The claw came from the corpse that Lin Hao used for his experiment. Yesterday morning, Leng Xuantong returned to the base, so Bao Xiaoying gave it to him. He put the claw and the stone together, but nothing happened immediately. So, he sealed the two objects in a box.
At this moment, Leng Xuantong observed the claw carefully and found that a thin layer of the stratum corneum had been corroded. That was a huge step forward!
He smiled delightedly, then put on his gloves and goggles before carefully opening the box. Next, he reached tweezers in and gently poked the skin of the claw.
The tip of the tweezers sank straight into the skin like piercing into a piece of rotten meat.
"Eh?" Leng Xuantong tried it a few more times and created a few small holes on the claw.
"The stone is effective on those creatures!" He excitedly took the claw out of the box and then scanned it with his power. As he expected, the energy contained in the claw was gone.
He then looked at the stone and reached a hand into the box to take it out. The temperature of the stone was different from before. He thought for a moment, then took off his gloves and held the stone with his bare hand. The surface of the stone was warm.
"Touch it! Is it warm?" He handed the stone to Bao Xiaoying and said uncertainly.
Bao Xiaoying took it over and felt it with her palm, then nodded and said, "Yes, it is warm."
Leng Xuantong looked at the stone, then at the claw. "I think the stone has absorbed the energy in the body part. But, it's just a part of a dead creature. I wonder if the stone can do the same to the alive ones."
Bao Xiaoying looked at him; she did not have an answer either. They had to wait for Chief to bring them a living underground creature, and then do some further experiments to find out.
…
Back in the underground cave, Lin Qiao sent the mushroom into her space and then quickly left with Bowwow, following behind the traces that Black had left.
Deeper underground was a fault, underneath which was a dark, empty space. The rock was corroded by all kinds of gases, transformed from a special kind of earth through weathering. From the cave roof, numerous stalactites reached down.
The space was smaller than the underground cave above it and divided into two layers, looking like a giant, widely opened mouth. The upper layer was inclining downward while the lower layer was inclining upward.
Further in were some naturally formed cracks and large caves. Quite a few of those caves were connected with some tunnels created by those underground creatures. At that moment, some five to seven meters tall underground gorillas had been climbing upward on the cave wall from underneath that dark fault.
Their claws were very strong, sinking straight into the cave wall to allow them to put forth their strength. The claws on their rear limbs were also able to go straight into the rock.
They crawled into the fault and then moved into the few caves, showing up in a remote room a while later. At the sight of them, the group of low-leveled underground creatures immediately bent over and lowered their voices, uttering a series of weird roars.
"Roar! Roar! Roar!"
Hearing those low-leveled creatures' roars, the higher-leveled creatures immediately clenched their firsts and punched on the ground, then gave a raging roar. After that, they scattered and rushed into the tunnel nearby.
There were about forty of them, with five of them being at level-seven and around seven meters tall.
"Roar…" Those enormous creatures were actually nimble and swift. Except for their roars, they made no noises while moving.
Lin Qiao quickly ran out of a tunnel and then entered another one. After a whole hour of running, she finally grasped a trace of Black's scent. The snake was pretty fast…
Thankfully, Black was a smart one. He smelled Lin Qiao and Bowwow, so he moved backward amd bumped straight into the few low-leveled underground creatures which were following behind him.
"Roarrr!"
"Owowowow!"
"Roar… owooo!"
He bumped those two-meter-tall underground creatures to the side, then wriggled forward fleetingly. While moving, he violently slapped the cave wall with his tail, and soon, a loud boom was heard from behind.
Before long, Black showed up before Lin Qiao.
"Aren't you worried that you might tear the entire cave down? Are you trying to bury all of us here?" Lin Qiao looked at the snake's cold eyes. Well, the snake was calm, yet the noises he created were loud.
Hearing Lin Qiao's words, Black blinked his eyes and looked at her as he slightly tilted his head.
"Alright, you guys have had enough fun. It's time to head home. Don't get lost! If you get lost again, I'd have to look everywhere for you one more time!" Lin Qiao grabbed the hair on Bowwow's neck with her left hand and pressed her right hand on Black's head, then brought the two into her space and threw them straight into the woods.
"Don't kill those creatures in there. I need them alive." In the woods, Lin Qiao gave the two an order, in case the two of them killed the underground creatures that she had caught before. If that happened, she would have to do it all again.
At that moment, the medium-leveled underground creatures had been gathering toward the center of the underground cave from all directions. Soon, they sensed the scents that did not belong the cave, and also detected the disordered vibes of some low-leveled underground creatures.
"Roar…" A level-seven underground gorilla walked out of a room and gave a long and resonant roar. A few minutes later, waves of roars could be heard from the surrounding tunnels.
"Roar!"
Lin Qiao exited her space to hear the waves of roars, rising and falling with a strange frequency.
Were those creatures exchanging messages?
Using her sensations, she detected the vibe of an underground creature that was at level six or seven from not far away. She immediately turned herself invisible and quietly approached that creature like a hunter.
She had gone all the way down there. Of course, she did not plan to go home empty handed. She had not found the large ones, so she decided to start from the smaller ones.
Doing that, she might luckily fall into the nest of that level-eight one.