"There's something else down here?"
The Snake Talisman's emerald-green threads bored through the rock wall, passed through more than ten meters of rock, and reached a sealed space completely encased in metal alloy.
There were two life signs inside.
Shengu Xuan raised his hand and struck the rock wall with his palm. An invisible force pulverized the entire wall along with the rock behind it. Before the dust could rise, the force field surrounding him pressed it to the ground, leaving a smooth passage before him.
At the end of the passage stood a silver alloy door, its surface engraved with densely packed sealing patterns. These were not seals from the Ninjutsu system, but a technological lock created through some combination of Scientific Ninja Tools and Otsutsuki chakra.
He walked up to the door without studying the lock's structure and pressed his right hand straight against it.
The alloy door split down the middle, as though a hand had torn it in half from the inside. Metal fragments flew to either side, striking the passage walls with a rapid clatter.
The space behind the door was larger than he had expected, about as wide as a standard classroom. Cool-white light tubes were embedded in the ceiling, and two transparent cultivation pods stood in the center. Pale blue liquid filled the pods, with bubbles continuously rising from the bottom.
A woman lay inside the pod on the left, her long hair drifting through the liquid. Her features were too exquisite to look naturally formed, more like perfect proportions calculated with rulers, compasses, and formulas. Her eyes were closed, her chest rose and fell faintly, and a white mark on the side of her neck matched the one on the back of Code's neck.
Inside the pod on the right was a