Chapter 166: Little Fellow [Part 1]
The originally tranquil underground base began to stir. The base’s defense system that had been dormant all this time reactivated after it had detected the energy waves from Cillin’s shots. The power that had been stagnant all this time also began to operate as well, causing many places to become filled with light. However, they were all warning lights.
A mechanical voice rang, “Outside threat detected. Please enter voice command!”
“Fuck, why is there a thing like voice command in this place!” Lung cried out.
“Voice command is incorrect. Please reenter!”
“…” Lung fell silent and looked at Cillin.
Cillin gave him a ‘I have no idea either’ expression. They had not imagined that the defense system in this place had not become completely paralysed despite being buried underground and subjected to crustal movements for so many years.
A moment of silence later.
The mechanical voice rang once more, “Repeat. Outside threat detected. Please enter voice command!”
Cillin looked at the gray cat, and that fellow was also crouching there in a daze.
Lung toyed with a device in his hands and did not say anything.
The mechanical voice rang for the third time, “No effective voice command detected. Terminal command initiated!”
“Terminal command? What terminal command?” Lung asked.
Suddenly, Cillin recalled the research lab beneath the slums back then. If these mad researchers were all similar, then…
“Run quickly! The base’s self destruct program has been activated!” Cillin pulled and Lung and charged towards outside along with the gray cat.
“Self destruct?! WTF, how could they bear to part with all this?!” Lung complained while running.
“Less bullshit, more running. I have no intentions of turning into a fossil!” Cillin charged at the front.
“I don’t either!”
The two men and a cat ran along the way they came from like they were flying, but the passage had been shut off a long time ago. Lung summoned the scanned layout of the base and was about to search for other passages.
“There’s no time. Tell your robots to dig on the spot!” Cillin cried out.
“But this isn’t the passage entrance, and the walls are too tough. It’ll take a long time to penetrate it, not to mention that excessive force will cause the place to collapse!” Lung said while ordering his excavator robot to dig the ground. In reality, the situation was just as he said.
Because the underground base was rather complicated, Lung did not bring many robots with him. He had brought only the pathfinders and excavators. The small excavator robots looked just like frisbees when they were folded up, and when they dug into the ground they would extend several metallic pieces put together at a certain angle to drill apart obstacles before them like a drill.
However, much effort had obviously been spent on this underground base, and the non-passage walls were reinforced by multiple layers. They would need high energy cutting beam to drill this type of wall apart, but time waited for no one.
After seeing the digging effects of the excavator robots, Cillin said to the gray cat, “Wheeze, go! Be the vanguard!”
And then Lung watched the multiple reinforced walls his robots were struggling against using high energy cutting beams being penetrated in two seconds by the cat.
With this hole, the expansion of the hole became much easier.
With the gray cat was drilling at the front, and the excavator robots were expanding the hole behind it, Cillin and Lung climbed up the dug hole.
“What’s that sound?” Lung asked.
“Desertification.”
“Fuck!”
Lung personally thought that his math was his weakness, but even he could count that at this speed they were totally going to be desertified ten seconds later.
The good news was that there weren’t too many of these multiple reinforced walls. After the walls had been penetrated, getting through the stones and soil layers on the outside became much faster.
The shashashasha noise behind them conjured far greater pressure than a rattlesnake could have. Five seconds, four second, three seconds…
They could get out in time!
The moment the duo burst out of the ground surface, they swiftly extended their hoverboards and jumped on it. Cillin scooped the gray cat into his arms and flew towards the distance on the hoverboard.
The second after they left the ground surface, the hole they had just burst out from had already been desertified. In fact, the desertification was still expanding towards the surroundings.
“That, that scared me to death! Fuck this underground base, that was way too clo…”
Lung didn’t manage to vent out his emotions before a loud explosion cut him off, and the expanding shockwave threw the two hoverboards that hadn’t flown too far off yet into the distance.
Peng, peng. Cillin and Lung crashed on the ground one after another.
“Peh! Peh!” Lung spat out the sand in his mouth repeatedly. He had no time to spare for complaining since his mouth was filled with sand and soil.
The duo were completely covered in dust and sand. They both cut an incredibly sorry figure.
“Those maniacs sure are ruthless. I had thought they would leave the base intact so they could one day come back and walk the memory lane, but who would’ve thought that they would desertify it outright plus one massive explosion…”
Cillin cast a glance at Lung. Even at such a time, this fellow had the spirit to chatter away incessantly.
When he recalled the scene inside the base, the final few cages at the place where the research subjects were imprisoned were all empty. This also meant that the important research subjects had either all been transferred, or had escaped a long time ago. The rest of the research subjects were either abandoned, or lacked the ability to escape.
As for the most precious research subjects among them, naturally the researchers would not let their efforts go to waste. How could they possibly not take away the things they had spent much effort to research?
“Fuck, time was too short. There was no time to acquire any info at all.” Lung said regretfully while staring at the message displayed on his device. The device in his hands had seized the opportunity to hack into the system for useful data when the base’s defense system had come online. However, the final results were not good.
Cillin moved sideways and lifted the gray cat’s head towards him. A flash clearly went across its eyes.
Tsk, still as terrible at lying as usual.
After raising his eyelids once, Cillin no longer looked at the gray cat.
It would appear that when the defense system and other power installations had started automatically, the gray cat had also seized the opening to hack into the system and steal some information. In fact, it was much faster than Lung’s device and had reaped quite a sizable amount of data. However, the gray cat was also quite shocked by the information it received. The molecular biological experiments conducted on animals and humans were just too terrifying to the gray cat.
Cillin stood up and kicked at Lung, who was covered in sand, sitting on the ground with spread legs, and patting at his device while sighing, “Get up and let’s go. Who knows if there might be more troubles.”
“Well, I guess there’s nothing left here anyway. Let’s return to the starship right away.” Lung summoned the transmissions sent by the robots he had scattered at various places. The work at several important sampling points had all been completed, the fossils had been selectively dug up, and the spaceplane should have enough space to store all the items.
Cillin nodded and took a few steps. But he stopped again when he saw the gray cat looking.
“What’s wrong?” Cillin asked.
“Something is looking at us.” The gray cat looked towards a direction.