The images stopped along with the accompanying noise.
Hao Xuan opened his eyes and looked towards the white ant, somewhat at a loss for words.
He didn't know what method the Queen used to send him those images, but somehow he could tell they weren't fabricated.
There was no reasonable explanation why he thought so, but he knew deep inside that that was what actually happened.
And what they implied was a very simple thing. Every time he called someone in or out of the Mind Palace, those invisible runes played some sort of a part in them. And doing it too often could 'overheat' or overload them in a sense and he wouldn't be able to do so again for a little while afterwards.
It had nothing to do with the Queen or anyone else for that matter, but was related to his Soul Severing Constitution instead.
Perhaps it was a restriction that he had not come across before or maybe it was something entirely new caused by the instability in his Spirit Center, but the fact was that it now existed.
In the future Hao Xuan would have to be extremely careful not to reach this limit, otherwise, it could spell trouble for him.
The only issue was that he could not tell when this limit was about to be reached.
"Thank...you," he awkwardly expressed his gratitude towards the Queen that was nowhere to be seen and quickly left the Mind Palace. There was no point staying in there any longer.
Hao Xuan opened his eyes back in the outer world.
The scene was still the same. Blood covered the rocky beach all around him. The lake water itself was completely black from all the debris, earth, and rocks that had been dragged into it, reducing the visibility to almost zero.
Hao Xuan let out another despondent sigh and took off his clothes again before walking into the freezing cold waters.
Baracus used the nanomachines to provide as clear of a picture as he could but that still didn't go further than five meters.
Hao Xuan slowly descended deeper and deeper into the inky depths of the lake. The hatch's location was some 400 meters in and 270 meters straight down.
A couple of minutes after Hao Xuan descended into the lake, a figure walked out of the forest.
***
Hao Xuan still could not use any spiritual energy of his own as it was all blocked by the Chaos Qi. Which left him with no other choice but to depend on his physical body alone to delve deeper in.
50 meters in, the visibility reduced to less than a meter. Almost all of his senses were blocked down here other than the sense of touch.
There was nothing to do for him but to think about random things, and just at such a moment, his brain decided to recall a very old memory.
Hao Xuan was about nine years when he first saw that dreaded movie. Aptly named after the maw of a gigantic great white shark, Jaws was perhaps the first movie that had scared him half to death.
He didn't shower for almost a full week after seeing it and even after that, he was always scared of deep waters.
And right now, surrounded by nothing but darkness this far in, all he could think about was what 'might' be in here with him.
"Um, Baracus?"
*Beep*
"Yes?"
"Earlier when you scanned everything, did you find any...lifeforms...down here?" Hao Xuan inquired while keeping a watchful eye on his surroundings. Unknowingly, he had slowed his descent.
"Of course. There were thousands of life signatures."
"Can you still find them??"
"Negative. Too much disturbance."
While talking, he passed the 100-meter mark without realizing it.
"B-But there wouldn't be anything..."dangerous" down here right? Haha."
"87.3% chance of the presence of hostile lifeforms. But they would only be near the bottom."
"...So exactly where I'm heading?"
"Negative. Initial scans could not locate hypolimnion."
"The what??"
"Bottom. Scans did not find the bottom of this body of water."
"What was the range of the scans?!"
"Two kilometers. The lake is most probably connected to another body of water somewhere deeper down."
While Hao Xuan was engrossed in the conversation, his feet made contact with a hard surface below him.
For an instant, his heart stopped until he saw the rocky surface and realized it was bedrock.
"Fuck that scared me half to death," he cursed inwardly.
"Is this it?" Hao Xuan asked inspecting his surroundings.
"Negative. A hundred and thirty meters left to go. Straight down."
"Down where? There's nothi-" he took a few steps forward but before he could finish the sentence the ground beneath vanished.
He waved his hands to push himself back towards the bedrock where he weakly sat down.
"What the hell....is this?"
He didn't need eyes to see what was in front of him. He could clearly feel it with his spiritual sense.
The lake stopped right here. What laid in front was a giant hole. The water temperature fell and pressure increased by several times if he just reached out with his hand.
While Hao Xuan was busy arguing with himself whether or not to jump, something moved about him.