radicalducati Chapter 121 Southbound Special Line
Chapter 121 Southbound Special Line
Chapter 121 Southbound Special Line
Moreover, it's not just the temperature that's bothering us.
From the moment I stepped into this darkness, a deep hum lingered in my ears; it wasn't sharp, but it was extremely penetrating.
"That sound—it's awful." The wolf's face showed obvious unease, and it moved a few more steps closer to Little Green.
Little Green could understand her feelings. This kind of sound could easily evoke a creature's most primal fear of the unknown behemoth.
However, Bai Shuyuan is clearly not included in this category.
She listened for only a moment before calmly concluding that this creature was clearly highly specialized in information nodes. This specialization would obviously weaken its other capabilities.
Basically, this means that this is a summoner who puts all their skill points into intelligence? So the main character is very fragile.
"I hope so," Little Green thought.
Xia Zhaozhao continued walking ahead, occasionally tapping the dejected little fire dragon with the blade of her sword, forcing it to continue deeper into the tunnel.
As the group ventured deeper into the area, the unsettling feeling intensified.
The buzzing grew louder, and the air became increasingly hot. The group seemed to be approaching the cavity of a living being.
As the loud buzzing sound gradually became clearer, Little Green finally realized what was coming from it.
"It's breathing," she said softly.
A heavy, slow breathing sound pushed the airflow to every corner of the tunnel.
Xiao Lü continued walking, silently gathering several ice blades around her and creating a cold wind to make the people around her feel a little better.
After walking for an unknown amount of time, Xia Zhaozhao, who had remained silent the entire time ahead, suddenly let out a gasp.
"Wow, that's—a locomotive? The locomotive of a traditional green train?"
Her voice was filled with surprise as she pointed ahead.
Following the direction she pointed, at the end of the line of sight, a huge silhouette stood silently.
It was barely recognizable as a train.
However, Xiao Lü noticed something was wrong after just one glance.
"No," she said instinctively.
"Hmm?" Xia Zhaozhao turned around and glanced at her.
"The locomotive of the green train doesn't look like this," Xiao Lü explained.
"Company-owned vehicles," Bai Shuyuan's voice came from behind.
"It should be a dedicated train for a large industrial or mining enterprise that connects to this railway line."
However, now is clearly not the time to discuss railway culture.
Because the source of that loud breathing sound was already very clear.
The last carriage of the train.
All the windows in that carriage were completely covered by a layer of writhing biological tissue. Warm air, even carrying a trace of steam, seeped out from the gaps in the carriage doors and joints.
And the sound of breathing reached its peak here, like the rasping of a dying person amplified countless times.
The wolf stepped forward and silently activated its telekinetic power.
"Squeak!"
She forcefully pulled open the carriage door leading to that carriage.
Xia Zhaozhao forced the little fire dragon to charge forward immediately. The rest of the group also prepared themselves and silently followed.
A wave of heat, almost overwhelming, mixed with a foul stench, billowed out from inside the door.
Then, Xia Zhaozhao stood there dumbfounded.
"What the heck is this?"
In this completely transformed freight car, the entire metal interior, floor, and ceiling are completely covered by a deformed fleshy tissue.
And right in the center of the carriage was the source of all this.
It looked like a gigantic, slowly beating, deformed human lung. The enormous lung lobe almost filled the entire space.
However, upon closer inspection, it turned out to be not a lung at all.
Its surface is covered with countless intertwined nerve bundles, spreading across the entire organ like ivy. Countless fragmented organs that once belonged to humans are haphazardly fused into this neural network, as if they were merely heat sinks on a server motherboard.
This is not a respiratory organ at all, but a living, lung-shaped brain.
From the folds of those lung lobes, countless fleshy ducts of varying thickness extend out. With each breath, astonishing heat is expelled through these ducts, turning the entire carriage into a steam room.
"Why does it look so weird?" Little Green complained. "It feels like it was designed to drop SN just to drop SAN."
"Dissipate heat." Bai Shuyuan's voice rang out. She simply stood aside, observing the thing with great interest.
"Its primary function is heat dissipation, not gas exchange. The lung-like structure is designed to maximize surface area to cool the vast internal neural network."
"And those haphazardly piled-up limbs are simply to reduce the density of nerves and prevent the local temperature from getting too high."
"So—it really is just a brain?"
"A purely computational center cannot even be called a brain."
Bai Shuyuan then gave her final judgment: "It is a product of convergent evolution, and it is organically combined with the mother worm that parasitizes its body. It devotes all its energy to information processing, which is why it can control such a massive number of individuals."
She paused, then added, as if pronouncing a death sentence on the monster.
"But at the cost, it abandoned almost all of its offensive and defensive capabilities, and even—it lacked independent consciousness."
Little Green understood.
The enormous, seemingly terrifying thing in front of us was just a graphics card that had been removed from the motherboard; it posed no threat whatsoever.
Under Bai Shuyuan's guidance, the so-called battle did not even take place.
It looks more like a demolition of illegal buildings.
Little Green and the wolf easily dismantled it. The whole process was so smooth it felt unreal.
This emperor, who once commanded thousands of troops, was unable to even utter a cry of grief or put up any effective resistance; he simply crumbled and melted away.
The humming in the carriage stopped abruptly. Little Green used its abilities to dispel the lingering heat.
With the threat of this parasite completely eliminated, the world has finally become quiet again.
Xia Zhaozhao poked the motionless lizard next to her with the hilt of her sword.
"How did it evolve into a petrifying lizard? — Never mind, see it, a Hagi lizard?"
Her tone was like that of a homeroom teacher giving moral education to a delinquent teenager, which was completely different from the trash talk she kept spewing out.
"If you keep evolving, you might end up like that. Your brain will look like lungs, it'll be as ugly as it gets."
Looking at the little fire dragon's eyes, Little Green concluded that its intelligence level was insufficient to comprehend such complex vocabulary.
However, Xia Zhaozhao clearly didn't care.
With her worries gone, Sasha stepped forward and, under the lizard's humiliated gaze, implanted a larva into its body.
Thus, the lizard finally completed its complete transformation.
"Alright, I'm assigning you a new task."
Xia Zhaozhao pointed to the slime all over the ground and gave a kind smile.
"Clean this place up completely, leaving nothing behind."
Leaving behind the poor lizard forced to clean up its predecessor's remains, the rest of the people turned and walked toward the other carriages of the train.
The threat is completely gone; it's time to explore for the loot.
"This was a huge success! A truly huge success!"
Xia Zhaozhao walked ahead happily with long strides.
"The spoils filled an entire train!"