Chapter 182: Underwater Dam

It was already midnight when Miao Hentian came to find Liu Mu.

She had originally wanted to come earlier, but the workers in the camp had put together a few mahjong tables after finishing their shift and played until the middle of the night.

Why did they dare to play cards?

Naturally, because the next day was their first day off since arriving at the Mine.

Liu Mu had approved the two-day break, and Haide Kanpu had already provided definite news that a steamship would transport the train and tracks in three days.

The Mine needed to temporarily halt work and concentrate all manpower on laying the tracks so that the ore could be shipped out after one week.

After surveying, the track that needed to be laid from the Mine to the wharf at Linjiang Zhen was only thirty kilometers long. After the ore was transported there, it would be loaded onto ships, though Liu Mu had not yet found out where it would be shipped to.

Heitao A, in her snake form, hid in the darkness of the night and approached the camp without triggering any alarms.

But how to enter Liu Mu's dormitory stumped her; the prefab house was a bit too smooth for the physique of her python form, and after trying several times, she simply couldn't climb up.

However, the stairs had voice-activated lights, and before she even got close, that ghostly light had already turned on twice.

"Hiss, hiss, hiss," Miao Hentian wanted to change back into human form to go up, but damn it, the medicine's effect lasted for a full three hours...

When it came down to it, it was still Black Taotie who hadn't considered things thoroughly, insisting that her human form wasn't good for sneaking in. Now she was a black mamba, and in python form at that—who had ever seen such a large black mamba?

After pacing behind the house for a while, she decided to try climbing up again to see.

Fortunately, she really did climb up the slippery wall, but unfortunately, just as she reached the window, she inhaled a large mouthful of intense fragrance; red snake eyes sprouted mosquito-coil patterns, and she fainted directly.

The snake head tilted back, and just as it was about to fall, a hand grabbed the black mamba by its seven-inch mark.

"What are you here for?"

The owner of the hand issued a cold question, then leaped out from the window.

Not until she was thrown into the icy mud pit did the black mamba shake her head and slowly see the person before her.

"You, lake, octopus, find, good dizzy~ ah..."

The large snake collapsed again, mud splashing everywhere.

Liu Mu dodged quickly and was not affected.

Only one day had passed since their last meeting, and Liu Mu had come to the lakeside again.

This time, she didn't need to call out; she saw the behemoth in the lake water rise up, clearly having waited for a long time.

"I found the dam you mentioned; shall we go now?"

"Is it worth going?" Liu Mu had asked the fish in the nearby water system to help look while Lv Ping was digesting, also holding onto the mentality of just giving it a try to find the Shuidianzhan that Ma Dajie had spoken of.

Unexpectedly, they really had found it.

"There's no harm in going to take a look, though there is one point I don't quite understand—of course, it could also be that those fish have too low an IQ and didn't describe it clearly."

Lv Ping stood on the octopus legs, level with Liu Mu. "They said the dam is underwater; it might have been washed away by this year's rainfall. But the distance is fine; we can arrive before daybreak."

"Let's go take a look," Liu Mu made up her mind; if she just left like this, she would feel a pang of regret for a long while every time she thought about it in the middle of the night.

However, she had assumed Lv Ping's giant octopus body wouldn't be able to enter the narrow river channel, but who knew that after not seeing him for a day, this guy had actually come up with a skill to decompose himself.

It was splitting a ball of flesh from the octopus's huge head; the surface of the flesh ball was covered in dense, short tentacles, and when swimming, these tentacles constantly opened and closed, forming a wave-like motion to push it forward underwater.

Liu Mu was also brought into this flesh ball by Lv Ping. "If you don't need to breathe underwater, it's about the same inside. Or I could make a big air bubble to put you in, that works too."

Liu Mu looked at the interior of the Valve with some disgust. "I'll follow you while swimming? Seriously, won't you feel uncomfortable if I go inside?"

"There will be some sensation of a foreign object, but the Split Body—that's what I call the parts outside the Mother Nest—doesn't have very sensitive feelings," Lv Ping explained, adding that once the Split Body accelerated, Liu Mu wouldn't be able to keep up.

The skeptical person hesitated for a moment, then climbed in anyway.

Liu Mu's body could only lie in this ellipsoid, which had a diameter of about three meters from front to back, as if she had fallen into some kind of fully-enveloping material with a very soft texture; if not for the dampness and the fishy smell of the sea, it would actually be quite comfortable.

She adjusted her position and could see the front of the ellipsoid; it had a field of view like being in a small submarine, and it was surprisingly very open.

She had assumed Lv Ping would be the same as her after entering, but she was completely wrong.

It turned out that the Lv Ping body seen outside was actually just a part of the octopus's flesh. His true body was in the Mother Nest inside the giant octopus's head, and what was in this ellipsoid was his consciousness.

This was almost the exact same principle as how Xu Xiaofeng could feel and control the branches of the Great Master Flower.

To be honest, Liu Mu was a bit envious of such an ability. If she had this ability, she wouldn't have to go everywhere placing her own clones; occupying large swaths of land and resources would be a piece of cake.

She also wouldn't be like she was now, where there were many things she wanted to do, but because of time, she could only prioritize them and do the urgent ones first.

Liu Mu lay alone in the Split Body and expressed this envy to Lv Ping.

The speed of the Split Body was indeed extremely fast; every short tentacle was like a small propeller, operating in unison to propel the Split Body forward.

And there was no fear of sudden obstacles in the water; the skin of the Split Body was as thick as the skin of the giant octopus, and it had mucus—soft, squishy, and slippery—so there wouldn't be any damage at all.

Lv Ping's voice sounded as if it were through water, muffled and hollow. "Why don't you try splitting a part of your body off too? Maybe you can do it as well; after all, we are all products of Mutation."

"Try it and die; when I was blown to pieces last time, I didn't feel like I could split at all," Liu Mu said, quite sadly. "If I really had this ability, why would I need to reshape my body? I'd just make a few clones, how great that would be. The more I get blown to pieces, the more clones I have."

"That would also..." Lv Ping's voice hesitated for a moment. "Be too terrifying; Liu Mus the size of thumbs everywhere, I wouldn't want to face that. Besides, I only have eight of these Split Bodies in total; not just any part of the body can have consciousness."

Perhaps it was the camaraderie of war, or perhaps Liu Mu was the only human Lv Ping could talk to now, but he didn't hide anything when talking about his own mutation, explaining the specific situation to Liu Mu along the way.

"You know when we were kids blowing those bubbles? I always feel that my ability to split now is very much like that big ball splitting into small balls."

Heitao A had previously analyzed a sample of Lv Ping's body, and a certain substance extracted from it came precisely from that big ball he had eaten.

The result given by the system was that the ball was a type of alien organism that did not possess sufficient intelligence itself. The database recorded its origin as being traded from a certain civilization during the voyage of the 13 Huanxingcheng to enrich biological diversity.

It was essentially an animal brought from a zoo for people to admire; as for the function of cloning, it wasn't in the data, or perhaps the Huanxingcheng itself hadn't conducted any research on it.

Liu Mu slept for a few hours in between, and when they arrived, Lv Ping woke her up with a weary voice.

"Look, hurry up and get up to look! This is likely a human miracle project; it's actually underwater."

Lv Ping's Split Body was weary, but also excited.

Liu Mu moved to the front and, through the almost transparent skin, saw a corner of the gargantuan creation in the darkness.

"Let me out," Liu Mu saw those giant stones washed by the water current, as well as the straight gaps connecting them, which fully indicated that this was built by humans.

"Alright, the water current here is very chaotic, be careful."

Lv Ping sent her out of the Split Body, but still tied Liu Mu's waist with a short tentacle. "Let's go together, let's go together; I'm afraid of the dark."

The underwater currents are turbulent; it is indeed very dangerous.

Liu Mu fished out a cold flare she had stockpiled previously from within the currents; this was one of the items prepared before the disaster, just waiting to be used in the days when darkness descended.

The cold flare burned underwater, and she threw it out with all her might.

They were close enough to the project that the cold flare successfully struck a rock, illuminating a section of the area.

The straight wall was only about three meters exposed in the water; further down, it connected to the riverbed rock. After confirming their location, Liu Mu carefully inspected the wall, walking all the way from the riverbed until she reached the shore.

After checking both directions, Liu Mu surfaced, made an estimate, and then climbed ashore.

"No cracks, no rubble; it doesn't look like a collapse. Lv Ge, I have a bold idea."

Liu Mu used her hands and feet to climb onto the rock at the shore, but this rock was not natural; it had edges and corners, extending from the wall onto the shore and finally disappearing into the dense vegetation.

"You suspect that this dam was originally underwater?"

Lv Ping himself was no less suspicious; come to think of it, his own understanding of general Shuidianzhan projects was even greater than Liu Mu's.

"You go look in the woods; if it was really intentionally submerged underwater, there must be a building nearby that controls the dam."

Liu Mu thought the same, "Then you take another look at the underwater part; you might be able to find an entrance to the interior."

The two split up to act; Liu Mu parted the vegetation with an iron shovel and walked upward along the stones.

The further she walked, the more alarmed and excited she became; such a project, built in a deep mountain canyon—she really didn't know what the people who built it were thinking.

Even for a war-preparedness facility, this was too well-hidden. Those "walking five hundred thousands" could be rowing boats on the water surface and would never imagine there was such an astonishing thing underwater.

There was no flat ground on the shore; the further she went, the steeper it became, and the entire way was almost entirely climbing.

It was also because Liu Mu's physical strength was several times that of an ordinary person that she finally climbed to the end of the stone wall.

Looking down, apart from the booming sound of the water current, there was only deep darkness.

"Can you scan the terrain?"

【Scanning range is limited; scanning in progress; terrain is complex; scanning signal partially blocked; 60% of scan complete.】

Liu Mu sat on a platform that was clearly man-made; the platform was only two or three square meters and covered in vegetation, so it was likely hard to discover even during the day.

A U-shaped three-dimensional diagram unfolded in her mind; a clear fault appeared in the underwater part, which must have been the blocked portion.

Added to what she had inspected below earlier, as well as the path she and Lv Ping had taken, a large map was quickly formed according to the system's records.

The system also marked the location of this river on the original water system map.

"How come the river's course on the public map is so different from what we've observed?"

On the public water system map, this river was winding and the flow was very small; at a glance, it was the kind that had no development value.

Yet, the whole way they had walked, there were quite a few fjords, and the flow was almost the largest among the other nearby tributaries.

Liu Mu quickly figured it out; this was all likely to hide this water conservancy project.

And the control building she was looking for was actually in the stone wall behind her.

The system could not scan the interior, but it clearly scanned the shape of the man-made building.

The position Liu Mu was in was not the highest point of the cliff; she estimated that from bottom to top, she was at about two-thirds of the height.

That is to say, the entrance to the building inside the cliff should be above.

She shone the Flashlight over it, and sure enough, she did not find anything resembling a door.

Of course, it might also be underwater; that would depend on Lv Ping's results.

Liu Mu did not stay too long and continued to climb upward; the trouble was that as she ascended, the interior of the stone wall that Heitao A could scan gradually lost traces of man-made structures.

【Analysis results are as follows: one, the building extends beyond the scanning range; two, the building was not constructed upward, and what has been scanned is not the control center.】

Liu Mu could think of this herself, but could she just leave like this?

Of course not; if she didn't figure it out this time, she wouldn't know when she could come again.

Even if the Shuidianzhan couldn't be utilized right now, there would always be a time when it was needed.

Once the Extreme Cold arrived and humanity collectively relocated underground, the iron Mine would have to be temporarily shelved.

Fortunately, the sun rose quickly; although the light was partially blocked by the wildly growing vegetation, it was still much easier to find traces of human architecture in the natural environment.

The top of the cliff was much flatter than Liu Mu had imagined; passing through a dense forest, she encountered some aggressive Mutated Plant, but she easily dealt with them.

At the end of the forest, she stopped in her tracks.

No one would have guessed that she had actually been to that place outside.

A few kilometers away was another river; that river had a large, gentle flow, and there was a town on the side.

It was precisely the Linjiang Zhen that Ma Dajie spoke of, which was the location of her home.

Every time the church transported supplies to the Mine, they also took the wharf at Linjiang Zhen, and in their plan, once the tracks were finished, trucks would also transport iron ore to this wharf to be loaded onto ships.

Under the morning light, one could even see two wisps of smoke rising from the town; it was the dormitory for the workers guarding the wharf at the Mine.

"What a coincidence," Liu Mu wiped her sweat and took a swig of water while enjoying the view, "Her husband said it was a top-secret project where it was hard to go home even once a year; Ma Dajie probably wouldn't imagine it was actually this close."

【Host, I have found a passage suspected of leading into the mountain.】

While Liu Mu was resting, Heitao A had not been idle and scanned a giant rock with traces of excavation.

Inside the giant rock was a passage leading downward.

Liu Mu originally wanted to go down and take a look, but just at this moment, a mountain breeze blew, and she shivered.

This would normally be a very ordinary thing, but it was not ordinary when it happened to Liu Mu.

It was true that the New Human Complete Form still feared Extreme Cold and extreme heat, but ordinary temperature drops could not possibly make Liu Mu feel cold.

"What is the temperature in degrees Celsius now?"

Heitao A gave the answer almost instantly: 【The temperature in the current area is 3℃, which has dropped 14℃ from the same time yesterday.】

"It seems I can't go down," Liu Mu looked at the sky; the morning glow was brilliant, but the sky behind it presented a lifeless leaden gray.

"Let's go back first."

On the way back, Lv Ping told her about the situation he saw; there was indeed an entrance underwater, but it had been welded shut and could not be opened at all.

Liu Mu recounted her side of the story as well, and finally told him to leave Hong Hu immediately.

"The temperature has been dropping sharply these past few days. I need to act right away, and you should leave quickly too. Don't end up frozen in the river water when the time comes."

"Then how will we contact each other later?"

Lv Ping had wanted to ask this last time; now that signals were no longer fully covered like before, once they parted ways, the next time they met might well be measured in years.

"You know the pier at my storage yard, right? If something happens, find a way to get there. Once the Extreme Cold hits, I won't be able to go out to sea either; I just hope the seawater doesn't freeze too deep."

Before parting, Liu Mu told Lv Ping in detail about the data the system had analyzed on that sphere, and then gave him a large jar of Red Mist.

"Red Mist is very dangerous for ordinary people, but it can help Mutants grow stronger. Take it for now, and if you have the chance to grow stronger, use it."

Liu Mu stood at the outlet of Hong Hu, sighed as she looked at the giant octopus head,

"Lv Ge, I don't know when we'll meet again. If you encounter a strong enemy you can't beat, don't force a fight; saving your life is the most important thing. Once the Extreme Cold passes, whoever provokes you, I'll go help you take revenge!"

Lv Ping was overcome with emotion, but used all his strength to suppress it at the edge of breaking down, "I know, you too. Give my regards to Sister-in-law Zhuo Qing. Little Mu, you must stay alive; I'm still waiting for you to introduce new team members to me. When that time comes, I'll definitely whip those green recruits into shape!"

"Go on," Liu Mu patted the big head and jumped from the squid leg onto the shore, "Hurry up, don't be wishy-washy, it's affecting my ability to go make a fortune!"

"Alright, Boss Liu, wishing you booming business, see you another day!"

Lv Ping feigned ease, but the giant octopus's body trembled, kicking up waves.

Watching him sink into the water, Liu Mu waved her hand again, then turned and headed toward her own destination.