The silk foot swallows the bead curtain, and the mysterious ruins are buried.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tick...... Tick......

The rough surface of the rock had become somewhat wet from the water flowing from above, and the black droplets of water that had become completely ink-stained slowly seeped through the narrow gaps, leaving a black sedimentary zone along the rock surface that had become significantly different from the surrounding color due to the accumulation of time. If you zoom in countless times, it is like a river running across the arid land, even if it has long been polluted by dust and cannot bear to look at it, it is constantly flowing downward.

The slender feet with scattered cilia are firmly attached to this moist fluid trail by the tension of the moisture surface, and the orange foot with three joints is like a thin thread, with no hard carapace or sharp claws, and it looks so soft and slender.

Six elongated feet of very similar appearance are attached to the common body, and interestingly, the creature's body does not appear to be very thick, but also has an elongated strip body.

True, its entire body resembles a thin orange line, and the thin lines branching out from this slender line are six slender ciliated feet and a head with two curved antennae.

Silky feet, that's the name of this small creature that is no more than four or five centimeters long. Its head is so small that its features are barely discernible from the perspective of a large animal, but it does have eyes, and dozens of tiny eyespots spread throughout its body weave a clear image of it.

It may not be able to identify the details of the environment too clearly, but at least it does not miss the general outline, so that it can always be aware of the presence of so-called predators.

The wind was howling, but only a faint trace of wind could penetrate the cracks in the rocks and blow all the way here. The silk foot stood still like a sculpture for a long time, and then slowly moved its foot, following the trail of the water until it reached the top of the rock, hanging upside down on the rough surface.

It was reluctant to leave this haven, and it was too dangerous to be exposed directly to the gray skies of the nuclear continent, and it was not a natural rocky cave. The stones were piled up on top of each other and seemed to fit together so tightly that they finally formed a fortress-like structure, which, of course, could not be called a real building from a strict architectural point of view, but at best a hemispherical hollow slope made of stones...... But knowing when and where it is, even such a humble building is shocking.

Cautiously feeling every move around him, Silkfoot's head turned upside down to stare at the ground below, and even though the semicircular fortress appeared to have only one entrance on the surface, the gaps between the rocks remained. It may never forget the days ago when a boiling rat with fiery red fur and like a small flame jumped through a crack in the rock in search of food, and almost caught it red-handed as a ration, before it managed to escape into a narrow crevin that the boiling rat couldn't enter. Perhaps from the perspective of the Moon Prayer, the Boiling Rat is just a cute little thing, but from the perspective of Silkfoot, it is a giant monster.

Drop after drop, the viscous liquid flowed down from the mouth of the silk foot, and the tiny droplets were joined together by thinner silk threads, turning into something that drooped downward like a rosary. These viscous droplets are extremely acidic and give off an orange shimmer like the body of the silky feet. They are able to absorb any tiny creatures attracted by this light, whether they are fungi or small insects, and then melt them into an acidic liquid to gradually erode them, and eventually, the silkfoot will swallow the slender strings of beads again.

Its entire body is very acidic, and if it were placed elsewhere, predators might choose to ignore it because of this problem, but in a place like the nuclear continent, where life density is low and the environment is extremely harsh, acidic bodily fluids seem to be too pediatric, and it is much easier to deal with this thing than nuclear radiation.

It doesn't dare to ask for too much...... The chemical information detected in the air by the tentacles of the head fork told it that it would probably be hungry for a long time, and there were no small insects in the area, and it could only survive the days by absorbing the small and inexerable fungi from the strings of beads secreted, and possibly even to the end of its life.

It sounds incredible, but it's fate. In this world, just surviving has become a difficult thing to do. Many of the silk-footed species have lived almost entirely on these fungi adapted to the radioactive environment for their entire lives, because it is too difficult to find other small insects on the nuclear continent for food, and with the size and strength of the silk-footed, it is simply desperately small.

It waited silently, for the fungi in the environment to gather onto the slender string of glowing beads. The cilia-like vibration-sensing organs of scorpions are so sharp that they even roughly estimate the approximate size of the fungus's movement inside the beads. It wasn't until this number reached the level of activity that it was enough to meet the needs of the movement for a short period of time, and the silk foot began to recycle the strands of beads that he spit out...... Its body also bulged with the strings of beads that had solidified in the breeze, a process that would continue until the fluid in the body softened them again into a liquid state.

Its movements were slow and continuous, as its slender body could not withstand too much movement, but just as it recycled the string of beads to the last few left, there was a sudden strange movement at the entrance and exit of the rock fortress. The silk foot reacted quickly in a very short time, the sharp organs on both sides of its mouthparts closed like scissors and cut the thin threads connecting the beads, and the last few beads fell directly out of support, while it hid itself in the nearest rock crevice with great speed, a gap so narrow that it could barely get into it, but it also meant safety.

The few drops of liquid quickly fell to the ground, and the droplets, which were not very strong, broke directly and turned into a wet mark on the ground, which made Sizu extremely distressed. The scarcity of material resources makes it consume a lot of nutrients for each droplet it condenses, but it does not hesitate to cut the silk thread. If the nutrients are lost, they can be slowly re-accumulated, but if the life is lost because of this momentary hesitation, then it is really over.

Food and life, any rational life knows how to choose.

The sound of walking could be heard from afar, and just by the sound of footsteps, Silk Foot could tell that the guy who arrived this time was definitely a terrifying large creature...... It's a lot bigger than the boiling rat, but it was a relief, as it meant that it was much less likely to be a part of the other party's recipe. If it is a really large animal, it will not care about such a small existence.

……

Of course, even the so-called powerful large animals from the perspective of the silky feet may not have an easier life.

Shiokue stopped, a little tired, and gasped for breath. She still grossly overestimated the limits of what the body could withstand, and the tearing sensation coming from her lungs made her almost suffocate like she had never experienced before, but only because of a sprint that didn't seem too long to her.

[Why...... Over here...... Will there be such a thing here? ]

The companion's condition was obviously not very good, but at least it looked slightly better than Mu Xue, and he stared back at the strange building in front of him in surprise after looking back at the still fierce fighting in the distance. Why is there such a thing that looks like a man-made structure on this barren and dead land?

The Xin Yu people obviously don't make anything like that, of course, with their strength, it's very difficult to pile up these stones that at least look heavy, and the Moon Prayer people, just because of the presence of nuclear radiation, they can't reach this kind of place to build a building, right? Unless this is a construction brigade from the future that comes on a time machine or something...... Well, it's pure joke, be sure not to take it seriously.

[Do you want to go in and check it out?] It looks strange. ]

Her companion seemed to be curious about this strange hemispherical building, and Xijie also looked at it with some curiosity, but she was always very vigilant when she knew the strangeness of the nuclear continent, and the stone building in front of her gave her the feeling that it was more like a ...... than a fortress or something A tomb that rises from the ground.

Eerie and terrifying, exuding an aura that no one can approach.

Tick......

As she reached the door, the sudden faint dripping sound did not reach their ears, and Shiokyu immediately noticed a wet orange trail on the ground, which had obviously just dripped down, and when she looked up at the top of the boulder that seemed to collapse at any moment, she noticed nothing unusual.

After all, it's too difficult to find a silk foot at the top of nearly three meters high.

Of course, Xijie and the Xin Yu people didn't know that this was purely a false alarm that they were scaring themselves, but this orange droplet of unknown origin could indeed scare people enough, but when they looked around the room, they only found a place in the corner that looked like it was covered with a stone slab, and other than that, there was only a cloud of dust.

It was a place also enclosed with stone, covered by a stone slab, but similar to the widening cracks in the surrounding walls, the slab's connection to it had long since been cracked by the passage of time, and now looked like a void.

The world seemed to fall silent, so quiet that only the sound of each other's rapid breathing could be heard. Shioyu glanced at her companions, who didn't sense any of the nerves from below, and she took a deep breath before stepping forward and opening the lid.

Empty eyes...... Yes, it can only be described as hollow, because it has no eyeballs, only empty eye sockets and a strange smile made of teeth, and what looks like a humanoid head skeleton lies quietly inside the container, grinning at the person who opened the lid.

(Thanks to the 588 starting point coin reward of "Purple Cloud Half Covering the Light Moon Traces~)