"Wowoooo…" Bowwow sniffed at every tunnel nearby, then stood at the side as it turned and barked at Lin Qiao while shaking his head.
Black had never been there, so the dog didn't sense its scent.
Lin Qiao sniffed the air. The tunnels were ventilated, but she didn't sense Black's scent from the air. As the two were wondering which way to go, the earth under their feet suddenly quaked and the cave wall shook, causing a few rock pieces to fall off the roof.
"Over here!" Lin Qiao immediately gave Bowwow an instruction, then flashed toward the source of the vibration.
"Wow!" Bowwow followed behind her.
On the other side of the cave, another room had collapsed, with Black sneaking away from one side. A group of low-leveled underground creatures were buried under the collapsed cave wall. They didn't die, but felt dizzy. They quickly struggled out of the pile of rock and earth, then dug through the collapsed entrance of the room with their strong arms.
"Roar!"
By the time they made their way out, Black had disappeared without a trace. All they could do was follow the snake's scent.
Black's body was as thick as a bucket and tens of meters long. He was a huge snake, but the tunnels were thankfully broad enough and his skin was very strong. Being bitten and scratched by those underground creatures could barely bring him any harm.
But still, those creatures did cause him some difficulties. So, he collapsed the cave roof with his extra strong tail and buried those underground creatures that had been pursuing him.
Black kept moving forward and soon entered another room with quite some underground creatures inside. As Black suddenly stuck his head into the room, those creatures immediately charged at him. However, Black bumped them all away with his head.
By the time Black tore that tunnel down, an enormous creature that was lying in a huge, empty room deep underground moved slightly, then stayed motionless again. At the same time, the mushroom had been running about on the dome of that room, dodging the stones that the few level-four underground creatures threw at it.
Earlier, those creatures tried to form a pyramid to catch the mushroom, but they fell to the ground in the end as the mushroom moved slightly sideways. They could not move steadily when they formed a pyramid after all.
While following the noises that Black made, Lin Qiao and the dog accidentally ran into the mushroom's room and saw the scene within. The mushroom seemed to be enjoying the game a lot.
"Wow?"
"Roar!" As Lin Qiao and Bowwow showed up together, the group of level-four underground creatures stopped throwing stones at the mushroom and turned toward them simultaneously.
Meanwhile, Lin Qiao immediately raised a hand. Following her movement, a few streams of black fire flashed out of her palm toward those level-four creatures.
"Roar!" Those underground creatures were frightened by the vibe coming from the fire, so they immediately turned around and attempted to run. However, the fire was faster than them by many times over. Within a blink of an eye, it disappeared into their noses.
"Roar…"
"Get down!" Lin Qiao looked at the mushroom on the cave roof and said. After that, she turned and walked toward another tunnel without even taking a glance at those underground creatures which were rolling on the ground with the pain caused by her dark fire.
The mushroom quickly came down from the roof and moved to Lin Qiao's side, reaching out a tentacle to hold her hand. She turned and gave it a glimpse, then held it and brought it into the space. Soon after that, she came back out of her space.
It was not her idea to bring the mushroom into the space, but the latter had asked for that. Lin Qiao had left it outside for quite a long while, and the mushroom actually missed the space.
The mushroom rushed to the pool once it entered the space, then sat down at the edge and reached a few roots into the water. It relaxed its head and raised a few tentacles to comfortably dance in the air.
Sensing its movement, Lin Qiao rolled her eyes speechlessly, then kept moving toward Black with Bowwow.
…
Near the entrance to the cave, Yun Meng was lying on a tree, looking at the rising sun. Lin Qiao and her three pets had spent a whole night in the cave. No loud noises were heard from the cave, so she had no idea how they were doing down there.
Abruptly, she changed her expression and turned to glance at the base. Soon, two people showed up near the entrance. Seeing them, Yun Meng immediately leaped off the tree and landed by their side.
"Eh? What are you doing here?" Yun Meng looked at Wu Chengyue and Li Yue Shan with surprise. "You're not going down there, are you?" She then turned to Wu Chengyue and asked him. There were so many tunnels in the cave. She did not know which one Lin Qiao went in, so she wasn't sure if the other could even be found.
"Haven't you heard anything from down there yet?" Wu Chengyue put a hand on his chin and tilted his head as he looked into the cave while speaking.
"No," Yun Meng shook her head.
Wu Chengyue looked into the cave silently.
"It's not gonna be easy for you to go down there and find them now. There're a lot of tunnels down there. We don't know where they all lead to. You don't have a dog's nose, so it's gonna be hard to find them," said Yun Meng as Wu Chengyue seemed to want to go down.
"Don't worry, I'm not gonna go down there," Wu Chengyue said smilingly.
He could not enter the underground cave just yet. The zombie lady should be fine. After all, she was smart, and had a space. She should be able to come out safely.
Currently, both Huaxia Base and Sky Fire Base had their eyes on Sea City Base and All Beings Base. If he left now, the situation might turn bad for him and his people.
"Oh!" Yun Meng responded to him with.
…
At that moment, Leng Xuantong was studying a piece of stone in all kinds of ways inside his lab in the All Beings Base. His experimental subjects hadn't arrived yet, which was giving him a headache.
"Director, come here and a take a look at this! The underground creature body part that we put together with stone number two last night is now showing some differences," said Bao Xiaoying, who was bending over to observe the things in a transparent box.
Leng Xuantong raised his head, then turned and walked toward her.
In the box, an egg-sized stone was put on the left side while a claw was put on the right. The claw was the experimental subject that Bao Xiaoying was talking about.
Leng Xuantong came over, so the other immediately stepped aside to make space for him.
He bent his waist and looked into the box. The stone seemed to be unchanged, but the claw looked a little weird.
Normally, the underground creatures' bodies would not corrode quickly unless they were exposed to sunlight. Their bodies contained a good amount of zombie virus, so their bodies would enter a frozen state after they died, just like the bodies of zombies. Without being exposed to the sunlight, it would take a very long time for their bodies to decay, even at room temperature.