Now that the general direction had been found, everything else was much easier.
Li Yao, Long Yangjun, Li Jialing, and the two "information lives" that had just been born, as well as the toys of the two little fellows, namely the super-tiny spiritual puppets that were as tiny as ants and the spiritual puppets that looked like wild bees that could fly freely, immediately set off and explored the direction where the special waves came from along the existing cracks and caves.
Every three hours, they would stop and activate the scanning and grabbing magical equipment to locate the source of the quakes again.
As they expected, the waves were getting more and more intense and clear, indicating that their direction was not wrong. Also, according to the increasing levels of the waves, the direction and the height could be further adjusted.
Gradually, they were far away from the towns where the ordinary people lived and the areas that were abundant in spiritual energy and life. They had truly entered the absolute darkness where there was nothing but dead silence.
It was a forbidden area where even the underground wildlings did not exist. The tunnels and caves were gradually narrowing and cutting off, too. The only thing that could be found were the bizarre-shaped natural cracks that allowed people to pass through.
In many places, they even had to clear the way with the Colossi by brute force in order to find new cracks.
Had it not been for the fact that Li Yao and Long Yangjun, the two super experts, who were leading the way at the cost of their spiritual energy, they would never have been able to find the correct path and would have been trapped in the rocks alive.
Just like that, they held their breath and snuck in the darkness for more than twenty-four hours before they finally saw a glimmer of dawn.
Shrinking their body to the minimum with the bone shrinking technique, they struggled to crawl through a natural crack that was no thicker than a viper. Then, they found themselves in the middle of a man-made tunnel that was at least fifty meters in diameter. There was no telling where it led to.
The tunnel was wide on two sides and narrow on the top and bottom. It was in the shape of an oval. There were obvious traces of artificial excavation on the walls, but after thousands of years of erosion, they had gradually become smooth again, as if they were covered in a hard shell.
"The tunnel was not excavated right now."
Li Yao analyzed the current altitude through the barometer. "We have descended to more than 24,000 meters underground. In many places, this is the boundary between the earth's crust and the earth's mantle. I didn't expect there to be such a large-scale man-made tunnel at such a deep distance.
"Come here and look at the traces on the walls of the tunnel. You'd better feel them with your hands. Do you feel the tiny helical stripes? They should be the traces of a certain shield tunneling machine or a giant drill. Judging from the size of the traces, they do not seem to be the magical equipment of the Pangu Clan or the Nuwa Clan of the same kind. They are too small."
Long Yangjun was the first to understand what Li Yao meant.
The 13 member races of the Pangu Civilization Alliance were mostly carbon-based life forms with large bodies. They were easily 20 to 30 meters tall or even taller.
Therefore, the shield tunneling machines, excavators, and pulverizers of the Pangu Clan or the Nuwa Clan should've been larger in size, and the traces they left should've been much wider too.
In many primeval relics, including the Kunlun relic, the remains of similar magical equipment of the Pangu Clan and the Nuwa Clan had been unearthed. Therefore, Li Yao and Long Yangjun knew the size of such magical equipment very well.
"You suspect that the tunnel was excavated by human beings?"
Thinking for a moment, Long Yangjun said, "The Supreme Emperor or the Blood God from ten thousand years ago!"
"If your guess is correct, it is very likely."
Li Yao nodded his head and said, "Assuming that the Supreme Emperor and the Blood God's army were really looking for 'something' below the ground of the capital planet, they would've had to excavate a tunnel that was spacious enough to transport soldiers and even destructive magical equipment. Now that Blackstar the Great learned the secret, there was no need for him to dig a tunnel of his own from the beginning. As long as he found the tunnel of the Supreme Emperor or the Blood God, he would've reached the 'target' easily."
"Fair enough."
Long Yangjun released her telepathic thoughts and explored for a moment. Then, she led everybody to the middle of the tunnel and pointed at the marks on the ground. "Touch these."
On one of his knees, Li Yao touched the uneven ground carefully and touched countless jagged protrusions.
"They're tracks. Very, very wide, heavy tracks. Also, they're a group of six to eight tracks. They must be some sort of track-type carrier with an astonishing load capacity."
Li Yao said, "If the tracks were made by the Supreme Emperor or the Blood God's army ten thousand years ago, they would've been corroded by time and wouldn't be so 'fresh'. The tracks of the tracks must've been left by the repeated collisions in the recent year and a half!"
Now, they were finally certain that their judgment was correct.
As for the obvious "contradiction" that the height of the tunnel was only thirty to fifty meters, and the working surface of the super-huge shield tunneling machine was almost a hundred meters in diameter, it was not a big problem.
The super-huge shield tunneling machine, on the other hand, was extremely vulnerable despite the seemingly invincible iron behemoths. The high-speed running time could be counted in seconds. If it was not necessary, one second less would be better.
It was the most efficient approach to dissecting the super-huge shield tunneling machine into thousands of components and magical equipment units, transporting them to the work site through track-type carriers, and reassembling them on the spot.
Knowing that the artificial tunnel must lead to Blackstar the Great's "trump card", after another two hours of holding their breath, it was not strange at all when they heard the rumbling noises up ahead and saw the guards of the Imperial Guards who were armed to the teeth.
Not just Li Yao and Long Yangjun, even Li Jialing, who had just finished a course of strengthening, could've easily taken down the Imperial Guards.
However, it was unnecessary to alert the enemy in such a way. They still chose a safer approach.
Everybody lurked in a dark corner of the artificial tunnel. Li Yao drilled a hole the size of a finger on the wall with "Neltharion" and reached the hot work site up ahead. Then, Li Xiaoming and Li Wenwen manipulated tremendous mechanical ants to crawl into the hole and send back the images and waves that they scanned. Everybody could share the vision of the mechanical ants.
The pictures that Neltharion and the mechanical ants sent back made them hold their breath and almost exclaim in shock.
The underground space at the end of the artificial tunnel was too enormous, too vast, and too "boundless".
Li Yao had seen countless enormous underground spaces. He had even seen a silver "ocean" below the ground of Boneyard in the beginning.
However, all the underground spaces combined were not as shocking as the void before his eyes.
The diameter and height of the underground space were at least ten times higher than that of the Great Iron Plants. It was more than enough to accommodate dozens of underground towns. It was like a mini black hole embedded inside the capital planet that swallowed all the rocks around.
As far as their eyes could reach, there were stairs and platforms that spiraled downward everywhere. There were also enormous caves that had been opened horizontally on the wall, which looked like some sort of complicated honeycomb or ant nest.
Some of the "ant nests" were the barracks of the Imperial Guards. Interconnected crystal cannons and all kinds of defense systems had been established next to the barracks, making them impenetrable. Some of the other "honeycombs" were factories where shield tunneling machines were assembled and maintained. None of them were small in scale.
Maneuvering Neltharion, Li Yao carefully adjusted the direction and went all the way down. He saw that on the platforms near the bottom of the enormous hollow, quite a few super enormous shield tunneling machines were digging and shattering nonstop. They were also followed by almost a hundred large, medium, and small shield tunneling machines. Their contrasting sizes made them look like giant beasts that were out hunting with their children.
It was impossible for the few shield tunneling machines to develop such a vast underground space in only a year and a half!
Thinking quickly, Li Yao was amused by his own stupidity. Such a "boundless" space was certainly not dug out by Blackstar the Great on his own. It was probably the Supreme Emperor or the Blood God's troops as Long Yangjun said. Wuying Qi was merely continuing the work of his predecessors.
BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM!
Right then, they heard rhythmic explosions from the depths of the underground space.
"Are they shattering the rocks with cannons?"
Long Yangjun asked Li Yao in a low voice.
"Not exactly."
Li Yao stuck his ears and cheeks to the wall and sensed carefully for a moment. Then, he shook his head and said, "They are scanning the structure deeper below the ground with the waves and the feedback after the crystal bombs explode."
Such a way of holographic scanning with the feedback of waves was a regular approach for the underground exploration.
Judging from the distribution of the wave emission sources, the Immortal Cultivators dug shallow tunnels in every direction with the super enormous shield tunneling machines and spread out in a radial pattern. Then, they installed a group of special crystal bombs at the end of every tunnel and scanned the place.
In other words, whatever Wuying Qi asked them to look for, they had not made any breakthroughs yet. They were just shooting randomly without a reason.
After realizing that, Li Yao was more or less relieved.
"At least an entire legion of the Imperial Guards has been deployed here. Also, judging from the new barracks and fortresses that they are building nonstop, the scale of the garrison is still expanding."
Li Yao narrowed his eyes and analyzed the image sent back by Neltharion carefully. "No wonder Li Linghai values the Imperial Guards so much. He has been secretly communicating with the Imperial Guards for a long time. Like I said, most of the Imperial Guards do not have much combat ability and will collapse at any moment on a battlefield. However loyal they are, they will not be of much use at all.
"As it turns out, Li Linghai, or Wuying Qi, did not intend to ask the Imperial Guards to fight the enemy at all but used them as' engineers'. That is quite appropriate."
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