Alien Hotel.

Chapter 700 Hidden in the Mountains
A dazzling streak of fire flashed across the sky—but it didn't look like one of the fortress torpedoes or orbital landing pods that had been fired from near-Earth orbit before.

It shimmered with a bewitching and magnificent azure blue, and as it fell, streams of light spilled out. The energy overflowing from it ignited the atmosphere and even disturbed the storm turbulence in the high sky. A huge ring of fire rapidly grew around the light, like a red lotus blooming in the sky.

Is that a space bomb? Is it a secret weapon at the border? Or is it a new type of landing module breaking through the atmosphere?
"……fox?!"

The black-clad priest let out a scream filled with fear and shock, and then terrifying heat and pressure descended upon every member of the secret order.

Some reacted quickly and began to flee into the distance; others, realizing they couldn't escape, had already erected shields; still others were helpless and could only scream and curse. The priest in the sage's robe simply stood high up with a calm expression. The moment the Lotus of Destruction descended from the sky, he suddenly raised his right hand, and his holy radiance expanded violently like the blazing sun. In that light, he transformed into a magnificent "sacred statue" sculpted from marble, with a crown of thorns crackling and burning atop his head.

Like the ancient demigods in Alglade legends who held up the stars, he solemnly and resolutely erected a massive barrier, proclaiming, "Witness the Holy Land..."

Then he was smashed to the head by a giant fox that fell from the sky, along with his shield, and was gone.

A ball of eerie blue fire rose from the mountains, the enormous flames outlining the shape of a fox's tail, blooming slowly like a flower in the ensuing massive shockwave—the earth shook, sand and stones flew, the ground burned in the foxfire, and the scorching rocks were swept high into the air by the powerful shockwave, turning into a torrential downpour of fire that splashed down at the foot of the mountain.

The priests on the defensive line no longer need to worry about the shield generators.

After a long while, the "Foxtail Fire Lotus" that bloomed on the mountain finally slowly dissipated.

Holding Eileen in his arms, Yu Sheng stood with Luna on an unmelted boulder in the impact zone, looking up at the fox spirit girl whose head was buried in the ground.

The little doll spoke haltingly: "I, I, I, my head is buzzing, buzzing..."

Luna nodded beside her: "Yes, that's right."

"You're so lazy, you're really good at saving your breath. My tongue's numb, completely numb. Give me a +1 instead..."

Yu Sheng couldn't bear to watch any longer, so he grabbed Eileen's head and shook it from side to side. With a click, he pressed the doll's half-undone neck back in place.

The little thing looked surprised: "Hey, I'm all better!?"

Yu Sheng only recently discovered the unique characteristic of Eileen's original body—her head works normally when it's attached to or removed from her body, but it stutters when there's a poor connection, like a dual-mode keyboard connected to a low-quality cable, essentially a battle between the left and right hemispheres of her brain due to Bluetooth and wired connections.

After recovering, the little doll started babbling again: "I'm not going to follow that silly fox's orbital descent anymore. They said it was protected by spiritual energy so I wouldn't get hurt if it crashed down, but why is my head still buzzing? And that silly fox, you really didn't slow down at all, and you were carrying someone on your back..."

The large fox, its head stuck in the ground, kicked its legs hard, and a muffled voice came from the half-molten pile of rocks: "The teacher never taught us how to slow down... Besides, orbital bombardment is a killing technique, how can we kill the enemy if we slow down!"

“Speaking of killing enemies, when I fell down just now, I think I vaguely saw a group of cultists down here,” Yu Sheng said, as if reminded, turning his head to look around, “...now there are none of them.”

"I don't know, I didn't notice," the fox spirit girl with her head stuck in the ground said sullenly. "But when I fell, it seemed like I hit something a bit hard, something crunchy."

"Let's not talk about whether it's crispy or not," Yu Sheng's eyes twitched, and he looked up at the fox girl stuck on the ground. "You're stuck again. How long will you be stuck this time? We have important business to attend to—should I open the door and borrow two packs of mining explosives from Engineer Sun to get you out?"

"No need, no need," Hu Li quickly wagged her tail vigorously upon hearing this, and then started kicking and thrashing with all four legs. "I'm experienced this time, and I adjusted my posture when I hit you. Wait a minute, I'll pull myself out~"

As she spoke, a creaking sound of cracking rock strata came from the pile of stones. Upon hearing this, Yu Sheng quickly grabbed Eileen and ran away, with Luna turning around and following closely behind.

The three of them had only run a dozen meters when they heard a series of loud cracking and booming sounds behind them. The great fox demon swayed to the side, using its four legs to brace itself against the ground, and then pulled its head up with all its might.

Another sandstorm and earth-shaking event ensued. Fortunately, Yu Sheng was agile and reacted quickly, and was hit four times in total. It wasn't that he dodged the rest, but rather that the stones from the sky had all fallen.

Turning my head again, I saw the fox standing on the ground, grinning foolishly at me.

Yu Sheng immediately lost all his temper.

“The location that Baili Qing marked is in this area,” he said, taking out his phone to look at the coordinates on the map. “The energy reaction is located inside this mountain, and the entrance should be nearby.”

At this moment, the unified fleet has occupied multiple orbits of this planet and released a large number of battlefield support satellites. Navigation signals from space can now provide assistance to ground troops. However, due to the lack of more accurate surface information, these navigation systems can only provide latitude and longitude data and general directions at present.

The great fox demon rushed over with a tremor, lowered its head, and looked into the small phone screen in Yu Sheng's hand. "My benefactor, my divine sense just detected a gap in the mountain nearby—it was probably created by the previous orbital bombardment. There seems to be something below the gap."

"Ah."

Yu Sheng nodded, but just as he was about to leave, he suddenly noticed that Luna, who was standing to the side, seemed to be in a daze and showed no sign of following.

"Luna?" He looked at her in confusion. "What's the problem?"

Luna did not answer immediately, but tilted her head slightly and remained motionless for a few seconds, as if she was seriously sensing something, or as if she had heard some kind of sound that only she could hear.

Luna only looked up abruptly, as if waking from a dream, when Yu Sheng couldn't help but ask again.

“I heard sounds,” she stammered, “lots of sounds, down here, I, I remember the ‘temple,’ I think I’ve been here before.”

Eileen couldn't help but interrupt halfway through: "Hey C-Cut, your stuttering is driving me crazy!"

Yu Sheng's expression changed rapidly several times before he turned to face Hu Li.

A dozen minutes later, following the location Hu Li had sensed with her divine sense, Yu Sheng and his group found the gap on a nearby hillside.

The landslide caused by the previous orbital bombardment destroyed the thick rock layers and tore through the layers of heavy alloy armor inside, thus exposing a corner of a large facility that was originally hidden inside the mountain.

“It looks like a factory down there? Or maybe an energy facility,” Yu Sheng and his group said, hiding behind a nearby boulder and looking at the hole that was still billowing thick smoke. “Anyway, it doesn’t look like a temple; the style is quite different from other places.”

Through the wide crack in the mountain, Yu Sheng could clearly see a crooked and broken corridor below. The wall on one side of the corridor had also been torn open, and deeper inside, one could see an intricate network of pipes and transportation systems, as well as a huge building that looked like a reactor.

The fox spirit girl then transformed into human form, resting her head on Yu Sheng's shoulder and peering outside. She sniffed, "I haven't sensed anyone yet."

“Go in carefully,” Yu Sheng waved his hand, then looked back at Luna. “If you feel anything is wrong, or remember anything, tell me immediately—if you don’t have time to say anything, just drag me into the wilderness of souls.”

Luna nodded immediately: "Okay."

The group emerged from behind the boulder and, taking advantage of the surrounding dust and the concealment spell cast by Hu Li, carefully slipped into the gap.

The mountain rocks collapsed and fractured, and the ruins were twisted and piled up. There was almost no place to step inside the gap, let alone any road. Further in, there were also some broken pipelines. The walls and the ceiling were crackling with fire. The remaining lighting system flickered on and off with the support of backup power lines, casting indistinct shadows in the ruins.

After finally navigating the difficult path, Yu Sheng and his group stepped into the crooked and broken corridor. After walking a few more steps, they saw several corpses lying haphazardly on the floor.

“They must have been members of the Secret Order who were originally stationed here,” Yu Sheng went forward to check, “and were killed by the shock.”

“They were probably already dead when the orbital bombardment hit. Now everything is a mess. The people guarding this facility probably don’t even know there’s a hole in it,” Eileen said, looking around. “This place looks huge. It’s like the whole mountain has been hollowed out.”

Yu Sheng nodded slightly, and just then, he suddenly felt a stirring in his heart.

A slightly familiar aura seemed to pass by, causing a slight fluctuation in the blood connection.

He subconsciously looked in the direction his intuition led him to, and out of the corner of his eye he only saw a white shadow that quickly faded away, the shadow disappearing so fast that it seemed like an illusion.

Eileen noticed his reaction: "Huh? Yu Sheng, what did you see?"

“A white shadow, but I couldn’t see it clearly,” Yu Sheng frowned, not simply dismissing the fleeting glimpse as an illusion. “We need to be careful; something extraordinary might be hidden here—if this place is truly connected to the secrets deep within the planet, then we might be facing more than just ordinary cultists.”

The little doll blinked: "Yes, yes..."

The next second, as if to prove Yu Sheng's point, a series of neat and heavy footsteps suddenly appeared at the end of the corridor!
(End of this chapter)