Epoch of Twilight

Luo Yuan told King Kong to stop after a minute.

There was already a deep pit in the ground about eight meters deep and 10 meters wide. Luo Yuan pondered it a bit before jumping into the pit. He listened carefully, but unfortunately he could not hear any sounds. It was completely silent.

Luo Yuan got out of the pit and asked King Kong to keep digging.

After 20 minutes, the pit grew more than 10 meters deep and 10 meters wide. This was even deeper than the location of the shelter, but Luo Yuan still could not find any signs of it, even though there was a light smell of blood spreading out from the pit.

Judging by the stones at the bottom of it, the shelter must have been squashed during the earthquake and mixed in with the rocks.

Luo Yuan did not ask King Kong to stop. He told it to keep digging instead. He did not believe that everyone in the shelter had died. As King Kong continued to dig deeper, the smell of blood got stronger, and they began to notice a tinge of dark red color on the soil. After a while, King Kong found a few corpses and threw them away along with the stones. Everyone was shocked.

It was not that appropriate to call them corpses, as they had been squashed together with the rocks. All their bones were broken and no one would even have recognized them if not for the clothes sticking on them.

King Kong sensed their strange reaction and quickly stopped. It seemed to know what it had dug up as it looked at Luo Yuan innocently.

It was sensitive to those small creatures wearing clothes. It was used to interacting with humans, and Luo Yuan had spent a lot of time educating it. It felt guilty, although it had simply thrown away a few corpses.

Luo Yuan did not blame it. He just told it to keep digging.

King Kong hesitated before it started to dig again. The pit was getting deeper, and they found a lot more corpses. Every few seconds, they would see one, and King Kong would carefully set it down at the edge of the pit.

Zhang Wu and some of the others were shocked. None of them could have imagined that such a scary beast could be so intelligent.

Luo Yuan was not surprised, as he was aware of King Kong’s intelligence. That was nothing compared to humans. Even a beast 10 times smarter than King Kong would only pose a minimal threat to them.

After a while, King Kong reached the bottom, which was full of tiny grains of sand and rocks. Luo Yuan observed it for a while before telling King Kong to dig horizontally. It seemed like the entire shelter had been squashed together. They did not find anything for a long time. It was evening when they finally discovered something.

A part of the rocks collapsed, and the sound spread out from the hole. Luo Yuan was stunned for a second before he jumped into the pit happily.

The pit had become more than 30 meters deep and 100 meters wide. It looked like the crater of a meteor that had crashed on Earth, even though King Kong was working at only half his maximum pace. This excluded the tunnel, which was 100 meters deep into the ground. If there had been such a beast before the end of the world, it would have helped them earn a few billion a year just by digging tunnels.

Luo Yuan told Huang Jiahui to throw him a flashlight. Then he walked into the tunnel with his sword, soon reaching the end of it. He saw that the wall on his left had collapsed, and more than 10 tons of rocks had covered half of King Kong’s body.

Of course, that was not a big deal for King Kong. It did not even care, it just kept digging until Luo Yuan came. Then it stopped and got out of the pile of stones.

King Kong had made the tunnel narrow, but it was wide enough. Luo Yuan asked it to stand aside as he turned the flashlight to the spot where the wall had collapsed. He discovered that the rocks were loose and there were some gaps between them. The possibility of finding something further up front was quite high.

"Dig this way!" Luo Yuan said as he pointed to the left. "Dig slower and more carefully."

Luo Yuan repeated himself, and King Kong understood what he meant. It had been doing the same thing the entire afternoon. That order was nothing new to it anymore.

To avoid another collapse, Luo Yuan backed off about 10 meters. King Kong had only dug twice when the entire wall on the left collapsed and exposed a hole about a meter tall. The strong smell of blood and an awful scent rushed out of the hole, making Luo Yuan step back.

He took a deep breath and told King Kong to leave. Then he bent down and squeezed his body into the hole.

It was stuffy and dark inside. Luo Yuan saw a mess of rocks and broken walls under the torchlight. Some of them were supported by big rocks, but they seemed ready to collapse anytime soon.

Several corpses were lying on the ground in the gaps between the rocks. Most of them looked purplish and scary. They had obviously died of suffocation. Luo Yuan checked around, but he did not find any survivors.

He tried to listen carefully, and a grin formed on his face. He quickly walked towards a heap of stones, where a sound could be heard, and found someone talking and moaning under it.

"Someone is still alive!" Luo Yuan said happily.

He looked at the huge pile of rocks and realized King Kong could not make it there. It would only cause another collapse if it tried. He put down the flashlight and his sword and tried to move the rocks. Stones were falling from the ceiling, each of them weighing a few tons. Even the smaller ones weighed a few hundred kilos. Luckily, Luo Yuan had brought his Zhanmadao. He just cut the rocks into smaller pieces if he could not move them.

Soon, he got the attention of some of the survivors.

"Anybody there?" a soft voice was heard asking.

"Please wait a moment! I’m coming to save you!" Luo Yuan shouted. His hearing was good, but theirs was not. They would not hear him if he didn’t shout.

"It’s useless, we’re not getting out! It’s just a matter of time before we die!" a second, desperate voice said.

"Who says you’re not? How do you think I got here?" Luo Yuan said as he threw aside a 300-400 kilo rock.

A minor chaos ensued as everyone got excited. "Wait! The government sent you to rescue us?"

"I’ll tell you later! How many survivors are there?" Luo Yuan asked.

"Eight! No, nine! Someone fainted, but we can still save him!" someone answered quickly.

Now that there was hope of survival, everyone started to move the rocks away.

"Do you know if anyone else is alive somewhere else?" Luo Yuan asked.

"I’m not sure. We heard many people shouting for help during the earthquake, but not anymore. I’m not sure if anyone else is still alive."

...

"Luo Yuan, where are you?" Huang Jiahui was shouting from outside. She had not seen Luo Yuan for too long, so she jumped down into the pit and went into the tunnel.

"I’m here!" Luo Yuan shouted. "Be careful when you come in, it’s dangerous!"

Many of them followed Huang Jiahui, all of them looking pale as they saw the corpses along the way.

"Hurry up! Help me, please! There are still people inside!" Luo Yuan said.

Everyone became energetic and quickly joined him. By 9.10 p.m., they had finally carved a path through the rocks.