Chapter 1413
Golza: Am I still destined to escape?
Cui Ming has been feeling quite helpless these past few days.
Because the Pitt aliens are about to start a fight with their own Norma.
The cause of the matter is simple: the Pitt aliens changed their strategy. Since openly approaching Choi Myung would be stopped by TPC's "special guards," they decided to take the best friend route instead—first infiltrating Choi Myung's circle of women, and then using a roundabout approach.
They set their sights on Angie.
After all, this blonde, blue-eyed girl seemed easygoing, approachable, easy to fool, and easy to bribe.
So one afternoon, the three "travel bloggers" "bumped into" Angie at a coffee shop, and kept saying "Sister, you're so beautiful" and "How do you take care of your skin?", their sweetness was almost sickening.
Angie munched on her cake, smiling as she dealt with the situation, but when the other person handed her a cup of "special beauty tea," she suddenly slapped the cake onto their face.
"Little sister, there's something special in your tea."
She flicked the cream off her hands. "Cui Ming said that anything given by a stranger should either be fed to the dog or smeared on your face. Which would you choose?"
The three Pitt aliens immediately turned on each other, but before they could even make a move, Hilda rushed out from the kitchen, grabbed a frying pan, and knocked them all unconscious.
"Angie! You stole my kill again!"
"Who told you to be so slow!"
"That was an ambush! Do you understand what an ambush is?!"
The two argued and dragged the prisoner back to the TPC interrogation room.
When the news spread, Norma's were in an uproar.
Led by Angie, the Norma girls are determined to defend Cui Ming to the death. These girls fought their way up from EDF with Cui Ming back then, and none of them are pushovers.
Elsa placed the sniper rifle directly at the dormitory window, declaring, "Shoot any suspicious woman within 500 meters."
Lindis went even further, posting a notice at the entrance of the TPC cafeteria: "Pittians and dogs are not allowed"—although Director Sawai ordered it to be removed, it still made a strong impression.
The Norma declared: They would absolutely not allow those damned bastards from Pitt Alien to have a chance to get close to Cui Ming.
Meanwhile, Choi Myung managed to slip away and set off with Daigo to Mount Kirimon, where a suspected monster had been discovered.
Before he left, Angie blocked him at the door. The girl, hands on her hips, asked, "How long are you going to be gone?"
"Two or three days."
"Underground?"
"Ah."
"Will you take me with you?"
"No, I won't bring it."
"Why!"
“You keep an eye on those Pitt aliens up there.” Cui Ming slung his backpack over his shoulder. “If they try to cause trouble while I’m not around, you’ll have to keep them in check.”
Anqi pouted, but didn't make a fuss anymore.
She knew that Choi Ming trusted her, and this trust was more important than taking her underground.
"Alright, then come back soon."
"Ah."
"And another one!" Angie suddenly leaned in and stuffed something into his pocket. "Take this. It's specially made by Elsa, an underground communication enhancer, so you won't disappear again!"
Cui Ming took it out and looked at it. It was a metal piece about the size of a thumb, with the Norma's symbol engraved on it—an eagle with outstretched wings.
He chuckled, stuffed the metal piece back into his pocket, and patted Angie's head: "Okay, let's go back. Although losing contact underground is a classic tactic."
-
At the foot of Wumen Yueshan Mountain.
Daigo was driving an SUV, and Choi Myung, in the passenger seat, was constantly cleaning his gun.
The Radiant Blade was disassembled into parts, laid out piece by piece on his lap. Cui Ming carefully wiped each crevice with a velvet cloth, his movements as practiced as if he were dissecting some kind of creature.
"Instructor, are you excited?" Daigo glanced at him.
"Ok?"
"You were smiling the whole time."
Cui Ming paused for a moment, then raised his hand to touch his face.
He was definitely laughing.
His lips were curved in a smile, and his eyes shone with light, completely different from his usual deadpan expression.
"Underground warfare." He put the barrel back in and clicked it shut. "I like it."
"why?"
Cui Ming did not answer immediately.
He looked out the window, where the outline of Mount Wumen was faintly visible in the mist, like a sleeping giant.
“Back in the Showa era,” he began slowly, his voice so soft it was almost a soliloquy, “my first underground battle was against the Giron people and those damned Aripontas.”
Daigo tightened his grip on the steering wheel.
He had heard of that history; there were only a few words about it in TPC's classified files—Storm One single-handedly stormed the anthill, annihilating four super beasts and four extradimensional aliens.
“Killing those Aliponta and Jilong people,” Cui Ming’s smile deepened, revealing his gleaming white teeth, “was so satisfying.”
Daigo felt a chill on the back of his neck.
He knew Cui Ming wasn't a pervert, but that deep-seated anticipation for underground warfare still sent chills down his spine.
"Then this time..."
"I wonder what's underground."
Cui Ming put the Radiant Gun back into its holster, rubbed his hands together, like a child waiting to unwrap a present.
"It could be a monster, it could be an alien, it could be the remains of an ancient civilization... anything is possible."
He turned his head and looked at Daigo, his eyes shining frighteningly.
"The underground is a good place—quiet, secluded, and undisturbed. You can fight your battles, I'll fight mine, without worrying about civilians, buildings, or public opinion..."
"Just keep killing?"
"Just keep killing."
Daigo fell silent.
He suddenly felt a pang of sympathy for the "potential monster" underground. Of all people to mess with, he had to provoke this one.
-
When they arrived at the observation station, the local geological team was in complete disarray.
"There's tremor underground! It's regular! It's not a natural earthquake!"
"Thermal imaging shows a huge heat source moving! At a depth of about 300 meters!"
"Sonic detection... God, that thing is breathing!"
Cui Ming squeezed through the crowd, glanced at the data on the screen, and then looked at the geological team leader: "Where is the entrance?"
"Enter, entrance?"
“Underground entrances, caves, fissures, mines, anything goes.”
The captain swallowed hard and pointed to the back mountain: "There's an abandoned mine shaft, sealed off in the 1970s, but the recent earthquake cracked the sealing stone..."
"lead the way."
"Wait! Mr. Choi Myung! The situation down there is unclear; we need to prepare more..."
"Prepare what?" Cui Ming slung his backpack over his shoulder. "Oxygen? I have that. Lighting? I have that. Weapons? I have that. Map?"
He pointed to his head: "Here it is."
The captain was about to say something when Daigo stopped him.
"Let him go," Daigo said with a hint of helplessness. "We'll just follow."
-
At the mine entrance, the wind howled out, carrying a strange smell of sulfur and dampness.
Cui Ming stood at the cave entrance, took a deep breath, and finally broke into a wide smile.
"That's the taste."
What does it taste like?
"The taste of home."
Dagu: "..."
Cui Ming didn't explain, turned on his headlamp, and stepped inside.
The mine shaft was more spacious than he had imagined. The supports from the 1970s were almost completely rusted, but the main structure was still quite stable. Cui Ming walked quickly, his steps as light as a cat's. The beam of his headlamp swept across the rock walls. Occasionally, he would stop, wipe a handful of moss or water stains on the wall with his finger, and smell it.
"Instructor, what are you looking for?"
“Traces.” Cui Ming’s voice echoed in the cave. “Monsters or aliens leaving behind scents, temperature changes, and even alterations to the microbial community. The Ariponta prefer acidic environments, and the Jilong people leave behind the smell of coolant…”
He suddenly stopped, squatted down, and picked up a piece of gravel from the ground.
The cross-section of the gravel shows signs of burning, and the edges are crystallized.
“High temperature passed through,” he tossed the gravel to Daigo. “In the last three days, something has crawled through here. It’s quite large and its body temperature exceeds 1,000 degrees Celsius.”
Daigo caught the broken stones, and was so hot that he almost dropped them.
"A thousand degrees?!"
“Hmm,” Cui Ming stood up, dusting off his hands, “Interesting. It’s not Ariponta, those things don’t have such a high body temperature. Nor is it an ordinary monster, ordinary monsters can’t go this deep.”
He continued walking, his pace quickening to almost a jog.
Daigo quickly followed, his headlamp casting arcs of light behind him.
The further down you go, the higher the temperature gets, the water droplets on the rock walls begin to evaporate, and a faint smell of burning fills the air.
Cui Ming suddenly raised his hand, signaling to stop.
Did you hear that?
Daigo held his breath.
In the distance, a faint, rhythmic vibration could be heard.
It sounded like a heartbeat, or perhaps the breath of some enormous creature.
“Deeper,” Cui Ming lowered his voice, a smirk playing on his lips again, “about… five hundred meters? No, eight hundred meters. It’s going down, or…”
He listened intently, his brow furrowing slightly.
"Or it's digging, digging deeper."
"why?"
“I don’t know.” Cui Ming pulled out the Radiant One from his backpack and checked the energy readings. “But subterranean creatures usually go deeper for only two reasons—to escape, or to search for something.”
He put the Radiant back into its holster, then took out several remote-controlled bombs and stuffed them into the crevices of the rock wall.
"Let's follow it and see what it's trying to do. If it's trying to escape..."
"What if it's an escape?"
“Then it is the prey,” Cui Ming glanced back at Daigo, his smile appearing particularly white under the headlamp. “Something is chasing it, and that thing might be more interesting.”
Daigo's nape felt cold again.
He suddenly remembered a record in the file: when Storm One was fighting underground, it had repeatedly used environmental traps to lure the enemy into narrow spaces and then annihilate them in one go.
Those remote-controlled bombs, those arrangements on the rock face...
"Instructor, have you already started setting a trap?"
“Habit.” Cui Ming patted the rock wall, as if checking its sturdiness. “The underground is their territory, and it’s mine too. Whoever is more familiar with it wins.”
He continued walking forward, his figure quickly swallowed by the darkness.
Daigo took a deep breath and followed.
The beams of their headlamps flickered in the cave, and the sound of their footsteps, one light and one heavy, echoed in the empty underground.
The distant tremors grew clearer and closer.
Cui Ming's fingers rested on the holster, rhythmically tapping the leather.
It wasn't nervousness, it was anticipation.
“After Aliponta,” he said in a low voice, as if speaking to Daigo, or perhaps to himself, “I haven’t encountered a decent underground battle yet.”
"Hopefully this time..."
He paused, a fleeting smile playing on his lips in the darkness.
"Don't let me down." (End of Chapter)