The distance between Pluto and the Sun is vast. Consequently, the surface brightness of Pluto is nearly pitch black.

However, upon entering the ice fissure, a marvelous faint blue glow emerged from the surroundings, sufficient for an ordinary Houtian martial artist with True Qi cultivation to discern everything before them. The faint light emanated from the thick layers of ice, suggesting the very ice blocks of Pluto were luminous. Gu Xichen swept his mental power around several times but failed to pinpoint the source of the light.

Above them was a thick ceiling of ice, while the sides consisted of a mixture of ice and rock. The widest parts of the ice fissure spanned tens of meters, while the narrowest sections barely allowed two people to walk abreast. Gu Xichen led the large contingent forward cautiously. At every perilous point in the terrain, he left behind a combat team of five or ten individuals to set up an ambush position.

After traveling for over an hour along the fissure, covering about twenty kilometers and descending roughly three hundred meters underground, they encountered an entrance to a cavern formed of crystal stones ahead. Pillars of natural crystals—blue, white, gray, and red—interlocked here, creating an entrance several meters high. Each crystal pillar emitted a bright light, casting multi-colored, eerie hues upon their faces. A faint whistling sound arose from the ranks; the energy detector indicated fluctuations ahead.

Gu Xichen cautiously approached the cave mouth and proceeded inward along the cave wall for about a hundred meters before a cavernous underground crystal chamber opened before him.

It was a crystal cave roughly spherical in shape, with a diameter of about five hundred meters. Crystal pillars, some dozens of meters long and others merely a few meters, jutted out from the walls. Various strange lights erupted from these pillars, illuminating the interior brightly, with iridescent light constantly shifting as if they were standing amidst a rainbow. There were several tunnel entrances on the cave walls; the one Gu Xichen occupied was just one of them. At the other tunnel entrances, several Crystalline beings were slowly moving in and out, seemingly transporting something.

Below, in the crystal cave floor, lay nearly a hundred smaller pits of varying sizes. Some pits contained low-level crystal beings—red and yellow ones—while others held a dozen nascent, small crystal beings, entirely white and only about a meter tall, grappling and playing with each other. Though small, these little crystal beings possessed immense strength; their punches and kicks striking their companions resulted in booming thuds that made the entire cavern tremble slightly.

The detector in his hand showed the temperature inside this crystal cave hovered around eighty degrees Celsius, with humidity exceeding ninety percent. The air pressure was five times that of standard atmospheric pressure. It was baffling why this cave, seemingly open to the external environment of Pluto, contained air and water vapor. However, such strange phenomena had been recorded in past special investigation records of the Earth Federation; although difficult to comprehend, Gu Xichen was not surprised.

This was merely a cave near the surface of Pluto. A former Earth Federation investigation team had ventured three hundred kilometers underground. They encountered a cave whose environment was the most extreme: temperatures reached three thousand degrees Celsius, absolute humidity was nearly one hundred percent, and atmospheric pressure reached three hundred times standard pressure. The crystal beings inhabiting that location were mostly advanced types, green crystal beings and above.

He hooked a finger backward. The Banruo and Mohe brothers cautiously crawled along the ground, peering out a few times.

“Whoa! We’ve hit the jackpot!” Mohe exclaimed, slapping his chest excitedly.

Within their line of sight were about a hundred red crystal beings, around twenty crimson ones. The yellow crystal beings resting in the pits below numbered five. Standing near one tunnel entrance, as if holding a meeting, were four crystal beings—two green and two cyan. In another tunnel, nearly a hundred red and crimson crystal beings were busy working.

Just the visible crystal beings, if auctioned on the Earth Federation black market, would fetch a price exceeding one trillion! That value translated to more than ten thousand cubic Zakla crystals.

“Too bad there are too many low-level ones!” Gu Xichen shook his head regretfully.

“Grab those two green and those two cyan ones. Abandon the rest!”

The Banruo brothers nodded. Ruhua and the others crowded up behind them, cautiously observing this crystal being settlement before them. Banruo and Mohe took the large-caliber missiles, made from dark green crystal warheads, handed to them by a few soldiers, and carefully loaded them into their launchers.

The Federation had been researching Crystalline beings for many years. All the energy for these strange, crystalline lifeforms derived from a peculiar energy fluctuation within them. If this energy fluctuation could be interfered with, much like poison affecting a human, the normal physiological functions of the crystal beings would be severely impacted. To this end, the Academy of Sciences of the Federation had developed an ultra-high-frequency energy oscillation bomb capable of disrupting the normal energy fluctuations of all crystal beings within a small radius.

What Banruo and Mohe loaded into their launchers was the eleventh generation improved model of this ultra-high-frequency energy oscillation bomb. This was Gu Xichen and his team's first time using it.

Mohe aimed at the group of green and cyan high-level crystal beings standing together and gently pulled the trigger. With a muffled ‘bang,’ the missile shot out rapidly. Approximately two seconds later, it struck a green crystal being.

A blinding flash erupted, and a field of violent high-frequency oscillation energy covered the entire crystal cave. The two green crystal beings at the epicenter screamed; simultaneously, all four of their limbs disintegrated into dust, and their bodies were riddled with countless large and small cracks. Vast amounts of green mist continuously poured out from within them. Two legs of a cyan crystal being were shattered into powder; its cyan light flickered erratically in its eyes, its two hands flailing uselessly in the air, shaking violently as if seized by a seizure.

Nearly all the crystal beings in the cave collapsed simultaneously in the bright light, falling to the ground as uniformly as wheat before a scythe. The fragile white nascent crystal beings crashed heavily to the floor, cracks appearing on their bodies; their forms spasmed randomly, the immense force driving them into the ground causing their bodies to bounce up and down.

Only one cyan crystal being, near the blast point, roared in fury toward the sky. Ignoring the fact that one of its arms had been pulverized, it lunged toward them like a cyan lightning bolt… With dull thudding impacts, the crystal being utilized the long and short crystal pillars jutting from the cave wall for leverage, leaping until it reached Gu Xichen in the blink of an eye. With a loud ‘bang,’ this cyan being delivered a swift, clean straight punch toward Gu Xichen.

Gu Xichen met the attack head-on without yielding. The strength of the cyan crystal being was roughly equivalent to the late Mars-level to early Earth-level innate fighters categorized by the Earth Federation. Having benefited from numerous fortuitous encounters, Gu Xichen’s strength had long surpassed this level. His heavy punch slammed directly into the cyan being’s fist.

A white shockwave burst from the point where their fists met. Gu Xichen stood firmly rooted to the spot, unmoving, but the cyan crystal being grunted and was violently repelled dozens of meters. A stream of white cold energy flowed up its arm and into its body. Wherever the Snow Soul Divine Power passed, the crystal being became coated in a thin layer of ice, and its movements visibly slowed.

Three Special Operations Bureau soldiers rushed forward, unleashing high-energy nets from their weapons. The thick electrical net wrapped the crystal being tightly, and hundreds of millions of volts of high-voltage current surged into its body, thoroughly scrambling the energy field within. The crystal being let out a furious roar, crashing heavily to the ground, unable to move again.

Only blue and purple crystal beings possessed the means to project energy to attack enemies. Cyan and lower-grade crystal beings relied solely on brute physical force. Faced with the pinnacle of Federation technology, developed after centuries of studying the Crystalline being race, these lower-grade beings offered no resistance and were captured alive.

The two cyan and two green crystal beings were quickly secured in specially made alloy containers and sent to the waiting transport vessel outside by the Special Operations Bureau soldiers.

The main body of the force flooded into the crystal being settlement cave. Dozens of Special Operations Bureau soldiers, wielding sharp high-energy light blades, unhesitatingly severed the limbs of all the crystal beings lying on the ground. Severing only the limbs would not affect the crystal beings’ survival; they would regenerate their missing limbs within about a month. Their energy cores were within the crystal spheres in their chests; severing only the limbs would not cause them to lose too much energy, ensuring they would have enough for promotion ten years later.

Gu Xichen walked past a red crystal being lying on the ground, its four limbs severed.

The red crystal being stared fiercely at Gu Xichen. Its body suddenly coiled and sprang up. It opened its large mouth and fiercely lunged to bite Gu Xichen’s arm.

A halo of faint cyan light emerged from Gu Xichen’s combat suit, securely shielding his body. The crystal being’s sharp teeth struck this halo, emitting a dull thud like hitting tanned leather. The powerful recoil instantly shattered the crystal being’s jaw, and it shrieked, falling back to the ground. The convulsing crystal being glared angrily at Gu Xichen and roared in broken Federation language: “Bandits… Robbers… Executioners… You have come again to plunder our kin!”

The side effects of the ultra-high-frequency oscillation bomb had not yet subsided in these crystal beings. Their internal energy was chaotic to the extreme; even the ability to actively explode their bodies to attempt occupying another via their crystal spheres was lost. The red crystal being could only incessantly curse Gu Xichen and the soldiers using light blades to sever the limbs of their kin.

Banruo stood quietly to the side, chanting the Sutra of Rebirth. Mohe, holding a high-energy light blade, laughed boisterously, “Big Brother, do we really look like bandits? Hmm, these guys have already learned to speak Federation language. Heh heh, they must be considered highly intelligent beings, right?” After finishing a chant of the Sutra of Rebirth, Banruo stated calmly, “If they are not of our race, their hearts must be different. Let them find liberation early and be reborn in the next life!”