Chapter 975 - 43: New Thebes

"It's a waste of time." Sun Hang shook his head, "If it doesn't work, have Mr. Wang fire a Dragon Breath Bomb. I'll try to see if I can apply my shielding ability to Mr. Wang..."

Sun Hang's gaze shifted to Wang Xiyi, who was readying herself, and suddenly paused.

"What's wrong?" Wang Xiyi immediately noticed the peculiarity in Sun Hang's eyes and asked.

"Something's off, Candle Dragon, recalculate the relative position between 'New Thebes' and us!" Sun Hang said.

Candle Dragon responded, set down his sniper rifle, reopened the closed operation terminal, and after a few seconds, his eyes lifted from behind the screen, saying in a deep voice, "Just within the past two minutes, 'New Thebes' has shifted horizontally by nearly a hundred meters... This Desert Sea is constantly moving, both on the surface and deep beneath—I should have realized this sooner."

"No wonder this guy hasn't attacked us; it's just here to stall for time." Zuo Jun squinted his eyes, "If it stalls a bit longer, the settlement under the Desert Sea will escape right from under our noses."

"Not entirely, this guy is bait, in two senses of the word." Sun Hang said, "If I'm right, once 'New Thebes' moves to a safe position, this guy will unhesitatingly detonate its heart to attract the Sinking Sand Giant Worm."

"How to handle it then? Ignore it?" Mr. Wang couldn't help but frown, "Or simply make a clean break? Hit it hard with one punch and then immediately conceal our presence and rush underground."

"Let me do it." Sun Hang took a deep breath and walked slowly toward the Convicted floating on the Desert Sea.

Sun Hang's initial plan was to conserve his energy as much as possible—after all, this time the opponents might not just be those leftover "Priests" from the old civilization, but potentially even the Sphinx... Regarding any unpredictable entity that might intersect with rules, Sun Hang always maintained sufficient respect.

Wanting to break the rules requires powerful strength—the so-called overwhelming strength, which must be stronger than all opponents combined.

Sun Hang walked until he was less than five meters away from the Convicted, which seemed to have been ordered not to attack them. Though it felt uneasy about Sun Hang's constant approach, it merely waved a segment of a thick limb resembling an arm without making any substantial attack.

Unfortunately, such gestures couldn't intimidate Sun Hang at all.

Sun Hang suddenly accelerated, slamming into the Convicted with great force. The several-thousand-ton mass was directly knocked rapidly backward, carving a deep trench in the Desert Sea.

Sun Hang himself had already penetrated the Convicted's body, his right hand piercing through the enormous heart with a diameter of nearly a meter, his five fingers stretching to the maximum.

Countless hyphae spread from Sun Hang's palm and back of his hand, instantly filling the entire heart of the Convicted.

It was only then that the consciousness manipulating the Convicted realized something was wrong, hastily removing all shielding measures from the heart, in an attempt to disseminate the Convicted's memetic aura.

But at this point, the Convicted's heart was already empty, all eerie memetic entities having been extracted clean.

The massive body began to gradually turn to sand and collapse, and within a few seconds, it had completely integrated with the Desert Sea.

"Let's go."

Sun Hang glanced back at the group and then quickly ran forward. After running a short distance, he felt a familiar emptiness beneath his feet and slid rapidly down a passage with a remarkably smooth inner wall.

The end of the passage was still a spacious "hall," but compared to the settlement of Nuer where the Sinking Sand Giant Worm's relic was located, this hall was many times larger, with several times more filtration holes connecting to the outside world.

After several dozen seconds, the other members of the team also descended, followed by two muffled thuds upon landing—that was the sound of two heavy portable Eternal Freeze Coffins, inside which lay Jin Hongyi and Ye Jiu.

To ensure both of them remained stable, they stay in suspended animation when not needed for combat.

Until Sun Hang decides to wake them.

The hibernating Jin Hongyi is on the verge of berserk mode; just a small vial of "neutralizer" injected into his artery, used to negate the effects of various inhibitors within his body, and he would immediately transform back into that Berserker who stormed the puppet army seven times.

While Ye Jiu is donned in full battle regalia, a delicate golden mask covers his face, tightly gripping the Tang Saber that exudes an aura of bloodshed. As for the three-meter-long Wolf-tooth Spear, it is dismantled into three segments, hidden within the dark compartment on the back of the Eternal Freeze Coffin.

The hall revealed no enemies, not even traces of ordinary residents, yet the walls were adorned with numerous torches. The continually flickering flames extended Sun Hang and his companions' shadows, stretching them long and short.

For the Desert Sea residents, torches are indeed luxurious items—they typically use a common bioluminescent crystal found in the Sinking Sand Giant Worm relic for illumination. Although these crystals emit radiation hazardous to humans, the Desert Sea residents' physique has long since adapted to such radiation intensity, provided they don't ingest these crystals directly, the radiation they emit doesn't affect the Desert Sea residents' lifespan.

But torches are different; both in the Desert Sea and the Sinking Sand Giant Worm relic, it's challenging to find materials that can serve as fuel. In the religious ceremonies held by the settlement, torches are lit using grease from the Convicted, which produces less than flesh and requires refinement and concentration before ignition... Based on information provided by Nuer, all the grease stored within his settlement might not suffice to keep the hall's torches burning for half an hour.

"What luxury... Is this some kind of welcoming ceremony?" Sun Hang couldn't help but comment.

"I don't think they're welcoming us." Candle Dragon shook his head, "I can smell them... they're hiding in the shadows..."

"Hmph, playing tricks." Wang Xiyi snorted disdainfully, "If not for the restriction on abilities, I'd have blasted the entire hall with Dragon Breath Bomb, let's see where they could still hide!"

"No need for Dragon Breath Bomb, flashbangs work just as well." Sun Hang raised his pistol, firing a flashbang in four different directions, instantly lighting up the entire hall as bright as day.