The whole nation: You're put to survive on a desolate planet, you'll be running an alien b

The rain poured down, and the wind whipped icy droplets against the rusty iron walls of the abandoned factory, creating a teeth-grinding noise. Li Haotian wiped the rain off his face, and the beam of his tactical flashlight pierced the dark night, focusing on a loose manhole cover on the ground.

"According to the coordinates provided by the old shopkeeper, the long-forgotten excavation site is right below here." Li Haotian's voice sounded particularly calm in the wind and rain, but the white knuckles of his fingers gripping the gun tightly betrayed his inner tension.

Lin Mo stood to the side, her face pale. Having just recovered from the shock of File Zero, she now faced this entrance to what felt like hell. She clutched her backpack tightly, containing the crucial data she'd brought from the archives. "This is the only backup maintenance passage the authorities didn't completely backfill after the accident," she said, staring at the dark well opening, as if she could smell the decaying stench wafting from fifty years ago. "Haotian, are you sure you want to take this route? The files mention that the ecosystem here… is very abnormal."

"Whether it's a den of dragons or a hell in the mirror, we have no way out." Li Haotian took a deep breath, suddenly reached out and grabbed the edge of the manhole cover, the muscles in his arm instantly tensing. With a piercing metallic scraping sound, the heavy manhole cover was pushed open, and a damp, warm current mixed with mold and fishy smell gushed out of the manhole and rushed towards them.

"Ugh..." Lin Mo couldn't help but cover his mouth and nose. The smell was not only the stench of sewage, but also a sweet and cloying smell similar to that of fermented formaldehyde, which made people want to vomit.

Little Black—the black hound that had always followed them—lowered its body. Instead of its usual growling and threatening tone towards the darkness, it tucked its tail between its legs, letting out a mournful whimper. It stared intently into the depths of the well, its body involuntarily shrinking back. Its eyes held not mere wariness, but a deep, instinctive fear.

"What's wrong with Xiao Hei?" Lin Mo noticed his dog's unusual behavior and quickly squatted down to soothe its trembling back.

"Its intuition is far sharper than ours." Li Haotian frowned, glancing at the bottomless darkness below. "It's not afraid of enemies, but of something deeper. Everyone be careful; there might be something we've never seen before down there."

Li Haotian jumped down first, his tactical boots making a dull thud as they hit the slippery ladder. Lin Mo followed closely behind, and finally, Xiao Hei, though extremely reluctant, cautiously leaped into the darkness at its master's call.

The sewer was more spacious than expected. It wasn't a typical brick and stone structure, but rather some kind of cast-in-place concrete tunnel. The walls were not only stained with watermarks from the years, but also covered with a dense network of black marks. As the beam of a flashlight swept across the walls, those marks seemed to come alive, wriggling slightly in the light and shadow.

"That's...moss?" Lin Mo walked closer to the wall and gently touched it with his gloved fingers.

That wasn't an ordinary plant. The black moss had a gelatinous texture. The moment my fingertip touched it, the blackness seemed to be activated, spreading rapidly along my fingertip for a short distance before retreating as if it were consciously trying to stay in place.

"Don't touch it!" Li Haotian shouted sharply, pulling Lin Mo back. "This is black erosion fungus. I've seen it in an extra chapter of a notebook. This kind of thing usually only grows near extremely high-level pollution sources. They feed on organic and inorganic matter and can even absorb weak radiation energy."

"How could something like this grow here?" Lin Mo asked, still shaken, as he wiped his gloves.

"Because what's buried below is 'feeding' them," Li Haotian said coldly, his gun always in a wary stance.

The team continued deeper into the mud. As they went deeper, the pungent, fishy smell in the air grew stronger, and the surrounding silence became suffocating. The only sounds were their heavy breathing, the slapping of their boots in the mud, and the faint dripping of water from the depths in the distance.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

But the sound of the dripping water seemed to have a strange rhythm, unlike a naturally falling droplet. It sounded more like some huge creature chewing saliva, or like countless people whispering.

"Did you hear that?" Lin Mo suddenly stopped, his voice trembling slightly.

"What did you hear?"

"The sound... it's like someone talking inside the walls." Lin Mo looked around in horror, the beam of his flashlight sweeping wildly through the darkness. "It's very faint, very low, but it's definitely there."

Li Haotian stopped and held his breath, listening intently. At first, there was only the whistling of the wind through the pipes, but gradually, he detected a strange fluctuation deep in his eardrums. It wasn't human language, but a low-frequency noise composed of countless tiny friction sounds, like countless insects flapping their wings simultaneously, or like countless lips whispering against his eardrums.

"Whispers from the sewers..." Li Haotian murmured to himself, a line of annotation he had once glimpsed in the top-secret files of the Dragon Shield Bureau flashing through his mind—"The Abyss lures its prey with sound."

Just then, Little Black, who had been walking at the back, suddenly let out a piercing bark. It leaped up, not forward, but lunging into the air as if something unseen was pressing down from above. Then, it landed awkwardly, its limbs slipping, and it nearly fell into the roadside sewer.

"Little Black!" Lin Mo exclaimed and rushed over to hug it. Little Black's whole body stiffened, its pupils dilated to the extreme. It desperately shrank into Lin Mo's arms, its claws even tearing Lin Mo's clothes.

"It's gone mad!" Li Haotian gasped. This was the first time he'd ever seen the usually fierce Xiao Hei so broken down. "That thing is nearby! Everyone run! Get through this confluence zone!"

The three dared not linger any longer. Urged on by Li Haotian, he sprinted through knee-deep sewage. The beam of his flashlight swayed violently ahead, illuminating the increasingly open space before them.

Finally, a vast open area appeared ahead. It was a huge circular confluence pool, where several thick sewage pipes converged like blood vessels, pouring black wastewater towards the center. The surface of the pool was eerily calm, like a giant black mirror, reflecting the dim emergency lights overhead.

"We're here." Li Haotian stopped, panting heavily. The terrain here was extremely open, with no cover whatsoever. If they were ambushed, they would be sitting ducks.

"In the center of the confluence pool..." Lin Mo pointed to a platform in the middle of the pool, "There's something there."

Under the strong beam of the flashlight, a stone platform can be seen standing in the center of the pool, with some kind of device on it, but it is too far away to see clearly.

However, just as Li Haotian was preparing to find a path to the stone platform, a sudden change occurred.

The once calm, mirror-like surface of the water suddenly began to ripple without warning. The ripples didn't spread outwards from the center, but rather spread simultaneously from all directions, as if something enormous was churning up underwater.

"Watch out!" Li Haotian suddenly reached out and pushed Lin Mo to the higher ground behind him, while raising his gun to aim at the water.

In that instant, all sound vanished. Even the eerie whispers ceased abruptly. Then, with a deafening splash, dozens of enormous black tentacles burst forth from the water!

These tentacles, as thick as buckets, were covered in a nauseating black, gelatinous moss, flailing wildly in the air like demonic claws reaching out from the depths of hell. They had no eyes, yet they precisely locked onto the three people's location.

"Damn it!" Li Haotian pulled the trigger, the gun spitting out angry flames. The bullet struck the tentacle, but it was like hitting mud, splashing up a few black droplets, unable to cause any real damage.

The tentacles seemed to be enraged, and quickly intertwined in the air to form a huge black net, which swooped down on them with a stench.

Little Black let out a desperate roar. This time, it did not retreat. Instead, it arched its body, revealing its sharp fangs, and stood in front of Lin Mo.

Li Haotian's eyes instantly turned fierce as he watched the dark shadows looming overhead. He pulled a high-explosive flashbang from his waist, pulled the pin, and threw it.

"If you don't want us to pass, then blow this place up!"

A blinding white light suddenly exploded in the dark underground world, and a deafening roar instantly swallowed everyone's hearing. However, when the smoke cleared, the black tentacles did not retreat, but instead surged in from all directions even more greedily, completely surrounding them.

Li Haotian leaned against the cold wall, watching the ever-increasing number of tentacles, and a chill he had never felt before rose in his heart.

This isn't a sewer; it's a giant mouth.

And they had already reached the very depths of their throats.