"Hmm?"
Hearing someone call his name, Elvin Ackerman instinctively responded.
But.
After responding, he froze, because that self-proclaimed Arctic King thing was looking at him.
Yes.
In Elvin Ackerman's eyes, the exploiter Miyel was a traitor, and also a scoundrel who would watch hellish jokes about Jesus at night with very poor taste.
And the Arctic Fox carrying a pink belt, speaking broken English and mingling with her, was clearly an extremely bizarre freak.
"You actually dare to respond!"
Seeing Elvin Ackerman stick his head out, Master Fuli looked shocked, not expecting Elvin to actually dare to respond. Did he not hear himself calling his full name just now?
Under Elvin's gaze, Master Fuli raised the two-meter-long, diamond-encrusted pink item, which seemed to be a lady's belt, in his hand and suddenly swung it out.
The pink belt, as it swung from Master Fuli's hand, transformed into thousands, like a scarlet tornado crashing directly onto Elvin Ackerman.
"Waaah—"
In an instant, whipping compared to a torrential downpour landed on Elvin Ackerman, the crisp sound of lashes and his work clothes turned into fragments in the air.
The completely shredded clothes of Elvin, standing in place with wide eyes, his originally bronzed skin turned bright red, faintly seeping blood drops under the rapid whipping.
"Why..."
Elvin leaned back, his arms falling freely to his sides, his emerald green eyes rolling back, passing out.
And the surrounding people watched this scene in a daze.
What happened?
The Arctic King swung his right hand left and right twice, but the crisp sound of lashes exploded like firecrackers, clearly showing Elvin endured no less than a hundred lashes.
"Hmph!"
Master Fuli retracted the belt, glanced at Elvin, who asked why before fainting, and sneered:
"This king needs no explanation for my actions, but if I must say, it's because the diviner told me my fortune today clashes with names containing Elvin. You damn well hexed me!"
"And you all, what are you gawking at! Dig! If you don't uncover the ruins in half an hour, I'll kill the foreigners!"
Master Fuli swept his gaze, glaring fiercely at those craning their necks like ducks watching the fun.
"Waaah......"
The gene swappers in the audience quickly returned to their excavation work, not sparing a glance, vigorously digging deeper into the rock layers.
Clearly.
The self-proclaimed [Arctic King] Arctic Fox was not merely a delusional king, but a highly spiritualized beast who had seized control of the ruin excavation site.
Everyone present had become hostages!
"Miyel!"
"Make a note of Elvin's name for me, and after the ruin excavation is completed, send him a calcium tablet with a yawn."
"Don't hold any delusions; once I find anyone slacking, the men will be sent to the mines, and the women to Miyel's brothel!"
"Monitor each other, report each other, and betraying workers will receive rewards from the great king!"
The pseudonymous [Arctic King] Master Fuli let out a cackling laugh, spouting nonsense to intimidate the foreigners.
The capitalist landlord clichés one after another scared the foreigners into frantically digging into the cliff without pause.
The imagination of organisms is limited; people cannot imagine things they haven't done.
The Arctic King opens his mouth about selling a dragon, clearly an expert in this field, involved in the slave trade.
The Arctic King speaks, and he will surely act.
Miyel: "........"
The words from Master Fuli's mouth... seem familiar, with an overwhelming sense of déjà vu.
......
Under the intimidation of a hundred consecutive lashes, the ruin excavation project quickly advanced inward.
The originally square-shaped metal high wall gradually elongated into a rectangle as the work progressed, revealing the building within the permafrost layer labeled the "mental asylum."
The layout of the "mental hospital" was fully revealed.
Entering from the hospital entrance, one first had to pass through a courtyard flanked by towering metal towers, after which one could enter the main hospital building.
The entire architectural complex was rectangular, with the main body of the hospital made entirely of metal, providing maximum defense.
Here, unlike the inside of the [Dragon Ruins], circular buildings were not ubiquitous.
The architectural style of the First Epoch ruins was large, with everything being exceptionally vast, and the walls were adorned with irregular, eerie carvings.
The carvings were the script of the First Epoch, with each carving representing a polysemous character that required contextual understanding for translation.
Amid the rallying cries of the polar leader, everyone united to set up the pre-prepared load-bearing steel beams, supporting the excavated cavern and forming a temporary steel-frame structure.
"Unos! Come over and study the door lock!"
The excavation, which was supposed to be completed between six and seven-thirty in the evening, was fully finished shortly after four in the afternoon, encouraged by Master Fuli's endless exertions.
Sitting on the silver tray, Master Fuli called out to Dr. Unos, who was transcribing and translating the wall carvings with Wang Ya.
Unos was taken aback, looking towards Master Fuli, then at the load-bearing steel columns, where a dense row of people stood trembling as they manifested their spiritual forms, raising their arms to support some of the deficient parts of the steel columns.
"Is it stable?"
Unos gazed blankly at the supervisor, Master Fuli, questioning whether the safety and quality were assured.
Master Fuli carelessly waved his hand, saying, "Whether it's stable is a matter for later; shouldn't the most important thing now be to open the door and find and suppress any life forms that might exist within the ruins?"
Master Fuli, able to see the flow of spiritual particles, was certain that there were strange entities inside the ruins capable of absorbing them.
However, he could not determine if they were biological or some unidentified objects.
"Hmm...."
Unos pondered for a moment, nodding lightly as if abandoning some previous plans, and said, "No problem, but we need to first reach a consensus before entering."
"If any ancient organisms revive, retreat should be our priority. From a certain perspective, the First Epoch's gene engineering technology is very sinister; I don't want to relive the nightmare of swimming through a mountain of flesh...."
As Unos stepped forward, he looked at Master Fuli and deliberately spoke a sentence.
Unos had participated twice in excavations of First Epoch ruins, but none had turned out well.
In one excavation under the sea, they spent two months as water spirits on an atoll, and when the ruins' door opened, some pinkish odd plants inside grew rapidly in the wind.
Within less than half a day, they covered half of the island, obstructing ships and jets.
Unos swam out of the atoll, facing an out-of-control scene that could only be dealt with by a nuclear explosion.
And the second time he excavated ruins, they were empty, with everything decayed into a black mud-like substance, which smelled extremely foul.
It was just black mud, but it could leave one stinking for one or two weeks.
If encountering fleshy plants, all Unos could think of was fleeing as far as possible.
He could not endure the cold sensation of the fleshy tendrils creeping over his skin.
Unos arrived at the entrance of the "mental hospital," a completely sealed metal door about seven meters high.
He raised his arm, pressing it onto the metal door, and the carvings on the door began to move gradually.
Amid the sounds of mechanisms turning with "ka-ka-ka."
The metal door, about a meter and a half thick, had its internal metal bolts and locks unlocking layer by layer, arranging its chaotic carvings into a pattern resembling a fortress.
The red fortress, seemingly like the Great Wall, stretched infinitely into the distance with countless human faces appearing on its surface.
"Boom——"
The tightly closed metal door of the "mental hospital" slowly rose amid the workings of the metal mechanisms.
A stench of decay, along with a chilling, dry airflow, swept out from the "mental hospital."
The cold wind was biting.
None who felt the wind sweeping past could help but feel a chill rising in their hearts and an overwhelming sense of unease.
Dead.....
Some similar species, but far stronger than me, died miserably inside, danger, danger!
"Corpse stench?" Master Fuli was taken aback, smelling the dead rodent-like odor in the air, with a face full of aversion, raising a hand to cover his nose: "Who has a gas mask?"
"What canine species can endure this? Even a scavenger would need to wear an N95 mask...."
Ansheng did not feel the danger and chill, but inhaled deeply the overpowering stench of rot.