Chapter Forty-Five: Name

Chapter 9: Name

(PS: It's a new week. I've updated today's chapter, originally scheduled for 12 PM, to now. I'm still asking for recommendation votes, subscriptions, and tips. This new book is like a seedling and needs the care and help of all friends who like it. Thank you all.)

The cave floor was covered in thick flesh, which had begun to rot. As the group stepped in from the cave entrance, even these resolute soldiers felt disbelief. Their faces were filled with intense, suppressed anger, but their mental fortitude far exceeded Lu Yuanming's imagination. Under these circumstances, they remained silent, simply following the commander's orders and exploring in groups of three.

The cave entrance was narrow, only wide enough for three people abreast, but the interior space was vast. The cave sloped downwards, about thirty meters high and at least twenty meters wide. The ground was covered in flesh, but there were no bones. In addition, the cave walls were covered in slime and what looked like moss, fungi, or meat blankets. This made the cave appear both terrifying and bizarre, as if they had entered the body of some giant creature or a world similar to Lovecraftian novels.

The team advanced rapidly. Lu Yuanming tried several times to reach the front of the team, even wanting to rush into the depths of the cave ahead of them. But as he charged forward, these soldiers also immediately accelerated their pace, not even bothering with their team formations. Even if they fell, they crawled forward on their hands and feet, forcing Lu Yuanming to slow down.

Before Lu Yuanming could find some officers to complain about the delay, tentacles began to emerge from the cave walls all around them. Tens of thousands of them, almost completely obscuring the entire cave from front to back. The moment these tentacles appeared, all the soldiers immediately opened fire. The cave was instantly filled with a barrage of gunfire and accompanying screams.

The tentacles were too numerous and dense. They weren't large, about the length of a few-meter whip. Under the gunfire, they were all blown into pulp, but there were too many of them. Even with hundreds of soldiers firing, tentacles still emerged from the hail of bullets, whipping or stabbing. Their strength was astonishing. If a soldier was hit, whether on the arm or torso, they would immediately twist and bend, or be directly pierced by a tentacle. In the very first engagement, at least thirty soldiers were killed or maimed. Lu Yuanming also immediately attacked and planned to run towards the severely wounded or crippled soldiers.

But before he could get close, the crippled soldiers among them directly pulled some kind of buckle on their bodies and then roared as they charged towards the most densely packed tentacles. Even those with broken legs crawled forward on their hands, and then, to Lu Yuanming's stunned gaze, these soldiers directly turned into explosive flames.

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

But the Expert Woman was fighting alongside the Black Big Man and the Tall Thin Man with her rifle, ignoring Lu Yuanming. At this moment, the commanding officer suddenly roared, "The meat blankets on the rock walls are the tentacles' weakness! If you blast the meat blankets, these tentacles won't appear!!"

As his words fell, soldiers wielding heavy weapons immediately began attacking the rock walls in front, back, left, and right. The previous dozen or so explosions had not collapsed the cave, and now they no longer cared. Grenades, RPGs, and other heavy weapons began to bombard the rock walls. However, these tentacles continuously emerged from the meat blankets on the rock walls. At the same time, these meat blankets were frantically absorbing the corpses and remains on the ground at an extremely fast rate. Using these corpses and remains as raw material, they were rapidly creating more tentacles.

As a result, both grenades and the powerful RPGs were entangled and wrapped by a large number of tentacles before they could explode, and the explosive power was insufficient to damage the meat blankets on the rock walls. Hundreds of people were squeezed in the middle of the cave. The tentacles from all directions increased, even blocking the cave entrance ahead. The tentacles intertwined and formed a flesh wall, pressing towards the team from the front.

Lu Yuanming could only charge towards this flesh wall. Apart from him, the soldiers' weapons had insufficient lethality against the tentacles. Although they could effectively kill the tentacles, their power was reduced by at least half. Only Lu Yuanming's soul body attacks, with a slight punch, caused these tentacles to immediately turn into White Light Particles as if splashed with aqua regia.

But Lu Yuanming's damage was only for one person. His soul body fists struck everywhere, only managing to barely push back the crushing flesh wall in front. A flesh wall also began to appear from the rear of the cave, threatening to crush them from behind.

At this moment, a young soldier suddenly roared. He actually charged directly towards the nearest tentacle-covered rock wall. These tentacles immediately wrapped around him, and small, finger-sized mouthparts opened on the tentacles. His flesh and blood were immediately gnawed and sucked away, a pain no less than being cut into a thousand pieces.

And this young soldier suddenly roared in Lu Yuanming's direction, "Sichuan Mianyang, Guan!"

With a rumble, this soldier exploded violently amidst the tentacles. He was wrapped in a circle of explosives and detonators. Every soldier who entered was like this, a last resort to prevent being anesthetized by monsters or having their legs broken, leaving them unable to survive. And at this moment, he had used it first...

Because he was engulfed deep within the tentacles, especially being sent towards the meat blankets on the rock wall, this explosion directly cleared an area of about one square meter of meat blanket. The density of tentacles in that area immediately dropped significantly.

Without anyone giving orders or shouting, dozens of soldiers immediately charged into the mass of tentacles. They endured the immense pain of their flesh and blood disappearing bit by bit, allowing the tentacles to send them near the meat blankets before detonating the explosives on their bodies. All that remained were their final shouts before the explosions.

"Shanxi Datong, Zhang!"

"Gansu Tianshui, Li!"

"Jiangsu Changzhou, Zhang!"

"Yunnan Kunming, Wang!"

"Hubei..."

Lu Yuanming turned his head, crushed a Colorless Light Particle, and then his soul body, along with his physical body, almost took flight, crashing directly into the flesh wall in front, forcibly tearing it open. On both sides of this flesh wall, loud explosions sounded. Lu Yuanming charged forward, followed quickly by the soldiers behind him. Explosions and gunfire echoed through the cave. As the flesh wall ahead was breached, a huge oval cavity appeared before them. In this cavity, meat blankets spread everywhere, and embedded within these meat blankets were civilians and soldiers being digested.

Dense crowds and soldiers were bound tightly to the surface of the meat blanket. As they were digested, more meat blankets grew, spreading towards the cavern and the passage outside it.

In the mid-air of this underground cavern, a giant octopus head was connected to the meat blanket above and below. The meat blanket was its extended tentacles, humans were its food, and the entire cavern could be considered its body.

When Lu Yuanming and his group broke through, the meat blanket closest to them began to writhe rapidly. The civilians and soldiers embedded within it were all screaming. They dissolved at a visible rate, turning into shattered meat chunks that fell to the ground. Most of the flesh and internal organs were absorbed by the meat blanket, becoming more meat blanket and growing tentacles.

The group's intrusion was like sounding an alarm for this giant monster. The flesh and blood within the entire cavern began to churn. Countless tentacles intertwined, and some giant tentacles hundreds of meters long began to form.

Lu Yuanming felt an Unnamable aura from this octopus head, the same aura he felt in Building C of the residential area, and the same aura from the giant tentacles he encountered by the sea. Did this mean that the ghosts attacking CQ and CD were all caused by the same Unnamable terror?

However, there was no time to ponder these matters. Lu Yuanming immediately crushed two Colorless Light Particles. He no longer cared if the post-battle side effects of the Colorless Light Particles would affect his physical body. With the enhancement of two Colorless Light Particles, his physical fitness surged sevenfold. A faint, flame-like white light appeared on the surface of the Soul Body behind him.

With a sevenfold increase in strength, Lu Yuanming's Soul Body, carrying his physical body, shot out over three hundred meters. All the tentacles that approached were crushed. However, just this movement caused Lu Yuanming's physical body to spew out a mouthful of blood. Blood seeped from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.

In that instant of explosive burst, his physical body felt the air ahead turn into liquid, with immense pressure. Although the Soul Body easily broke through this obstruction, his physical body was injured by this liquid-like pressure. In that moment, he felt as if his entire body was about to be crushed.

The sound barrier!

The normal output force of the Soul Body's arms was about ten to fifteen tons, and its legs had thirty to forty-five tons of force. With a sevenfold increase in intensity, the power of his legs at least surged to over two hundred to three hundred tons. Where his Soul Body had just started, the entire ground's flesh and blood exploded and churned. This immense power caused his Soul Body, carrying his physical body, to almost break the sound barrier. The Soul Body was unharmed, but the physical body was severely injured by the inertia and wind pressure. His internal organs showed signs of displacement and rupture, and his brain felt an immense dizziness. He was completely held up by the existence of his Soul Body, preventing him from passing out.

This forced Lu Yuanming to immediately use a Colorless Light Particle for healing. During this brief window, the surrounding sea of tentacles surged forward, and several hundred-meter-long giant tentacles whipped towards his material body from all directions.

Lu Yuanming could only control his Soul Body to lash out wildly in all directions. But even with two fists, he couldn't fend off countless tentacles. A giant tentacle whipped from behind and to the side. Although the Soul Body reacted, tentacles were everywhere. He could only manage to block the giant tentacle diagonally with one arm. With a bang, the Soul Body, along with his physical body, was blasted dozens of meters away. His feet immediately bent backward upon hitting the ground, and one arm was torn off as he rolled on the ground.

At this moment, explosions erupted from the pile of tentacles. One by one, the warriors, their young faces shining, shouted out the names of their hometowns and surnames. These explosions rushed towards the core of the cavern with unstoppable force, less than a hundred meters from the octopus head.

After using another Colorless Light Particle, Lu Yuanming directly activated the full burst of his Soul Body. The immense pressure of the sound barrier once again severely injured his physical body. He had already stepped onto the path cleared by the warriors, charging directly towards the octopus head.

At this time, fewer than twenty warriors remained. Lu Yuanming's dynamic vision captured a scene: the Expert Woman, gritting her teeth, charged forward head down. Her hand pulled at a buckle under her clothes, but she did not call out her hometown and surname. At the last moment, she seemed to look back, but Lu Yuanming couldn't see clearly...

Amidst the booming explosions, Lu Yuanming's Soul Body pierced through the flames and soared upwards. In the explosion's firelight, the Soul Body's golden-red armor on its back suddenly unfurled, and azure flames spewed from its back, causing the Soul Body's speed to erupt again. He narrowly dodged the interception of several giant tentacles. In the bloody vision of Lu Yuanming's physical body, the octopus head grew closer and closer.

Bang!

A golden-red light pierced through the octopus head. A large amount of White Light Particles burst out, three unknown objects were absorbed, and a Gray Light Cluster hovered in mid-air.

Lu Yuanming landed, stood up, and with loose teeth and a bleeding mouth, he shouted loudly, "Hey, does anyone know her name?"

"I don't even know her damn name!!"

The cavern echoed. The surrounding tentacles and meat blankets began to decay and rot, revealing tens of thousands of civilians and soldiers behind them. Most of them were injured but still alive, though they were mostly in a coma. Thus, no one responded to Lu Yuanming's roar in the end.

Only the echo repeated the same question over and over...