Chapter 16: Underground Exploration_1

[A misty luminescence rose from the soil as if carrying colors in an invisible container before your eyes, coalescing into shapes that are hard to grasp. The colors within the container swayed with the twisting of the light fog, resembling the shimmering lights in a bar at midnight.]

[You felt as if you were in an ocean of neon lights.]

Wang Ran regained his spirit.

He had been exploring the cracks for nearly two days without water, food, or a way back, almost losing his sanity, and now he finally found a suspicious place.

[You observe the area cautiously.]

[You notice no signs of monsters or Doomsday Apostles.]

Wang Ran felt a bit disappointed.

Without any signs of monsters or Doomsday Apostles, this place might just be unrelated to either, perhaps just a peculiar natural sight.

[You decide to step into this eerie land.]

[You walk into the light fog.]

[You discover that the light fog is filled with a kind of luminescent powder, which is what created the spectacle before you. As you notice this oddity, you have inadvertently inhaled some of it.]

Wang Ran froze.

Powder...

Once bitten, twice shy; he immediately thought of the pollen that had turned him and Lin Ying into mushrooms.

[Your body is undergoing unknown changes.]

Wang Ran's heart skipped a beat.

Was he going to start sprouting mushrooms from his body next?

[You fall into a coma.]

The situation took a turn for the worse.

Wang Ran sighed, "Indeed, the prettier something is, the more dangerous. Curiosity killed the cat!"

The text continued to scroll.

[On the third day, you are still comatose.]

[Nothing happens.]

[You have been comatose for a whole day.]

At this point, Wang Ran began to feel puzzled.

Because his other self in the simulator didn't immediately turn into a mushroom but was comatose for a whole day without harm.

[On the fourth day, you are still comatose.]

[Nothing happens.]

[You have been comatose for a whole day.]

A sliver of hope emerged in Wang Ran's heart.

He and Lin Ying had turned into mushrooms in just a short while before, but this time he had been in a coma for two days without anything special happening besides the coma itself.

Could it be because his constitution was stronger, making him resistant to the mushroom transformation?

"What exactly is going on?"

Wang Ran was nervous.

The text in the simulator continued to scroll.

[On the fifth day, you wake from the coma, and you feel that your mind has changed.]

He woke up!

Wang Ran breathed a sigh of relief and also noticed the simulator's description.

His mind had changed?

Did he wake up dumb?

[Your perceptual abilities have greatly improved.]

[You have become stronger.]

Wang Ran was very surprised.

Literally,

he not only didn't suffer from inhaling the powder and falling into a coma, but he also experienced a positive change.

Wang Ran concluded, "This powder is different from the one that turns people into mushrooms. It's a kind of powder that is beneficial to humans."

[It is pitch black all around.]

[The magnificent spectacle you saw before falling into the coma has disappeared, and you realize that an unknown event occurred while you were comatose.]

Two days in a coma, and the light fog and powder were gone.

What had happened?

Wang Ran speculated, "It couldn't have been me who absorbed it all, could it?"

As everyone knows, one still breathes during a coma, and he had inhaled more during the coma than before it.

At this moment, he was filled with deep curiosity.

What was this powder?

Why didn't the monsters absorb it?

Wang Ran fell into thought.

He couldn't yet answer the former, but for the latter, he had two uncertain speculations: either they were incapable of absorbing the powder, or the powder was so common that they didn't care about it.

Which speculation was correct would require more exploration to determine.

Wang Ran tended to lean towards the former.

Having groped his way around underground for two days, he had encountered the light fog just once, which led him to believe that it was not a common occurrence.

However, there was another possibility,

Maybe the light fog appeared randomly, and he had simply been lucky enough to encounter it, but there was no logic to support this view at the moment.

[Your cell phone has run out of power.]

[You have tried to turn it on multiple times but failed.]

[You have lost the light.]

Being without light undoubtedly posed a significant obstacle for exploration, but Wang Ran had been staying underground for five days, and it was already quite an achievement that his phone had lasted this long.

Wang Ran sighed, "Just hold on a little longer."

Exploring the underground had been a rash decision made by the him in the simulator in a moment of folly.

With no preparation in advance,

hiccups kept occurring on the road,

he had lost hope of finding the Doomsday Apostle,

just scraping some extra points would suffice.

[You decide to explore in the dark.]

Wang Ran quickly realized that exploring the treacherous underground in the dark was like torturing himself!

[You accidentally fell from a height.]

[...]

[You tripped over a stone.]

[...]

[When you looked up, you hit a hard stone spike.]

[...]

[You rolled for one hundred and fifty-two meters.]

[...]

"Ugh!"

Wang Ran, watching his pitiful plight in the simulator, felt like laughing but thought it inappropriate since the him in the simulator was also him.

The next line of text made him unable to hold back.

[You try to deceive yourself into believing there is light in front of you.]

In the simulator, Wang Ran, frustrated by repeated setbacks, tried a preposterous move; he actually attempted to use society's trickery to fight against the edifice of physics.

[But you failed.]

"Of course it failed!" Wang Ran couldn't help but laugh and cry, "It's not that I don't believe in light; there really isn't any, this cavern isn't Ultraman!"

The him in the simulator must have reached a certain level of dejection,

otherwise he wouldn't have done something so absurd.

At this moment, the plot took a turn.

[You see a hint of light flickering in the distance.]

Wang Ran paused for a moment.

[You realize that it is the light of a flashlight.]

A flashlight?

Wang Ran couldn't help but get excited.

Without a doubt,

monsters wouldn't be using flashlights,

so...

What a pleasant surprise!

[You try to deceive yourself.]

[You succeeded.]

[You think no one can see you.]

[Your Talent "Cover-Ears Steal Bell" is effective.]

[You sprint toward the light.]

[You hear a solemn chanting voice.]

Wang Ran held his breath and focused.

["The current world suits you and your kin, please return from the long night, shake off the shackles of mud and stone, let your roar thunder through the heavens!"]

[You see a mysterious figure clad in a black cloak.]

[He holds a thick book, murmuring incomprehensible words to a violet flower.]

Without a doubt, the mysterious figure was a Doomsday Apostle.

"A violet flower?"

Wang Ran thought of the monstrous flower that had appeared outside the academic building on the tenth day; that flower was also violet, and it was very likely connected to this one.

Why was the Doomsday Apostle talking to the flower?

What did his words mean?

You and your kin...

Wang Ran boldly guessed.

"You" must be the target of the Awakening Ceremony of the Doomsday Apostle, and the kin must be those monsters covered in spikes!

Shaking off the shackles of mud and stone...

Does it mean the big BOSS is sleeping beneath the earth?

At this point, the text in the simulator continued to scroll.

[You walk up behind him.]

[You lift a boulder the size of a millstone.]

[You reveal an innocuous smile.]