Dragon Race: Lu Mingfei Returns from Warhammer

Chapter 362: The City of the Abyss
The "Great Shark" has entered the water.

Looking up through the observation window on the top, one could see a line of light in the center that seemed to be projected from an inverted well in the sky, but soon, the blue-black sea water quickly replaced everything in the field of vision, and the Giant Shark was sinking rapidly.

Yuan Zhinv stood in front of the control panel. Her seemingly heavy hands covered with armor actually controlled the joysticks, buttons and knobs quite flexibly. The mechanical arms hanging from the top of the cabin grabbed his left and right shoulders and neck, fixing him in place. The same happened to Lu Mingfei and Finkel behind him.

The cockpit of the Megashark was extremely spacious for ordinary people, but it was not so spacious for the passengers who were 2.5 meters tall and wearing heavy power armor after the modification.
In order to reduce unnecessary space occupation and free up more room for carrying weapons, the Alchemy Technology Corps did not install seats specifically suited to their size. Instead, they relied on simple fixings and magnetic locks on the armored feet to maintain the balance and stability of the warriors in the cockpit.

But the warriors didn't care about that. Brother Fingel found a more comfortable standing position, using the mechanical arm to support his armor and body and standing relaxedly.

Lu Mingfei took off his helmet and looked at the deep blue sea outside the window.

The Giant Shark had turned on its external spotlights, and the bright white light illuminated the space within about twenty meters around it. One could clearly see various small fish gathered into a huge long team swimming past the Giant Shark, and when illuminated by the white light from the spotlights, they looked like a brilliant galaxy.

He had never seen such a novel sight, such a vast ocean that seemed as silent as death but was full of vitality underneath; he had no memory of such a short dozen years in his hometown. During the hundred-year journey in that universe, the huge bodies of water he had seen were either the wastewater oceans of the forging worlds or industrial hives, or the biological pools where the Tyranids converted countless biomasses into sticky and disgusting liquids for absorption by biological ships.

"It was the same on Terra once. All life originated from this vast ocean."

Lu Mingfei's familiar voice suddenly sounded in the quiet cockpit, with a contemplative tone.

When he came to his senses, he found that the boy had appeared in front of him without him knowing when; he was quietly looking at the ocean outside the window, and the deep blue light illuminated his slightly dark face.

Lu Mingfei wanted to salute, but the boy waved his hand to indicate that he didn't need to do so. Then he realized that the will of the Lord of Humanity did not come in person, but came here in another way.

Just like the method Lu Mingze often used in the past, no one on the Giant Shark except Lu Mingfei realized the emergence of the Emperor's Will.

"Don't be nervous, Mingfei. I just came to see with my own eyes a part of Terra that has long been extinct."

The boy's thoughts were conveyed to Lu Mingfei through his mind. "Although tens of thousands of years have passed since these things were destroyed in Terra today, this amount of time is insignificant from the perspective of the universe."

"After Terra solidified into a complete planet, the boiling ocean gradually cooled down and became warm and turbid, like a primitive soup pot. This soup pot was cooked for hundreds of millions of years. The organic molecules collided, merged, and split each other. After countless failed reactions, finally in a successful reaction, a molecular chain split and replicated another identical molecular chain, which then absorbed the surrounding small organic molecules... Then microorganisms were born. That was the origin of life and the tree of evolution."

“And the human species did not appear until 3.5 billion years after this evolutionary tree grew. Even though humans in that universe had a brilliant and dark peak era, and their footprints had traveled across the entire Milky Way twice, 40,000 years was just a blink of an eye compared to the long years before. I have never marveled at the miracles of the universe, because it is already amazing that I was born in this cradle of life.”

The boy was talking and Lu Mingfei was listening silently - although he was not quite sure what the emperor meant by telling him this.

“I have no intention of interfering with your first battle after leading the legion, but I do sense a hint of uneasiness hidden in your heart.” The boy turned his head to the side. There were no more stars rising or extinguishing in his eyes. Instead, they were as dark as Lu Mingfei’s, but revealed an omniscience that saw through everything in the world. “Are you afraid of failure, Mingfei?”

"I am not afraid of failure, Your Majesty. I just cannot guarantee that there won't be too many casualties... The interference from the demons is still going on."

Lu Mingfei said truthfully that no one could hide anything from the will of His Majesty the Emperor.

"No one can guarantee that too many will not die, son." The boy's face was filled with an indescribable sadness, if only for a moment. "In the Webway War, I did not want my unique Ten Thousand to die. In the end of the Heresy, I did not want Malcador to die for me... but to this day, ten thousand years after the Heresy, even as we speak, countless lives have been sacrificed to slow the collapse of the Imperium."

"When you were a warrior of the Lamenters, I would praise your kindness and love for humanity; but now you are the Lord of the Legion, and inappropriate excessive kindness will only allow your enemies to see more of your weaknesses. Sacrifice and bloodshed are inevitable, and all you can do is make them more valuable."

The boy's tone became concise and stiff, like a strict father educating his inexperienced child.

Lu Mingfei had no choice but to lower his head and listen silently to the teachings of the Lord of Humanity.

But He did not stay for long. Soon after the thought ended, the boy's figure gradually became blurred.

Before disappearing, He took one last look out the window. The submersible vehicle had already dived to a depth of two thousand meters under the sea. Marine life was no longer dense, and there was only darkness outside the areas where the lights could not reach, as if the universe had just begun.

The will of the Lord of Mankind left, and the sounds of the machinery and propulsion system running inside the Giant Shark filled his ears again.

After thinking for a while, Lu Mingfei reorganized his thoughts and put on a helmet to hide the expression on his face.

"The depth of the Giant Shark has reached 4100 meters, and all systems are operating normally. The propulsion system will begin to slow down after reaching 6000 meters, and the 'Simulated Dragon Power' is ready to be activated." Yuan Zhinv reported while operating the control console, speaking to both Lu Mingfei and Finkel, as well as to the Sumeru Command Base on the sea.

In addition, in the central control room of the Kassel Academy headquarters, far on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, the executive director Schneider was also "auditing and learning", observing the first official operation of the "super soldiers" led by Lu Mingfei not as a commander but as an assistant.

He sat alone in the middle of the hall, staring at the various data and pictures that kept coming in from the Japanese branch on the computer screen. The light illuminated the iron oxygen mask on his face.

An operation similar to the one Japan is currently conducting to dive into the deep sea to search for dragon embryos was carried out seven years ago in the icy sea of ​​Greenland, and the team involved in the dive was almost wiped out.

Now, Finkel, one of the survivors of that operation, has set out again on the deep-sea diving equipment. Compared with before, he is undoubtedly stronger and his mind has returned to the original level (?); When Schneider asked him privately, "Can your team really solve the embryo perfectly?" Finkel gave a confident answer:
"Absolutely, easily!"

Schneider had witnessed Lu Mingfei's powerful strength before, and now he is even more looking forward to seeing what amazing performance Lu Mingfei and his army will have after undergoing the mysterious biological surgery.

If the qualities they displayed were as he expected, Schneider would immediately pack up all the elite members of the executive department and send them to Lu Mingfei to undergo transformation and put on armor.

"A clear dragon embryo signal has been detected, with a hatching rate of 21%. It is confirmed to be safe. The depth has reached 7500 meters. All systems are operating normally. The weapon module is activated, and the 'Simulated Dragon Power' is activated."

The sea more than 7,000 meters deep, which should have been pitch black, was lit up with a warm red light, and this sea area seemed to have returned to the vitality of the shallow water layer before the dive.

The color of the water is like the sunset. Large schools of fish consisting of thousands of fish float in the rosy water. Some of them form spiral upward arcs, while others dive into the seabed like whirlpools. Some of these fish are as white as silver, while others are almost transparent. Occasionally, huge manta rays flap their feather-like fleshy fins to pierce through the schools of fish. The schools of fish will crack open and then return to their original state. Giant sea turtles swim with the schools of fish, waving their wing-like fins clumsily.

This is a beautiful scene, with a vast, glorious momentum and dreamy beauty that exceeds the limits of imagination, as if the sunset-colored sea water outside the porthole is the sky before sunset, and schools of fish are swimming in groups in the sky dyed by the afterglow.

But soon another shadow passed by, and a giant whale over a hundred meters long swam over the Giant Shark - it was the extinct Basilosaurus, with gray-white cloud-like patterns on its belly, and its huge body made a thunderous sound when it hit the sea water.

"The ecological environment here has been rebuilt, probably thanks to that embryo."

Finkel stood up straight, his helmet banged against the observation window as he looked down:
The sea water has such a beautiful color because it is located directly above the Japan Trench. On the left is the gently sloping seabed, and on the right is a rugged cliff. The left side belongs to the Eurasian Plate and the right side is the Pacific Plate. They collide here to form an extremely deep underwater canyon.

At the bottom of the canyon is a golden crack running north-south, where the earth's crust breaks apart and the red rock layers roll out. Magma gushes out intermittently, and the seawater and magma present a wonderful sight of blending seamlessly, with faint thunder echoing below.

The exploration module and scientific research module of the Giant Shark began to operate autonomously. The camera took pictures and recorded valuable things, and the collector collected water samples and fish in this sea area for research when returning to land. But it can be confirmed without research that it is the biological pheromones released by the dragon embryos that affect and reconstruct the ecosystem of this sea area, attracting various marine life to come and reproduce a new food chain.

At the same time, the dragon genes also rewrote their original genes, transforming them into dragon subspecies, with a more obvious change in body shape than before -

In addition to the Basilosaur, there are also many other large mutated marine creatures, such as the giant hammerhead shark with eyes two or three meters apart, the giant squid with a body length of nearly twenty meters, and the oversized lobster with two giant claws.

But they were soon scared away by the "dragon power" simulated by the Giant Shark - the pure-blooded dragon biological signals simulated by the alchemical matrix were naturally intimidating to dragon subspecies; if there were any blind creatures who wanted to compete with the Giant Shark, the weapons and equipment equipped on the Giant Shark could also bring unexpected surprises to these primitive creatures.

The Giant Shark was still descending, and the depth gauge read 8500 meters. The thousand-meter crack below seemed to be torn by a giant sword, and golden blood was flowing out. When the magma came into contact with the sea water, there were continuous explosions. The external water temperature reached 240 degrees, but the cabin temperature was automatically adjusted, so Lu Mingfei and the others would not feel any discomfort even if they were not wearing power armor.

The propulsion system pushed the Great Shark smoothly along the seabed crack that looked like a burning abyss.

"We have discovered 'Takamagahara'." Genji said, while the exploration and scientific research modules were operating at maximum power.

The first thing that was discovered was a huge black tower standing next to the ground fissure, with magma rising and falling not far away; then, as the Giant Shark moved forward, an ancient alien city unfolded below like a picture scroll.

Even though half of the city had fallen into the lava river, the ruins of the other half that had collapsed still showed how magnificent it once was.

An endless series of towering buildings, with raised gabled roofs covered with iron-black tiles engraved with cirrus clouds and dragon beasts. Hundreds of meters long metal chains are hung on the four corners of the buildings, with black wind chimes hung on the chains. These chains rise and fall in the ocean currents, and thousands of black wind chimes sway with the ocean currents, playing silent music.

However, Lu Mingfei's focus of observation was not on the artistic style and architectural structure of this alien city.

"Activate the scanning system and thoroughly scan all signals in this area to find the dragon embryo and the hidden 'Holy Grail'."

Lu Mingfei gave orders while observing the abnormalities of the ancient underwater city outside the window. However, less than two seconds after his order was issued, a warning sounded from the cockpit of the Giant Shark:
"Giant biological signal detected!"

Giant biosignal?

Lu Mingfei frowned slightly, but the next second he looked towards a "building" in the ruins of the ancient city with a strange shape, like a mountain rising from the ground. A huge fleshy pupil slowly opened on its dark surface, and the red light reflected by the magma seemed to serve as a source of fire, igniting a cluster of purple flames in the pupil.

It just stared at Lu Mingfei's people from a distance of hundreds of meters... Then a second eye opened on the other side of the building, and this strange building seemed to come alive from its slumber.

"It's about to begin." Lu Mingfei said in a deep voice.

(End of this chapter)