"Alright, let's move."
The team leader pocketed the controller and stood up, addressing the others.
The last image on his controller had shown every Blood Crystal Worm retreating from the three Blood Crystal Clusters.
The technician in the lab coat immediately made an adjustment to the device in his hands — he appeared to dial back the output, and the anxiety and revulsion gnawing at Xiang Yi's chest eased considerably.
The group continued forward.
The lighting equipment they'd brought turned the mine tunnel blazingly bright, making it easy to spot all three Blood Crystal Clusters from over ten meters away, each one positioned at a different point along the passage.
When they'd first sent in the robots, the feed had been riddled with signal interference, and the robots' built-in lights hadn't been nearly strong enough — the clusters had looked completely unremarkable.
But now, bathed in powerful floodlights at close range, it was a different story entirely.
The three Blood Crystal Clusters, each standing taller than a person, looked like works of art. Under the beams of the spotlights, they scattered dazzling crimson light in every direction — breathtaking and otherworldly.
Xiang Yi could tell immediately that the quality of these three Blood Crystal Clusters was in a completely different league from the Blood Crystals they normally chipped out of the rock face.
And every last one of them had been bought with human lives.
One of the younger guards in the group reached out, clearly tempted to touch one of the clusters. The older guard was on him instantly, cracking his baton down across the back of the younger man's hand.
"Don't touch anything. You won't even know what killed you."
The young guard pulled his hand back. He was wearing a protective suit, but that didn't give him enough nerve to argue.
Noticing that the young guard's eyes were still glued to the Blood Crystal Clusters, the older guard jerked his thumb back down the tunnel. "Go check on the rear. Find out why the others are taking so damn long to get down here."
"Sure."
The young guard headed back without complaint.
The older guard stayed where he was, moving to stand beside Xiang Yi. Together they watched as the team leader and his four subordinates began the work of transferring the Blood Crystal Clusters into the large metal crates they'd brought with them.
Neither of them dared get close to where the team was working — one because he had no protective suit, the other because he simply didn't have the guts.
Still, both of them were intensely curious about what the team leader intended to do with the Blood Crystal Clusters, and neither could take their eyes off the operation.
"Ahhh—!"
A terrified shriek tore through the air from the direction of the tunnel exit.
The older guard flinched at the sound, but he recognized the voice almost immediately — it was the young guard. Except the kid had only just left, barely half a minute ago. How could he already be…
He looked helplessly toward the team leader, who was still figuring out how to move the clusters without damaging them. "This…"
The team leader raised a hand to silence him, then turned to the others. "Two of you stay here and watch the equipment. Don't let those Blood Crystal Worms come back. Everyone else, come with me."
He pointed to two of the lab coats and told them to stay, then ordered everyone else to pick up the pace toward the tunnel exit.
Xiang Yi would have much preferred to stay near the device, but the team leader's warning glare — and the sight of the older guard falling obediently into line — was enough to kill that idea.
He'd been counting on the team leader's crew to wrap things up quickly so he could go rest. The blood loss and the constant back-and-forth had left his body and mind running on fumes.
But things were clearly sliding toward a kind of danger nobody had planned for.
There was nothing he could do. He'd just have to follow along and see how it played out.
The group had only rounded two bends in the tunnel.
Xiang Yi's sharp eyes had already picked out the young guard who'd left moments ago — and he quietly stepped back several paces into the shadows beside him.
Because he'd seen how the young guard had died.
The protective helmet on the guard's head had been almost completely shattered, leaving his skull fully exposed.
Across the back of his head, more than a dozen holes were packed tightly together, blood and brain matter oozing from each one. Crimson-red granules were still pushing their way out from the wounds.
The team leader's expression went dark. "Blood Crystal Worms. What are they doing this far out? There shouldn't be any here… wait…"
Something clicked. He turned to look at Xiang Yi. "You were bleeding when you came out earlier, weren't you?"
He didn't wait for an answer. "The worms followed your blood trail out. When we were all together, there were too many of us and they stayed hidden. But when he went back alone…that's why he's dead."
"Just how much blood did you lose…"
"So what do we do now?"
"Protective suits won't hold against full-grown Insect Race. We need to contact the surface and get someone down here with extermination equipment."
"The surface? What about the two men who went to fetch the crates…"
"They…"
The team leader had no clear answer about those two.
But Xiang Yi happened to be standing at an angle where he could see around the next bend.
Two bodies were lying there, perfectly still. Crimson granules were seeping out of them in far greater quantities than from the young guard's corpse — the state of them was significantly worse.
They'd clearly died not long after entering. They hadn't even had time to scream.
Right now, a mass of Blood Crystal Worms was hatching inside those two bodies, and could surge toward Xiang Yi's group at any moment.
Xiang Yi spoke up quickly. "Look ahead — they're dead around that corner. The bodies are already rotting through."
The team leader moved alongside Xiang Yi and squinted into the distance. He made no move to go closer for a better look.
Anyone who went down in the tunnels was as good as dead. There was no point confirming it twice.
"Why have these things suddenly gotten so aggressive?"
"Hell if I know."
The lab coat standing closest to Xiang Yi lowered the tablet-like device he'd been holding. "It's no good — I can't reach the surface. Signal's being badly jammed. The worms around us are definitely more than just what's in those bodies."
Those words sent everyone in the tunnel scanning the walls around them in tight, nervous sweeps, as if they might somehow see the Abnormalities moving through the solid rock.
Except there was no need to look.
That thick, crawling skittering sound had already risen around them — only now it wasn't coming from deeper in the tunnel. It was coming from the direction of the exit.
"How are there so many of them out there?"
"What do we do?"
"Can we make a run for it?"
"Don't run! Running is suicide!"
The service elevator was only fifty or sixty meters away. Get there, and they'd be safe. But that distance might as well have been an ocean given their current situation.
The exit was sealed. The people on the surface had no way of knowing anything had gone wrong down here — not this fast, anyway.
They were trapped, and something lethal was closing in on them from every direction.
Xiang Yi was tense, just like everyone else — but he wasn't panicking.
His own experience had taught him that panic solved exactly nothing.
So he thought.
The situation was straightforward: they were pinned inside the tunnel with hostile Abnormalities cutting off both ends.
That meant their only way out was that device back in the tunnel — the one…
"Hey."
A hand clamped around Xiang Yi's arm and broke his train of thought.
The older guard had drawn the solid-frame pistol from his hip — a powder-charge weapon by the look of it — and pressed the barrel against Xiang Yi's stomach. His other hand yanked Xiang Yi forward. "You're going up front. Run out there and get someone to come save us."
"Don't do this…"
Xiang Yi's eyes flicked to the gun. The safety was still on. He immediately put on a show of fear, pressing his hand over the guard's and pushing the barrel to the side.
"Will you quit giving stupid orders." The team leader had already clocked the situation. He wheeled on the older guard. "The man's got nothing on but a pair of pants and you want to send him out to die? We've got the device — we're not dead yet. We go back, we wait. Fifteen minutes, tops. If they can't reach us on the surface, they'll send someone down."
The team leader had the same idea as Xiang Yi — use the device to buy time. As long as they could hold out a little longer, they had a chance.
But Xiang Yi had a new concern. "Will the elevator still work?"
The team leader answered quickly. "It's mostly mechanical. The only electronic components are at the very top. The interference shouldn't affect it."
"Enough talking. Everyone does exactly what I say."
The group turned around and started moving back into the depths of the tunnel.
But at that moment, a sharp, piercing scream came from deep inside the tunnel ahead of them.
"That's impossible!"