I’m Trapped in a Cube - Chapter 246

Mo Ling turned to look at Bai Zhou and found he still had that dazed appearance, showing no signs of anything wrong.

The mermen beside the fortress fiddled around for a long time and finally discovered the reason for the component failures.

“Why is there rust everywhere? Didn’t anyone notice before?”

“That’s not right! There were no rust marks when we landed just now. These appeared later!”

The reason the mermen’s components had various special effects was because of the merman language runic inscriptions on them, but now these carved marks were crawling with ugly rust, causing the runes to completely lose effectiveness.

“Quick, remove the rust!”

The mermen controlled the components beside them, lining them up like window cleaners circling the fortress. As they circled, the components also shot out red light, striking the rust-covered fortress surface.

After the red light swept over, the mermen hurried back to the fortress surface to check the rust removal inside the carved marks, but the situation seemed worse than they had imagined.

“No effect?”

One merman put his face close to the carved marks, scraping at the rust with his armored fingers, but the rust showed no signs of disappearing.

“Use rust remover!”

Other mermen also hurried to these rust-covered runes, using every method they could think of to remove the rust.

They also used nearby components to synthesize a semi-solid yellow liquid out of thin air, sprayed it on the fortress, waited a moment, then cleaned it with water.

However, the rust remover had no effect either. After several attempts, the rust in the carved marks still didn’t decrease at all.

He extended a sharp light blade from his fingertips, carefully scraping inside the carved marks a few times. This light blade cut several scratches in the original runic inscriptions but had no effect on the rust.

This merman was also stunned by this scene and froze in place.

“This isn’t rust at all!”

At this moment, they also realized that these “stubborn stains” covering the entire fortress weren’t ordinary rust marks at all.

In their urgency, some mermen even wanted to directly cut off parts of the components, but such behavior was quickly stopped by Jeff.

He raised his hand, opened a gap in the protective shield, grabbed some of the fog beside him, then asked a subordinate nearby, “Are this fog and the rust related?”

“Wait a moment, General, let me test it.”

A subordinate came to the fortress side, controlling the components beside him to carefully touch the rust-covered runic carved marks.

After a moment, he excitedly returned to Jeff’s side.

“Ninety-seven percent similarity?”

“They’re the same! General! The unknown substances in this rust are the same as those in the fog! They’re actually the same thing, just one is liquid and one is solid.”

The subordinate seemed worried Jeff wouldn’t believe him, quickly transmitting his test data to the fish swarm’s communication channel, even making a special comparison chart.

Mo Ling also saw that comparison chart. Although he couldn’t understand the technical terms inside, the identical patterns and conclusions were easy to understand.

“Fog condenses and becomes rust!”

Aside from some impurities and concentration differences, this fog and the rust on the fortress were indeed completely the same thing.

Not only that, during the time the mermen were attempting various methods, this rust was even continuing to spread, with more and more components failing due to the rust’s expansion.

After the test results were sent to the fish swarm, it caused another wave of panic, but the mermen quickly adjusted and immediately had teams control components to put up protective shields, isolating the entire fortress.

The fog was blocked outside.

However, even knowing this fog was the culprit causing the rust, there was no way to clear it.

Although the fog had been forced outside, the rust on the fortress continued spreading.

The helpless mermen could only watch as the rust continued devouring those originally intact runes.

Like an unextinguishable fire burning the entire building.

“Remove the useful components and leave the ones with rust,” Jeff decisively gave the order. The fish swarm didn’t hesitate and quickly joined the rescue work.

Jeff stood in place, quietly looking up at the continuously rusting fortress and busy mermen, the light on his armor flickering slightly, seemingly thinking about something.

He remained motionless, slowly asking a subordinate beside him, “Do you remember what that Chali tribe member said before?”

“What?” The subordinate didn’t react immediately and froze in place.

“Death, spreading death,” Jeff explained, then repeated the Chali tribe member’s previous words:

“Learning the cost of immortality means everything around will be tainted by death. Death will even wrap around like thick fog, accelerating the passing of everything nearby. Even if immortality is achieved, this mist will forever linger.”

“The fog is death, the rust is also death. We understood immortality, so we’ve been entangled by eternal death.”

He looked at his subordinate and asked, “Do you have records of fog density?”

“Yes!” Although the subordinate was somewhat confused, he quickly sent the records to the communication channel.

It was a continuously rising coordinate graph.

The horizontal axis was time, the vertical axis was fog density.

Jeff looked at the curve on the coordinate graph for a long time before speaking again.

“That’s right, the fog density changes also match up.”

“From when we learned the method of immortality, the fog began intensifying, but the rate of increase was relatively slow. After we conducted experiments, the curve entered an inflection point, and the density increase kept accelerating.”

Mo Ling also glanced at this coordinate graph. The curve’s slope was indeed constantly increasing, becoming steeper and steeper.

But what did this indicate?

Soon, Jeff stated his conclusion.

“The fog’s density is related to our degree of understanding immortality.”

“Or rather, the closer to immortality, the closer to death.”

While speaking, Jeff grabbed some fog beside him again, then summoned a protective shield to squeeze the fog away.

However, as Jeff’s words spread through the fish swarm, the still-updating coordinate graph suddenly changed again. The already very steep curve bent again, rapidly shooting upward.

The fog density surged again.

“Seems this also counts as understanding about immortality,” Jeff shook his head helplessly.

He probably hadn’t expected that his own deduction would also trigger the fog’s violent reaction.

“So it’s related knowledge. This is somewhat troublesome.”

The suddenly violent fog shrouded everything around in black. Outside the hexagonal protective shield, fog like tentacles continuously beat against it.

This rolling fog was like some kind of unknown life, anxiously trying to enter the protective shield.

Not only that, some black spots quickly climbed onto the protective shield, like some kind of rust debris…

“Crack.”

Mo Ling seemed to hear the sound of something breaking.