<h4>Chapter 1612: Home of the Brain Monsters</h4>


    Trantor: EndlessFantasy Trantion Editor: EndlessFantasy Trantion


    It had been a long time since Hao Renst saw such a monster. Thest time he saw it was when he helped solve the sirens’ problem in Nasaton. A brain monster had upied the city of the deep sea. It had an exchange of spirits the siren queen. It took Hao Ren and his team a while to catch the monster, but it got away from the high-security monitoring of the Petrachelys by uploading its consciousness. The escape had bothered Hao Ren for a long time.


    After the incident, he had never seen the terrible creature, which was mutated from the brain of the guardian giant. It just disappeared out of thin air all together from the deserteds and space in the ne of Dreams.


    Never had he expected to see it here, on a that the minions of the Mad Lord ruled.


    Vivian’ use of Night Veil spell was a wise move. Under the cover of powerful magic, the brain monster in the room was not aware of the foreign breath above it. The brain monster justy on the round metal pedestal like a mollusk with its tentacles—which were in fact nerves—connected to the holes around the base. It produced a mumble that sounds as if mud was squirming on the ground while issuing instructions to the different instruments in the room.


    Had it not been for the previous encounters, no one would have associated this horrific meat with the guardian giants.


    “It does not notice us.” Nangong Sanba quickly stepped back just after a nce. “The sound of this thing is disgusting. Please do not tell me that it is singing a song popr among the festered army.”


    “Brain monsters are one of the highly intelligent mad creatures.” Vivian’s brows knitted together. “Could it be that these brain monsters are the ones controlling festered monsters?”


    “You mean that this is actually their of the brain monsters?” Lily blinked. “Are you sure? We have only seen one so far. Maybe it is just a coincidence.”


    “No, perhaps this is not the only one.” Hao Ren noticed the small details in the room. “Did you see the instrument and the pedestal? Those things have a bioelectronic connection with the nerves of the brain monsters. Other than that, there is no other control interface. It only means that these equipment are specifically designed for the brain monster, not for other controllers. If the brain monster is just an individual little potato among the festered army, how do you exin the existence of these specialized instruments that no one except the brain monster could use?”


    “We cannot rule out that the pieces of equipment are only meant for the brain monsters,” Nangong Wuyue said in a whisper. “What if it is the head here?”


    Hao Ren thought for a moment. He could not rule out the possibility. “I cannot say for sure. Let’s see if we can find more of these brain monsters.”


    Lily bared her fangs at the thing below the floor. “What should we do about it? Should we take it out?”


    Hao Ren pondered and then shook his head. “Don’t cause unnecessary trouble. And don’t forget that the brain monsters have psychic abilities; it may be able to alert the others through telepathy. In case we fail to kill it at once, we will be in deep sh*t. There is no way to capture this thing nor make it confess anything using torture. It is a low-value target.”


    Others agreed with Hao Ren’s view. Lily was a little disappointed and could only follow Hao Ren from behind as the team moved deeper into the underground facility.


    Thirty minutester, they passed through the outer zone of ??the great temple and entered the underground area.


    The team was now in the vicinity of the control center, which was a rather massive facility on theary fortress. It consisted of a skyscraping temple and an underground structure that looked like a subterranean city. The underground part wasrger than the structure on the surface. During the adventure on Naqdal, the sprites led Hao Ren and his team directly to the server room. But here, they had to maneuver through the sophisticated venttion system to find their way to the target. This had significantly slowed them down.


    “Sman has sent a message: the sporadic exchange of fire in space has ended. Now, the Guardian Legion and the drone group have retreated to the predetermined position and stood opposite the Amantir defensive circle,” Hao Ren said in a whisper. “Following this, the Amantir forces will return to the’s atmosphere. We have to be very careful.”


    Nangong Sanba looked at the dimly lit passage ahead. The monotonous environment here made him uneasy and was patience-challenging. He became a little antsy. “Where are we now?”


    The MDT called up a hologram showing the map Sm had provided. At the center of the n was a blue light column representing the crystal of Amantir, and they were now on the side of the blue light column, blocked by aplex web of obstacles. “The straight-line distance from here to the crystal of Amantir is two kilometers. But considering we have to maneuver through the endless tunnels and corridors, the real distance would be ten times longer.”


    There was no way around it. The team was moving around in a circle in the underground. They entered from the south of the great temple and then followed a spiral duct moving downward for half a circle. A section of the tunnel was close to the equatorial rift before it turned to the north of the temple into the control room where the crystal was located. Theoretically, it was the safest route.


    “Sigh, we can only move ahead,” Nangong Sanba said.


    After following the map going for some distance, Lily halted her steps, feeling a little baffled. “Do you feel it? It is hot here.”


    Not only her but Hao Ren had also felt it. The temperature in the surroundings seemed to have risen.


    “We are right next to the rift.” Hao Ren nced at the map, on which a striking red crack cut through one-third of the underground facility. “It should be heating from the rift.”


    It turned out that Hao Ren was right.


    Before long, the air in the tunnel had be a heatwave, and there were apparent signs of repair on the tunnel. There were also branch lines and gates that did not exist on the map. These were the additions from the reconstruction.


    Apparently, after the equator of Amantir was torn open, the festered army had repaired and modified the area. The map that Sman provided was no longer valid after this point.


    “Apparently, the underground facility is notpletely sealed. Otherwise, the heatwave would not havee into the tunnel.” Y’zaks sniffled with an annoyed expression. “It is worse than the air quality in my homeworld. The sulfur smell is not pure at all.”


    Hao Ren nced at him with a condescending sneer. “You still have the nerve to talk about air quality; the air in your homeworld could cause lung cancer in ordinary humans with just a couple of breath.”


    While speaking, they had arrived at a fork, which again did not exist on the map. Now, they were on their own. Lily cocked her tail straight up in the air and watched how the fluffy hair on her tail fluttered. “The air is blowing from that direction. Should we go and check it out?”


    The direction that the husky maiden suggested was consistent with the original route. So, Hao Ren agreed with a nod.


    The team moved in the direction from where the hot air blew and found that they were leaving the venttion duct system.


    The tunnel ahead was getting wider and wider with several abandoned gates along the way. The lighting system did not work here. All signs suggested that this was an abandoned tunnel.


    The road opened up ahead.


    Nangong Wuyue nervously jabbed the ground with the tip of her tail with her arms crossed. “I feel like I am evaporating!”


    As soon as they emerged from thest gate, they found themselves right before the equatorial rift.


    A bright red filled the field of vision. When the eyes finally adapted to the light, Hao Ren discovered that arge metal tform built on the rock formation extended out from the gate. Under the tform, hot-redva surged continuously under the drive of some chaotic energy. On both sides of the tform, exposed machines, ducts, tform, beams, and gates were everywhere on the rocks, which had turned red from the heat. These artificial structures extended all the way down the cliffs into theva below.


    “Hide!” Nangong Sanba suddenly shouted quietly. Almost at the same time, Vivian summoned a Night Veil spell again shrouding everyone in it.


    The team then hid in a recess on the edge of the tform while a group of hideous monsters flew over the tform.


    Those monsters did not seem like they were conducting a patrol but soldiers that had just been ‘created’ out from the rift. They roared as they flew up into the sky, totally unaware of the tiny intruders down below.


    Hao Ren looked into the distance where more monsters were being created out from the rift that surged withva. Their number was much lesser than those in the battle earlier, but it was still a shocking scene to look at.


    Lily poked out her tongue. “How could it be possible? Do they create the soldiers from theva?”


    With the wave of a hand, a little bat flew out from the shadow nearby and puffed into blood mist before returning into Vivian’s body. She then shook her head. “No. The monsters do note out of the magma. I have checked with the small bat; there are evocation grounds down below.”


    “Evocation grounds?” Hao Ren’s brows knitted together.


    Vivian did not borate. Instead, she drew a few runes on the ground, and the scene that the little bat saw began to appear above the runes. The image was not as high-resolution as a hologram, but it was good enough.


    At the bottom of the rift, near the surgingva, many massive ck tforms were scattered along the cliffs. The tforms were drawing someplicated symbols and patterns with dark-red outlines. Hao Ren felt dizzy by just looking at the chaotic patterns. Every once in awhile, the model on the ck tform will glow, and a deformed monster would form in the air before flying up into the sky.


    “F*ck!” Hao Ren could not help but swear. “Is there any more nature-defying than this?”


    Lily nced at him. “Making 80 billion drones in four years and yet you still have the nerve to use others of nature-defying?”


    Hao Ren was speechless.


    “These are not the most important. Whates up next is the most crucial part.” Vivian interrupted them. “Look, these tforms are actually connected.”


    Sure enough, as the viewing angle rose, everyone could see that the ck tforms were not isted from each other. They all had a ck, pipe-like thing that extended out to the middle of theva flow at the bottom of the rift, where a ck metal tower with a few rings of hemispherical structures on the surface. Each hemispherical structure carried a monster.


    It was the brain monsters.


    Sure enough, Amantir was a brain-monsterir.