Not the end of the world, nor the pinnacle of the world, but a never-ending world.

The fire of the ship floated in the continuous clouds, like stars hanging high in the sky. Just like when I came, the color of the sky and the color of the earth were gray clouds.

In this regard, explorers looking from a distance from the window can also feel tired.

Before eating, he counted the food in the storehouse. After counting, he couldn't help but rub his temples and began to mumble about the food arrangements for the rest of the journey.

There are not many or too few industrial supplies in the Gear Man's ship that can be eaten and are not necessary. Since there are very few people in demand, there are only two people, and if you count Mr. Dandan, who occasionally eats something, it may be considered a lot.

But a lot of it all can't stand the terrible drift that is about to come. The entire journey from departure to crossing the cloud belt has now become the first small poem of the entire travel poem. And the barrenness of the Netherworld makes it undoubtedly the highest probability that there will be no supplies in the next journey.

A few days earlier, Hatsuyun had used her newfound middle school math to give a complete calculation of the length of the two cloud bands in terms of food, including the total amount of human edible food the entire ship had and the daily intake for the two of them.

"But the presuppositions for this estimate are still the result of my optimism." "Now that the second band is clearly emerging, we have to lower our expectations even further, and we should estimate it by three or more...... Save even more. ”

The only fortunate thing is that the gear man-water cycle is functioning normally.

The young man remembers a study on Earth when he was a child claiming that people can only live for three days without drinking any water, and that they can live for seven days without eating anything else and drinking only water.

"That means that we who can drink water and drink to our heart's content, can actually consider time and grace the four or five readings of the Eternal Clock?"

Gu Chuan held the water cup and drank a sip of water while thinking. The water has been filtered by repeated gear man's means, and the taste is bitter.

He raised his head and said to Zaiyan:

"It's okay, it's all under control."

Jae-sin gave him a skeptical look.

In the new understanding of the explorers, they divided the vast Netherworld into two parts, one called the cloud field and the other called the cloud belt.

A cloud field is a slightly brighter, more visible part without clouds. The cloud belts were the massive wall-like entities they had just passed through that were made up of the thickest clouds and were even more massive than the tower-like clouds.

There are many differences between cloud fields and cloud belts, and the most important one is probably the direction of the wind. The winds in the cloud bands are steady and consistent, while those in the clouds are disordered.

And although the clouds in the cloud field and the cloud belt are thick and thin, they cannot see the moon or the sun in the sky.

The world without celestial bodies is depressed like a deep ocean.

Returning to Yunye was only a trivial matter in Zaiyan's judgment, and it was not worth waking up the two resting companions in advance. But soon there was a major event, which Zai Yi thought had to be discussed intensively-

The direction of the dream jellyfish is different.

The bubble-like creatures no longer traveled straight south after they had pierced the cloud belt. It is worth mentioning that the explorers at that time could not determine whether the dreaming jellyfish had changed their direction by observing the objective world.

This group of jellyfish has almost no distinction between front and back in the structure of the body, and it is almost the same as the top and bottom and left and right. The most characteristic of their movement is the shaking of the body of water, and if they make a big bend, the instantaneous turn is very slow and slow. The action was almost imperceptible in the dark.

Originally, the explorers recorded the distribution of the jellyfish swarm, but the distribution of the jellyfish swarm changed rapidly, swinging back and forth around the central jellyfish, and they soon abandoned this plan.

As for the outline of the cloud in the distant arc, since they could not confirm whether the cloud was moving or the jellyfish was moving, it was naturally not enough to be used as some basis.

The basis for their findings is that the direction of the compass is skewed.

The angle of deflection is also quite large.

Although they didn't notice if the jellyfish's movement was so intense, the compass pointed unmistakably to the upper right after the cloud belt where the fire was located.

"Does that mean they're turning left and going down?"

After the gear machine assistant called the police, Zai Yan hurriedly summoned the explorers.

Gu Chuan said:

"I'm afraid yes, we're going to get out of the jellyfish swarm as we originally planned. It just so happened that there was a tower-like cloud in front of us that was large enough to carry our fall, and when the time came, we would use the light to pierce the jellyfish and force ourselves back on the right track. ”

"What about the jellyfish?"

Chu Yun asked.

Zai Yi said:

"The power of the light can be large or small, but with the ability of this group of jellyfish, at least 20 percent of the body fluids will be directly evaporated. According to biological common sense, the jellyfish that swallowed the ship and the jellyfish that shot before the light were dead. ”

The meaning of death made Gu Chuan's spirit concentrate a little.

"We may need to think, are there other physical consequences? For example, the light should not cause fluctuations in the towery cloud, right? ”

"The effects of light and tower-like clouds are based on the past experiments of the Gear Man, so don't worry too much."

Zai Yan shook his head, and when he said this, he seemed to think of something again, and said:

"But one thing might be worth mentioning."

"What?"

Gu Chuan asked.

"Now we know that the Netherworld, as barren as it looks, is actually inhabited by some of its inhabitants who can speak. In addition to these lineages of toedless people, there are also species that resemble shadows, or parasites. ”

Hearing the word "talking", Mr. Dandan, who was driving an invincible mage card to break through the dungeon of the mad mage, raised his head. At this moment, the gear machine flying in the air dropped a six-sided die made by a young man, and let out a strange mechanical sound, urging Mr. Dandan's character to move his character around the map.

Zaiyi on the table over there continued:

"At that time, because the jellyfish and the water body are also moving, it will be difficult for us to know the direction of the light with certainty, so that when the light penetrates the front, it may hurt the residents who may exist in the 'eagle cloud', and even if it does not hurt, it will be impossible for the residents who originally wanted to rely on the jellyfish to get out of the eagle cloud."

The eagle cloud is the giant cloud that the jellyfish are about to fly to in front of them.

Its shape is somewhat like a huge eagle standing vertically, and the whole large cloud appears slender, which can be roughly divided into three parts, the center is the largest, and the small clouds on both sides also originate at the bottom but fork, extending to both sides, which looks like the wings of an eagle, so the explorers call this tower cloud an eagle-like cloud.

Gu Chuan got up and walked until he reached the window, relying on the light of the searchlight to look at the huge clouds. The giant clouds that connect the heavens and the earth are like a giant tornado.

He said:

"If that happens, we don't have a choice."

If they don't follow the direction of the compass, they will surely get lost in the netherworld.

Zai Yan shook his head:

"No, we have another choice."

The young man turned his head, looked at Zaiyan, and asked him:

"What choice?"

The lion replied:

"Go back with the jellyfish."

"Is it any good to go back?"

"The good thing is that ......," said Zaiyan, "you don't have to risk your death." ”

As he finished, the atmosphere in the boat became strange.

The pinion machine suddenly didn't dare to speak. It picks up the dice it tossed, and just above the dice is one. And the boiled egg shrank his head.

"Return the way you came, you will suffer a little more at best, but you will not starve to death. The journey home is always clear and does not have to be risky. "But the road that continues to go forward is a boundless sea of suffering for you, an unknown one, a terrible road that you don't know how long or far away it is." ”

The lion thought that he would hear the young man's fierce rebuttal, and he had already thought of the lines of admonition he was going to say, but he heard Gu Chuan ask rhetorically:

"Can you accept that? You are the one who escaped from the city of your race. ”

Thinking that he had loosened, he said:

"I don't have anything to fear, I won't go back to Answer City, but it doesn't mean that I will leave the Great Wilderness forever......"

"If you go back, do you have to collect supplies again in the Great Wilderness and start over? How much time does this take? The young man asked again.

Zai Yi just wanted to speak, but he heard the young man answer himself:

"It's hard to estimate, because we don't know what's going on in the Gear Man world today. However, I don't think Kyokai and Zijin were able to convince as many cogwheel people as your mentor to bring them together to answer a world question. We had to collect a huge amount of supplies and rebuild the huge hull. ”

And, at most, they are back to the Great Wilderness.

When you reach the insurmountable mountains, you will once again face the pursuit and torture of the Celestial Mirror and Sunset City.

"Regardless of this, there are still dangers on the way back that are difficult to assess...... I'm afraid this time is infinitely long. And when the reorganization is complete, we may go to the second or third cloud belt, and use up another half of our resources – assuming we can collect that many resources – and save the remaining half or less, and choose to revert...... That's the meaning of the unknown. ”

"The journey is not in a hurry."

Zai Yan said eagerly.

"It's true, the journey is urgent, it always takes a long time...... But because it has been gone for a long time, it has proved its truth, if it was small and easy, it must have been taken into the hands of someone a long time ago, wouldn't it be boring? ”

The young man smiled.

"But!"

The lion-headed gear man slapped the table and stood up.

But the young man looked intently out the window, and the eagle-like cloud and its two wings seemed to be about to spread. When the sky hangs, if there is electric light. Boundless snowflakes and rainflakes flew in from afar again, sprinkling on the Death or Life Horn that was moving forward.

The compass on the table quivered, pointing in a more oblique direction.

"Don't be afraid, Zaiyi."

He said.

"There's you in this boat who can live longer, don't you? There are also strange things that can fly back with the Eternal Bell and a few other things when we, you, and the ship sink together, right? Because of this, I don't have anything to fear. ”

He turned his head and smiled pleasantly.

Because I know that everything will come in the history of living things, and everything will become a part of the history of past explorations in the future.

"Somebody will take the risk."

He said.

Jae-chan did not speak again.

The swarms of jellyfish were getting closer and closer to the eagle clouds, but no one was nervous, not even the feeling that they were making some kind of farewell to fate.

Or, this kind of farewell, each of them has done too much and feels normal.

In the spacious exterior observation room, you can see all the changes in the underworld ahead. Zaiyi didn't do anything, just observe the outside world. Gu Chuan sat on the mechanical hand of the telescope, playing cards with Mr. Dan Dan and Chu Yun.

The people who brought the earth-flavored solitaire to this world were really superficial and careless in their card technology. He's lost eleven in a row.

Mr. DanDan wins by handing over the cleaning of the sleeping box until the end of the trip to the young man.

Chu Yun was calculating the mathematical probability, and the young man looked at the combination of the big king and the little king he got for the first time in his hand, and turned his head sideways. He saw that the wind was harsh outside, and for the first time the whole death or life was in the jellyfish's body, not because of the movement of the jellyfish, but because of the movement of the wind.

He threw the twelfth directly, saying:

"It's coming."

The closer you get to the eagle cloud, the more material flies out of the eagle cloud and hits the jellyfish. Endless flakes of snow rushed into the water, stirring up a large expanse of foam.

"Can you proofread the direction and deflect the eagle cloud?"

Gu Chuan asked.

Zai Yan shook his head:

"No way, that's what the jellyfish are using 'us' to shine on the eagle-like clouds."

"That can't be helped. Let's shoot. ”

Said the young man.

He held up the dragon's heart and nodded his binoculars. And the newborn consciousness of the growing gear man in the telescope raised the scope embedded in the bow of the ship in ignorance.

And the entire bow of the complex optical equipment began to flicker at high frequency, increasing the power of positioning all the way to the power of destruction. In an instant that people can't see, a light tens of millions of times brighter than a searchlight condenses on a specific path, flying outward from the objective lens, straight through the body of the dream jellyfish, and then piercing through the bodies of several jellyfish surrounded in front of the jellyfish, and then sinking straight into the depths of the vast darkness of the eagle-like cloud.

The light pierced through the eagle-like clouds, and the ship's explorers saw the straight marks left by the light on the windows. Chu Yun said in a low voice:

"Did it work?"

"The launch was successful, and it should have pierced the jellyfish's shell."

As soon as the young man finished speaking, a ...... suddenly sounded in his ears A scream.

"It's ...... What's the sound? ”

Gu Chuan hurriedly walked from the edge of the telescope to the window, and as far as he could see, all the water bodies in front of the Dead or Alive, began to boil in an instant, and a large area of steam was rushing all the way from the jellyfish's body to the outside of the body.

The dream jellyfish they were in was screaming in pain.

The newborn creature realized the danger of the luminous object it had swallowed, and it trembled violently and painfully in the air, and the churning and evaporation of the water stimulated the waterwheel and sails. Their tumbling and death or life calls like a tidal wave also began to swing.

Everything on board was shaking. One by one, the cards made of glass books flew up and smashed indiscriminately on the floor or walls, and outside the fixed tables and chairs, things that were not fixed began to tilt.

But that's not where the screams come from.

Gu Chuan slowly moved his eyes and saw that the jellyfish swarm was scattering.

The primitive creatures chose to stay away from the death-or-life cry that suddenly emitted a bright light threatening with death, leaving behind the jellyfish that they had surrounded in the center and the jellyfish that were pierced by the beams, and turned back to the other side according to their path, disappearing behind the eagle-like cloud.

And these jellyfish are not the source of the scream.

Gu Chuan finally set his gaze on the eagle-like cloud.

He saw a small hole pierced by the light, briefly revealing some kind of snake-like body that was speeding rapidly. As the body kept moving, the color of the epidermis was also constantly changing, showing a variety of red, yellow, green, blue, and purple, countless neon-like brilliance.

"No, our searchlights didn't shine over there." The young man suddenly realized this, "It is not we who illuminate the thing, but the thing that is shining and illuminating us." ”

He saw that from the small hole in the cloud, something that could have been scales or blood had been thrown out.

"We, unfortunately, really hit something."

And not a weak, toeless-like inhabitant, but some powerful and strange inhabitant at the top of the food chain of this world.

The material swayed by the injured beast flashed in a sparkling rainbow light in the air, and most of it quickly evaporated and disappeared with the undulation of the nether matter.

Only a small point sank into the body of the dreaming jellyfish, and then mixed with the strange body fluids, and I don't know what changes occurred, causing the jellyfish's water body to vibrate more violently.

The jellyfish is also making painful sounds, the roar of the waves made by the evaporation and movement of the water in the jellyfish's body. The Death or Life then went up and down, almost turning over when it met the tower-like cloud.

The young man couldn't stand any longer, so he slammed headlong into the top plate and was suddenly pulled by the manipulator. And Hatsuyun was agile, hooking the fixed door table, and letting the direction of gravity make them hang in the air against the floor.

The wind rose stronger, the clouds surged harder, and the heavens and the earth resounded with an ominous roaring sound.

The light that flew out of the crack in the light dragged up countless changes in the wind and clouds, like a speeding meteor, which grazed the sky with a stream of light in the netherworld matter, and ran like lightning, but it crashed into the wounded jellyfish that were clustered together like a train.

After the impact, the meteor emitted billowing smoke, like the creation of a new whale cloud, like a house of flames, like an evaporated sea, filling the entire view of the ship.

The whole world was in chaos.

And the fierce sound of water in the jellyfish's body instantly rubbed a violent wind sound in the boundless clouds.

Then, like a man hit by a car, or a kite with a broken string, the jellyfish could no longer control themselves and threw themselves high and far.

Things change in a complicated way, but they only happen in a split second.

The Death or Life had been flipped twice, and the young man had once again slammed his head into the ceiling that had become the floor. He had experience, relying on his own hands, barely maintaining his balance, and looking at the outside world anew in the whirlwind of the world.

By the time the injured jellyfish flew out of the blank newborn clouds in the storm, they had landed in the air far away from the eagle-like clouds.

The young man's brain spun faster.

With the sensitivity of life and death, he realized that if the injured jellyfish died directly at this time, or directly expelled the death or life number from the body, the death or life number and they would have to face the threat of falling straight down at an altitude of thousands or even tens of thousands of meters.

"No, it's not going to work."

Zaiyun and Hatsuyun were equally aware of this, and the former shouted:

"Prepare for a crash landing."

The latter grabbed the table legs and hurriedly shook his head:

"Look at the bottom, there are no large clouds at all, we don't even have a buffer, we will fall straight into the netherworld in a void!"

The young man's face turned pale. He pursed his lips and said:

"Zaiyi, hand me the dragon's heart horn. I can't catch it. ”

Zai Yan glanced at the young man in amazement, and used his own pair of mechanical hands to climb up on the erected floor, all the way to the small box where the dragon's heart was stored. He took it with both hands, took out this strange object from the box, and threw it to Gu Chuan, who was on the bottom side of the cliff.

When Gu Chuan received the dragon's heart horn, he immediately let go of the hand that grabbed the telescope manipulator and let his body fall down.

The small gear machine opened the door to the large hallway for him.

So the young man left no longer in the way and fell straight down. Familiar doors passed by either side of him. And the door he had asked for came to him in a matter of moments. The young man's arms tensed at that moment, and he grabbed the door opening gear of the exhaust chamber.

The gears rotate and the door slowly opens.

At that time, the waterwheel and sail were still moving, and the hull was still flipping, Gu Chuan was like a person hanging on a horizontal bar. Even though he faced the hull flipping twice, it was something he had never done. He said to himself:

"Calm down, it's like pull-ups, I can do that."

His latissimus dorsi contracted rapidly. His body was pulled up against the door, until his entire upper body turned over the edge of the door, and the young man suddenly exerted his strength and fell into the exhaust chamber. The whole body walked through the door of the exhaust chamber and hit the wall of the exhaust chamber as if it were a carp.

At the same time, the gears are no longer under pressure and the door closes.

"It's time to open the hatch!"

What used to be a vertical ladder has been transformed into a walkway that spans the air.

The dragon's heart horn was hung directly on his skull. He grabbed the ladder with both hands, walked out of the hatch with one hand at the other, and then lifted his feet and kicked the gears of the hatch.

The colorless bodily fluids of jellyfish poured in like a tidal wave.

As for the outside world, the wind was roaring, like the roar of a wild beast, and the clouds rolling in the air were shattered into countless pieces in the continuous swirling storm. The sky is full of snow flakes and water droplets, constantly hitting the jellyfish's body, creating large ripples.

Boundless rippling, ripples, broken jellyfish are like small lakes in a rainstorm.

And the young man was in the small lake in the rainstorm, clutching at the hatch of the Dead or Alive, swaying in the water, looking down on the bottomless abyss through the water.

Don't be afraid, O petrel, of clouds and torrential rains.

Because you know that all of this is just a fleeting challenge, and it is the light that your life will shine through.