Night of Despair-Chapter 209 - : Exploration

Chapter 209: Exploration

“It’s scripture, which involves religion, plus the shape of that altar, that place definitely hides no small secret,” Yu Hong sat cross-legged on the ship, set down the scripture, and gazed out at the world beyond.

The Black Ship slowly sailed through the Black Fog, occasionally swaying gently as though it were in the real sea.

Solitude.

Quietness.

Even the sound of the wind was almost inaudible.

Roughly fifteen minutes later, the Black Ship gradually slowed down until it came to a stop.

A dilapidated black wooden bridge appeared on the side of the ship’s hull.

Yu Hong stood up, carrying an iron ball with a light leap, he jumped down from the Black Ship and landed on the wooden bridge.

The dragon lizards, one by one, leapt down in succession, dropping like dumplings, swiftly returning to the Black Wind Camp Array.

Yu Hong looked at the wooden bridge, then turned back to the Black Ship.

“Could this ship be bound to this wooden bridge?”

This thought suddenly rose in his heart.

Stepping off the wooden bridge, he immediately checked the scripture in his hand again.

Sure enough.

The scripture was completely blank, and all the text had entirely disappeared.

“There definitely is a problem… It seems the book I got hold of earlier can only be read in a special environment.”

This time he went to the manor without bringing the translation device, worried that if he encountered a particularly tough opponent, it would be a pity to damage it in the fight.

Thankfully the outcome was still good.

Thinking it over, he stepped back several paces and returned to the wooden bridge.

Instantly, lines of text reappeared on the scripture in his hand.

“Indeed!”

Yu Hong’s face lit up with joy, this thing, along with a bunch of Black Disaster remnants that the dragon lizards brought back with their mouths, made his harvest this time far exceed any previous.

Back in the cave, he quickly grabbed the translation device and again stood on the wooden bridge.

This time, text appeared on both the scripture and the small booklet from before.

Settling down inside the cave once more.

Yu Hong first checked the Array, the repair of the Array continued, but it had vanished due to the erosion from the wooden bridge.

Not just reduced, but completely gone.

“Could it be that the wooden bridge itself isn’t harmful, but what is truly dangerous is the place it connects to through the Black Ship?”

Thinking this, Yu Hong’s mood improved a lot.

Had it not been to relieve the burden on the Array, he wouldn’t have necessarily needed to embark on the Black Ship to explore the outside world.

Wasn’t staying within the Array and resting while doing Qi Cultivation delightful?

Sitting back on the wooden bridge, he took out the translation device, placing its earpiece against the scripture, and lightly slid it across.

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“Scanning complete, unknown language detected, please name,” a sweet-sounding Mandarin female voice spoke up.

“Night Text,” Yu Hong casually selected a name. A shorthand for the text discovered at night.

“Naming successful, Night Text structure analysis underway… beginning sample collection. Current progress 0.15%.” The sweet voice’s feedback left Yu Hong somewhat disappointed.

Immediately, he moved the earpiece across every face of the scripture until the progress increased to 6%, then he stopped.

By this time, the entire scripture had been recorded, afterwards, he took out the small booklet from the Black Ship that he found earlier, opened it, and continued recording.

“Same type of Night Text detected, beginning collection.”

A few minutes later, Yu Hong set the booklet down again, hearing the translation device speak.

“Current progress: 8%.”

He got up annoyed, walked out of the wooden bridge, and returned inside the Array.

‘To translate the content with this progress, it’s probably going to take a long time; it’s a shame, if there were a place with a lot of samples, the progress could be completed quickly.’

He didn’t bother with the wooden bridge anymore, returning instead to the front courtyard, in the stone castle’s first-floor hall, he pried open the mouths of the dragon lizards, one by one, and extracted clumps of black mud-like substance.

Plop.

From one clump of the black mud, a piece of irregular purple-black bone suddenly fell out.

The bone was covered with tiny dense holes, as if worm-eaten.

Yu Hong reached out to pick it up, tapped off the black mud from the surface, and set it aside. Then he continued to look at the dragon lizards’ finds.

Under the white light, clumps of black mud were placed on the ground, occasionally with pieces of purple-black bone being set aside.

Holding a detector, Yu Hong placed it on the surface of the black mud.

The values on the detector’s LCD screen fluctuated, settling at 86.523.

He measured all the clumps of black mud one by one, all of them were around eighty-something. Each clump the size of a fist.

Then the bones…

Thud!

Thud!

Thud!!

Suddenly, heavy, massive impacts came from the darkness outside the camp.

The ground shook slightly, from time to time the sound of trees snapping and falling.

Yu Hong halted in his actions and quickly went to the monitoring basement of the cave to check the surveillance footage.

In the furthest and highest camera, a huge blue silhouette could be seen, taking steps towards the distance.

Blue indicated that the individual’s temperature was lower than the surrounding environment, and this silhouette showed its height estimation data clearly in the monitoring system.

Measuring height and width—that was one of the built-in functions of the surveillance, or rather, the original surveillance system had this capability.

Yu Hong looked at the data displayed on the screen.

“183 to 192 meters in fluctuation.”

His pupils contracted slightly, although this wasn’t the first time he had encountered a passing gigantic Black Disaster creature, although he had already directly injured that previous Black Hand.

But the main body of that Black Hand, the three-eyed Black Daoist, was only around thirty to forty meters tall.

And this behemoth within the surveillance system was actually approaching two hundred meters…

Not to mention anything else, such a massive creature, with its sheer weight alone, was extraordinary. The durability of the skin layer that could withstand such a weight was also beyond imagination.

Otherwise, the hardness of ordinary materials would probably crumble under half that weight; then the skin would crack, and the creature would collapse on the spot, let alone walk so effortlessly.

The thumping sounds gradually faded away.

Signifying that the large Black Disaster creature had already moved away into the distance.

But even so, Yu Hong’s expression remained grim.

“Should a large Black Disaster suddenly decide to give our camp a kick… That…”

The primary defense target of the Black Wind Camp was the Black Disaster, particularly small and medium-sized creatures.

If they had to face such a huge creature, one stomp from it, and the entire camp would collapse.

After all, who would believe that such a giant would weigh less than several hundred thousand tons?

How could any camp withstand a weight of several hundred thousand tons pressing down?

“Too dangerous…” Yu Hong watched the direction in which the mysterious giant had vanished on the screen, where everything had returned to an impenetrable Black Fog.

But the alarm bells in his heart continued to ring.

“It’s no good… we can’t just stay in one place; the large Black Disaster creatures are becoming more numerous nearby; the more problems and dangers the camp will likely encounter if we stay here…”

This was a significant danger signal.

Because the camp was stationary, it had always been passively subjected to dangers from the outside.

“But, what if the camp could move?”

This thought suddenly flashed through Yu Hong’s mind.

If he could transform a mountain cave safe house, along with the surrounding Arrays, into a mobile structure…

The idea would seem insane, and to those unaware, it would definitely be seen as madness.

But Yu Hong was different.

He had the Black Mark!

“I can try to reduce the volume as much as possible, then transform the inner wall materials, and add some moving devices, like tracks… or mechanical legs?”

“Or perhaps I can construct an anti-gravity device… and fly the safe house away directly!”

Once his brain got going, Yu Hong’s mind brimmed with numerous ideas.

“If the camp’s safe house could move, I could actively avoid many troubles and dangers. And find a better and more suitable environment to live in! Many problems would no longer be problems.”

Exiting the surveillance bunker, he grabbed all the black mud and purple-black bones, put them in a barrel, and carried it to the mountain cave safe house.

“Let’s strengthen the safe house’s defenses again; we can use all the remains of the Black Disaster, like the sunlight materials. The outer layer can be coated with these remains to camouflage and hide its presence, making it part of the Black Disaster; then, we can use materials containing elements of sunlight for expulsion and isolation in the middle layer. The innermost layer can use various runes I’ve designed to absorb the Red Value essence, creating a relatively pure and safe environment.”

Yu Hong set down the barrel and looked around the cave.

Three bunkers, two large and one small, along with the main space on the first floor. It wasn’t difficult to make the entire safe house mobile; the tricky part was bringing along the entire Array of the camp.

“If only the camp’s Array could be packed up… made into a type that can expand and contract. Once a spot is decided, it would automatically deploy, burrow underground, and form an outer defense perimeter.”

At the fence of the outer courtyard.

Yu Hong took out all the remaining black mud and a barrel of sunlight material paint that he had obtained from Zhang Kaijun, placing them all on the ground.

Then he quietly waited for the luminous stone enhancement to finish.

An hour later, the Black Mark concluded its work, and he stopped his Qi Cultivation, placed his hand on the ground.

“Enhancing the camp, direction…”

In his mind, he envisioned a massive cubic platform, a tracked mobile one that encompassed the entire inner and outer courtyards.

But immediately, the feedback from the Black Mark was a blow to his aspirations.

“Completeness insufficient, unable to enhance.”

“I knew it.” Yu Hong released his hand and sighed. “It definitely isn’t possible to achieve the goal in one go. I’ll focus on strengthening the surrounding defenses for now.”

He pressed his hand on the ground once more.

“Enhancing the outer yard defense layer. Direction…”

The so-called outer yard defense layer was the ring of wooden fences, which had started to soften and disintegrate due to prolonged water exposure.

The recent incident reminded Yu Hong, and he decided to significantly strengthen this defensive layer.

At this moment, he imagined the image of the fence enhancement in his mind.

Combining the black mud, the sunlight materials, and the soil around the fence.

He envisioned a tall black wall encompassing the camp.

The walls, rising from the ground around the outer courtyard, were two meters thick, six meters tall, with extremely high material density, and featured various functions—waterproof, pest-resistant, fire-resistant, cold-resistant…

Yu Hong impulsively added a pile of features.

Then…

“Fundamental information insufficient, unable to enhance.”

The Black Mark ruthlessly rejected him.

Releasing his hand, his brow furrowed.

“Is it because there are too many conditions? Or is there another reason?” He glanced at the black mud. “Could it be that this material doesn’t have the functions I described?”

He then attempted other enhancements with different requirements, but none of them were successful.

As time passed and he made more attempts, the expression on Yu Hong’s face gradually showed understanding.

“I remember when I first strengthened the cave’s gate; it was a wooden door, yet I was able to enhance it to an iron material… Why wasn’t I notified of insufficient foundational information for enhancement then? How did the wood turn into iron?”

“If it worked then, why isn’t it working now?”

He touched the fence gently, its wood scarred with notches and indentations, bearing witness to the variety of dangers the camp had faced these past days.

After pondering for a moment, he suddenly remembered something.