There weren't many people in the snake hunt group. From the fact that their opponent was capable of infecting all Desolates through the Desolates' collective subconsciousness ocean, everyone understood just how terrifying their enemy was this time.
For that reason, the Celestials only sent out their elites to search for the serpent while the main army monitored them from afar to provide reinforcement if necessary.
The snake eye in the trunk acted up several more times during their journey, and the closer they approached the location that the snake eye was looking at, the more frequent its violent bursts became.
Increasingly more chaotic information was being sent through the passage of the collective subconsciousness towards Yun Yi's mind. And the more information he received, the clearer their function became: to cause pain.
Yun Yi was already scowling while he endured the pain from the chaotic information. This pain information was already reflecting on his body, it felt like there was a red-hot iron rod being stuck straight into his mind, then slowly stirred left and right.
The pain was exceptionally clear, but his judgement was slipping. This contradicting sensation caused one to feel like screaming or roaring, only to find that they couldn't do anything about it except to face this torture again and again, then it would proceed to create even more pain.
"Are you ok?" Po Nan looked at Yun Yi's eternal scowl and tried asking.
"It's still bearable for now" Yun Yi nodded, then began to carefully describe his internal situation.
As a researcher, he understood clearly that if his mental state was unstable, forcing himself to proceed by acting tough would only result in terrible consequences. The rational choice was to report his state to a companion in a timely manner.
"If it reaches a dangerous level, the device I prepared will report it to you"
Yun Yi was participating in this mission with the resolve to die, after all, he was originally a Desolate. That was why he had implanted a device into his body to constantly monitor the state of his consciousness.
As soon as his mental state deteriorated below a certain level, the device would alert his surroundings, and if it fell below the minimum value, the countermeasures he prepared would kill him.
The snake eye in the trunk suddenly jumped once again and looked down at the ground, once again growing countless veins as snake heads.
"It's here!" Yun Yi opened a compartment of the trunk, which included a number of dials, buttons, and a screen: "It's right below us"
"Yun Rong, have you arrived?" Yun Yi fixed the snake eye trunk onto the ground, operated the buttons and dials, then turned on his communicator and contacted Yun Rong who was supposedly learning an ultimate technique from Killer J.
[I can act any time, although, why did you give up on the snake eye? You get to draw two more cards while in a chaotic state, that's simply divine]
Ever since he studied under Killer J, Yun Rong's speech pattern had become mixed with occasional nonsense, but fortunately, Yun Yi had also learned the perfect way to deal with this from an unknown source, which was to completely ignore the words he didn't understand.
"Withdraw!" a squad of about 10 people exchanged glances and quickly ran towards the far distance.
Standing at a distance, Yun Yi's group gathered in front of a projected screen. Quite a few clockwork birds were flying above where the trunk had been abandoned, constantly transferring the images they saw onto the screen.
They could see the snake eye in the trunk madly struggling, meanwhile, a countdown was ticking down on Yun Yi's glasses. When the timer reached 0, he looked up.
A tiny red dot could be seen in the sky that was growing increasingly larger. A metal rod that had become incandescent from being heated was spiraling as it plunged into the ground, many of the Cede runes carved onto the rod had already been triggered and exerted their power as soon as it came into contact with the ground.
The earth shook intensely as if everything was trembling.
Projection Outer Space weaponry, created on the basis of a document from Negary called 'Analysis of Fang Ze's Authority', which was then modified to fit the current world and brought into reality through the Celestials' Fantasy Technology.
Its main function was to attack underground enemy bunkers or structures, targeted subjugation, and in conjunction with ground troops to assassinate or break sieges; originally developed to drop into Desolate bases during the war in order to break the other party's defenses.
Yun Yi then released a few more clockwork birds in order to observe the drop site.
The ground around the drop site had clearly cracked open, affecting the surrounding geography. The very center of the drop site even caved downwards with some molten lava seeping out from the cracks.
"I found some fluctuations!" Yun Yi's gaze gradually became tense as he was rubbing his temple with one hand in order to ease the continuous aching pain.
Thanks to his dissection of the head snake, he managed to dig up some information regarding the source of the poison, the so-called Serpent God. Using this information, he created the long-range locator snake eye as well as a short-range locator device that could accurately pinpoint the Serpent God's location.
Since the fluctuations had appeared, this could only mean that their target was close.
The cracks on the ground slowly expanded as a presence of bad omen seeped out from within.
The cracks seemed to pause for a brief moment before rapidly spreading, the ground quickly became distorted as dirt and rock caved in while leaving a long trail behind it. Evidently, some sort of giant monster was approaching from underground.
"Everyone be careful!" the deity statue that covered its eyes appeared behind Po Nan while his body swiftly entered an ethereal state. The deity statue then slowly lowered its hand, revealing a pair of golden irises that first glanced at Po Nan's body before gazing underground: "That thing is exceptionally giant"
As Yun Yi cleared his throat, a small bag behind him opened up and transformed into two large spiral engines that pushed him into the air thanks to its considerable thrust. The bracelets on his wrists and ankles also expanded to turn into mechanical armor pieces that covered his hands and feet, supplying the necessary thrust for him to change directions.
The remaining Celestials also deployed their measures one by one. For example, a certain Celestial opened a large chest that he had carried with him, allowing the object inside to unravel itself into a large mechanical armor, followed by numerous golden eyes that appeared all over its body that appeared to be perfectly combined with the armor.
Or the thousand-hands Celestial from the battle with the Nanwu Shaman who deployed all of his arms, each of which carried a different kind of gun while wearing a layer coat of various ammunition.
The crack soon reached their locations and didn't stop for even a single moment. A ruby-like serpent emerged from underneath the ground and opened its gigantic maws, attempting to bite or swallow Yun Yi who was flying in the sky.
Each of the serpent's scales were as large as an armored vehicle, and by the time they took a careful look at it, they noticed that the ruby-like scales were actually crimson irises that contained a maddening level of grudge and pain.
As the serpent leapt out of the ground and was about to catch Yun Yi in its maws, a small bit of its tail was still underground; but even so, its entire body continued to writhe in an unnatural manner to try and ease its pain.
「 I am the Serpent God, am I pain---- 」before the serpent could say the final word, a bright red light shot up from the ground to strike the serpent's lower jaw. The strike forced it to shut its mouth and retreat at the same time.
"I have a feeling that if I let you continue speaking, you'll summon something terrifying…" Yun Rong mercilessly cut its words off while wielding a pair of bright red blades in his hands.
