I, Stone Golem, only want to forge.

Chapter 125 Giant Serpent

There is no skin on the palm, only pure bone.

The bones were a dark gray-iron color, suggesting they were metal, and their surface was covered with fine lines.

And attached to the skeleton are densely packed tubes and cables, like meridians.

The pipes varied in thickness, the thickest being as thick as an adult's waist and the thinnest being about the size of a finger, resembling a fascia woven from pipes and cables.

The pipe is made of a semi-transparent, dark-colored film.

Murphy looked closely and discovered that something was faintly wriggling inside the pipe.

Every few seconds, a slightly darker shadow could be seen sliding from one end of the pipe to the other, then disappearing into the depths of the bones.

"What is this hand?"

Murphy looked away and asked with some curiosity.

"I don't know."

The Relic Merchant stood behind Murphy, following its gaze to the enormous hand clinging to the edge of the pit.

"This thing wasn't here when I came last time."

As the relics merchant spoke, he subtly took a small half-step back.

When was the last time you came here?

Murphy asked.

"It was a year or two ago, I think. There were some strange things going on down here, and it was hard to get anything good from there, so I haven't come back since."

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He spoke a little faster than before as he continued, adding to the point.

"When I came here a year or two ago, there was nothing around this pit except for the metal plates buried in the soil and a few broken pipes. At most, there were some messy things down there."

"A jumble of things?" Murphy caught the qualifier in his words.

"It's down here."

The relics merchant raised his chin and gestured towards the depths of the pit. "In the lower levels, some things that look like tree roots start to appear on the walls and hang down from the ceiling. There's a thick layer of soft, water-permeable stuff on the ground, but it's not dangerous. I can take you down there to take a look."

Murphy nodded.

Unlike before when he brought Murphy into the market, the Relic Merchant did not use any methods like shadow travel to send him directly down.

He crouched down and wandered around near the edge of the pit, groping among the metal fragments and piles of rubble half-buried in the sand.

After a while, they walked to a flat sandy surface that looked no different from the other places and stopped.

The heritage merchant vigorously swept away the thick layer of accumulated soil covering it.

A round metal lid, about the width of a person, was exposed beneath the soil.

He stood up and kicked the edge of the lid a few times with the heel of his boot.

The metal lid made several dull thuds, causing the surrounding sand and soil to slide down in a rustling sound.

With the final kick, the lid finally gave way and popped open with a bang.

Beneath the cover was a dark, circular opening, from which a row of rusty metal stairs extended downwards.

The staircase spirals downwards.

Murphy looked down and saw that the stairs extended for about ten meters before turning a corner and blocking the view, making it impossible to see the bottom.

"You can go down from here."

Murphy was slightly speechless.

It originally thought the Relics Merchant would use some kind of shadow travel method to send it down directly.

I never imagined it would just be leading me down a path.

Despite his thoughts, Murphy obediently followed the relics merchant into the circular opening.

The stairs were quite long, and it took the two of them a while to finally reach the top.

Murphy counted them, and they were at least twenty or thirty meters long.

When Murphy came out of the stairwell, he found himself standing on a platform built on the edge of a large pit.

The platform is about three or four meters wide, and it extends out along the pit wall in a long strip shape, like a corridor for people to pass through and observe.

Near the pit was a metal fence, the crossbars of which were also rusty.

Murphy walked to the fence, looked down, and saw that it was still pitch black, with no bottom in sight.

However, Murphy could vaguely see some red lights flickering in the darkness.

It looked at the red lights more closely, and a strange feeling suddenly arose in its heart.

This doesn't resemble the flickering light of a normal machine.

This red light looks more like the fluorescence produced by some kind of organism.

However, Murphy hadn't been observing for long when the Relics Merchant standing behind it interrupted its observation: "Go this way, the passage to the left leads down."

Murphy turned his head, temporarily putting the matter of the red light aside, and followed the relic merchant to the left along the platform for a distance.

At the end of the road, the two arrived at a large door.

There was a card reader embedded in the wall next to the door frame. The machine was in much better condition than the cover on the stairs. The surface was only covered with some dust and there were no obvious signs of corrosion.

The screen was dark, but a small indicator light next to it was still glowing a faint green light, indicating that the device was still powered.

The relics merchant stood in front of the door and began rummaging through his pockets.

He patted a few pockets, then reached inside his robe and rummaged around, seemingly looking for something like a pass.

Then he heard a voice behind him.

Ding dong.

A crisp notification sound suddenly rang out in the quiet underground space.

The heritage merchant turned around abruptly and saw Murphy take a step forward. The light on the scanning device above the gate, which had been off, suddenly lit up with a pale blue glow.

A beam of light shone down from the scanning device, quickly scanning Murphy, and then the pale blue turned into a soft green.

Then, the door emitted a low, mechanical whirring sound, and the heavy door panels began to slowly slide open to both sides.

The relics merchant was visibly stunned by what he saw.

Several seconds passed, and after the two had entered the elevator lobby and the doors had slowly closed behind them, he finally pressed the floor button and asked in a voice that he could no longer contain himself, "How do you have this place's certification?"

After he finished speaking, he withdrew his finger from the button and looked Murphy up and down again.

The heritage dealers were a bit unsure.

He originally thought Murphy was just a somewhat capable repairman, with the added layer of "having a good relationship with the lizardmen".

But now it seems he's starting to doubt even what Murphy's purpose was in asking him to bring him here.

Anyone who can enter this building without a card is definitely not someone of simple status.

Even for businessmen like them who spend their days rummaging through underground ruins, getting into facilities of this caliber requires a lot of effort and various unorthodox methods to break through several security gates.

Murphy, on the other hand, simply stood in front of the door, and the scanning device lit up by itself, opening the door automatically.

This is a level of authority that is at least required at the facility management level.

While it's unlikely that the Stone Man is in management, it's also unlikely that he isn't.

But the facts are right in front of him, leaving him no room for doubt.

This guy clearly has the highest authority here, yet he pays someone to guide him.

Either he has amnesia, or there is some hidden secret he doesn't know.

"I don't know either."

Murphy shook his head.

It genuinely doesn't know where its permissions come from.

Theoretically speaking, there are several possibilities.

Either someone programmed the corresponding permissions into its body before it became intelligent.

Either the Craftsman's Hammer itself comes with a universal access code.

In short, there are quite a few options.

If you ask it to pick the correct answer right now, it really can't pick one in a short time.

"Never mind, it has nothing to do with me."

The relics merchant remained silent for a moment before shaking his head.

He's just doing his job for money. What secrets Murphy has or what his identity is is ultimately none of his business. He just needs to complete his mentorship mission.

As for whether Murphy is an amnesiac ancient person or inherited the estate of some administrator, asking him such a question won't earn him a single extra penny.

The lifting platform began to descend.

Ding dong.

Outside the door is a horizontal corridor, at the end of which is an open space.

The relics merchant went out first, followed by Murphy.

The two walked out of the corridor and came to a huge glass observation window.

However, when Murphy and the heritage dealer both looked up at the window, they were both startled.

Looking out through the one-way glass observation window, the scene in the underground space completely exceeded their expectations.

Several enormous trees were uprooted from the ground.

The trunks are so thick that it takes more than a dozen people holding hands to encircle them. The surface of each trunk is covered with rough bark texture, but the color of the bark is not normal brown or gray, but blood red.

The leaves were also the same blood red color, with palm-sized leaves densely packed on the branches, forming clusters of blood red canopy.

Even more strangely, the tree canopies were still emitting a faint, blood-red glow, though the glow was very weak.

But it was conspicuous enough in the dark underground space, enveloping the surrounding area of ​​dozens of meters in a dark red halo.

Each tree is over twenty meters tall, and some even reach the dome of the underground space. Their canopies are squeezed between the rock strata and the metal structure, deforming the steel.

Murphy and the heritage dealer unconsciously took a few more steps forward, reaching the very edge of the glass.

Looking down from a higher vantage point, they could see the thick roots that were intertwined at the base of the trees.

Tree roots rose from the soil and metal scraps, intertwining and weaving a dense network that covered the entire ground.

It looked like a bunch of giant blood vessels twisted into a tangled mess.

Beneath the tree roots lies a carpet of fungi covering the ground, resembling a pile of flesh and blood.

It is breathing at an extremely slow pace.

The surface will periodically bulge and then fall back down.

When it bulges, the surface becomes so taut that it becomes almost transparent, revealing dark fluid flowing underneath.

Murphy surveyed the environment in which the trees and fungal carpets grew, his gaze shifting from the tree trunks to the surrounding walls and ceiling.

This underground space was obviously not originally designed to look like this.

Remnants of metal passageways and steel structure supports can still be seen on the surrounding walls, with jagged breaks in the steel bars and plates exposed.

In several places, the metal was forcibly cracked open, and the cracks were filled with dark red tree roots and mycelium.

The ventilation ducts in the ceiling were pushed to one side, twisted into strange shapes, with obvious cracks in the duct walls, the edges of which were covered with dried, dark stains.

All traces of man-made structures are being slowly eroded, squeezed, and destroyed by these blood-red plant bodies.

It doesn't look like it was originally planned to be built here to plant trees.

In other words, these trees grew out of nowhere.

"Has this existed before?" Murphy asked.

"Absolutely not!"

The relics merchant peered through the glass at the crimson giant trees and the wriggling fungal carpet, repeating, "Absolutely not. When I came here a year or two ago, this was just an ordinary abandoned building complex. It was a bit messy, but there wasn't a single tree or blade of grass."

After he finished speaking, he paused for a moment, then took a small half-step back, lowered his voice, and added, his tone filled with undisguised unease: "The situation here is much stranger than when I last came."

However, at that moment...

A massive figure suddenly appeared among those blood-red giant trees.

The figure was partially obscured by the trees and the red light.

At first, all you could see was a large area between the tree canopies that was darker than the surrounding area, moving slowly.

Then the movement became more and more obvious, and the entire canopy was shaken and blood-red leaves fell down in a rustling sound.

Bang bang bang!

The vibrations grew closer and louder.

Murphy could feel the floor beneath his feet trembling slightly.

Suddenly, something enormous passed by the glass window.

It was a snake's head.

Its size was outrageous; a single snake head completely obscured the entire glass observation window.

The scales are dark green, each as big as a tabletop, with an oily sheen at the edges.

Dark patterns were embedded between the scales, which swayed slowly as the snake moved.

And that enormous snake eye was slowly moving against the glass window.

The relics merchant instinctively took two steps back, his back slamming against the corridor wall.

One hand unconsciously pressed against the inside pocket of the robe.

Fortunately, the glass is one-way.

The enormous snake's eyes swept across the window without pausing.

It slid from the left side of the glass to the right, then disappeared beyond the edge of the window frame.

It quickly began to wriggle its massive body and slowly crawled towards the base of those blood-red giant trees.

As the snake moved forward, a corner of its body finally emerged from the canopy.

The snake's body was not smooth and flat; every inch of its skin was covered with countless pustules of all sizes. These pustules swelled and wriggled between the dark green scales, as if something was hiding inside them, trying to crawl out.

Some abscesses swell to the size of a fist and then rupture on their own, oozing a dark yellow, viscous liquid that flows down the scales.

Others are always in a bulging state, their surfaces stretched to almost transparent, revealing a dark, writhing shadow inside.

Murphy stared at the giant snake, and the more he looked at it, the more familiar it seemed.

Finally, it remembered where it had seen this snake before —

The giant snake before us is the same one that fought with the dragon that dropped Xiao Mo.

Not only that, Murphy also recognized the blood-red giant tree.

It was the same Serpent's Bloodwood that it used when it was helping goblins build breeding machines in the forest.

The only difference is that it is much larger, almost on a completely different scale.