Alien Relic Hunter

Ke Lan was just standing at the entrance of the elevator shaft, and the armor's external temperature sensor was already sending out low-temperature warnings.

The surrounding air temperature has dropped as low as minus 25 degrees, and a thin layer of white frost has condensed on the metal walls of the elevator shaft. If someone touches it directly with their hands at this time, their whole hand will probably be tightly bound. The ground is "sticky" to the well wall, and if you pull it off, you have to tear off at least one layer of skin.

According to the information provided by Schroeder, the normal temperature on the first and second floors of the underground icehouse is minus 30 degrees, and the third and fourth floors are even lower, about minus 50 degrees... But now The entire underground icehouse has been without power for several hours, and Ke Lan is standing at the wellhead several hundred meters above the ground. The temperature here should not be this low.

This can only mean one thing...the fifth floor of the underground icehouse has been opened.

All this cold air escapes from the fifth floor.

"It's still a step too late." Ke Lan sighed, "I hope you don't let me see a Yinglong egg with eyes all over it."

"Are we going down?" Akira Asano asked.

"We're all here. Even if it's too late, we can only make a last-ditch effort." Ke Lan said, "That thing probably hasn't been completely integrated with the Yinglong egg, otherwise we wouldn't have a chance to stand here and talk... …I’ll go down first, and you follow me, keeping a reaction distance of about twenty to thirty meters from me. If I tell you to run quickly from below, just run and don’t look back.”

"Then what should you do?" Asano Akira asked immediately.

"I still have a trump card in my hand, but this trump card is very unstable and may involve you... If you come to save me, it will be a shackle for me."

After Ke Lan finished speaking, he took out a pair of hooks and fixed them on the edge of the well mouth, then stepped on the frosted well wall and began to slowly slide deeper into the elevator shaft.

After Ke Lan slid down a certain distance, Asano Akira lowered a cable and began to descend.

As the altitude drops, the temperature sensor's indication is increasing rapidly - of course, there is a negative sign in front of this indication.

When Ke Lan's feet finally touched the ground, the surrounding temperature had already dropped to more than sixty degrees below zero.

He was wearing a set of general-purpose powered armor. Because he had no plans to enter the depths of the underground icehouse before setting off, he did not add a temperature insulation layer inside the armor. The temperature control device that came with the armor could no longer be used. The temperature inside the armor remained at around 20 degrees, and a biting chill continued to seep into the armor from the outside until it penetrated the bone marrow.

"It's so cold..." Ke Lan took a look at the working status of the thermostat. It was already operating at maximum power. He could even hear the rumble of the pump blades located on his lower back, but the temperature inside the armor remained the same. There was no way to get back to a positive number, and there was no way to drive out the invading cold air.

Ke Lan felt as if his blood was freezing.

In this environment, if you stay in this environment for twenty minutes, you will get frostbite, and it is not uncommon for a few fingers and toes to freeze off.

Although based on current medical technology, it only takes a few months to replant a severed limb, not to mention that Ke Lan has a self-healing ability that is far beyond ordinary people, but if he loses his hands and feet in the next battle, If you are conscious, that would be a big problem...

Ke Lan thought for a while, but removed the power armor reactor from his chest, removed the radiation protection cover inside the reactor, and then put it back on - this operation is no different from committing suicide for ordinary people. , but for Ke Lan, the threat of radiation is far less than hypothermia.

Soon, the inside of the armor became warm again. This was the waste heat that overflowed from the reactor, and along with the waste heat, there was also a lethal amount of radiation.

But for some reason, Ke Lan not only didn't feel uncomfortable, but he also felt that his strength seemed to be getting stronger, and his head, which had been a little bit foggy from the cold, also woke up.

"Is it possible... that I can still directly absorb radiation energy now?" He said to himself, but at this time he did not have time to verify whether this was an illusion. Taking advantage of his physical condition to return to its peak, Ke Lan hurriedly asked Go forward.

There is only one passage at the entrance to the underground icehouse. On the left side of the passage is Area A, on the right is Area B, and behind it are more than a dozen divisions such as Area C and Area D - the number of "collections" on the first floor of the icehouse and There are the most types, and the actual area is divided into the most divided zones on the fifth floor. As for the entrance to the next floor, it is located at the end of this passage.

If the entire underground icehouse is separated from the Ark, you can see that its shape is similar to an inverted pyramid. The further you go down, the smaller the area becomes.

At the top of the pyramid, there is a vertical secret passage connecting it - it is like picking up a pyramid-shaped pendulum body, and the pendulum rope connected to the top naturally hangs down under the action of gravity. Likewise, this "pendulum rope" sank into the cooling pool of the Ark's main reactor. The sealed metal container tied to the end of the "pendulum rope" was immersed in liquid nitrogen at minus 200 degrees Celsius.

The eggs of the prehistoric species "Yinglong" were sealed in this metal container.

"Damn, it's really exciting just thinking about it." Ke Lan rubbed his handnails and wiped off the white frost on them. As he walked, he looked at the scene on both sides.

The partition walls on the first floor of the icehouse are made of special glass that is opaque and resistant to low temperatures. Walking in the passage, Ke Lan suddenly felt like he had returned to the remains of a glacier.

I guess there should be a collection of pieces of meat behind these opaque glasses... I just wonder if there are big eyes that can move freely in the ice and are made of human limbs. The centipede monster…

Most of the collection warehouses were not opened, but when Ke Lan walked to Area G, there was a hole in the glass wall that was large enough for people to pass through, and broken glass particles were scattered all over the floor.

The living specimens of the six-winged gray mosquito were sealed in Area G, so Ke Lan was not surprised - he would have been surprised if all the partitions were intact.

He glanced into Area G. Most of the samples sealed here were samples of insect creatures. At least half of the samples had broken free of their original storage containers. Without exception, they had been infected by memes and It seemed that the only one that had mutated, but survived in the end and managed to escape before the icehouse cooled down again, was the six-winged gray mosquito.

Ke Lan didn't stop here and continued walking forward.

Akira Asano followed him from behind, keeping a distance of twenty to thirty meters from him.

It seemed that thanks to the cold air escaping from the fifth floor, the temperature of the power-out underground icehouse dropped to dozens of degrees below zero again. Ke Lan and Asano Akira did not encounter any enemies along the way - even after some indigenous creatures woke up. He ran out of the containment device and has now turned into a motionless ice sculpture.

Without a protective container, the life of these creatures has disappeared from their bodies the moment they are frozen, and they will never wake up even if the temperature rises again.

"The institute has really suffered heavy losses this time. Not only did it lose so many people, but there are not even a few items left in the underground icehouse..." Ke Lan couldn't help but think of an old article he had seen online. Story: It was the year when Ark had just landed on Alpha Planet. In that era of extremely unstable prices, a businessman used all his savings and loans to purchase a batch of rare drugs, and put them all into a bank that he spent a lot of money to rent. In the cold storage below.

He originally wanted to wait until the price rose before taking action and make a lot of money, but just two days later, in order to clean up a group of indigenous creatures that were approaching, Ark's main gun was used three times in a row. The stable voltage caused power outages in many areas of the ship. Although the power outage lasted only a few hours, all those expensive medicines had deteriorated and turned into worthless garbage...

The businessman who dreamed of getting rich ended his life with a pistol.

"Anyway, the losses are so heavy. It's better to launch the West Second District into the sky and set off a big firework just like the East Ninth District. That's..." Ke Lan wanted to say, "It's neat and tidy," but He then thought about it, Ze Luo could still survive in that situation, let alone this "intelligent" meme subject, and had to swallow the next words.

The second floor of the underground icehouse is still accessible without obstruction.

The third level is still the same.

The fourth floor...

Finally, when Ke Lan was about to reach the entrance of the secret passage, he finally encountered the interceptor.

Those were two Type B mutants wandering in the passage.

Creatures such as erosion seeds can even survive in the vacuum environment of the universe for a period of time. Low temperatures of tens of degrees below zero are not a problem for them at all.

However, they were nothing to Asano Akira - without moving or stopping, Ke Lan didn't even see clearly Asano Akira's action of drawing out the sword. The "cores" of the Type B mutant on both ends It had been gouged out by the blade and cut in half in mid-air.

The low temperature inside the icehouse did not seem to have any impact on Asano Akira.

"Good to kill." Ke Lan gave Asano Akira a thumbs up, then stepped over the two mutated corpses that began to degrade themselves, and walked straight towards the secret passage.

There is no elevator in the secret passage, but a straight ladder embedded in the wall of the passage. If you want to enter the fifth floor of the icehouse, you can only climb down the ladder little by little.

Of course Ke Lan would not choose such a time-wasting method. Just like in the elevator shaft, after he fixed the hook rope, he jumped directly down and started sliding at high speed against the wall of the passage.

His speed was not much slower than free fall, but he had been falling for nearly half a minute before the power armor's sensor sounded a warning that he was about to hit bottom.

The reverse buffer thruster ignited, Ke Lan's speed suddenly slowed down, and then he landed firmly on the ground.

This is a hall about the size of a football field. The floor, walls and walls are all made of metal. On the ground in the middle of the hall, there is an extremely exaggerated hole torn open by violence.

Ke Lan walked to the edge of the crack, adjusted the angle of the searchlight on his head, and looked in.

Although the thick white ice fog blocked most of his sight, he still saw a huge egg, which was imprisoned by a large number of metal frames and covered with various pipelines.

This is the egg of Yinglong... At a temperature of two hundred degrees below zero, it is still beating rhythmically, like a strong heart.

At this moment, Asano Akira suddenly pulled out his knife, pointed the blade at the corner of the hall, and shouted in a low voice: "There is something (anti-harmony) hidden there."

"It's in this hall?" Ke Lan was stunned, raised his head, and looked in the direction Asano Akira was facing——

A little boy who looked about ten years old slowly walked out of the shadows. He was barefoot, hairless, and wrapped in a white coat that didn't fit at all and was stained with blood.

For some reason, Ke Lan always felt that the appearance of this little boy was very familiar, but he couldn't remember where he had seen it before...

You can't, it's in a dream, right?

"Who are you?" Ke Lan asked.

"Who are you?" the other party also asked.

"...What are you?" Ke Lan asked in a different way... He knew that the other party was definitely, yes, no, human.

"What are you?" The little boy is like a mirror, a repeater, a valley that only sends back echoes - he looks at Ke Lan with his dark and clear eyes, repeating Ke Lan's question his words.

"Why do you want to imitate me?" Ke Lan couldn't help but frowned.

"Why do you want to imitate me?" The other party also frowned in the same way...even though his eyebrow arch was bare and he had no eyebrows at all.

"Crap." Ke Lan suddenly said a curse word.

"Crap." Not to be outdone, the other party immediately returned the favor.

"I'm stupid." Just when Asano Akira thought the two were about to start a re-reading scolding battle, Ke Lan suddenly changed the topic and came up with a move of "hurt the enemy a thousand, and hurt yourself a thousand." trick.

But this time, the other party did not repeat what he said, and suddenly burst into laughter.

"Damn, there's something wrong with this guy." Ke Lan cursed in a low voice. He didn't mind calling himself an idiot. As long as it could end this meaningless conversation, it didn't hurt to suffer a little verbal loss.

Besides, Ke Lan felt that he was indeed quite stupid from a certain point of view for just rushing into the fifth floor of the icehouse.

"I ask you again, who are you?" Ke Lan stared at the little boy and put his hand on the handle of the shotgun. "I don't have time to play that boring game with you. If you continue to act stupid or Silence, I will directly choose to shoot."

"What am I...don't you already know it in your mind?" The little boy stopped laughing and asked Ke Lan.

"Are you the subject of the 'meme'?"

"No...I am you." The little boy said.

I am you.

These three words immediately stunned Ke Lan. He finally understood why the little boy's face looked familiar to him but he couldn't remember where he had seen it before... The appearance of this little boy was clearly very similar to his own. They are exactly the same!

He is me...

From a biological point of view, the little boy did not lie. Lin Qiming said that the "meme" was born because Professor Smith injected cells from the Seed of Erosion into his own cloned tissue...

If this little boy developed from that piece of cloned tissue, then he was indeed his own clone.

A clone of Ke Lan carrying a highly dangerous "meme".

"I am you..." the little boy repeated again. After saying that, he stretched his hands to his chin, and his nails dug directly into the tender flesh, and blood instantly stained his fingers.

Ke Lan didn't know why the other party suddenly started to harm himself. He picked up the gun, stared at the little boy warily, and took half a step back.

The little boy began to scream sharply, and the expression on his face was distorted by pain... But the movements under his hands did not stop at all. His fingers had been completely inserted under the skin, and his face was bit by bit... Roughly...teared off...

Then, he crumpled the bloody thing into a ball, threw it on the ground, and crushed it with his foot.

"You... hiss... this is... part of you... hiss... I am you, but I don't want to become you!" The little boy pointed at the mass on the ground and shouted to Ke Lan.

"Even if you tear your face off, a clone will still be a clone." Ke Lan said word for word, "Your actions are meaningless."

He didn't know what the other party was crazy about, but if the other party was willing to communicate, Ke Lan still felt it was worth trying.

Of course, the premise is not to delay more time.

"No, this is not a face, this is part of the body... You are just a body... Inside the body, there are other people's things."

"What body? What is the thing that contains someone else? Please explain clearly!" Ke Lan's heart skipped a beat, and he vaguely felt that he had caught something.

"I am you, but you are not yourself!" the little boy yelled at the top of his lungs.