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This underground city, from the inside out, seems to be composed of numerous concentric circles, with the center being her target. Daisy walked for an hour and felt that even if she was a road idiot like Zoro, she wouldn't get lost as long as she followed the straight path.
However, she did not relax her due vigilance. Just like what she saw on TV, whenever she passed the intersection of an arc and a straight line, she would draw an arrow on the ground as her direction of travel.
In the empty passages, only the sound of her footsteps echoed. To keep herself alert, she stopped every two hours to rest, drink water, and regain her strength.
In this way, she walked down the sentry tower at noon, and now the mechanical watch showed that it was already eight o'clock in the evening. She just felt that she had walked enough for now.
Sitting on the ground, eating compressed biscuits, she took two bites and threw the rest back into her backpack. It was too dry! She didn't want to consume too much water; she had to be frugal with it. After all, she wasn't a superhuman and needed to return the same way she came after gaining superpowers.
Closing her eyes briefly to ease her tense nerves, she found that as long as she held the obelisk tightly, it restored some of her stamina. It wasn't much, but in this hellish place, it was precious.
Gritting her teeth, she stood up and continued walking deeper.
Even though she hadn't encountered a soul along the way, she tightly held onto her pistol, her only means to save her life at the moment.
By midnight, her physical strength was still sufficient, but she was already very exhausted mentally.
Daisy had to conclude her journey for the day.
After a short break, leaning against the wall, she sat down with her backpack in front of her, grasping the obelisk to keep her body warm. Closing her eyes, she drifted into a deep sleep.
In this silent and dark underground city, untouched by human presence for thousands of years, it was far from an ideal place to sleep. No comfortable beds, no pillows or blankets—she curled up on the side like a refugee.
Her consciousness drifted in and out, sometimes dreaming of her new novel being horribly criticized, and other times of being defeated by Thanos, with blood flowing all over the floor.
Intermittently sleeping for three hours, she woke up to find that indeed there was blood, but it had nothing to do with Thanos; it was purely a "personal" issue.
Feeling embarrassed and confused, she tidied up relying on the past memories of this body. Unable to go back to sleep, she decided to continue toward the city center.
...
"Oh my god! Finally, I made it!"
Daisy, at this point, looked disheveled. If not for her long hair, it would be hard to tell her gender. After three days of stumbling around, she had finally reached the center of the city.
Six large stone doors were arranged in a circular pattern, spaced two meters apart, supporting the interior stone chamber. In the center stood a one-meter-high stone platform. Daisy glanced at the top and wondered how the design was structured, a not-too-bright light precisely refracted several times and landed on the stone platform.
Rubbing her somewhat stiff cheeks, Daisy first observed the surrounding environment.
According to her memories, once the ceremony began, the stone doors around would automatically close, creating a sealed environment. The obelisk would shed its metallic shell, revealing the internal Terrigen crystal and emitting a mist.
She is now worried that once the evolution was complete, these stone doors would automatically open, or would they remain closed forever?
After careful observation, the research result was inconclusive. No mechanical transmission, no power supply—she couldn't figure out how these stone doors would move on their own after the ceremony started!
Becoming a woman, she had to be cruel to herself. If there were things she couldn't understand, she wouldn't think about them beforehand. Even if the stone doors closed completely after the evolution, she wasn't afraid. Those who evolved into mediocre abilities needed to worry; she, as the proud Quake, had no reason to worry!
Taking out the last two bottles of water, she poured some into her palm and wiped it on her face to look a bit energetic.
Daisy placed the obelisk in the center of the stone platform, took two steps back, and waited for the ceremony to begin.
With a rumbling sound, the six stone doors began to move slowly along a predetermined trajectory. Three minutes later, they completed their alignment, reducing the interior space by half, and the sealed environment was established.
The obelisk converged with the projected light from above and began rotating with the stone platform under her excited gaze.
With crisp cracking sounds, the metallic outer shell of the obelisk scattered around, revealing a light blue crystal inside. The crystal seemed alive, sprouting many branches automatically, transforming from a single crystal into a crystal cluster in just ten seconds.
Daisy anxiously watched the crystal rapidly growing, veins popping on the back of her hand, her nostrils twitching lightly. She stared unblinkingly at the crystal cluster.
Originally, the crystal energy in the original timeline had been divided into half by another inhuman (Reina), and later shattered by a well-intentioned person(Trip) before it could fully perform it duty. It could be said that the Quake had never reached the height she deserved.
Now, with this evolution all to herself, everything would be different.
Daisy silently waited, and before long, the stone platform stopped rotating, and the frenzied growth of the crystal cluster gradually calmed down. Silence surrounded the area, with no signs of any abnormalities.
Was that it? She couldn't believe it.
Taking a step forward, a sudden change occurred.
The light inside the stone chamber was somewhat dim, and Daisy couldn't see very clearly. She vaguely noticed that gas seemed to be spraying out from the crystal's interior, quickly fermenting in the sealed environment, carrying a slightly sour odor.
The air was somewhat polluted, and Daisy could guarantee that the PM2.5 levels here were off the charts. She wondered if inhaling this stuff was harmful to her lungs.
As she was thinking nonsense, she suddenly felt a tingling sensation in her body. Looking down, she saw her fingers and wrists starting to petrify.
If she didn't know the truth, she would have been scared to pee...
In reality, she wasn't faring much better. Her body was becoming increasingly stiff, and the black-gray stone material was rapidly climbing over her body.
Stay calm, it's just part of the routine! She tried to encourage herself, but her mind was blank. The petrification speed was extremely fast, and she lost all awareness of the outside world, completely transforming into a stone statue.
The ceremony did not stop; the crystal continued emitting mist. In this sealed environment, the mist had nowhere to go, and most of it ended up being absorbed into Daisy's body.
It wasn't until the crystal depleted its energy that it inexplicably evaporated in the air, and the stone chamber fell into tranquility.
"Thump... Thump..." After an unknown amount of time, a faint and almost imperceptible heartbeat emanated from within the stone statue, growing clearer.
"Splash, splash." The stone statue began to crack. It started with the fingertips. After days of fatigue, the fingers, once stained, now regained their fair complexion, faintly gleaming.
The cracks grew larger, spreading from the fingers to the palm, the hand, all the way to the cheeks.
Daisy felt that the entire world had changed in her perception, but it was not clear where the change was. There was also something new inside her body, but all of this was blocked by an uncomfortable layer of stone skin.
"Ah!--" She shouted loudly, a surge of power bursting from her cells. This force, like a long-accumulated flood, overflowed irresistibly. It was as if a thunderclap had struck flat ground, and the stone skin explosively burst from the inside out.
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