The Name

Chapter Nine: The Name

The cave floor was covered in thick layers of flesh, which had already begun to rot. As everyone stepped inside, even the resolute soldiers found it hard to believe what they were seeing. Their faces were filled with tightly suppressed anger, but their mental fortitude far exceeded Lu Yuanming's expectations. Even in these circumstances, they said nothing, simply following orders and exploring ahead in groups of three.

The cave entrance was narrow, just wide enough for three people to enter abreast, but the space inside was enormous. The cave sloped underground, reaching about thirty meters in height and at least twenty meters in width. Flesh covered the ground, but there were no bones. The cave walls were also coated in slime and covered with things that might have been moss, fungi, or even a meat blanket. It made the cave look both terrifying and grotesque, as if they had entered the body of some gigantic creature—or stepped into the world of a Lovecraftian tale.

The team advanced quickly. Lu Yuanming tried several times to rush to the front, even to plunge into the depths of the cave ahead of everyone else, but whenever he sped up, the soldiers sped up too. They even abandoned their formation, crawling forward on their hands and feet when they fell. Lu Yuanming had no choice but to slow down.

Before he could find an officer and tell him they were wasting too much time, tentacles began emerging from the cave walls on all sides, front, back, left, and right. Tens of thousands of them appeared, almost completely blocking the cave. The moment they showed up, all the soldiers opened fire. Gunshots and agonized screams immediately filled the cave.

There were too many tentacles, packed too tightly together. They were small, each one about as long as a whip several meters in length, and gunfire blew them all apart into pulp. But there were so many of them that even as hundreds of soldiers raked them with gunfire, some still lashed out or stabbed through the hail of bullets. They struck with incredible force. One hit was enough to twist a soldier's arm or body into a grotesque shape, or pierce straight through them. In that first exchange alone, at least thirty soldiers were killed or maimed. Lu Yuanming immediately joined the fight, then tried to run to the soldiers who were badly wounded or disabled.

Before he could reach them, the disabled soldiers pulled some kind of clasp on their gear and charged toward the thickest mass of tentacles, shouting as they went. Even those with broken legs dragged themselves forward with their hands. Then, as Lu Yuanming stared in stunned silence, they turned into fireballs.

Lu Yuanming immediately turned to the Expert Woman and said, "I can heal them!"

But the Expert Woman was fighting alongside Black Big Man and Tall Thin Man with a rifle in her hands. She didn't even look at Lu Yuanming. Just then, the commanding officer shouted, "The meat blanket on the cave walls is the tentacles' weak point! Blow it apart, and the tentacles will stop appearing!"

As soon as he finished speaking, soldiers with heavy weapons began firing at the cave walls in every direction. The more than ten explosions earlier hadn't brought the cave down, and now they didn't care if it did. Soldiers immediately began blasting the walls with grenades, RPGs, and other heavy weapons. But tentacles kept pouring out of the meat blanket, while it frantically absorbed the chunks of corpses and debris underfoot. It absorbed them incredibly fast, using them as raw material to rapidly produce even more tentacles.

So many tentacles wrapped around the grenades and powerful RPGs before they could explode that the blasts weren't strong enough to damage the meat blanket on the walls. Hundreds of people were trapped in the middle of the cave. Tentacles continued to multiply in every direction, and the passage ahead was completely blocked. Entwined tentacles formed a wall of flesh, pressing toward the team from the front.

Lu Yuanming had no choice but to charge into the wall of flesh. The soldiers' weapons couldn't do enough damage to the tentacles. They could kill them, but their effectiveness was reduced by at least half. Only Lu Yuanming's Soul Body could hurt them properly. At the slightest touch of his fists, the tentacles crumbled into White Light particles as if splashed with aqua regia.

But Lu Yuanming was only one person. His Soul Body swung its fists in every direction, barely holding back the wall of flesh pressing in from the front. A wall of flesh was beginning to form behind them, too, and it looked ready to crush them from the rear.

Then, a young soldier suddenly shouted. He charged straight at the nearest wall of tentacles. They immediately wrapped around him, and tiny, finger-sized mouths opened along their length. His flesh was instantly gnawed and torn away. The pain was no less than being carved up by a thousand knives.

The young soldier suddenly shouted toward Lu Yuanming, "Shanxi Datong, Guan!"

With a deafening roar, the soldier exploded in the midst of the tentacles. He was wrapped in a belt of explosives and blasting caps. Every soldier who had entered the cave was equipped the same way—a last resort, in case they were paralyzed by a monster or had their legs broken and could no longer hope to survive. And now, he had been the first to use it...

Because he had been dragged deep into the tentacles, right toward the meat blanket on the wall, the explosion cleared a patch of meat blanket about one square meter in size. The tentacles in that spot immediately thinned out.

No one needed to give an order or shout. Dozens of soldiers charged straight into the mass of tentacles. They endured the excruciating pain as their flesh was slowly torn away, letting the tentacles drag them close to the meat blanket before detonating their explosives. All that remained of them was their final shout, just before the blast.

"Sichuan Mianyang, Zhang!"

"Gansu Tianshui, Li!"

"Jiangsu Changzhou, Zhang!"

"Yunnan Kunming, Wang!"

"Hubei..."

Lu Yuanming turned around and crushed a Colorless Light Particle. His Soul Body carried his physical body aloft, and he slammed into the wall of flesh ahead, tearing it open by force. Explosions rang out from both sides of the wall. Lu Yuanming charged ahead, and the soldiers followed close behind. Explosions and gunfire echoed through the cave. Once they broke through the wall of flesh, a huge, oval-shaped hollow opened up before them. Meat blankets had spread everywhere inside. Entombed in them were civilians and soldiers being digested.

Countless civilians and soldiers were tightly bound to the surface of the meat blankets. As they were digested, more meat blanket grew, spreading across the hollow and into the passageways outside.

Suspended in the air above the underground hollow was a massive Octopus Head, connected to the meat blanket above and below. The meat blanket was an extension of its tentacles, and humanity was its bait. The entire hollow could be considered part of its body.

As Lu Yuanming and the others broke in, the meat blanket on the wall closest to them began to writhe. The civilians and soldiers embedded in it all screamed as they visibly dissolved, crumbling into chunks of flesh that fell to the ground. Most of their flesh and organs were absorbed by the meat blanket, becoming more meat blanket and sprouting more tentacles.

Their intrusion was like an alarm going off inside the gigantic monster. All the flesh in the hollow began to churn. Countless tentacles came writhing toward them, and several enormous ones, each hundreds of meters long, began to form.

Lu Yuanming sensed an indescribable aura coming from the Octopus Head. It was the same aura he had felt in Building C in his residential complex. The gigantic tentacles he had encountered by the sea earlier had carried the same aura, too. Did this mean that the ghosts attacking CQ and CD were all caused by the same indescribable horror?

But he had no time to think about it. Lu Yuanming immediately crushed two Colorless Light Particles. He didn't care whether their post-battle side effects would affect his physical body anymore. With two Colorless Light Particles empowering him, his Physical Quality soared sevenfold. Faint white light, like flames, appeared across the surface of his Soul Body behind him.

With seven times his strength, Lu Yuanming's Soul Body carried his physical body more than three hundred meters in a single leap. Every tentacle that tried to approach him was crushed. But the moment he moved, blood sprayed from his mouth. Blood seeped from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.

In that instant, the air ahead of him seemed to turn into liquid, pressing down with immense force. His Soul Body easily broke through the obstruction, but his physical body was injured by the pressure, which felt like liquid. For a moment, he felt as if he were about to be crushed flat.

The Sound Barrier!

The Soul Body's ordinary output was about ten to fifteen tons of force in its arms and thirty to forty-five tons in its legs. With its strength multiplied sevenfold, the power in its legs had surged to at least two hundred or three hundred tons. Where Lu Yuanming's Soul Body had taken off, the flesh covering the ground had exploded and churned. The immense force had carried his physical body almost through the Sound Barrier. His Soul Body was unharmed, but inertia and wind pressure had badly injured his physical body. His internal organs felt displaced and possibly ruptured, and an overwhelming dizziness washed over his brain. He stayed conscious only because of his Soul Body.

Lu Yuanming had no choice but to immediately use a Colorless Light Particle to heal himself. But in that brief moment, a sea of tentacles surged in from all sides, and several enormous tentacles, each hundreds of meters long, lashed at his physical body from every direction.

Lu Yuanming could only make his Soul Body swing its fists wildly in every direction. But two fists couldn't fend off countless tentacles. One enormous tentacle lashed at him from behind and to the side. His Soul Body reacted, but with tentacles surrounding him on every side, it could only raise one arm to block the blow. With a deafening bang, the Soul Body and his physical body were hurled dozens of meters away. His legs snapped backward when his body struck the ground, and one arm was torn off as he rolled.

Then explosions began to erupt in the mass of tentacles. One soldier after another, their young faces shining in the flashes, shouted the names of their hometowns and their surnames. Their blasts surged toward the hollow's core with unstoppable force. They were now less than a hundred meters from the Octopus Head.

After using another Colorless Light Particle, Lu Yuanming unleashed the full power of his Soul Body. The immense pressure of the Sound Barrier badly injured his physical body again, but he had already reached the path the soldiers had opened up with their lives. He charged straight toward the Octopus Head.

There were fewer than twenty soldiers left. Lu Yuanming's dynamic vision caught sight of the Expert Woman lowering her head and charging ahead through gritted teeth. Her hand reached under her clothes and pulled out a clasp, too. But she didn't shout out her hometown or surname. At the last moment, she seemed to glance back, but Lu Yuanming couldn't see clearly...

Amid the blast, Lu Yuanming's Soul Body burst through the flames and soared upward. The gold-and-red armor on its back suddenly spread open, and blue-green flames shot out. His speed surged again, letting him narrowly evade several enormous tentacles. Through the bloodshot eyes of Lu Yuanming's physical body, the Octopus Head drew closer and closer.

Bang!

A streak of gold-and-red light pierced through the Octopus Head, and a large number of White Light particles burst out. Three Unknown Items were absorbed, while a Gray Light Cluster remained suspended in midair.

Lu Yuanming landed and got to his feet. With loose teeth and a mouth full of blood, he shouted, "Hey, does anyone know her name?"

"Goddammit, I don't even know what her name was!!"

Echoes rang through the hollow. The tentacles and meat blanket began to decay, revealing tens of thousands of civilians and soldiers behind them. Most were covered in wounds, but they were still alive. Almost all of them were unconscious, so no one answered Lu Yuanming's shout.

Only the echoes kept repeating the same question, over and over...