended. Now, the Guardian Legion and the drone group have retreated to the predetermined position and stood opposite the Amantir defensive circle,” Hao Ren said in a whisper. “Following this, the Amantir forces will return to the planet’s atmosphere. We have to be very careful.”

Nangong Sanba looked at the dimly lit passage ahead. The monotonous environment here made him uneasy and was patience-challenging. He became a little antsy. “Where are we now?”

The MDT called up a hologram showing the map Salam had provided. At the center of the plan was a blue light column representing the crystal of Amantir, and they were now on the side of the blue light column, blocked by a complex web of obstacles. “The straight-line distance from here to the crystal of Amantir is two kilometers. But considering we have to maneuver through the endless tunnels and corridors, the real distance would be ten times longer.”

There was no way around it. The team was moving around in a circle in the underground. They entered from the south of the great temple and then followed a spiral duct moving downward for half a circle. A section of the tunnel was close to the equatorial rift before it turned to the north of the temple into the control room where the crystal was located. Theoretically, it was the safest route.

“Sigh, we can only move ahead,” Nangong Sanba said.

After following the map going for some distance, Lily halted her steps, feeling a little baffled. “Do you feel it? It is hot here.”

Not only her but Hao Ren had also felt it. The temperature in the surroundings seemed to have risen.

“We are right next to the rift.” Hao Ren glanced at the map, on which a striking red crack cut through one-third of the underground facility. “It should be heat coming from the rift.”

It turned out that Hao Ren was right.

Before long, the air in the tunnel had become a heatwave, and there were apparent signs of repair on the tunnel. There were also branch lines and gates that did not exist on the map. These were the additions from the reconstruction.

Apparently, after the equator of Amantir was torn open, the festered army had repaired and modified the area. The map that Salaman provided was no longer valid after this point.

“Apparently, the underground facility is not completely sealed. Otherwise, the heatwave would not have come into the tunnel.” Y’zaks sniffled with an annoyed expression. “It is worse than the air quality in my homeworld. The sulfur smell is not pure at all.”

Hao Ren glanced at him with a condescending sneer. “You still have the nerve to talk about air quality; the air in your homeworld could cause lung cancer in ordinary humans with just a couple of breath.”

While speaking, they had arrived at a fork, which again did not exist on the map. Now, they were on their own. Lily cocked her tail straight up in the air and watched how the fluffy hair on her tail fluttered. “The air is blowing from that direction. Should we go and check it out?”

The direction that the husky maiden suggested was consistent with the original route. So, Hao Ren agreed with a nod.

The team moved in the direction from where the hot air blew and found that they were leaving the ventilation duct system.

The tunnel ahead was getting wider and wider with several abandoned gates along the way. The lighting system did not work here. All signs suggested that this was an abandoned tunnel.

The road opened up ahead.

Nangong Wuyue nervously jabbed the ground with the tip of her tail with her arms crossed. “I feel like I am evaporating!”

As soon as they emerged from the last gate, they found themselves right before the equatorial rift.

A bright red filled the field of vision. When the eyes finally adapted to the light, Hao Ren discovered that a large metal platform built on the rock formation extended out from the gate. Under the platform, hot-red lava surged continuously under the drive of some chaotic energy. On both sides of the platform, exposed machines, ducts, platform, beams, and gates were everywhere on the rocks, which had turned red from the heat. These artificial structures extended all the way down the cliffs into the lava below.

“Hide!” Nangong Sanba suddenly shouted quietly. Almost at the same time, Vivian summoned a Night Veil spell again shrouding everyone in it.

The team then hid in a recess on the edge of the platform while a group of hideous monsters flew over the platform.

Those monsters did not seem like they were conducting a patrol but soldiers that had just been ‘created’ out from the rift. They roared as they flew up into the sky, totally unaware of the tiny intruders down below.

Hao Ren looked into the distance where more monsters were being created out from the rift that surged with lava. Their number was much lesser than those in the battle earlier, but it was still a shocking scene to look at.

Lily poked out her tongue. “How could it be possible? Do they create the soldiers from the lava?”

With the wave of a hand, a little bat flew out from the shadow nearby and puffed into blood mist before returning into Vivian’s body. She then shook her head. “No. The monsters do not come out of the magma. I have checked with the small bat; there are evocation grounds down below.”

“Evocation grounds?” Hao Ren’s brows knitted together.

Vivian did not elaborate. Instead, she drew a few runes on the ground, and the scene that the little bat saw began to appear above the runes. The image was not as high-resolution as a hologram, but it was good enough.

At the bottom of the rift, near the surging lava, many massive black platforms were scattered along the cliffs. The platforms were drawing some complicated symbols and patterns with dark-red outlines. Hao Ren felt dizzy by just looking at the chaotic patterns. Every once in awhile, the model on the black platform will glow, and a deformed monster would form in the air before flying up into the sky.

“F*ck!” Hao Ren could not help but swear. “Is there any more nature-defying than this?”

Lily glanced at him. “Making 80 billion drones in four years and yet you still have the nerve to accuse others of nature-defying?”

Hao Ren was speechless.

“These are not the most important. What comes up next is the most crucial part.” Vivian interrupted them. “Look, these platforms are actually connected.”

Sure enough, as the viewing angle rose, everyone could see that the black platforms were not isolated from each other. They all had a black, pipe-like thing that extended out to the middle of the lava flow at the bottom of the rift, where a black metal tower with a few rings of hemispherical structures on the surface. Each hemispherical structure carried a monster.

It was the brain monsters.

Sure enough, Amantir was a brain-monster lair.