Master of the Stars

Chapter 29: Observation Platform (Part 2/2)

Two people walked shoulder to shoulder down the long corridor. This place was extremely dark and silent, just like before. But this effect was completely different than the deathly stillness of the laboratory room.

It was dark within the long corridor, but turbid and muddled ripples of water waves could be seen. The water refracted a bit of the sky’s light in a negligible manner. The scene was extraordinary and lively.

There were even slight echoes coming from all sides of the glass walls. Underwater life forms were affected by their light, crashing into the glass walls one after another.

The more quiet the surroundings, the more resounding the noise.

Luo Nan couldn’t hold back his curiosity at one time. He aimed his light into the water and illuminated an alligator head on. Xie Junping ducked instinctively when he saw the sinister skull crash into the glass wall, but something else crashed fiercely into a wall on a different side. The collisions nearly made him cry.

He was much more well-behaved from this point on. In any event, they all had to follow the centerline of the underwater corridor. He even took the initiative to lower the brightness of his light to the lowest. Finally they made it to the end of the corridor without fear nor danger.

There was clearly a sharp bend over here. Xie Junping walked to the corner, trembling with fear. His wristband illuminated across and a thick metal door entered his eyes. He saw a series of steel bars locking the gate from top to bottom. He didn’t feel that good anymore.

Xie Junping threw himself all over the door for quite some time. In the end he gave the door three ferocious kicks, only causing muffled bangs to ring out. It was evident that the other side was already crammed with water, dirt, and silt.

He suddenly recalled what was most important and lowered his head to check to see if he had signal: “Looks likes I have a bit? We should be one or two meters from the surface from here.”

There was a problem; the water, dirt, and silt had mixed together into a single layer to possess an extremely powerful electromagnetic blocking effect. The capabilities of Xie Junping’s wristband were considered relatively strong, but it was still very difficult for him to receive a distinct signal.

Xie Junping tried in torment until his brow was beaded with sweat. On the other hand, Luo Nan changed his gaze to a different location within the underground corridor. He fumbled around as the digital map, which was illuminated on his retinas, seemed to blend onto the inner wall.

Luo Nan’s actions were far too eye catching. Xie Junping, who had failed time and again, also had his interest drawn over. He copied Luo Nan and lightly tapped on various places of the inner wall, but he was unable to tell why Luo Nan was doing such a thing from the produced sound.

“There hasn’t been a single hidden door on our entire journey. There shouldn’t be an exception here. Each of those building designs are filled with arrogance……”

Xie Junping spoke in a very opinionated manner. Well actually, Luo Nan’s digital map also led to the closed metal door and ended there with no other guidance.

Luo Nan had tried to remotely control this door, but this door was clearly a dumb, purely physical, and isolated device. It was completely immune to all the advanced digital control technology that was out there.

But he had yet to give up.

This was because there was something that he was completely unable to make sense of. Why were none of the system modules of the laboratory that were mapped onto the external neuron’s interface unable to have a response, save for this Observation Platform function of Gear; why did just this appear so distinctly?

Judging in according to various information, this Observation Platform path was set up before Yan Hong had established his laboratory…… Was it a natural fit with the rest of the building? Or was it specifically remodeled later?

If it was later remodeled, didn’t this mean that there was a certain purpose for its existence since it was coincidently different from Yan Hong’s laboratory designs?

Only the most common public settings were seen on their road here. It seemed that only the end of this long corridor held some secret space. If there really was an issue, it would only appear here.

Luo Nan pondered for a moment. He decisively terminated his integration with the laboratory system modules and withdrew the heavily chained crow.

What was truly worth noting was that his mental connection with the external neuron had a higher level of priority. As soon as the heavily chained crow withdrew, the external neuron transformed back into the lightning thread once more and was retrieved into his brain.

“What an incomprehensible object…….”

Luo Nan shook his head, no longer spending troubling thoughts on this matter. Instead, he ordered the heavily chained crow to drive the wraith sign to scan this entire area in one fell sweep.

All physical partitions were absolutely meaningless to the heavily chained crow and the wraith sign.

“Got it!”

Luo Nan suddenly raised his head and looked at a metal plate in the upper direction. Tempered glass made up of 95% of the materials of this long corridor, the exception were metal plates fixed on the two ends. No one wouldn’t notice them normally.

But when the heavily chained crow swept across, it was able to see a material in a certain upper location clearly and completely different than the metal plates and tempered glass.

“Hey. What are you looking at?” Xie Junping noticed that Luo Nan was acting bizarre. He also raised his head to look, but was unable to discover anything.

Luo Nan ignored Xie Junping. He just estimated the height and angle seriously.

He should be able to reach it…...

“Make room.”

Luo Nan waved Xie Junping to the side and backed up two steps. With a running start, he heavily stepped onto the metal door, borrowed its force to make another jump, twisted his body half a turn simultaneously, and reached up with his hands.

It should have originally been the location of a metal plate, but it had inexplicably changed to something that was sticky and slimy. It was only a slight obstruction. As soon as Luo Nan’s hands broke through, Luo Nan’s hand immediately collided with the edge of the real metal plate. The collision was a bit painful, but Luo Nan’s reactions were quite fast. He gripped on tight and his body twisted for a moment. He exerted force from his back and performed a pull up, his body shooting upwards.

From Xie Junping’s perspective, half of Luo Nan’s body entered the metal plate. Then a pair of legs shook back and forth, and Luo Nan’s figure could no longer be seen.

“Oh d*mn……. A camouflage film!”

Xie Junping’s family had some business dealings with the military. He had shouted out the name of a top-of-the-line product in a single breath.

This was yet another glimmer of hope! It was really worth celebrating!

However there was a problem; It seemed this was a highly difficult vertical jump and climb. My body couldn’t possibly do this…...

This blockading ordeal had Xie Junping waste at least 10 minutes before getting through with great difficulty, even with Luo Nan’s help.

And when Xie Junping had truly accessed the overhead space, he couldn’t help but curse out:

“My god! So there was a secret passageway waiting here all along!”

Indeed, this was a narrow tunnel with a height and width not even reaching a meter each. They needed to get on their knees and crawl in order to pass through. It was completely different from the route they had up until this point.

“Don’t you agree that this is due to the arrogance of the designer?”

“This should have been opened up later on…… The front’s different.”

Luo Nan had already performed some reconnaissance while Xie Junping was wasting time. He led the way crawling over. Soon a completely different style was revealed.

At the lateral end of the narrow tunnel was a sudden reversal in structure. It had turned into a vertical space. Although it wasn’t very spacious, it was still able to hold two people with enough to spare.

The most important thing was that…… it was much more comfortable.

A stone flight of stairs with a wooden grain style spiraled up under the illumination of light. Even though they had light, they were unable to see to the very end. With a feel, they could tell that their surroundings were extremely moist yet very clean.

The two people ascended the stairs and Xie Junping felt the inner wall with curiosity: “It seems to be tree bark…… Hey. Looking at this position, could it be that we’re inside the withered tree of the sandbar?”

“Maybe.” Luo Nan responded, “The trunk should be padded with some bionic material. It appears to be close to rotting, but it's in fact extremely resilient.”

“Wow! This is a tree house! The iconic tree of Withered Tree Sandbar is a treehouse! Which year and which month was this major undertaking……. F*ck! What’s that!?”

A shadow had suddenly rushed across Xie Junping’s eyes, leaping directly to the base of the tree. Its body wasn’t that big, but its speed was extremely fast. It was unknown which path it took, but a faint sound of water rang out. Then there was silence once more.