Ke Lan pushed the switch up with force, and immediately, a rumbling sound came from inside the two water pumps that were more than one person tall. It was the sound made by the high-speed rotation of the centrifugal pump blades.

Two water pumping pipes made of high-strength polymers are fixed with brackets, one end is directly inserted into the blood pool, and the other end extends to a wastewater pool in the base. The pool was originally used to store radioactive wastewater produced after the secondary refining of crystalline ore. There are complete protective measures at the bottom, around and outside of the pool.

Ke Lan has conducted preliminary tests on the plasma in the blood pool, which is found to be corrosive to a certain extent, but not as perverted as the acid of the monsters. It will not cause any damage to the water pipes and sewage pools that have been treated with anti-corrosion treatment. The only problem is that there are a lot of lumps of scab-like substances in the plasma, which will wear out the blades of the pump and easily cause blockage of the pipes.

Ke Lan had to stop the pump about every five minutes, and then go up to clear the pipe under the radiation.

After four rounds of dredging, the water level in the wastewater pool has reached the warning line, but the height of the blood pool has only dropped by less than half a meter...

"The capacity of this blood pool... is not right..."

Just when Ke Lan approached to clear the pipe for the fifth time, he finally saw the exposed roots underneath the giant cocoon.

Although I had prepared myself mentally, when I saw the root of the giant cocoon, an indescribable fear still surged up from the bottom of my heart...

Countless thick tentacles were entangled together, twisted and weird. Their tops were connected to the bottom of the cocoon, and the bottoms were soaked in thick blood like magma. These tentacles had a dark red skin that was almost black and brown, and many tiny crystal particles were scattered on it... and looking inside the gaps between these tentacles, you can vaguely see many human limbs slowly wriggling in them... bent thighs, palms without fingers, squeezed eyeballs... Ke Lan even saw a bra with black lace edges soaked in dirty blood...

"Could these be the bodies that were collected...?"

Ke Lan also noticed that these limbs were not only wriggling along with the tentacles, but also seemed to be slowly sinking... The black lace bra that was still about four or five centimeters above the water surface just now was almost completely sunk under the blood pool.

For some reason, Ke Lan suddenly thought of the scene of chewed food passing through the esophagus when humans swallow...

At this moment, Layton's voice suddenly came from the headset: "Ke Lan, the communication device is ready, and Ivan has found four injured survivors, but unfortunately Liao Zilang was not found... Now everything is ready here, but... do we really need to send a distress signal to the Mitsui Group?"

"Send it, send it now, send a distress signal in the standard format, with the additional information of emergency 039, and if you want to sign it... use Manstein's ID." Ke Lan said.

"Emergency 039" means "suffering an organized attack by a large number of indigenous creatures, and the emergence of new species that have never been recorded in the archives and pose a huge threat." According to the regulations of the Ark, if any individual or organization receives a distress message mentioning "Emergency 039", they must report it to the Ark headquarters as soon as possible and provide the greatest possible rescue to the target within their capabilities.

"No... wait, change 'Emergency 039' to 'Emergency 000', and don't use Manstein's ID, use mine." Ke Lan stared at the pool of blood and said slowly.

"000? Are you sure...?" Layton's voice in the headset sounded a little hesitant.

"Yes, just press 000. I will take all the responsibility." Ke Lan made up his mind.

"Emergency 000" does not specifically refer to a particular time. It only means "an event that is severe enough to directly threaten the Ark and may lead to the extinction of mankind."

In the first few years after humans landed on Alpha, "Emergency 000" occurred a total of 46 times, and each time it was resolved only after humans paid a huge price. However, in the past twenty years, no incident that qualifies as "Emergency 000" has occurred.

On Earth, the punishment for falsely reporting a fire is just five to ten days of detention and a fine of several hundred dollars, but on the Ark, the consequence of falsely reporting "Emergency 000" is enough to make the person spend the rest of his life in prison... and this is only for relatively minor cases with small losses... If it causes major losses, even execution on the spot would not be an exaggeration.

"What if..." Leighton was still a little hesitant.

"I said, I will take all the responsibility." Ke Lan emphasized again, "If possible, I even hope that the Ark can fly over and use its main gun to directly fire a shot at this big guy under our feet."

"Did you find anything?" Leighton asked nervously.

"Those monsters... seem to be performing some strange sacrificial ritual. They use human corpses and themselves as sacrifices..."

"Sacrificial ceremony?" The hound's voice also appeared in the communication channel.

"Hmm...very similar...I suspect they are trying to awaken this great beast."

"Ke Lan, what on earth did you see?!"

"I saw it..." Before Ke Lan could finish his words, a buzzing sound suddenly rang in his ears without any warning. He felt as if he was floating up into the air...

"……?"

He wanted to stretch out his hand, but found that he had lost the sense of his arm... Not only his arm, he couldn't even feel his own body. He was like a soul unsheathed, a ball of pure consciousness, floating continuously into the sky.

"What on earth is going on?"

Ke Lan only felt waves of sleepiness coming over him. He was even deprived of the ability to think, and his vision gradually became blurry.

"Could it be... an illusion? Triggered... in this situation?"

"What are the triggering conditions?"

He vaguely remembered that he was talking to Layton and the Hound just now. He turned around and saw something coming out of the blood pool...

It seemed to be a long, inky black crystal...

When Ke Lan's scattered consciousness gathered again, he saw a creature shaped like a giant whale hovering in the air directly below him. It was so huge that it looked like an island floating in the air...

"...Leviathan! This is...Leviathan!"

But why am I here?

Ke Lan looked around, there was nothing, then he lowered his head and glanced at the place where his body should be——

It's also empty.

Although his thinking has returned to normal, he is still in that "conscious body" state.

"Could this also be... one of the memory fragments hidden deep in my head? Text, sound, video... has it finally been upgraded to VR image?"

Ke Lan tried to close the distance between himself and Leviathan. As soon as this thought came to his mind, he found himself instantly appearing on the back of Leviathan, less than ten meters away from this prehistoric beast.

At this time, Leviathan's body was not yet covered with the rock layers hundreds of meters behind... Instead, it was covered with large patches of earth-gray scales, and between the scales were a large number of long, inky black crystals.