Chapter 42: 41. The Alien God Beneath the Earth

41. The Alien God Beneath the Earth

Looking at Xue Hanlei, who was once human and had fought side-by-side with him to find missing children, now reduced to nothing but a ferocious, mindless head, Li Jiahong could not help but feel a wave of sorrow.

Perhaps he should never have let this mother step into this forbidden human realm from the very beginning, and even less should he have blindly given her the hope of finding her child.

Hope is a straw; sometimes it is a lifeline grabbed by someone falling into a rushing river, but sometimes it is also the final weapon that breaks the camel's back.

Exchanging her stepdaughter's life for the chance to reunite with her biological child, she had indeed succeeded—not only reuniting with the child but also being physically sewn together with them. Yet, all of this was a sinister conspiracy of the Huogu, a vile word game played by them, and these beasts had deliberately misinterpreted a mother's true wish.

Li Jiahong felt a surge of intense anger. No matter how advanced or powerful the race that built this Alien Dimensional Space and this magical city beyond reason might be, in his eyes, they were all a base race, more degenerate than the demons of hell and more foul-smelling than the Evil Beasts of the netherworld.

But his anger was useless and impotent. From the start, humans and they were not on the same level, just as when humans see an angry ant; people usually ignore or overlook it, but once they notice the little thing baring its fangs and brandishing its claws at them, they treat it like some rare spectacle, teasing it with great interest and indulging in the darkest, most wicked humor in their hearts.

Facing the giant fist swung by that modified creature, the group could only scramble away in terror.

The girl, who was about to turn four, was held high above the head of her ethical "older brother," his rough, large hand gripping her without a shred of pity, controlling her precarious life.

He Jia'an and two other Mysterious Investigators tried to draw their guns and fight back, but even with the aid of special bullets, none of the three could inflict effective damage on the deformed human-monster before them.

This modified creature was clearly far more advanced than any they had faced or seen before; he had undergone even deeper modifications by the Huogu.

Li Jiahong did not know where the courage came from, but he grabbed rubble from the battle-damaged scene and threw it at the special modified creature. His desperate throw landed like a dragonfly skimming water on the wrinkled, pillar-like structure that one could hardly call a face on the creature.

The damage was minimal, but the insult was extreme.

The special modified creature seemed to have suffered a great humiliation; it let out a roar and suddenly lunged at Li Jiahong.

Li Jiahong was scared out of his wits on the spot, and a careless step caused him to tumble down the stairs behind him; it was precisely this careless step that saved his life.

The human-monster, with a body as hard as rock, flashed past Li Jiahong's rolling field of vision, flew over his head, and landed in a single leap on the platform where the Guhuo Bird and other modified creatures were locked in a bloody battle.

It seemed that Jiang Gu's will still remained in the Guhuo Bird's head. Upon noticing Li Jiahong fall from the high platform, her rage was like a detonated bomb, instantly erupting into an even more ferocious offensive. It slaughtered the monsters that came charging one after another, letting their foul-smelling blood drench the sacrificial altar filled with forbidden grotesqueries beneath it.

As the special human-monster landed, the Sacrificial Altar, which had absorbed a large amount of blood and life, activated some unknown Strange Array. With a loud "Boom—," the Stone Gate on the platform shattered and collapsed downward, falling along with the countless, pathetic, and lamentable corpses of the modified creatures into the seemingly bottomless, dark netherworld.

In an instant, all the humans present were frozen in place by an unidentified roar from ancient times, and even the human-monster that had undergone special modification seemed to lose consciousness instantly.

The next moment, a hellish claw covered in slimy tentacles and unidentified strip-like organs reached out from the square black hole. Just the single claw used for leverage crushed the monster corpses lying near the edge of the black hole.

When another equally violent and vicious giant claw crawled out of the ground, the human-monster that had kidnapped the girl could not escape either; it was crushed to death under the claw on the spot.

The Guhuo Bird, who viewed the child as a treasure, was quick-witted. Before the girl could fall into the endless abyss along with that mass of limp, rotting flesh, she flew past and snatched the girl back from the hands of those monsters.

Just as He Jia'an and the others did not know what kind of forbidden life they had accidentally released, they saw a winged evil dragon, impossible to describe with concise language, crawl out from beneath the Stone Gate. It extended its massive head, covered in tentacles and eyeballs, and let out the most insane, most ancient roar to the world, as if venting its agitated emotions toward the universe and the past that had once forced it to sleep here underground.

Facing such a hideous, god-defying creature, Li Jiahong had been so frightened he forgot to breathe. It was not until He Jia'an, who still retained a sliver of reason, pulled his arm that he rose from the cold, sticky floor and began to run aimlessly with the equally panicked Mysterious Investigators.

"Damn it, how could an Alien God be sleeping in this city? What kind of hellish thing did that group of Huogu worship and serve!" While running, He Jia'an cursed loudly to combat his increasingly tense emotions. He had no intention of looking back at that monster again, nor did he have the courage to do so. He was afraid that if he met the monster's gaze one more time, the creature's eyes, which seemed to contain everything, could destroy his tiny brain with a massive amount of knowledge.

Yu Lianyun gritted her teeth and kept running, her thoughts in chaos. After hearing the roar of the underground Alien God for the first time, she had already felt her spirit tethered by some invisible fishing line. She was like a piece of bait that could only run; the moment she was hooked, she had already become the most delicious breakfast for the Alien God that had been in a long slumber.

The indescribable and incomprehensible roar echoed through this demon realm. The roar spread through the air like a shockwave, shattering every inch of land around the unknown Alien God. Magnificent high-rises were shaken to pieces by the sound waves, and buildings and stone tablets crumbled and collapsed in an instant.

Li Jiahong and the others, while fleeing, suddenly felt a surprising push from behind. In the sensation of weightlessness, the surrounding sounds seemed to be muffled; they were thrown forward one after another, and then suddenly lost consciousness.

Not knowing how much time had passed, Li Jiahong woke up from the darkness and found himself pinned under the ruins. He struggled with all his might to crawl out from a gap in the rubble. Standing on the ruins covered in black stone and fragments of mysterious inscriptions, he stared blankly at the tragic scene before him. He took off his night vision device with its shattered lens, watching as a magnificent Alien Dimensional magical city was mostly destroyed by a hungry, frenzied Alien God, while that giant, hunched-over Evil Beast continued to wreak havoc in the ruins.

"%#@... %kuthuen）**（）" An unknown, strange language came from beside Li Jiahong. He turned his head to look and saw a rat-man with half its body destroyed, whispering in a daze, somewhat like reciting a eulogy, and somewhat like expressing final dying words.

That Huogu, perhaps the last one in this Alien Dimensional Space, its eyes filled with fear and piety toward the Alien God, died miserably amidst a series of whimpers.

Watching the biological race he loathed most die so easily, killed by the terrifying creature they had built their city beneath and piously worshipped, Li Jiahong only felt that it was all so ironic and absurd.