Meng Chao tried to wrap the fluttering foam in Spiritual Energy.
He wanted to preserve even the faintest trace of a clue from deep within the foam.
But in the end, all he obtained were tiny amounts of crystalline powder.
"What is this?"
Meng Chao stared at the powder in his palm, deep in thought. "Why would human flesh and blood turn into a gray, rubber-like substance? Why would that gray substance turn into pink foam? And why would these crystalline powders remain inside the pink foam?"
For no reason at all, he thought of the equally crystalline "ancients," whose bodies seemed to be composed of crystal and metal.
If human remains became gray-white ashes after being burned by blazing flames—
Then these crystalline powders looked rather like the "ashes" of the "ancients."
Could it be that the rescue team member, after being squeezed through the fissure, had not turned into a grotesquely twisted monster, but was slowly transforming from a "human" into an "ancient"?
Could that seemingly bizarre and horrifying process have been not the distortion of humanity, but the nirvana of life?
Could these crisscrossing, clawing rock fissures have been not deadly traps, but something akin to a mother's birth canal? Could a newborn only be reborn and become a crystalline supreme being like the "ancients" by exhausting every ounce of strength to pass through the birth canal and receive the mother's compression and blessing?
Could all the explorers who had heard the "Primordial Summoning," plunged headfirst into the depths of darkness, and vanished over the past several decades have not died at all? Could they have existed in a brand-new form in another world at the end of the fissures, within the realm created by the "ancients"?
Meng Chao shuddered deeply.
He forced himself to stop thinking.