Chapter 349: The Strange Maternal Nest

The instant Lin Xian saw the humanoid creature, his first reaction was to strike immediately!

He raised a finger, and the kinetic cannon along with 25 Lei Sun drones simultaneously unleashed a concentrated pulse beam, blasting straight at the monster's twisted face.

Shhh!

But the white shadow moved with incredible speed, retracting into the tunnel in the blink of an eye; dozens of pulse beams struck something, erupting in a series of explosions, sending up clouds of dust.

Immediately after, a series of clicking, cackling laughs echoed endlessly from deep within the tunnel, as if luring everyone to follow inside.

Xiang Ningjing, seeing the monster vanish, immediately turned to Abai.

Abai shook his head strangely: "Weird—I feel we're being watched, but there's no obvious mark on us…"

"Perhaps in a place like this, no mark is needed at all," Mo Nika cut in sharply.

"What do you mean?"

Xiang Ningjing looked at her: "Are you saying this place is inherently the domain of dark creatures?"

"Impossible!" Qian Dele immediately rebutted: "If no mark is needed, our base would've been gone long ago!"

"This is still our world."

Lin Xian stared at the tunnel, his expression grim: "It's just been corrupted by the Star Abyss."

"Why did that monster run without attacking us?" Kiki suddenly grew suspicious—they'd never encountered a weird body that fled, and yet it left no mark.

"Move out!"

Without hesitation, Lin Xian immediately sprinted toward the White City transit station. The strange phenomena in White City were just beginning to surface; all they could do was resolve the issue quickly and return to the train to escape the Star Abyss!

Zzzt

As the group moved, the signal frequency inside their exosuits became unstable; even though Kiki, Fire Brother, and others were right beside them, the comms were filled with shrill static. Inside his holographic visor, Lin Xian adjusted his breathing, tensing every nerve.

As they pressed forward through the darkness, the number of "people" on the streets grew denser and denser.

Lin Xian noticed these "people" seemed to be converging toward a central area. Realizing this, he stopped, unfolded the original map of White City, and confirmed the convergence point was the city center.

White City was a mountain city, its layout elongated north-south with mountains flanking both sides and wide open space east-west; outside the center, most buildings were low and dilapidated.

From the map, it resembled an eye nestled in the mountains, with the White City transit station located in the eastern suburbs.

But as Lin Xian ran further, unease grew—he remembered Grace's earlier reconnaissance had been smooth, and they'd deliberately avoided the northern sewage plant, taking a detour; yet now, something felt off.

"Everyone," Mo Nika, running behind Lin Xian, spoke up: "Many sounds are drawing closer—this isn't good."

Lin Xian glanced down at the street, where countless mummified corpses stared up at them, and said: "Get inside buildings—don't let these things watch us!"

Clink!

Without delay, Lin Xian leapt onto the exterior wall of a high-rise, accelerating vertically with his thrusters, then diving straight into the top floor. All the glass in the building had shattered and vanished, leaving it standing like a rotted fish skeleton; the others followed, slipping into the corridors.

Clang.

Instantly, heavy footsteps shattered the corridor's silence. Pitch blackness surrounded them; under night vision and spotlights, the floor was littered with broken bricks, plaster, and rubble—this had once been an apartment building, only about ten stories tall, the apartment door numbers on the hallways completely rotted away, the footsteps echoing endlessly.

"Grace, scout ahead!"

The situation outside was too bizarre—the more they ran, the more bodies appeared. Combined with Abai and Mo Nika's reconnaissance, Lin Xian decided to send Grace out first while the rest hid in the apartment building to observe.

【Understood. You can trust Grace.】

Clink, clink, clink.

Grace instantly assumed a sprinting posture; a few crisp toe-taps echoed, then she vanished into the dark corridor, heading toward the street.

Meanwhile, Lin Xian and the others found an apartment and slipped inside.

The apartment's security door had rusted through; a light push snapped the hinges clean off, and it crashed inward with a thud.

Lin Xian casually forged an alloy door to seal it shut, then said: "Wait a few minutes. Let's see what happens before we act."

Xiang Ningjing nodded, then signaled Xiao Qing, who immediately drew her blade and checked several rooms.

At this point, Lin Xian also constructed several completely sealed iron windows to block all the room's windows, then lit a lamp in the living room.

Instantly, the light pushed back the darkness. The first thing visible was a completely ash-gray living room—sofa, coffee table, TV, TV stand, wooden floor—all retained only their shapes; everything else was a uniform gray haze, walls and floors fused together.

"That was terrifying—how did so many people suddenly appear on the street without any warning?"

Kiki spoke, reaching out to tap a bookshelf beside her—immediately, the shelf collapsed into a pile of rotted fragments, kicking up a cloud of dust.

Qian Dele, observing the apartment's condition, turned to Lin Xian.

"Is it because there's no mark that you didn't attack those people?"

Lin Xian, monitoring Grace's data, replied: "Those are clearly corpses."

"Zombies wouldn't mark us—but why did that monster in the tunnel…?"

"Anyway, something's off."

Lu Xingchen clenched one hand, releasing a warm glow that dispelled the chill in the room, and said seriously: "Humans still prefer places with light."

Chen Sixuan returned from checking the rooms with Xiao Qing, holding her gun, and joined the group in discussion.

"Lin Xian, those fleshy tissues—don't they remind you of the ones beneath Underground City Nine?"

Lin Xian nodded: "That's why I'm worried—there might be a giant monster in this city."

Kiki frowned: "Grace didn't see any of this a few hours ago—how did they appear?"

"We're still eight kilometers straight from the White City transit station. If we can't pass through the city, should we detour around the mountains?" Xiang Ningjing suggested: "Or use Kiki's flight ability."

"Lin Team Leader?"

After speaking, Xiang Ningjing noticed Lin Xian hadn't responded, so she repeated herself.

Then Lin Xian suddenly said: "Abai's right—we're lucky we didn't fly into the air."

At that moment, Grace had transmitted her footage back. Since the distance was short, the data wasn't heavily compressed or delayed; he immediately synced the footage to the others.

"Outside, it's all weird bodies!"

【I'm currently advancing east along Elm Street. Many corpses are hanging from power lines. I'm also being tracked and observed by several 'humans.' Biological sensors detect no signs of life.】

On-screen, the street above was lined with countless corpse-like dummies. Ahead of Grace, several childlike "humans" appeared strangely—staring fixedly at her. Some crouched on cars, others ran—but as Grace moved forward, the strange children instantly retreated under vehicles or into crevices.

Through the comms, Grace's voice was crisp and cold, as if she weren't walking through a dark, terrifying, eerie street at all.

But Lin Xian, watching the footage, felt increasingly uneasy.

"Check the light ahead—if attacked, retaliate immediately!"

【Grace understands.】

Inside the ruined apartment, the reconnaissance team huddled together, frowning at the holographic display.

"They all look like humans… but they're not humans…"

Chen Sixuan spoke with a subtle tone. If monsters had appeared, their pressure might've been lighter—but this was their first time seeing a city within the Star Abyss, and everything they encountered was grotesquely human-related, each more bizarre than the last.

Abai stood quietly to the side, observing the apartment rooms, occasionally glancing toward the door, his face pale—he seemed to sense footsteps beneath the floorboards, and deep in the pitch-black corridor, something strange was breathing…

Lin Xian's alloy door blocked all light from this small room, and now everyone was closely monitoring Grace's data.

In the pitch-black streets of White City, a silver-black female robot moved swiftly, gracefully leaping over vehicles and obstacles, agile and nearly silent.

Yet despite this, countless "presences" watched the machine. The entire city's alleys radiated a bizarre atmosphere—seemingly empty, yet unnervingly alive.

In Grace's system, more and more corpses hung from the street ahead, while the reddish-brown organic matter on street corners grew denser. She noted this, then quickly climbed a tall building, installed a new signal relay, and began scaling the rooftops.

At this point, her radar detected that many surrounding buildings were now wrapped in this fleshy tissue. Gradually, rooftops and roads no longer had concrete—entire districts had become parts of some colossal organism.

After climbing atop a skyscraper in the city center, Grace's night-vision display revealed a deathly city shrouded in darkness.

The asphalt roads were covered in living tissue; slimy membranes writhed across building surfaces like decaying skin. At the center of the fleshy mass, the source finally appeared—a nest built of piled flesh, vast as a large stadium, its surface crawling with pulsing black veins, dark-purple veins spreading like roots. The nest opened a gaping maw like a volcanic crater, thousands of tentacles surging forth, continuously disassembling human corpses!

Atop the nest floated another, even more twisted entity—a "printer" forged from flesh and madness, composed of countless tiny tentacles and cysts, constantly spewing half-formed monsters. These reassembled humanoid forms dropped from its base, landing on the fleshy carpet, twitching as they rose.

Their limbs were misaligned, heads inverted, joints bent at impossible angles—yet they still walked, crawled, and emitted a viscous, near-linguistic whisper.

Then, the disassembled human corpses and the half-formed monsters began to be stitched together. Thick black mist seeped into their bodies like a biological energy medium, rapidly mutating them—growing spines, thick armor, claws, fangs…

Thus emerged: three-headed spider monsters, white human-wraiths, massive black entities, inverted crawling horrors…

All manner of fused weird bodies were thus "manufactured" from disassembled human corpses, then crawled off into the darkness in all directions.

Eyes multiplied and grew, arms twisted and deformed, skeletons expanded, muscles dissolved…

The nest had no discernible pattern—it was like an AI generation system fed with chaotic keywords, spitting out illogical, nonsensical "results."

Countless streams of black smoke erupted from the nest's colossal mouth, like an ancient gas engine running at full power; the black veins spreading across the entire city continuously devoured dead human corpses.

Grace stood far from the nest, attempting to transmit data—but interference was too severe; all video feeds became mottled and distorted.

To Lin Xian's team, the scene in the city center looked like hell itself—chilling to the bone.

Hssss!

Inside the sealed apartment, many members of the reconnaissance team gasped sharply, staring in stunned silence at the holographic footage synced by Lin Xian.

After a few seconds, Kiki finally cried out:

"My god—these weird bodies are created like this?!"

"I knew these weird creatures always had something to do with humans—so they really are stitching together human corpses," Qian Dele said, incredulous: "How did these things even end up on Blue Planet? Alien civilizations?"

Xiang Ningjing's pupils trembled: "It's… like a monster factory."

"There must be more than one of these. There could be others in the Star Abyss—so when night falls, monsters appear," Chen Sixuan said grimly.

Fire Brother remained silent, staring at the nest on-screen, clearly stunned.

"If we destroy this thing, will the apocalypse be averted?" Xiao Qing, usually quiet, suddenly asked—leaving everyone speechless.

"It's not that simple."

Lin Xian said gravely: "Don't you notice? Almost all the stitched creatures are C-class or B-class weird bodies."

"Then how do A-class, Special-class, and S-class ones appear?"

"Never mind the colossal beasts tens of kilometers wide, covering terrain, occupying volcanoes, deep oceans, skies—those world-level disasters couldn't possibly be manufactured like this."

Mo Nika nodded: "I think there's some pattern among these creatures."

"What pattern?" Qian Dele asked.

"Just like humans and the organisms on Blue Star—insects, microorganisms, animals, and even humans themselves—are stratified, controlling different social resources and means of production," Mo Nika said in an analytical tone. "Isn't this obvious?"

"I don't think now is the time to discuss this," Lin Xian spoke up.

He stared at the frozen screen, his expression grim. "The anomalies are coming from all directions!"

Outside the sealed apartment, sounds multiplied—movement, climbing, countless eerie whispers rose from dark alleys, piercing screams echoed in the darkness. Every member of the scouting team held their breath, eyes fixed on Bai Bai.

Without doubt, if any of them were marked now, they would be swallowed by an endless tide of anomalies.

Facing the nest, everyone finally understood why the monsters in the darkness could never be wiped out...

At this moment, the time reached 11: 4.

Lin Xian watched as the time froze again at 59 seconds. For an instant, the time dilation around them stretched impossibly long; everyone felt their breath halt.

The next moment, the time advanced to 11: 5.

Suddenly, the noises outside vanished. A few seconds later, Grace's voice came through.

【Target vanished. No valid data acquired. This may be a visual effect caused by spatial distortion.】

Hearing Grace's words, Lin Xian's heart tightened. What happened? Why did everything disappear all at once? Wasn't it still night?

The sudden change caught Lin Xian off guard. He immediately ordered Grace to scan the surroundings. Sure enough, not only had the nest vanished, but the human corpses and flesh fragments that had littered the streets had disappeared too.

The scouting team was left bewildered by this bizarre turn.

"What's going on? An illusion?"

"Strange—Bai Bai said the monsters' auras are gone."

"Disappeared during the night?" Kiki frowned. "Aren't these monsters supposed to appear at night?"

The sudden shift once again shattered their understanding.

Lin Xian was full of questions, but though he didn't know why, the disappearance of the anomalies was at least a good sign. Out of caution, since Grace was no longer being marked or targeted by anomalies, he ordered her to proceed directly to the city center—the former location of the nest—to investigate. Better safe than sorry.

Grace immediately moved, leaping swiftly across rooftops before dropping onto the street and sprinting toward where the nest had once been.

Ahead, a massive sinkhole had opened, splitting the city square from its center. Yet the surrounding buildings remained intact, undamaged. Strangely, several relatively new armored vehicles—apparently abandoned by survivors—lay scattered, all splattered with blood, but empty of any occupants.

Grace swiftly scanned and transmitted data, awaiting Lin Xian's next order.

At that moment, a silent, eerie whistling pierced the air above the square—a black iron spear shot toward Grace at blinding speed.

*Scritch!

Grace, mid-task, raised her arm and caught the spear with perfect precision.

【Attack detected. Combat system activated!】

Instantly, more iron spears flew in. Simultaneously, two cars beside Grace seemed controlled by an unseen force, slamming shut in a pincer strike.

Grace leapt upward, flipped her wrist, and activated the plasma pulse emitter in her forearm. The weapon sliced through one car's hood and melted the incoming spears along with it.

But behind her, a shadow suddenly appeared. Its mechanical exoskeleton joints erupted with energy pulses, moving so fast it left afterimages. In an instant, it reached beneath Grace, seized her neck, and slammed her into the ground.

*Thud!

The ground cracked open beneath her, forming a deep crater. As the figure believed he had subdued her, Grace's head twisted mechanically, scanning him rapidly. Then her feet exploded into the ground, twisting her body mid-air. The shadow felt a tremendous force wrenching his wrist—so strong it threatened to snap it. His eyes flashed—he released his grip, reversed his claw into a fist, and punched straight for Grace's head.

But Grace merely tilted her head coldly, dodging the blow, then seized his arm, flipped upside-down, and slammed him face-first into the ground.

Yet as Grace struck, another anomaly erupted: the stones beneath her feet rose violently, hurling her aside. Simultaneously, another car hurtled toward her, crushing her against a heavy steel truck, pinning her tightly.

The shadowy figure rose swiftly, his voice icy.

"Impressive machine. A quantum-brain alloy unit from the Crimson World—far rarer than ordinary junk."

She was a short-haired woman clad in black powered armor, two short knives strapped to her back. Her body radiated overwhelming power—an energy shift only possible after genetic evolution had reached a certain stage. Her suit was clearly custom-made, a black exoskeleton marked with a red symbol.

She seemed to be communicating via a comms device. No sooner had she spoken than another man's voice echoed through the air.

"Ran, don't get distracted!"

Above, a man in an odd powered armor, hood drawn, a Japanese katana clipped at his waist, floated down slowly. He raised his hand—and every stone fragment and broken metal shard on the ground rose into the air, twisting rapidly into sharp, needle-like cones before hurtling toward the car pinning Grace.

In an instant, the debris struck like a storm of bullets, shattering every armored panel on the jeep.

*Boom!

At that moment, a metallic figure erupted from the jeep's wreckage, leaping over several vehicles and sprinting toward the Bai Cheng train station behind them.

"Running away?!" The black-hooded man possessed an ability strikingly similar to Kiki's—he leapt through the air, reaching out to control Grace. But her power output was too immense. He drew the red katana at his waist.

Seeing this, Ran, who had followed behind, spoke over the comms.

"Ryū no Suke, don't damage it! A quantum brain is extremely valuable. Capture it and bring it to Shinji—we need it right now!"

"Shiho, follow!"

"Understood."

From the corner, a petite girl in an expensive flight-powered armor darted out, trailing behind them. She spread her arms, and a dark green energy membrane enveloped all three as she called out:

"This robot retains traces of Dangling Spirit energy. It was left by an extremely powerful psychic."

"Then it must be a high-ranking Crimson World operative!"

Hearing this, Ryū no Suke sheathed his katana mid-flight and used his ability to gather nearby stones, rubble, and metal fragments, attempting to encase Grace.

As the three pursued Grace, Shiho suddenly froze, turning sharply toward the dark street behind them.

"Enemies approaching. Their speed... is terrifying!"

(End of Chapter)