Doctor Gu Jian

As the Air Door opened, everyone slipped inside. The flames died, plunging the space into darkness again, but only for a few minutes.

Six or seven minutes later, a click sounded, and a dim blue-green light shone up from below, illuminating the frozen world.

A stooped old man emerged from another passage, carrying an oil lamp. He had graying hair, stood barely over a meter tall, and wore a pointed hat that made him look like a dwarf.

Behind him came four creatures, each two or three meters tall. Their upper halves were pale blue, their lower halves dark blue, and their chick-like bodies bore black skull markings on their heads. They carried a huge ice coffin on their shoulders. Sealed inside was an enormous creature, half hippo and half human.

At the old man's direction, the creatures set the coffin in place. He studied it, sighed, then led them away. Darkness swallowed the space once more.

Seeing this, Ye Mu immediately instructed Kuromu.

"Follow them carefully..."

In the dark tunnel, the old man's oil lamp cast a faint glow over the path ahead.

Before long, a massive stone door appeared at the end of the tunnel.

The four creatures stepped forward and pushed it open. Brilliant light spilled through the widening gap.

Once the old man had gone inside, the creatures shut the stone door and left.

Inside the Door-Door Space, Ye Mu looked at the others.

"Looks like the answers are all behind that door! Lililu, unleash your Domain of Death. It's time to investigate..."

A steel fortress straight out of a futuristic world stood before them, bathed in bright light.

All manner of precision instruments and chemical reagents filled the room.

At its center stood an enormous boiler-like device, its dense network of pipes connected to