pjbooks Chapter 337 Groundwater!
Chapter 337 Groundwater!
The "sowing" of the ruins began earlier than he thought.
Zhang Yan went around to the back of the factory and cut in through the drainage pipe.
The space here is narrow, making it difficult for ordinary people to move around, but the Thousand-Machine Arm can directly pry open the corroded and deformed pipe walls.
He neither summoned the White Tiger nor released the Black Scorpion.
Currently, strong combat power is not the first choice.
Cut the water first.
There was a thin layer of black residue in the pipe, adhering to the inner wall.
Zhang Yan approached with the heart of a divine craftsman.
A blue-white light appeared, and the remaining black residue quickly faded away.
System notification: Low concentration of pollution, can be purified.
Zhang Yan pushed his way through the pipe.
Ten minutes later, the first reconnaissance robot arrived at the edge of the second underground level.
Thermal imaging revealed a circular high-temperature zone with a diameter of about ten meters at the center of the third underground level.
The temperature is stable.
It is not a mechanical heat source.
It is the metabolism of living organisms.
The B+ grade pollutant is inside.
Zhang Yan switched the camera to the underground water pipes.
The pipeline splits into three output nodes underground in the factory, each connecting to different branches of the Shanghai underground water system. Each node has an extremely thin, dark red energy filament extending along the direction of water flow.
It's like twisting pollution into a thread and then slowly feeding it into the city.
Zhang Yan looked at the three energy threads and suppressed his killing intent.
If the satellite hadn't detected it early, the pollution radius would have expanded to the edge of residential areas in a few days. By then, wells, green spaces, and underground seepage would all have become channels for transmission.
Monsters can be killed.
How to kill the water?
This is how Xu is playing now.
Instead of confronting him head-on, we pollute the environment.
Instead of continuing to approach the core, Zhang Yan activated the Azure Dragon's space detection module.
Remote scan initiated.
A few seconds later, the system provided a label.
A stable small spatial compression cavity exists in the underground core area.
The pollutant is output after the energy of the ash is refined through the compression chamber. The current diffusion radius is 3.4 kilometers.
Zhang Yan's eyes darkened.
Spatial compression chamber.
This is something that a B+ level family member can't naturally make.
It requires at least an external device, or a structure left behind by a higher-ranking member of the family.
In other words, the Shanghai factory is not a wild node.
It is artificially cultivated.
A direct assault on the core area could destroy the compression chamber, and when the chamber collapses, the accumulated ash energy inside will be released all at once.
That would be tantamount to helping it spread.
The pipes must be sealed first.
Zhang Yan changed his route and moved along the underground water branch pipe toward the first node.
The pipe is getting narrower and narrower.
He simply switched the exoskeleton to low-power close-fitting mode, with the Thousand Arms clearing the way in front.
The first output node is located seven meters underground.
The dark red energy strands vibrated slightly against the water.
Zhang Yan did not tear it off directly.
He used the multi-arm to fix the pipe wall, and then attached the Heavenly Craftsmanship Heart close to the bottom of the node.
The purification pulse is released at a low frequency.
Blue and white light spread along the inner wall of the pipe, and the dark red energy strands began to retract, retreating towards the core as if they had been burned.
System notification: Conductivity has dropped to 71%.
Zhang Yan continued moving towards the second node.
Footsteps could be faintly heard from above.
The guards haven't spotted him yet, but there might be vibration sensors on the basement level.
He didn't stop.
The second node was thicker than the first, and the contaminant had already formed a film on the outside of the pipe wall. It took Zhang Yan four minutes to seal it.
The conduction efficiency dropped to 43%.
The core heat source experienced its first fluctuation.
That thing sensed it.
Zhang Yan steadied his heart rate and continued forward.
The third node is located near the third underground level.
Unusual indentations have appeared on the top of the pipe, as if something has been pressing down on it from above for a long time. The images transmitted back by the reconnaissance robot are starting to distort, not because of poor signal, but because the images themselves are being stretched.
The influence range of the spatial compression chamber has been reached.
Zhang Yan did not get too close.
The Azure Dragon module specifies a safe distance of 21 meters.
He stopped at a distance of 23 meters.
It's just enough to seal the node.
It might also be discovered by the core area.
Zhang Yan pressed the Heart of Heaven onto it, releasing a purification pulse.
This time, the dark red energy thread did not retreat immediately. Instead, it shuddered and rushed towards him through the pipe.
Zhang Yan was prepared.
The thousand-arm mechanism unfolds into an arc-shaped baffle, boosting the power of the Heavenly Craftsmanship Core.
Blue-white light and dark red light collided inside the pipe.
The pipe wall began to vibrate.
The footsteps above suddenly became more frequent.
Someone has discovered it.
Zhang Yan ignored it.
three seconds.
Five seconds.
ten seconds.
The dark red energy filament was forcibly pressed back to the node and then broke.
System notification: Conductivity has dropped to 18%.
The remaining conduction is due to natural leakage in the core area, and it can no longer form an active output.
Zhang Yan withdrew the power of the Heavenly Craftsmanship.
There was a moment of silence in the pipe.
Then, a low hiss came from deep underground.
It's not anger.
It feels more like pain.
Zhang Yan looked up.
There was a downward-extending access opening at the top of the pipe, which was dark inside and covered with traces of corroded metal.
The hissing sound came from inside.
The system annotation popped up.
B+ level dependents
Form unknown.
Current status: Restricted.
Zhang Yan stared at the word "restricted".
It is not hibernation.
It's not a period of dormancy.
It is restricted.
He had a miniature reconnaissance robot climb up along the opening.
The video feed was intermittent.
In the center of the third underground level, there is a circular chamber.
The chamber is surrounded by a large number of metal supports and pipelines.
In the center was a bloated, dark red life form, fixed between the ground and the wall by seven thick metal chains.
Each chain is engraved with patterns that do not belong to the modern industrial system.
The end of the chain is connected to a spatial compression chamber.
That thing isn't freely exporting pollution.
It was used as a battery.
Zhang Yan's expression turned completely cold.
The Zefeng Consortium is training its members' families.
No.
It's worse than domestication.
They locked their families underground and used them to poison the city's water system.
This means there is a complete set of technologies supporting it.
This technology may have originated from the ruins, or it may have come from a human organization that has already been contaminated.
The sound of a metal door opening came from above.
The sound of footsteps followed the maintenance passage downwards.
The guards have arrived.
Zhang Yan did not rush to summon the mecha.
The underground space is narrow, making it difficult for the White Tiger to maneuver. The Black Scorpion is damaged, and forcing a fight would affect its core cavity.
He needs to know one thing first.
Who put those shackles on that B+ rank familiar?
Zhang Yan zoomed in on the reconnaissance robot's image.
In the center of the seven chains is a small control console.
The console screen was still lit.
There's a line of cherry blossom text scrolling above.
The system's automatic translation popped up quickly.
"Seventh breeding node, output recovery failed, requesting remote takeover."
Zhang Yan stared at the words and slowly clenched his fist.
The console screen flickered the next second.
A new instruction popped up.
"Remove the restrictions."