I’m Trapped in a Cube - Chapter 110

Nothing happened in the Needle Stone Forest.

No stone giant bursting through the sky, no fireworks filling the air.

Only a sudden, faint aurora.

Shi Beng sensed that the great power within the stone forest had disappeared, guessed something had happened, and went off again in search of fear.

Li Luo stood on the hillside, gazing at the mesmerizing aurora, a little dazed.

Mo Ling sat in the metal cube, staring thoughtfully at the white bracelet on his wrist, not noticing the red headscarf in the corner trembling slightly.

“Let’s go.”

Li Luo’s call interrupted Mo Ling’s thoughts.

“To the monitoring station.”

……

The environment of the Disorderly Dunes was truly harsh. Mo Ling felt that, compared to this, the Needle Stone Forest had been full of life.

Endless, rolling dunes and swirling sand made it feel like a land of death.

After leaving the Needle Stone Forest, the scenery along the way didn’t change.

But in Mo Ling’s vision, many small creatures began to appear beneath the dunes, burrowing through the earth.

After walking a while, he saw some cactus-like plants, tall and round, standing out on the dunes.

Their roots reached so deep that Mo Ling couldn’t see the end, and around the roots was a rich community of life, with many small animals gnawing on the plants above.

Not only that, predators began to appear-lizards crawling over the dunes, searching for plants, and when they found them, they’d rush up to hunt the insects on the plants.

Further ahead, strange floating creatures appeared in the dunes, looking like tumbleweeds, with a faint blue glow inside.

They didn’t float high, with a long tubular organ reaching to the ground, constantly sucking up sand and sending it into the air.

Like vacuum cleaners, once they’d cleared an area of sand, they’d drift to another spot and start again.

The sand was sent into the blue light, spinning and filtering, and after a while, it was suddenly ejected and scattered on the ground.

They must be some kind of filter feeder, but was there really any nutrition in that sand?

Mo Ling even saw some flying predators that specialized in eating these floating creatures.

They looked like vultures, but their skin was mirror-like, and their wings were like thin sheets, flying with a strange, drifting motion.

When they swooped down on a floating creature, they’d first use their claws to stimulate it. The attacked floater would instantly contract, squeezing out some of its blue light.

This blue light was clearly very lethal, spinning up the air around it, even creating a huge tornado.

But the predators weren’t afraid of the light. They’d rush in before the storm formed, use their wings to surround the light, and after several reflections, the blue glow would be completely absorbed.

Then they’d repeat the process, continuing to stimulate the floating creature and absorb the blue light, until the floater was exhausted, and only then would they fly away.

It looked like a sustainable predation behavior.

Mo Ling and Li Luo were both amazed, Abyss Second was truly wondrous.

There were many more such strange creatures, all kinds that were mesmerizing to watch.

The short trip to the monitoring station took a long time because they kept stopping to look.

“That should be it up ahead.”

Li Luo, holding her electronic screen checked the map. Not far ahead was the nearest monitoring station outside the Needle Stone Forest.

This monitoring station had a beautiful name, Black Tower.

With Li Luo’s tap, the electronic screen displayed the station’s introduction:

Black Tower was not originally a monitoring station.

It is the petrified remains of a certain type of creature. When this fossil was first discovered, all the Hunters were shocked.

Because it was so abrupt, a huge black stone structure suddenly found in the uninhabited desert, it was hard not to be suspicious.

But as research progressed, people discovered that Black Tower was made of calcium carbonate.

It was an environment similar to a coral reef.

Perhaps many years ago, Black Tower was alive, but as life faded, the calcareous main body remained, and under nature’s influence, it became a solid structure.

Though made of calcium, researchers found an unknown mesh structure inside Black Tower, making it very sturdy and hard to collapse.

Like a coral reef, Black Tower’s interior formed a rich ecosystem, with weak creatures hiding in its pores.

The sturdy structure could withstand the unpredictable sandstorms and giant creatures of the Disorderly Dunes, and the pores could store water during day-night cycles, allowing plants to flourish.

After humans discovered Black Tower, they began studying its internal life. At first, it was just a camp, but as more people arrived, the interior was gradually developed.

While minimizing ecological damage, humans occupied the entire Black Tower, building facilities and passages inside as a research base for Abyss Second Layer life.

The safe environment also gave many Hunters in the Abyss Second Layer a place to rest, using it as a temporary stopover.

Gradually, Black Tower became an officially recognized monitoring station, taking on more and more roles.

Most monitoring stations in the Abyss Second Layer were built this way. Black Tower was just one of them, showing how humans made full use of the Abyss.

Though Mo Ling’s vision was limited and he couldn’t see the distant Black Tower, there were several pictures of it on the electronic screen.

In the pictures, it really did look like a tall tower, but its surface was covered in countless holes, large and small.

Below Black Tower were scattered smaller towers, looking very much like a coral reef.

In the crevices of these tower-shaped structures were many strange vine-like plants, weaving in and out, seemingly growing attached to the towers.

There were also flocks of birds in the pictures, though hard to see clearly, likely using the holes as nests to escape the dangers of the Disorderly Dunes.

Judging by the scale, Black Tower was truly enormous-no wonder it could form such a unique ecosystem.

Mo Ling guessed that some of the creatures he’d just seen probably came from Black Tower, which explained the vibrant life nearby.

Li Luo put away the electronic screen, but didn’t move forward. Instead, she lowered her head and looked at her chest.

“What was wrong?”

She picked up her nameplate , and the strange characters on it were slowly changing, as if something was about to appear.

Mo Ling only now realized that since coming to the Abyss Second Layer, Li Luo’s nameplate had never updated.

“Looks like you have to stay in the Abyss Second Layer for a while before it changes.”

“A title should be appearing, right?

Many powerful names flashed through Mo Ling’s mind, but he didn’t know which one Li Luo would get.

But the distortion of the characters seemed to take a long time, and Li Luo’s expression grew stranger, as if she sensed something was wrong.

“Was there a problem?”

Fortunately, the twisted characters finally began to settle, forming a circle of mysterious patterns.

The moment he saw the words, Mo Ling was dumbfounded.

The title on the nameplate-he’d heard it before.

……

“Level 2 Hunter, Fire Thief Li Luo .”