The curled body emerged bit by bit from the undulating ground, revealing a hint of its rugged outline before sinking back down. It really did look like a giant earthworm hiding its accomplishments and keeping a low profile.
But in the process, its razor-sharp circular mouthparts had chewed through the basalt bedrock, while its high-temperature slime melted the tunnel walls into a smooth, glassy passage.
By the time it vanished beyond the horizon, the tunnel it left behind had a perfectly spiral-shaped cross section. Sunlight slanted in through a crack in the ceiling, refracting through iron oxide dust and casting an ocher-red glow. Sulfide crystals left on the walls still hissed as they released a colorless, odorless gas, as though the red planet were breathing slowly through its fresh wound.
A passage wide enough for tanks to drive through had just been built before everyone's eyes.
Yu Lian wasn't sure whether these enormous tunneling worms had any of the genes of Arrakis's sandworms, but many of their biological traits were indeed similar.
At that moment, his dead memories came back to attack him.
On another timeline, upgraded tunneling worms could even tear apart the underground armored interception nets. Countless ferocious warrior bugs would charge through the tunnels they carved, appearing at every possible location amid the damp slime of the creep.
The armies of every nation had suffered plenty of losses to that trick. Yu Lian had too... of course, he'd only seen it on TV. A small tunneling worm suddenly bursting out through the floor of a cafeteria, bringing a crowd of smug-looking zerglings with it to kick over a pot of bone soup—that scene was still the stuff of nightmares for many children.
Yu Lian forced himself to keep a straight face as he watched the enormous sandworm