Hao Ren didn't know whether the owner of the tentacle could hear him, but he sincerely hoped the Firstborn could hold on a little longer. The planet was drawing ever closer to its breaking point. The sun's gravity and uneven heating were tearing its crust apart, bit by bit, and even the Firstborn's body couldn't resist that force. Neither the Giant Turtle Rock Platform nor the companions Hao Ren had brought with him could change the planet's fate. There wasn't much time left for the virtual world, and by now, the only thing that could prolong its existence was probably the Firstborn's own endurance.
The underground world had been shaking nonstop for the past hour. The constant tremors, great and small, made it feel as though they were standing on a giant drum, while the occasional booming crashes of rock strata collapsing somewhere nearby were enough to make their hearts pound. Every sign pointed to the planet hurtling toward disintegration, constantly reminding them that they were plunging toward the sun atop a five-trillion-ton boulder. But the people working in the underground shelter had no time to worry about any of that. They were busy tracking the neural signals coming from the tentacles and heading for the possible location of the brain core based on the analysis from the ship's computer.
The group had now left the hall that had once held a large number of alloy cylinders. They were hurrying through a sprawling underground structure as intricate as a spiderweb. Corridors crisscrossed in every direction, connecting caves and underground chambers of every size. The entire underworld was a labyrinth so vast it seemed endless. Without the ship's computer guiding them, they would have gotten lost almost immediately in the branching passageways. At first, Hao Ren had been astonished by the