"These locusts are nesting in a magma cavern? It's at least the size of a big soccer field. Did it form naturally, or did the locusts dig it out?"

Skilled enough to be bold about it, Shen Cong crept deeper into the cavern.

It looked like the volcanic craters you see all the time in movies, except that the mountaintop closed it in like a lid. A ledge ran around the edge, wide enough for the ancient locusts to walk on, and in the middle was the mouth of a magma channel dozens of meters across. Like the neck of a beer bottle, the channel widened as it went down, until at the bottom it was at least a hundred meters across.

The sheer scale of it was breathtaking.

The whole cavern was at least seventy-odd degrees, and the air was very thin on oxygen.

The smell of sulfur was heavy, and with every breath he could feel tiny grains being drawn into his lungs.

An ordinary person from the old world would probably have been poisoned within thirty seconds of walking in.

The ancient locusts lived here and were perfectly fine. So was Shen Cong. He was a particle-grade Mechanist, and his body was a high-strength metal machine whose resistances came with a quality guarantee. Never mind this place—throw him into the magma and he could probably swim around for a few minutes without trouble.

Lava that reaches the surface is at least 1,150 degrees Celsius when it glows white, at least 1,090 when it glows golden, at least 900 when it glows orange, and at least 700 when it glows cherry red. Dark red lava runs between 550 and 625 degrees.

Lava that is about to cool, with only a faint red still showing, is at least 475 degrees.

Shen Cong passed through one of the nurseries, went around an ancient locust with a Talent of about 3.3H, and came to the middle of the cavern, where he looked down at the magma a dozen or so meters below the rock wall.

He could feel the heat scorching…