The smoke of battle slowly receded like an ash-laden tide, leaving the battlefield to reveal its scarred and desolate reality. Soldiers moved in silence among the broken walls and ruins, their heavy footsteps and the occasional shifting of rubble the only sounds in the dead silence. Shattered weapons, charred pieces of armor, blood-stained strips of cloth... Every piece of wreckage was carefully collected and sorted. This was not a simple cleanup, but a painstaking reclamation of civilization's fragments from the very jaws of the Abyss.
Limeng squatted on the scorched earth, pinching a small handful of soil between his fingertips. The texture was sticky and cold, carrying the unique, heart-stopping corrosive aura characteristic of the Abyss, resembling the pus and blood oozing from the earth. Albedo stood beside him, holding a flask filled with a sample of turbid abyssal pollution fluid, which refracted an eerie purplish-black hue.
"Biological filter screens are the foundation," Limeng said, his voice hoarse from days of command, yet exceptionally clear. He pointed to several bundles of special roots just transported from the Serenitea Pot—the massive root system of the Crimson Grain: Deep Root. Through special cultivation, they had become as tough as iron and steel, interweaving into dense nets. "But neutralization and transformation are the keys."
Chapter 211