Chapter 38: The tip of the iceberg of the world

Xu Xin walked up to the iron gate that looked incredibly heavy.

This iron gate was designed like a vault door, and he was currently inside the door.

Xu Xin had seen how vault doors were opened in movies and games, where a circular wheel on the outside was turned like a steering wheel in reverse. After a hissing sound, the circular door would push outward and then slide to the left or right.

But he was now inside this room, so there was no circular switch. He could only try to push the large door with his hands.

"Zzzz—" A harsh metal scraping sound rang out as Xu Xin used all his strength to slowly push the door open.

"It's working!" Xu Xin was delighted to see the door moving and continued to push hard.

"Click!" With a crisp sound, the circular iron door had been completely pushed out of the doorframe, leaving a gap of two fingers' width between the frame and the door.

Xu Xin didn't rush to open the door fully, but instead looked outside through the gap.

He had expected the outside to be a modern room like a vault, but to his surprise, what he saw through the gap was a wall of soil with a faint reddish tint, as if he had entered another cave.

"Is it another cave outside?" Xu Xin was puzzled.

Did this mean that underground, there was a solitary square iron room like a vault buried here, and inside the room was a dead European from their world in the 1980s?

How strange.

"Coco, is there any danger outside… What are you doing?!"

Xu Xin's eye twitched as he watched Coco lying on the ground, pawing at the skull.

The poor skull was being rolled around on the ground by Coco like a ball, smacked left and right. The scene was quite eerie at times – a cute little red panda playing with a human skull.

"Ying?" Coco looked at Xu Xin questioningly.

That's right, Coco was a red panda. He couldn't expect it to feel fear towards a human skull. Xu Xin shook his head helplessly, "I'll have to give you a good bath after we get out of here!"

"Ying!"

However, the little one's antics had actually dissipated much of his inexplicable fear of the skull.

"Coco, is there any danger outside?"

"Ying." Coco shook its little head, indicating it didn't sense any danger.

Xu Xin took a deep breath, reached his fingers into the gap, and pulled hard to move the large door to one side.

With a harsh sound, the door slowly opened halfway.

Xu Xin stopped there, as it was enough for him to pass through.

He went through the door and looked outside.

Seeing everything beyond, Xu Xin was stunned. He rubbed his eyes and looked again.

He had thought this was a cave, but he was wrong, terribly wrong.

"Ying!" Even Coco let out a surprised cry.

Xu Xin instinctively took two steps forward, then suddenly stopped.

He suddenly realized he was at the edge of a cliff.

That's right, at the edge of a cliff.

Small stones and soil rolled off the cliff edge. Xu Xin looked down, involuntarily clenching his teeth, his facial muscles twitching, a bead of sweat sliding down his temple.

Below the cliff, almost a thousand meters deep, was a huge underground world that stretched as far as the eye could see.

With his night vision enhanced, he saw everything in the underground world.

"Is… is this real…?" Xu Xin's lips trembled slightly as he stared blankly at everything before him.

He saw countless emerald green and blood-red vines wildly dancing below.

He saw a giant carnivorous plant with a bloody maw-like flower bud devouring an animal that looked like a dinosaur.

He saw a huge monster, dozens of meters tall, covered in green seaweed, tearing apart those blood-red vines and stuffing them into its mouth.

He saw countless car-sized flying insects with glowing tails spinning and dancing around the carnivorous plants.

A chaotic dance of demons.

The scene before him was so unreal, the amount of information so overwhelming, that he was left in a daze.

He blankly looked around again.

He was now at the very top of this underground world, in a cave. The top of the entire underground world was just above his head, within arm's reach.

If you viewed the underground world as a giant room, he was now like a tiny bug in the gap between the lampshade and the ceiling, looking down at this enormous room. And those monsters were the owners living in this room.

On the map, the densely packed red dots made a sense of fear and despair rise in his heart.

[Congratulations, you have discovered one of the hidden secrets behind this world, becoming the first among this batch of survivors to discover the underground world. The reward will be issued after this jungle exploration activity ends.]

[Please do not share the world's secrets with those who do not know them, or you will face extremely severe punishment.]

[Do not panic. The underground world is not something survivors can deal with at the current stage. How to solve the beast uprising is what survivors need to consider now.]

[Please continue to strive, strengthen yourself, and work hard to survive in this world.]

[A gentle reminder again, do not abandon your little treehouse. The treehouse is your only support.]

The mysterious voice sounded in his ear again, suddenly bringing him back to his senses.

Against the backdrop of these monsters, he now found this mysterious voice so familiar and comforting.

"Wait! Where exactly is this place? Why is there such a large space underground with so many monsters?" Xu Xin asked the question he most wanted to ask right now.

[The secrets of the world need to be explored by the survivors themselves]

The mysterious voice only answered him with this one sentence, and no matter how much he inquired, it said nothing more.

By now, Coco had already burrowed into Xu Xin's arms, hiding its head and trembling.

There were simply too many monsters below. Even at a depth of a thousand meters, Xu Xin could still feel the oppressive presence of those giant monsters, let alone Coco.

Fortunately, the mysterious voice had just said that they didn't need to deal with these huge monsters now, and should first consider how to solve the beast uprising. This meant that these monsters wouldn't come out now; he had just gotten a preview of the content of later versions, so to speak.

This made Xu Xin truly breathe a sigh of relief.

He suddenly thought of something.

"Coco, didn't you say the golden chest was here? Don't tell me it's down there?"

Let's find the golden chest first. Xu Xin calmed his current mood and rubbed the head of the little one in his arms.

"Ying!" Coco suddenly remembered this too, jumping out of Xu Xin's arms and tugging at his pant leg, indicating for Xu Xin to follow.

Outside the huge circular iron door wasn't just a small cave on a cliff; there were other openings in the cave wall. Xu Xin had been too shocked earlier to notice.

Following behind Coco, Xu Xin soon reached the end and saw the golden chest there.

Even in the dark underground world, this chest still emitted a faint golden glow, illuminating the surroundings at the end of the cave.

Xu Xin examined this chest. He first confirmed the pattern on the chest; it was indeed the head of a beast, but it differed from the qilin in his memory. It seemed that what was printed on the three chests was not a qilin.

Xu Xin decided to open the golden chest here.

He took out the key, inserted it into the keyhole of the golden chest and turned it. A mechanical sound was heard, and the chest opened.

"Ying!" Coco climbed to the edge of the golden chest and also looked inside.

Inside the golden chest was a bottle of gray potion and a thin card.