Underground Hollow

Clang! Clang! Clang!...

The Titanium Snail's shell slammed violently against the tunnel's rock walls, echoing with the sound of metal being struck. The vortex's chaotic currents made it impossible for the Titanium Snail to keep its balance in the water. It could only drift with the flow like this and leave its fate to the heavens.

The vortex had formed because an underground hollow had opened a passage to the ocean. Now Huo Gu and the Titanium Snail it was inhabiting were inevitably plunging into the depths underground in this way.

Splash!

The sound of hitting water rang out. The seawater that had surged in earlier provided Huo Gu with enough cushioning.

"My luck really is rotten to the core. Good thing I chose to use titanium alloy as the skeleton back then, or I really would have had to start developing from microorganisms all over again."

"Speaking of which... where is this?"

Huo Gu looked around. Darkness so deep it could not see its fingers before its face surrounded it on all sides.

"...Looks like I need to adjust my visual senses."

After receiving the command, inside one of the Titanium Snail's eyes, the hypochlorous acid that reacted to visible light was replaced with elemental water that photolyzed under infrared irradiation. Its perspective shifted from visible light to infrared, and the pitch-black environment was transformed in the blink of an eye.

"So huge!?"

Huo Gu marveled at the sight before it. It was an enormous underground hollow, hundreds of meters high, with this giant underground structure supported by thick stone pillars one after another.

"Too spectacular..."

"How did this kind of structure form?"

Huo Gu looked around, and soon understood the reason behind its formation.

There were vast numbers of fissures on the hollow's floor. These fissures continuously sprayed out fine steam, just like the kind that gushed from a kettle after the water boiled.

This underground hollow where it currently was should originally have been filled with liquid water, but the planet's temperature in the early days was extremely high. After the liquid water absorbed heat, it became water vapor and squeezed out of the hollow through those tiny cracks, thereby creating this kind of terrain.

Withdrawing its attention from the external environment, Huo Gu began to think about its own affairs.

"All right, as I am now... I should be considered safe, right?"

Huo Gu looked at the surrounding environment with very little confidence, then let out a sigh of relief.

"Looks like I'm safe."

When it thought of what it had just experienced, Huo Gu felt a chill of fear. An area several hundred nautical miles across had been undergoing changes. Converted into land kilometers, that was 720 kilometers. In terms of destructive range alone, it was already roughly equivalent to a quarter of the Tsar Bomba in human history.

Huo Gu had previously imagined many possibilities and had tried to overestimate the other party's power as much as possible, which was why it had chosen a position several hundred nautical miles away as the starting point for laying out the rhizome system.

However, it had never imagined that it had still underestimated it.

That kind of large-scale crustal movement had also happened on Earth before. Every time it occurred, it was often accompanied by a mass extinction. Fortunately, this was still the Hadean Eon, and the planet's ecosphere contained only microorganisms, which were also very adapted to the environment after volcanic influence.

"Sigh, I only wanted to live a peaceful life in a relatively stable environment. How exactly did I touch a nerve with that unidentified thing?"

Humiliation and unwillingness surged in Huo Gu's heart. However, what there was even more of was powerlessness, the feeling of powerlessness when facing an opponent with unmatched strength.

Fight?

Fight with what?

It did not know the opponent's true face or location at all, so targeted attacks were naturally out of the question. Its destructive power was even on the same level as nuclear weapons.

And Huo Gu?

It was an ordinary, flesh-and-blood organism, weak, pitiful, and helpless. Forget nuclear weapons—even an ordinary volcanic eruption would be certain death if it did not flee.

"I really want to surrender..."

"Hm?"

Huo Gu came back to itself, and with a heart full of excitement, it began paying attention to the surrounding environment.

"Right now... aren't I in a relatively stable and safe environment?"

"In this underground hollow, there aren't any strong currents or heavy pressure, and there's even less need to worry about drifting into a volcanic crater while resting, except that there's no light."

"Since that guy hasn't pursued further and cut the weeds by the roots, can I take it to mean that guy has no way of detecting organisms deep underground?"

So why not live in this underground hollow for the rest of its life?

"No... no, that won't do. That's too spineless. This isn't how I, Huo Gu, should live. Wouldn't that make me no different from a rat in a gutter?"

"Though, between dignity and life, I would choose life. But that doesn't mean I won't consider preserving my dignity under the premise of ensuring my life."

"And as long as that guy is still thinking about how to attack me, I can forget about having peace for the rest of my life. Even if it doesn't have the ability to detect underground now, what if it does in the future?"

"..."

"I'll set everything else aside for now. Before that, I need to make sure I gather organic materials. Developing myself first is the hard truth."

"Gourd, start setting up the rhizome system."

The Gourd carried at the Titanium Snail's tail swam out. It attached itself to the bottom of the water not far from Huo Gu and swelled up its body. After a period of time, it grew into a conical organism.

It began absorbing water, just like its other kind. The difference was that the mouth at the very top had become a water outlet, while the six mouths below had become water inlets.

There was no way around it. Its body was too enormous, and the mouth above had already risen above the liquid surface, so it could only be flipped upside down.

During this period, Titanium Snails, Gourds, and rhizome wreckage would occasionally be washed down from above. The collection of materials needed for the rhizome system sped up considerably precisely because of these.

Very soon, the rhizome system grew out from beneath the conical organism, then grew from the water onto the shore.

It spread all the way onward. The cave walls, the ground, and the stone pillars were all covered in a layer like a net woven from vines. It was called a giant hollow, but compared with islands on land, it was still insignificant by comparison.

"Huh? This underground hollow is actually connected to other places."

Contrary to Huo Gu's expectations, on several of the giant hollow's cave walls, it discovered several caves leading to unknown areas.

"Where could they lead?"

Suddenly, through the visual system on the rhizomes, Huo Gu's attention focused on a rock near the entrance of one of the caves.

That thing stood quietly on one side of the cave like a gatekeeper totem from a primitive tribe. It looked like a statue, but on closer inspection, it was also a very natural rock. Its appearance lay somewhere between man-made and natural.

This made the concept of underground people involuntarily surface in Huo Gu's thoughts...

It hurriedly scattered these unrealistic fantasies.

"What exactly is going on? Why have I had so many unrealistic fantasies lately? This is the Hadean Eon, an environment unsuitable for large organisms to survive, so..."

When Huo Gu said this, it got stuck. Its gaze stared fixedly at the suspected crafted stone beside the cave, unable to move away for a long time.

"...Sure enough, it would be better to go inside and confirm things."