Chapter 163 The Ancient Crocodile Dragon
Three to five hours for Chen Fan, who had become accustomed to long hours, was no problem at all. In the past, when rus.h.i.+ng to Russia and the Tonga Trench, it was calculated on a weekly basis.
As the rock was chipped away, Chen Fan found that the bottom temperature of the pit was already nearly zero, but as the cave went deeper, the temperature was rising.
When all work was done, the temperature rose to about 15 or 16 degrees. The temperature was a small problem, but the unknown s.p.a.ce was the main issue.
Onsh.o.r.e, if there were any monsters, the electric eel could only rely on mere fighting, because the air was not conducive to electricity. The lightening relied on the powerful internal voltage that did not effectively travel through the air. And the electric eel now has to release the current at close range, not remotely.
"I hope you don"t get a bite out of your head when you go out!" Chen Fan said to himself and then controlled the electric eel from a distance 20 meters away, quietly putting the spear in the air ahead.
After 10 seconds, the spear didn"t have any movement, and Chen Fan was satisfied and nodded. "Safe!"
As the electric eel came closer to the unknown hole, Chen Fan found the water not far away seemed to be emitting a faint glow.
Poof!
When the electric eel"s eyes were above the water...
Chen Fan was completely surprised and shocked...
What idiom could be used to describe Chen Fan"s feeling now?
"As dumb as a piece of wood," "To be struck dumb," "To be ill at ease and full of dread," "Frightful billows and terrible waves"?
NO, NO, NO!
These idioms were only used to describe the general state of the human mind.
And the scene that Chen Fan saw, very obviously, absolutely did not belong to normal feelings. He would not feel this way even if he saw something bizarre like Ultraman and the little monster mating.
d.a.m.n!
What a scene it was!
Under the electric eel"s excellent vision, a wide, multicolored s.p.a.ce was completely exposed to the electric eel, which was about 100 meters high with no geometrical explanation.
Everything was paved with brilliant gold and in gold fluorite minerals, which were mixed with other colorful crystals.
White, red, green, blue, purple, yellow, and a lot of crystals, emitting a bright l.u.s.ter.
But that was not all!
In this gorgeous s.p.a.ce, unexpectedly still lived the crocodile-like creature that Chen Fan saw for the first time.
And beyond the line of sight, there was an unknown lake. Even more confusing for Chen Fan: beside the lake, there stood a golden stone tower up to 10 meters.
"The paradise, the Kunlun fairyland?" Chen Fan was completely lost.
Immediately, he woke up again and then puffed the electric eel back into the water. Because there was a monster of 10 meters long, with a green, squiggly face coming toward the electric eel"s head with a big mouth open that surely meant to behead him.
The monster was similar to a crocodile, but the shape was much bigger, and the head was not the flat kind of a crocodile but was similar to the dinosaur, a stereoscopic triangle with two rib-like horns behind its head that made it look even more imposing.
"Roar!"
The monster saw the electric eel go away, roared, and jumped into the water.
And then...
It was completely stunned, struggling to escape.
The electric eel had just shown its two eyes, and the crocodile monster didn"t know what it was. But when it got into the water, it turned out it was a monster of over 80 meters long.
"Now you want to run after you come in?"
The electric eel"s eyes glared, and then the front part of the spear flashed blue arcing light and poked swiftly toward the crocodile monster.
The speed of the spear was so fast that the monster had just touched the sh.o.r.e when it was struck by the electric eel.
The monster"s scales and muscles were very hard. The spear had only gone through halfway and was stuck in the bones. But this did not prevent it from striking as much as 30,000 volts into it. In not even five seconds, the monster stopped moving.
Shaking the monster off the spear, the electric eel backed away for a few tens of meters, then stared at the hole.
The gold ore in the hole… Chen Fan knew its origin. It was called the golden mica.
It was a kind of rock mineral, and its appearance was pearlescent. it had good electrical insulation and resisted heat, acid, alkali, pressure, and performance. There were many applications for it in life, especially in engineering and electronics.
It is not unusual to find a large number of mica mines in rocks. Although the gold mica is as pure as the Yellowstone, it has a wide range of parts in China and only the purity was a concern. But a.s.sociated with the golden mica, the colorful gems that glow and don"t s.h.i.+ne, are undeniably valuable.
The interior of the cave had no other light sources, suggesting that they are permanent luminescent gems and contain a large number of luminous radioisotopes. And that kind of gem belonged to a rare breed. During ancient times, n.o.bility had broken their head to buy it, and a lot of Kings inlaid it in the palace or wore it on the crown.
There was no discussion of these valuable gems, and there were many of the world"s karst caves, or mines, that have similar minerals, but these were only a few.
What about the big number of monsters?
What do those monsters eat in isolation?
Did all the demons follow the practices of the Jindan period, able to deny the valley and absorb the essence of heaven and earth?
Of course not. The electric eel had just used a spear to kill the Jindan monster. Wouldn"t that make the electric eel not a G.o.d?
The electric eel"s line of sight did not find anything that could feed the monsters, so the monsters were probably hungry and went to the lake to hunt for food.
The only explanation was that there were a lot of nutrients in that lake, and the plankton ate the nutrients, small fish ate the plankton, big fish ate the small fish, and monsters ate the big fish.
What about that beautiful stone tower?
It must have been erected in the ancient times when humans used the ore to build it or cut it out directly from the large ore.
It wasn"t hard to explain why there were a lot of human skeletons in the pit and in the tunnel. The ancients wors.h.i.+pped religion and G.o.d. Perhaps a wizard, or a tribal leader ordered the construction, and then lived in it. But at the end of the day, there was a bit of a disaster and the place was flooded.
Isolated caves and the living organisms that survived must have a separate ecosystem.
The source of this ecological system was the lake.
To get an understanding of the existence of the large number of creatures, the electric eel dove into the lake to take a look.
Taking a deep breath, Chen Fan struggled out of his thought, then again controlled the electric eel.
Looking around, there were no big monsters in the vicinity, only a few small ones, and the electric eel could kill them with just one look.
Gently taking a deep breath, Chen Fan found out that the air pressure there was not as high as he expected it was, only a little atmospheric pressure and no harmful gases in the air. Chen Fan thought that his own body could even spend some time in it, too.
Stay for a while?
Chen Fan looked at the stone tower in the distance, and a bold idea came to mind.
What if he made it the base of operations for himself and the electric eel?
The thought made Chen Fan happy. The electric eel could easily survive in such an environment and the lake was the best place to live.
What about him? His goal was the 10 m high stone tower, but now he was too far away. The electric eel could not see clearly the special structure of the stone tower, but the circular profile and the flat structure above was certainly the best habitat for him.
Even though Chen Fan didn"t understand why the atmosphere there was not as high as his own calculations, it was not a problem. As long as he made it his home base, would he be afraid anymore if he had any major enemies coming after him?
The security of it was comparable to that of an anti-nuclear bunker. There were electric eels there to guard and no enemy could come in.
Not to mention that the entrance was more than 1,000 meters underwater. Even a submarine couldn"t dive that depth. Even if it could, thought, the electric eel would strike it with the spear.
To transport himself there was very simple. He could use the small, customized, thick t.i.tanium alloy submarine, or the electric eel"s mouth. But after he thought about it, Chen Fan decided to use the t.i.tanium alloy submarine. Going into the electric eel"s mouth was a little too embarra.s.sing.
It"s a waste not to make the best of it. Now the only thing the electric eel had to do was to use the force of violence to bring down the monsters there.
The antelope would run away if it saw the leopard because it knew the leopard was strong. The electric eel would have to stay around for a while, and the animals would naturally see how strong it was and run away.
After seeing the power of the monster, Chen Fan controlled the electric eel and climbed to the sh.o.r.e.
Crocodile dragon. Let"s call them crocodile dragons. They"re like crocodiles and dragons, anyway.
A few of them saw the electric eel and immediately looked at it with curiosity, crawling around it.
"Roar!"
A dry, hot breath of air, came out from the electric eel"s mouth and terrified some of the little crocodile dragons. The electric eel did not have an organ to emit sound, it could only rely on a large amount of rapid airflow to vibrate the mouth and make a thundering sound.
Because it was not a proper amphibian, the electric eel"s four claws were powerful, but they were still crooked as if they would break if they were touched.
Behind the electric eel, was the colorful rock with no end, but the front was endless s.p.a.ce.
The stone tower was about three kilometers from the electric eel, and there was about a dozen alligator dragons between them. The small ones were only one or two meters, and the large ones were more than 20 meters long.
The world"s largest cave is the Mammoth cave of the Appalachian Mountains of North America, a full 64km long. Along with other branches, it was 250km long, just not as wide.
Located in the city of Lichuan, Hubei Province, there were four large lakes, five sections of an underground waterfall, more than 300 holes, and it was more than 230 meters deep. Inside the water, there were turtles the size of a tank, bats the size of an umbrella were everywhere, and the local residents said that there was a trail of wolves and tigers. The terrain still had not been fully explored. Wujia, a big cave in the water city of Guizhou, the highest point, was almost 430 meters deep.
The hole was large, but it was not so special in scale compared to the rest of the world. It"s just that the environment and the structure were very strange comparatively.
Chen Fan wanted to control the electric eel and walk to the stone tower to see if it was suitable for human habitation.
Crawling over the land, the electric eel, with its spear in its mouth, swung right and left to the stone tower.
Water is an inorganic substance composed of hydrogen and oxygen. And electric eel could use the electricity in the body, to decompose the water, into oxygen and hydrogen, so in the electric eel before losing the body moisture could definitely stay on land. Moreover, the electric eel had drunk a large amount of water.
The 85-meter-long electric eel, weighing 100 tons, was an absolute monster on land. It acted slow, but its moving speed was not slow.
"Roar!"
When he reached the front of a 15-meter-long crocodile dragon, it opened its mouth in defiance and shouted at the electric eel.
"Small creature, see how I will treat you!" The electric eel held the spear in his hand, then slowly moved to the crocodile dragon. The crocodile dragon stared at the spear quizzically, and when the spear touched its head. It tentatively touched it with its claws.
Bang! With a flash of blue light on his spear, the crocodile dragon shook violently and then began to cry and run away.
It was so shrill that, seven or eight crocodile dragons in the neighboring area had turned their eyes on the electric eel and began to crawl toward it.
Boom! The electric eel raised its head, opened its mouth, and squirted out a clear green poison. Half-a-meter-thick venom, like a water gun, spurt the crocodile dragons that were not able to run away and soaked them.
Although the electric eel"s poison could not kill the large creatures, the stabbing pain made a few crocodile dragons rolled hard on the ground due to the pain and emit a scream that buzzed the electric eel"s ear.
It was like poking a hornet"s nest. Between him and the golden stone tower in the distance, all the crocodile dragons that lived in the area turned their heads around and stared at the electric eel.
Hum! The electric eel gave a loud roar!
Boom!
Dozens of crocodile dragons, as if they were angry tankers, wagged their tail and ran toward the electric eel. There were three big guys which were about 20 meters long.
Looking at the army of crocodile dragons that was approaching, the electric eel again opened its mouth, a clear green venom spat out, then flashed the electricity out of its mouth, and the clear green poison immediately was on fire. He was like a ferocious dragon.
The dragon fire, which splashed out at a distance of 20 to 30 meters, was thrown into an arc by the electric eel"s head, landing in front of the crocodile dragons, and pus.h.i.+ng the brakes on the dozens of high-powered "crocodile dragon tanks."
The fire was so efficient that the flames leaped seven to eight meters, and the heat was so intense that even the electric eel in the distance could feel it.
Chen Fan did not want to kill these organisms. They might be the world"s only crocodile dragon group. They would become extinct if he killed them. It was better to stay there, then make them soldiers, and the eel would be their king.
Of course, he needed to see if the crocodile dragons" temperaments were brutal or not. If it was a group of stubborn creatures, and if they would not learn a lesson, the electric eel would not kill all of them. It would just kill all the big ones, leaving only the smaller ones.
About five seconds later, the fire that the electric eel spat had extinguished. Of the crocodile dragons that were blocked a distance away, none of them wanted to be the first to show their claws and teeth to the 85-meter-long monster.
The electric eel held its heads high and stared at them.
Finally, after a dozen seconds of stalemate, one of the largest of the crocodile dragons, howled and crept forward.
The electric eel did not move, it just watched as it was getting closer and closer to it.
Rumbling, the 23-meter-long crocodile dragon, a few dozen meters away from the electric eel, dropped its head and showed its two horns, about five meters long, and tried to dash into the electric eel.
The electric eel"s action was simple, with a long spear and a half of body twist, Bang! The crocodile dragon was swept to a dozen-meter-distance and knocked onto several others that were there.
"Haha! "The electric eel howled, tugged the spear, and charged at the crocodile dragons.
A man of two meters tall may be beaten up when encountering a dozen kids.
But what if the strong man had a crescent moon broadsword in his hand?
The electric eel was in the similar situation, carrying a t.i.tanium alloy spear 30 meters long and weighing 40 tons das.h.i.+ng into the group of crocodile dragons like the man with the broadsword who dashes into a kindergarten, and kept attacking them causing them to scream in pain.
Boom, boom, boom, boom! The spear threw away four to five of them, and its tail swept away about the same amount.
It was always possible the electric eel wouldn"t be so cool with the dozens of small crocodiles, if only one could find a chance to bite it or to stab it with the long horn on its head.
The result was quite the opposite. Instead of taking a bite, the crocodile dragon fled.
Because of the electric eel"s voltage that was up to 38,000 volts, the crocodile dragon, which got just close enough, would be hit by a powerful arc, and then all they could do was run away.
Although the electric eel couldn"t release the lightning current over a long distance, when high-pressure ionization conductor is close, the short-range air around will be an instantaneous breakdown, forming a conductive electric arc, hitting the crocodile dragons.
It was like with a lighter"s electronic fire device, which had a very small voltage, but when you"re very close to it, you"re still struck by the white arc that it releases.
Up to 30,800 volts and more than 100 amperes of current. Its power was very, very big. With one blow, the crocodile dragon didn"t have to attack again. They only could flee to a distance with a painful scream.