King of Tomb Raiders

Chapter 292

I took a deep breath and lowered my voice: "You stay here and monitor everyone's movements, so we don't get attacked from both sides, right?"

An ambitious master like Guan Nan Wulang must have a "those who obey me prosper, those who oppose me perish" principle when it comes to personnel. If Su Lun and I cannot obediently follow orders, we will definitely be put on the "elimination" list. What I am worried about is not a direct face-to-face confrontation, but the opponent's pervasive scheming and taking advantage of our misfortunes.

Without wasting a second, Suren immediately replied, "Okay, don't worry, I'll make sure your escape route is unobstructed until you come back."

A wave of emotion washed over me. Back in the Egyptian desert, she had countless times stood by me, provided support, and rescued me, handling every mishap. Now, we had finally returned to a state of perfect understanding.

"Very good." I didn't want to say any more sweet words. In fact, she could understand all the tenderness in my heart with just one look.

After descending the steps, I was genuinely shocked to witness the terrifying tilt of the ground. The openings near and far also tilted, like the distorted eyes and mouth of a patient who had just had an epileptic seizure. Perhaps due to the massive tremor, the communication equipment was unresponsive, and everyone huddled around the dish antenna.

Guan Nan Wulang suddenly shouted, "Yesak, go and see what's going on in the tunnel, and take your weapons."

His thoughts coincided with mine; we both felt that the dramatic change was coming from that direction.

Yesak immediately agreed, took a miniature submachine gun from a white-robed man, and ran towards the cave entrance. I happened to be passing by them at that moment and couldn't help but find it somewhat amusing to see Yesak leaving with such a weapon. Even high-explosive shotguns might not be effective against illusion demons, let alone these popcorn-like bullets.

"Feng, what are you laughing at?" Guan Nan Wulang's cold gaze swept over me.

He held the lead box tightly in his hand, never letting go for a moment. The only change was that all the buttons on his suit were undone, and his tie was loosely draped, like a passionate orator at the crucial moment of his performance, and this world under the dome was the wonderful stage where he could give his all.

“If there’s danger, that gun won’t help him.” I tried my best to remain calm and didn’t want to provoke him at all.

"What danger could there be? Feng, do you really think that sealed illusion demon can break free?" His knowledge was extremely extensive, with almost no area he had not explored, so he was very clear about the illusion demon.

In my opinion, Tensho Jubei's entry into the crystal might actually contribute to the resurrection of the Illusion Demon. The Illusion Demon's power seems limitless; he can manipulate Tang Qing and Tiger's minds, causing them to lose their true nature. Even as one of his puppets, Tang Qing could potentially turn Tang Xiaogu into his own puppet as well, allowing him to continue committing murder and evil.

His existence is always more terrifying than we imagine. To eliminate even a shadow of the Illusion Demon, humanity has lost skilled surgeons; if one day they were to face the Illusion Demon itself, countless more would perish here.

After acquiring the "ultimate weapon," Guan Nan Wulang's arrogance swelled, and he believed that he could control the world, which turned out to be his greatest weakness.

"Perhaps that's possible." I walked past the man in white robes without further hesitation and headed straight for the cave entrance.

"Where are you going, Feng? I need your and Suren's help, do you hear me?" His voice was filled with barely suppressed anger.

I turned and smiled at him, nodding slowly. He certainly needed help, but not now, but after he had truly become a global enemy. If I could give him a few doses of tranquilizers, I think he would understand that his current predicament was far from the optimistic prospect of conquering the world.

The cave was quiet. Yesak had entered about five minutes before me, and judging by his speed, he was already standing in front of the crystal. As I leaped into the passageway, I gathered my inner strength, entering a state of alert, ready to counterattack at any moment. After walking forward for a while, I could vaguely see the firelight shining from inside the crystal, but I didn't see Yesak anywhere.

"Could he have been walking all the way to the other end of the passageway?" I wondered, and immediately quickened my pace, calling out, "Mr. Ye? Mr. Ye?"

This is the third time I've walked through the tunnel. Even with my eyes closed, I can walk straight ahead without bumping into the stone wall.

With a "clang," I kicked something, slid forward a few steps, and landed on the surface of the crystal. It was a dark blue American submachine gun, its torn sling haphazardly wrapped around the barrel; it must have been the one Yesak had taken with him when he left.

I walked closer, but instead of bending down to grab the gun, I simply turned it over with my toes and carefully examined it.

A gun sling wouldn't just snap for no reason, unless Yesak was in a fierce struggle with someone and that's when it broke, causing the gun to fall to the ground. So, where did he go? My first thought was to look down at the crystal, and without a doubt, the person with his back turned was Yesak, with a long, narrow gash in his neck, blood gushing out like a fountain.

"He died, and then fell into the crystal. Who killed him? The Illusion Demon—or Tensho Jubei?" I watched him enter the cave and then fall to his death, with only five minutes in between, which shows how powerful the enemy was.

Yesak, as Guan Nan Wulang's eldest disciple, was no ordinary person, yet he didn't even have time to fire a shot to call the police. I bit my lip, and slowly placed my right hand on my left wrist, touching the hilt of the "Over-Distance Blade." A surge of anger suddenly ignited within my calm heart.

While the infighting among Earthlings is fierce, it is always a battle between people. But when this fierce battle is extended to a war between Earthlings and aliens, I will never watch my fellow human beings fall one after another to the enemy's machinations.

"Who?" I sensed someone approaching from the other end of the passageway. I immediately flicked my finger, drawing the blade halfway out of its sheath, which reflected a ring of bright light.

The person appeared silently before me, his golden armor and mask gleaming. It was Alpha. He had taken Tang Xin away after she was seriously injured, and I thought he would never appear again.

“The time has come when we have no choice but to act, hasn’t it?” He held a gleaming golden axe in his palm and strode over Yesak’s body.

Upon closer inspection, the blood spurting from Yesak's neck was also still; every drop of blood floating in mid-air was clearly visible, just like the frozen flames. His "death state" was also frozen in an instant.

"I can open this crystal, but if no one can control the Illusion Demon, it will be the end of the world. Look, the sealing gate and sealing array I painstakingly built have been destroyed. The former was destroyed by the great god Tu Liehan, and the latter by a scholar professor with extremely inflated ambitions. Is this fate, to release the Illusion Demon and turn the earth into a living hell? Feng, our last hope rests on you, is there a problem?"

He raised his axe, preparing to chop it down.

"Is this the only way? If we do nothing, won't he eventually break through the barrier?" I didn't stop him.

“Yes, it might be a difference of a second earlier or later, but at least I can still help you for now. If we delay any longer, my energy will run out—” He smiled bitterly, looking in the direction I came from. “Now I understand. The energy of the ‘Asian Gear’ only supplies the Earth’s rotation and revolution, and there is no way for others to seize it for the time being. It’s a pity that for so many years, we have been dreaming that reaching the ‘Asian Gear’ would bring us renewed vigor. This shows that there are no shortcuts in the world; everything still depends on ourselves.”

My other option is to retreat properly and wait for the fierce battle to begin, but if I do that, I'm afraid the first to die will still be the seventeen Qi cultivators under Morari's leadership.

"Feng, you can do it." The flickering flames were reflected on Alpha's mask.

He never took off that mask, so to this day my deepest impression of him is still limited to his square eyes; I remember nothing else.

"Okay." I took a step back and gestured for them to proceed.

With a flash of golden light, his great axe slammed down on the crystal, followed by a second and a third blow, relentlessly cleaving until a "crack" sounded, and the crystal surface split open, the bright cracks extending haphazardly downwards, becoming more and more numerous and denser.

Part 5: The Source of Energy

— Chapter 5 — The Labyrinth World of the Illusion Demon —

As if a large block of ice had been shattered by a breaker, my feet sank, and I immediately fell into the shards of ice. In that instant of sinking, I heard Alpha's almost whispered sigh: "Wind, I'm sorry."

"What does he mean?" I wondered, but my attention immediately returned to the surroundings.

My body was capable of movement, but it felt as if I were submerged in a heavy, gelatinous substance, making my movements slow and heavy. Yesak's corpse lay at my feet, limbs outstretched, bizarre and laughable. Anyone who underestimates the power of the illusion demon...

That's exactly what happened to him, there's no doubt about it.

To my right front was the spot where the illusion demon had been. He had slowly stood up and was backing away step by step. He was a dark-skinned man wearing a large gray robe that only revealed his neck and above. I imagined that his four arms on his back must be hidden under the black robe, ready to be revealed at any moment to kill.

He retreated towards the light behind him, but did not leap straight up into the tunnel. I followed slowly, speculating according to common sense that after being imprisoned for a very long time, once he was resurrected, his limbs would be stiff for a considerable period of time and would need to recover. Perhaps that would be my perfect opportunity to fight him.

The feeling of his body being stuck together gradually faded, and the stone walls on both sides tightened until only a meter of width remained, as if he had entered a tunnel squeezed between high walls. He began to run, his speed increasing, his gray robe fluttering like a strange dark cloud.

At that moment, I also let go of the transparent colloids around me and truly stood in the air, which immediately made me feel at ease.

Beneath my feet were dark, gleaming flagstones, and on either side were towering walls built of massive flagstones. Looking up, I saw a roof several meters high. Without a compass, I had no sense of direction. I felt as if I had entered a vast tomb, and wherever I went, all I could see was hard, cold stone.

I used my lightness skill to chase after it. Since the illusion demon was retreating in fear, it proved that my guess was correct and that the opponent was powerless to fight at the moment.

The narrow passageway stretched for about three hundred meters before suddenly opening up into a square stone chamber with torches lining its walls. Each side was at least ten meters long, but the chamber was completely empty. A two-meter-high, one-meter-wide opening in the left wall served as the only passageway leading forward.

I hesitated for a few seconds, then plunged back into the tunnel, giving chase.

The size of this passageway is already the minimum limit that the illusion demon can pass through. It can only escape this way. But I can't imagine what the end of the passageway is, and what is the point of him building so many complicated passages in such a small underground space?

After passing through seven different passageways, stone chambers, and more passageways, I felt like I had entered the depths of a maze. Every maze has an end, and after passing through the last square stone chamber and turning into the passageway, I had only taken about thirty steps when a steep cliff suddenly appeared before me.

It wouldn't have been bad if there had just been a cliff, but there was also a strong air vent there. I was suddenly sucked down and fell into a smooth stone trough, sliding down with a whoosh.

My vision became dizzy, and I repeatedly saw a huge metal machine standing abruptly in the sky, its outer walls covered with all sorts of strange symbols.

I bent over, carefully protecting the back of my head and ribs, and waited until the slide stopped before I sprang up.

Two hundred paces ahead, there really was a silver spacecraft standing, about one hundred meters tall, with a sharp, cone-shaped warhead mounted on top. It was unimaginable that it would be placed in a space beneath a mountain, and the space I was in was extremely vast, at least the size of four connected standard football fields.

The walls of the space were covered with slides of varying lengths, and the entrance from which I fell was just one of them. The slide was quite steep, with a vertical angle of over 60 degrees and a height of at least 30 meters. Climbing up would probably be extremely difficult.

In such a vast and empty place, humans appear incredibly small. If this aircraft belongs to the Illusion Demon, this must be its final lair. I find it strange that after breaking free of its restraints, it didn't rush towards the "Asian Gear," but instead retreated back here.

The top of the space was still a blue stone wall, with no exit for spacecraft launch. This reminded me of the world of the Epang Palace, where the top was also a stone wall of the same color, as if these people had hollowed out the heart of the mountain just to store these strange and wonderful things.

"Where are you?" I shouted, trying to catch my breath. There was no echo, no response whatsoever.

I walked towards the spacecraft, looking at the characters painted on its silver shell, sometimes large, sometimes small, sometimes slanted, sometimes upright, chaotic and disorderly, like grass gnawed by wild beasts. The cylindrical fuselage was firmly held in place by a three-legged support, which was deeply embedded in the bluestone ground, and I was standing under one of the legs of the support.

For a metal object that is a hundred meters tall and more than twenty meters in diameter, this support structure is undoubtedly too slender, consisting of twisted gray metal rods with a diameter of only thirty centimeters. A narrow gangway extends from a small door ten meters high, which is undoubtedly the entrance to the aircraft.

If extraterrestrials were to land on Earth, they would undoubtedly possess corresponding spacecraft; this is a certainty affirmed by numerous space scientists. Space creatures that do not rely on spacecraft but are themselves spacecraft certainly exist, but so far, they only appear in third-rate science fiction novels.

Even highly technologically advanced extraterrestrial life forms cannot compare to synthetic metals in their ability to resist cosmic rays, meteorites, and extreme temperatures. The biggest difference between humans and animals is the ability to use tools, and extraterrestrials certainly conform to this natural law as well.

“I’m here.” He appeared near the other leg of the support, fifty paces away from me. He was still wearing a gray robe, but now he had a silver helmet covering his neck and above.

In his hand, he held a two-foot-long triangular weapon, which looked very similar to the triangular pyramids and triangular bayonets used by Earthlings.

"This is a battle between two people, a battle between Martians and Earthlings. Unfortunately, due to extreme energy depletion, I can't show you the Martians' latest weapons. However, even these primitive weapons are enough to kill all Earthlings. If you didn't have the information I need stored in your head, I might have already sent you to the other end of the maze, without needing to waste any more words on you—"

He waved the triangular pyramid in mid-air, making a strange "whoosh" sound, and slowly stepped closer to me.

The helmet's visor was black, so I couldn't see his expression as he spoke. I could only sense the helplessness in his every word and action, and the immense sorrow that enveloped him.

"Data? What do you need? Aren't you omnipotent, having flown from distant space to Earth? Do you need Earthlings to provide data?" I slowly backed away, trying to lead him away from the spacecraft to a more open area.

"To complete the mission, we need energy, an unlimited amount of energy, but the Earth's existing materials simply cannot provide that. So I piloted my spacecraft to search nearly forty spherical surfaces on the Earth's surface, finally discovering this place, only to fall into your trap—"

He took increasingly larger strides forward, then suddenly leaped up, the triangular pyramid striking down on his head.

I have no doubt about the importance of energy to the Martians, Alpha, and the Turkic gods, as they all mentioned the situation of "energy depletion." Just as cars need refueling and humans need food, when they arrive in an alien world, they must find fuel, supplies, and food to sustain themselves. Clearly, a space suitable for human habitation does not make them feel "at home," forcing them to adopt increasingly desperate measures. As a result, these extraterrestrials' abilities are greatly diminished, reducing them to a situation where they fight humans with melee weapons.

The shrill sound emitted by the triangular pyramid was deafening. Just as I dodged to the side, one triangular pyramid suddenly transformed into dozens of others, connecting to form a huge silver encirclement that blocked all directions of escape.

I suddenly drew my sword and lunged at him, attacking him head-on. The "Over-the-Distance Blade" was faster than the triangular pyramid. Before his encirclement could close, my sword pierced into the fluttering gray robe. With a swift slash, the gray robe silently tore open, revealing the silver metallic garment he wore underneath.

The shadow of the triangular pyramid suddenly disappeared and could no longer be seen.

"Your methods are swift, your thoughts shift rapidly, and your mental calculations are even faster, making you the perfect test subject for me. I know that Earthlings can survive for about three to seven days without a supply of nutrients, but never more than ten days. In other words, your physical body will die within 240 hours. Then, your soul will escape and be incorporated into the spacecraft's computing center, hehehehe..."

He released his grip, and the triangular awl fell to the ground with a soft "whoosh," embedding itself effortlessly into the stone, with only an inch of its handle protruding. How similar was this seemingly blunt weapon to the legendary "Mysterious Iron Heavy Sword," a weapon rarely seen in the martial world?

"It's clear you still lack a clear understanding of Martian technology, still clinging to fantastical legends like the 'Mysterious Iron Heavy Sword.' Think about it: in the past, during the search for energy sources, any discarded material I left on Earth became a source of immense excitement for you. The weapon in your mind is nothing more than a damaged part of a spacecraft that I casually tossed aside. There's a saying among Earthlings, 'A day in heaven is a thousand years on earth.' Extending this, it means that for every 24 hours Martian technology advances, Earthlings would need 1,000 three hundred and sixty-five days multiplied by 24 hours to catch up. Therefore, Earth will forever remain a colony of another planet; this was determined from the very beginning of the Milky Way's formation—"

I know that since he can control Tang Qing and the tiger with his thoughts, he must also be able to read my mind.

"Give up the idea of fighting. Trying to kill aliens with swords is fundamentally flawed. Can you cut a wound with a knife? Can you shoot down flames with a bullet, or knock down lightning with a stick? You and I have nothing in common. The me you see is not the real me. What stands before you is merely one of the countless forms of Martian existence. Perhaps we should talk calmly. Maybe I can invite you into the spacecraft and let you see the Martian world?"

He glanced disdainfully at the knife in my hand, then turned and pointed at the gangway.

I slowly sheathed my sword, but shook my head, declining his invitation. While fighting the shadow of the illusion demon, I had lamented how difficult it would be to defeat them in a real Earth environment. After all, no one could possibly have such a speed of attack.

“There’s no easy way to kill them, he’s right.” I admit that. Perhaps Alpha realized this earlier, which is why it could only “trap” him rather than “kill” him.

"You mean, humans who enter here have no chance of survival?" I looked around at the slides and openings on the surrounding stone walls.

"Many people, seduced by Alpha, rushed into this place with the determination to 'save the Earth and slay the formidable enemy.' And what was the result? They only became sacrifices between him and me. You probably didn't even have time to look back; those labyrinthine passages leading here are forever irreversible. When you think you've found your target, that's precisely the beginning of your death. Now you understand why I retreated instead of charging towards the 'Asian Gear'—"

He patted his helmet with some regret and sighed deeply: "This is Alpha's trap. He set up a decoy, and then set up a maze-like route around the decoy that can only be entered but not retreated. Inside those pipes, there is an inert gas that can solidify at any time. Whenever he wants, he can turn the pipes into an indestructible crystal."

Of course, I didn't have time to look back, since my goal was to hunt down the illusion demon and rid the earth of this menace.

"You are also his victim, without exception. The final result is death, then turning to dust, your thoughts absorbed by the spacecraft, becoming part of Martian energy. However, this will be another trap set by Alpha, which I didn't realize during the initial killing spree. Continuously absorbing the energy of Earthlings will temporarily enhance my combat power, but this brings the worst consequences: my Martian traits are disappearing, replaced by the thoughts, physique, and way of thinking of Earthlings—fortunately, I realized this and stopped the massive energy absorption, instead selectively absorbing the energy of highly intelligent humans..."

This is remarkably similar to the example of the Earth God, who absorbed the energy of the man-eating crocodile and the Golden Thread Viper, resulting in a horrific physical transformation. These two groups, originating from Mars and Saturn respectively, are both repeating the same path of self-destruction. The only difference is that the Earth God brought about his own demise, while the Illusion Demon was secretly plotted against by Alpha.

Perhaps the smile on my face offended him, for he suddenly raised his voice: "What are you laughing at? Is what I said so ridiculous?"

I shook my head: "No, it's not funny at all. I've been wondering, with your superb ability to manipulate human thoughts, how come you're still unable to escape? Are you frozen inside the crystal?"

When I found him, he was immobilized and helpless, not as strong as he had described.

"I was merely testing methods to eliminate those inert gases, and I was just a hair's breadth away from breaking through. Alpha's sealing power had diminished by two-thirds, insufficient to re-solidify the crystal. However, after you entered my world, I suddenly realized that the energy I truly needed was within you, including that all-illuminating flame of fury—that's what the Martians needed most—"

He couldn't help waving his hands, appearing extremely excited.