Alien Relic Hunter

…

Finally, Ke Lan and the others returned to the place where the bodies of the three experts were found.

Previously, due to load issues, they only took away the usable materials from the three corpses, and did not take the corpses with them. When they came back this time, the corpses were still in their original positions, with no trace of being moved.

Ivan stepped forward, leaned over to check, and nodded to Ke Lan: "The marks left before are still there, there is no problem."

"Huh...fortunately there is no problem." The hound let out a long breath, "If the body had not been seen before, or if it had changed its position, then the plot would start to become scary."

"The appearance of these three corpses here is already very scary. They scared that guy Park Sang-woo before and he couldn't even finish his words." Layton said half-jokingly.

"But then again, Ke Lan, you said you wanted to test a conjecture. What exactly is it? Can you tell me now?" Hound asked.

Not only the hound, but also Aya Breya who followed was looking at Ke Lan with a puzzled face, waiting for him to speak.

Ke Lan turned the corpse over, then groped around on the back of the corpse. With a soft "click" sound, he pulled out a silver-white metal tube as thick as a finger from the corpse's protective suit.

"This is... a portable distress signal transmitter?" Aya recognized the name of this thing.

"Yes." Ke Lan nodded and threw the metal pipe to Leighton. Leighton cut a small opening in the metal pipe and inserted a metal wire pulled from the robotic arm into it.

Two seconds later, the high-frequency signal light at one end of the metal tube began to flash, and everyone present also received the distress signal sent by the metal tube.

"This thing has never been used, and the battery inside is full." Layton said.

Ke Lan pulled out the signal transmitters from the protective suits of the other two corpses, and the results were exactly the same as the first one.

These signal transmitters have not been activated.

"My previous judgment was wrong. They failed to escape from the Yagunaktor." Ke Lan sighed, "They knew that the distress signal could not be sent out at this place, so they did not activate this thing."

"What do you mean?" Aya asked in shock.

"Where we are now, here -" Ke Lan pointed, "I think it should be the inside of 'Yagunaktor'."

"How is that possible?" Aya's voice couldn't help but raise a few notches, "Do you think this joke is funny?"

"Although... although I'm curious as to why their bodies appear here, I think Team Leader Aya is right." Park Sangwoo in the rescue cabin said, "The signal transmitter doesn't mean anything, maybe it's In their desperation, they forgot, or they found traces of the heretical sect nearby, and they had to remain silent - but this could never be 'Aguna Kotor', this tunnel was discovered earlier than 'Yaguna' But Thor was several years earlier, and we have conducted many inspections and found no problems... Your point of view is so ridiculous, it doesn't make sense at all!"

"The entrance to the tunnel is not far from here. Captain Breya, you can send your men there to see if the entrance we came in from is still there," Ke Lan said.

"You two, go to the entrance and have a look." Aya immediately assigned two agents.

…

Fifteen minutes later, two agents ran back with frightened expressions on their faces.

"The entrance...the entrance has disappeared!"

"What did you say?" Aya's eyes widened.

"The entrance has disappeared. Where it was supposed to be the entrance has turned into a passage exactly like this one. Even the magma on the ground has disappeared... We even walked forward another two hundred meters..." The agent looked at Ah Ya glanced at it and shook his head.

"With one-way transmission nodes, it is basically impossible to return the same way." Ke Lan said, "Sixteen years ago, a group of ruin hunters encountered a similar situation while exploring the A-044 ruins. Four The hunters entered a narrow corridor and lost consciousness instantly. When they woke up, they found themselves in a wilderness more than 600 kilometers away from the ruins. Unfortunately, the transmission device seemed to have malfunctioned. , only the upper body of a person was teleported out, while the lower body remained in that corridor. Later, people sent by the institute conducted hundreds of experiments on that corridor, and they found that everything that entered the corridor would be Completely or incompletely teleported to a random place in the wilderness, the maximum distance between the teleportation destinations will not exceed three kilometers, but no space nodes such as wormholes can be found in the wilderness. "

"Do you want me to use a drone to explore the road?" Layton asked.

"It's not necessary. The maximum control distance of the drone is only two hundred meters. Since we are no longer in the original tunnel, let alone two hundred meters, even if we walk back twenty thousand meters, we can't go back." Ke Lan shook his head.

"Could this tunnel be a closed loop?" Hound suddenly said, "Didn't we encounter a circular ice channel in the ruins of the bottomless sinkhole before?"

"No. That time was in a dream. Even if there is such a seemingly straight passage in reality that is actually a closed loop, it is probably achieved by interfering with our perception by some means, but this means is essentially A kind of blinding method, just like the 'ghost wall', will not work on precision mechanical measurement equipment." Ke Lan said, "Unless they use a transmission device to connect the end of the channel when building this channel, it will not work. to a similar effect.”

"If that's the case, what's the difference between us going forward and going backward?" Layton said, "We shouldn't be trapped here, right?"

His eyes couldn't help but rest on the three corpses... "Could these three people be trapped alive like this, right?"

"The inclination angle of the tunnel has not changed, and the size, texture, specifications and spacing of the lighting equipment are exactly the same, as well as the energy crystals we put in..." Ke Lan suddenly turned to the agent who ran back, "Speaking of which, Did you feel the temperature rise when you were near the entrance...I mean the place where the entrance was supposed to be?"

"Uh... no." The agent shook his head.

"According to this calculation, the space node should be located at a certain point between the entrance and the three corpses. When we passed that point, we were transported unknowingly... But when we tried to return to the entrance, the temperature in the tunnel But there has been no change..." Ke Lan quickly analyzed, "At least we can't go back to the tunnel at the entrance... As for whether this tunnel is connected end to end, we will know as long as we keep going forward... … If this is a closed loop, we’re still going to see these three bodies eventually.”

"But the biggest problem we face now is." Ke Lan turned around and said seriously, "Our supplies can't last long."

If you drink water, the purification cycle using urine can last for a long time, but there is no way for food - there is indeed a device on the Ark that can recycle feces and extract the protein, and then process it into food, but that kind of The size and energy consumption of the thing are huge, making it impossible to carry it around with you.

"I still have two bags of self-heating military rations, six energy bars, and two compressed biscuits left." The hound opened his backpack and took inventory, "What about you?"