Alien Relic Hunter

However, just in case, Ke Lan still made second-hand preparations - he folded the cold-proof clothes into a ball and tied them to his ankles with ropes - although in the narrow cave in front of him, he could not The heavy cold-proof clothing was worn on the body, but if the passage behind suddenly became wider, this cold-proof clothing dragged behind the feet would come in handy.

"Be careful. If anything goes wrong, come back quickly." Layton said worriedly, "I always feel-"

"Stop!" Hearing Leighton's "crow's mouth" start to speak again, Ke Lan quickly stopped him, "Just wait here for me. If I don't come back within fifteen minutes, it means I I made a special discovery inside... If I'm not back within two hours, don't wait any longer."

After saying that, Ke Lan bit the flashlight in his mouth, lay down, and crawled into the cave on his hands and feet.

The inner wall of the cave was very smooth, as if it had been carefully polished with polishing paste. This made Ke Lan quite laborious when crawling. His elbows on the ground would slip from time to time. It took him a minute to crawl. It only crawled less than ten meters.

The only good thing is that the air quality in the cave is pretty good, the oxygen content is not low, no toxic and harmful gases have been detected, and there is no particularly unpleasant smell, only a faint earthy smell permeates it.

"Could this cave be that thing's lair?" Ke Lan thought to himself, but at this time, he had completely lost the trace of the pink meat paste - fortunately, there was only one passage in this cave and there were no branches, so it was No need to worry about losing track.

Noisy current sounds continued to come from the earphones. Ke Lan tried to call the team channel twice using a short-distance radio, but did not get any response... Obviously, there is a strong interference field in this cave. Even if they brought The survey robot cannot be controlled remotely using radio.

After crawling for nearly a hundred meters, the inside of the cave actually became wider. The diameter of the cave instantly changed from less than half a meter to more than two meters, and the cave walls were no longer as smooth as before and became rough. sand and gravel material.

Although it was still cramped, at least Ke Lan could put on the cold-proof clothing and stand up. The risk of hypothermia was eliminated instantly. Moreover, walking consumes much less energy than crawling.

Ke Lan turned back to look at the small cave. He noticed that there was a circle of sandstone around the entrance of the cave that had a glass-like texture. He originally thought that the inner wall of the cave would become so smooth because "meat" often entered it. It was because of crawling, but now it seems that it is not the reason.

The rock formations around the inside of the cave at the front have undergone a vitrified transformation, which means that the cave did not exist originally and was later "burned" by something with extremely high temperature.

To vitrify rock, the temperature must be at least around 2,000 degrees. In terms of human technology, it is not difficult to obtain this temperature. What is difficult is how to precisely control such a high-temperature object to allow it to melt in the rock mass. Drilling a hole more than 100 meters deep with almost the same diameter from front to back can be done without damaging the structure of the rock mass itself - as far as Ke Lan knows, apart from the research institute, there is absolutely no engineering company on the Ark that can do this. No more than five.

But if it were the Alpha civilization, this kind of thing wouldn't be worth making a fuss about.

At this moment, a burst of noisy gunshots suddenly echoed in the cave!

Ke Lan's first reaction was to lie down immediately, but he soon realized that these gunshots were not real - just like the sounds he heard in the abyss of the sea, they all came from his mind. illusion among them.

"Gunshots? Why are there gunshots here?"

Ke Lan got up from the ground with some confusion. Over the years, the ruin hunters on the Ark have indeed unearthed individual weapons of Alpha Civilization in ruins everywhere... But the problem lies in the individual weapons of Alpha Civilization. Most of the weapons are energy weapons, and the few that use physical ammunition are also kinetic energy weapons... And the gunshots are clearly made by firearms that use gunpowder. Ke Lan can even distinguish the "Type 01" assault rifle and some The distinctive gunshot sound of older models of firearms.

This is not the first time he has heard this kind of "hallucination", but when this kind of "hallucination" appeared in the past, it was always some information related to Alpha civilization, and there was never anything related to the "alien species" of humans. .

This is the first time.

"Strange... If we are still in the dream world, this kind of thing is not difficult to understand..." Ke Lan said to himself, "And why can I hear gunshots here? Is it because of some special needs?" 'Triggering conditions'? Or...are the gunshots of those mercenaries from before being preserved by this 'cave' for some reason?"

Ke Lan read a story on the Internet, saying that in a certain valley on the earth, whenever there is thunder and rain, the valley will echo with the sound of horses neighing and weapons clashing, as if two people are fighting. It was as if a ghost army were fighting in the valley. Residents living near the valley were frightened by this. They called this phenomenon "the passing of ghost soldiers." This rumor became more and more bizarre as it spread, even attracting many experts and researchers. All led to this place.

After expert surveys and inspections, the source of the sound was basically determined: First, because there are a large number of weathered rocks in the valley, the whistling sound of high-speed airflow passing through the rock pores was mistakenly heard as the neighing of war horses. Sound; secondly, the rock structure in the valley is mainly composed of quartz ore and magnetite, coupled with the static electricity generated during thunderstorms, turning the valley into a huge "recorder", recording all kinds of noisy sounds .

The effect of this kind of recording using minerals and lightning is naturally incomparable with that of a real tape recorder. There will be serious distortion, and the distorted sound will sound even weirder. On the contrary, it is in line with people's feelings about ancient battlefields and the undead. Military assumptions.

Does this cave also have a similar recording function?

As for the source of the sound, the mercenary also mentioned that when they faced the fleshy mud that suddenly emerged from the deep trench, they poured out a large amount of ammunition. Those deafening gunfire echoed continuously in the cave... It must have been in the cave. At that time, it was "recorded" by this cave.

Ke Lan continued to walk inside the cave. Not far away, there was an almost ninety-degree right-angle turn in the cave. After turning this corner, an empty underground square came into Ke Lan's field of vision. !