Chapter 525 - 522: Turbulent Zone

Chapter 525: Chapter 522: Turbulent Zone

The airship swayed, and during this smooth leg of the journey, the gondola fell silent. Only a few team members remained awake.

The investigation team members seemed to have developed a habit of taking turns staying awake. Though they said traveling by airship was safe, they remained vigilant.

Outside the gondola, the currents whistled past. The airship drifted along in the turbulent zone as countless enormous, soft objects drifted by, only to be pushed away by a strange repulsive force.

Those bizarre synchronization residues still appeared and vanished in a flash, as if they could only be seen from specific "angles" and "positions."

’Could they really be some kind of projection?’

Mo Ling couldn’t suppress his curiosity and secretly initiated a teleportation on one of the soft objects in the distance.

He aimed for an object that looked like an iron rod, which was covered in something like blue paint. With a single thought, Mo Ling pulled the iron rod into the Block.

However, what he didn’t expect was that after the iron rod vanished, the soft object instantly deflated like a leaky balloon and disappeared.

Watching this, Mo Ling realized he might have caused trouble.

Sure enough, after the soft object vanished, a powerful air current rushed in from all sides. A windless void formed where the object had been, madly devouring the surrounding air.

The air currents around the airship were thrown into chaos, and the gondola gave a violent lurch. Only after the void was filled did the airship gradually stabilize.

"What’s going on?" The jolt had woken everyone in the gondola.

"No idea. Seems like turbulence. Things like this happen a lot in the turbulent zone."

"This doesn’t feel like turbulence. It feels more like some kind of external force..." The team members who often traveled by airship quickly noticed the difference.

"Let’s stay on alert. We need to be careful."

"Right."

After a brief discussion, the team members spontaneously moved to different sides of the gondola, looking out warily.

Li Luo was also woken by the turbulence. Hearing the team members’ conversation, she immediately started looking for the Block. She only breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the Block fly over to her.

"It might be dangerous outside. Don’t go running off," she said, patting the Block.

Mo Ling looked at the blue-painted iron rod on the metal floor, feeling a pang of guilt.

He carefully crouched down and poked the blue rod. It was indeed a solid object, not some projection. The blue paint seemed to be constantly seeping out of the rod, even flowing onto the surrounding metal floor.

Seeing the rod making such a mess of the metal floor, Mo Ling disgustedly tossed it back out.

However, it seemed his actions had caused trouble yet again...

The instant the iron rod appeared in the clouds, a terrifying ROAR erupted from it. Like a high-speed train screeching to a halt on its tracks, the ear-piercing sound of friction shot through the clouds and into the airship.

Everyone in the airship immediately covered their ears.

"What is that?"

"Where’s that sound coming from? What’s happening outside!"

The team members shouted excitedly, but the roaring noise drowned everything out; they couldn’t hear their companions at all.

But it wasn’t over. The iron rod Mo Ling had thrown into the Sea of Clouds began to melt rapidly, as if suddenly subjected to intense heat.

Immediately after, a powerful heatwave erupted. A terrifying blast of air shot out in all directions, and the expanding current whipped up a gale that blew the airship right off its original course.

"It’s over, we’ve fallen into the turbulence..."

"What in the world happened? How could there be such a violent explosion?"

"It’s a synchronization residue! Their synchronization rate is different from real-world objects. Something must have made it come into contact with reality, causing a collision!"

The team members quickly figured out the cause, but that didn’t help the situation. The air currents in this part of the Sea of Clouds had been completely thrown into disarray by the explosion. The airship was just spinning in the swirling currents, seemingly unable to ever fly out.

But just in the nick of time, a black, plastic-like pipe suddenly extended from the Sea of Clouds and slowly wrapped around the still-swaying airship.

Immediately after, countless more pipes reached out, securing the airship firmly. Bound by these pipes, the airship gradually stabilized before being pulled into the clouds.

Seeing these pipes appear out of nowhere, the team members became ecstatic.

"We’re saved!"

"It’s the people from the Pipe Fortress! We were already this close?"

Pulled by the black pipes, the airship flew onward. Soon, a massive tower appeared before them.

It turned out the Pipe Fortress was right below them. The turbulence had unknowingly brought them directly over the fortress.

As they got closer, Mo Ling discovered that the tower, which shot out countless pipes, was actually made of pipes itself.

The pipes were intertwined, forming a stable structure.

The pipes pulled the airship to the side of the tower. It was a structure similar to a watchtower, soaring into the clouds. Many pipes extended from its peak, stretching out wantonly like tentacles. It was these pipes that had captured the airship and brought it here.

A fully-armed soldier stood on the tower. He was notifying others on his communication device while cautiously approaching the airship.

The airship was brought to the side of the tower’s peak, where the pipes had arranged themselves to form a walkway. The soldier walked along this path directly to the airship.

"Signal confirmed. Airship ID confirmed."

The soldier raised his hand, and a pipe extended from the ground, touching the airship’s gondola. The gondola’s entrance then opened automatically, as if it had received some kind of command.

"Follow me." The soldier came to the gondola entrance, shouted inside, and then stepped back, continuing to speak into his communication device.

The investigation team members didn’t hesitate, jumping straight out of the gondola to follow the soldier.

The soldier led everyone onto the tower. A pipe extended from the ground, tapped each person lightly, and then retracted.

"Your identities have been confirmed. You’ve been through a lot."

"But there’s one more thing to confirm..." the soldier said, tapping on the electronic screen in his hand.

"Did you see anything strange in the turbulent zone just now? Anything unusual near the explosion?"

The soldier seemed very concerned about the recent explosion.

The team members looked at each other, then shook their heads at the soldier.

"We didn’t see anything, just heard a loud bang... the sound of objects with different synchronization rates colliding. Then the explosion happened, the heatwave knocked us off course, and you rescued us."

After listening, the soldier nodded and turned his electronic screen toward them.

"Then did any of you notice this residue?"

Everyone crowded around to look at the screen, and then they all shook their heads.

On the electronic screen was an iron rod covered in blue paint...