Alien Relic Hunter

There is air with sufficient oxygen content, normal gravity and suitable temperature, there is no lethal radiation, and there is water so pure that it is almost drinkable - a "good place" like this, let alone in It is within the ruins of Alpha Civilization. Even if the scope is expanded to the entire Alpha Planet, it is still very rare...

In other words, it doesn't exist at all.

There is no way there is such a water source on Planet Alpha.

The natural water source with the highest degree of purification that can be found in the wilderness can only meet the industrial grade four water standards - the purification standards of industrial water and drinking water are completely different concepts. Industrial water with a grade four purification level Judging from drinking water standards, it does not even reach the lowest first-grade water threshold.

In other words, which is easier for everyone to understand, even if you use this kind of water to wash a mop, you may find it dirty.

Even the exiles who are crawling around in the wilderness will not drink directly from the natural water sources found in the wild under non-extreme circumstances-in any case, some necessary filtration and purification processes are absolutely indispensable... …You know, in the wilderness of antibiotics and electrolyte supplements, something as minor as diarrhea can be fatal.

The water Ke Lan is stepping on now is as clear as if it had just been released from the most advanced purification pump in the water purification plant.

Could this water be the reserve drinking water of Alpha civilization?

Although humans have not yet found the remains or body tissue samples of the Alphas, one thing is certain - they, like humans, are carbon-based organisms.

One of the biggest things carbon-based organisms have in common is that they must have water to survive.

…

But when Ke Lan reached the 170th step, he suddenly realized that this world... was most likely an illusory world that only existed in his imagination.

Because the bracelet he placed at the bottom of the pool suddenly disappeared, and the next moment, Ke Lan felt something seemed to be on his left wrist.

He didn't have to look down to see that the smart bracelet was back on his wrist.

He glanced at the time on the screen. It was now 16:55 and 29 seconds in the evening... But when he took off his bracelet and put it on the ground, the time displayed on the bracelet was 16:00. Fifty-six minutes and forty-one seconds.

The timeline of this world seemed to be reset back to the moment he just entered.

It's a pity that there is nothing in the surrounding environment that can be used as a reference, and Ke Lan is completely unsure whether he has returned to the starting point.

"Is this a dream?"

He couldn't help but think of the "big octopus" under the bottomless sinkhole that could only make people fall into multiple dreams.

Ke Lan subconsciously reached out and touched the top of his head.

If you want to simulate dreams to such a real level and make people unable to break away from them, you must have a "direct connection" with the human nervous system in a physical sense. This is the way the big octopus controls them. Pricking countless tiny fleshy tentacles into the scalp, penetrating the skull, and directly connecting with their cerebral cortex...

But the problem is that Ke Lan now has a "living body armor" in his body. This thing is equivalent to the anti-virus software installed in the computer. If a foreign object from the outside tries to invade Ke Lan's body, the living body armor will immediately attack him. When it launches an attack, its reaction speed is even faster than Ke Lan's own immune system.

(Of course, the premise is that this concept of anti-virus should not be confused with those so-called "free anti-virus software" or "XX Computer Manager" and other rogue software.)

An old saying can be used to sum it up well - "One mountain cannot tolerate two tigers." If the plot in the bottomless sinkhole were to happen again, I am afraid that those tentacles would have been strangled and swallowed by the living armor as soon as they penetrated Ke Lan's scalp...

Ke Lan looked at the surrounding environment, then looked at his hands, and decided to do an experiment.

He took out the short knife he carried with him and slashed his wrist hard - since this space has the ability to reset like "reading files", he wanted to see if the wound on his wrist was also the same. It will recover accordingly.

But the next scene made Ke Lan couldn't help but reveal an embarrassed smile - the wound had healed as soon as the blade left the wound, not only leaving no scars, but also no blood flowing out.

He also deliberately made a cut that was nearly three centimeters deep. As a result, not even a mark was left. The skin on the wrist was smooth and fair, and the skin quality was so good that it hardly resembled the body of a ruin hunter.

Since merging with the living armor, Ke Lan's own body recovery ability has reached an almost abnormal level. Fortunately, the undead crew will grant him a series of privileges. Otherwise, just a routine physical examination every time he enters and exits the Ark. It was enough to trigger a small-scale riot.

It can even be said that if he had not been decapitated or stabbed in the heart, Ke Lan could recover from any injury in a very short time - even if he was cut into human sticks, it would not take half a day to recover from his lost limbs. It will grow back from the break.

Ke Lan knew very well that compared to the modified people of the heretical sect who were parasitized by the seeds of erosion... he actually fit the title of "monster" better.

"Oh, there's nothing we can do."

Ke Lan sighed, gritted his teeth, and pierced his forearm with the dagger. The sharp tip of the knife suddenly emerged from the other end of his arm.

He didn't pull out the dagger, he just let it get stuck in the wound, preventing the wound from healing automatically, and then he started counting in his mind second by second.

When he counted to four hundred and fifty seconds, a fleeting sense of trance appeared in his consciousness. Then, the heartbreaking pain in his arm disappeared, and the dagger returned to the one tied to his leg. Within the scabbard.

The pain just now was like an illusion, as if everything had never happened.

"Reset every four hundred and fifty seconds." Ke Lan muttered silently. He suddenly took a deep breath and then began to rush out at full speed in one direction.

Seven and a half minutes later, when the familiar trance appeared again, Ke Lan still didn't see anything new except the water surface and the chaotic sky.

Even if the boundary of this space exists, at his speed, he cannot reach that place before the "timeline" is reset.

The only good news is that the reset function of this space does not reset his memory.

But that's about it.

I think that other people who enter the tower should be trapped in a similar space like me - although in this space that resets every seven and a half minutes, the trapped people can obtain the "" that many people dream of" eternal life". But in such a chaotic space with nothing but water, the so-called eternal life is an extremely terrifying torture.

You can't go anywhere, you can't do anything, the only thing you can do is wander on this water that will never reach the edge. Every seven and a half minutes, everything will be reset except your memory. ...It makes people feel creepy just thinking about it.

The memory will not be reset, but has become the most inhumane setting in this "cage"... The only outcome for the people locked in this, besides death, is to go completely crazy.

No matter how steadfast the mind is, people will gradually lose their minds in this near-eternal torture.

Suicide may be a way to escape, but it also has to face two problems: 1. After death, will the trapped person be resurrected with the "timeline reset" seven and a half minutes later? 2. If this space is an illusion created in human consciousness, then if you die in the illusion, will the body outside the illusion also die?

It cannot be ruled out that "death" may be the only means to break the situation, but Ke Lan will not choose "death" without trying all means.

"We can only try one thing at a time."

Ke Lan silently counted the countdown in his mind. When it reached the 448th second, he decisively pierced his wrist with the dagger again, and then activated "Time Stop" at the 449th second. .

All the surrounding scenes suddenly froze, and even the light escaping from the chaotic sky was pulled into mist-like halos. Ke Lan muttered silently in his heart: "One second... two seconds... Three seconds..."

The trance did not appear, the wound on the arm did not heal, and the dagger inserted in the wound did not return to the scabbard.

But the next second after Ke Lan ended his pause state, a trance so subtle that ordinary people couldn't detect it happened as promised - the wound healed, the dagger was sheathed, and everything returned to its original point.

If you don't count the few seconds in the time-stop state, it is exactly 450 seconds.

"The time-stop ability cannot interfere with the rules of this world... Although from my own perspective it can indeed delay the arrival of the reset node, at normal flow rates, it is still every four hundred and fifty seconds. Reset once..."

"Plan A is on hold for the time being, and plan B will be implemented first."

Above Ke Lan's head was a starless and chaotic sky, surrounded by unknown boundaries that could never be touched. The only thing he could touch was the bottom of the pool where his feet were firmly on the ground.

If the clues to break the situation are hidden in this space, the priority of ground exploration is obviously in the first echelon.

With a thought, the living armor immediately covered Ke Lan's right hand.

"Let me think about it...the general structure of that thing should be..."

Gradually, the living armor formed a cylindrical instrument at the front of Ke Lan's arm... As the details of this instrument were gradually improved, the front parts began to rotate, and hundreds of cutter wheels were on the cutterhead. Emitting a neat and dense whistling sound - he actually simulated a mini "shield boring machine" based on the image in his memory.

A shield machine is a large instrument used to dig tunnels. The drill bit mounted on the "Super Gopher" previously equipped by the Gopher Team is an engineering machine designed by combining the characteristics of a drilling drill bit and a shield machine.

However, when this "mini shield machine" was taking shape, the seven and a half minutes of reset time were about to come. Ke Lan simply took his living armor back into his body and waited silently for the reset to come.

When he restored the mini shield machine for the second time, the time it took was directly compressed to five seconds. When the hundreds of cutter wheels were spinning, he did not hesitate to verticalize the cutter head of the shield machine. Fell on the bottom of the pool.

Suddenly, water splashed everywhere.

The bottom of this pool is a black glassy mineral similar to obsidian. The hardness is not very high. Along with a large amount of debris spit out from the tail of the shield machine, the front end of the shield machine has drilled nearly half of the ground in the blink of an eye. meters depth.

At this rate, Ke Lan can dig down to a depth of at least nearly a hundred meters before the next reset.

The surrounding water is constantly poured into this shaft. Although it has a certain impact on Ke Lan's excavation work, it at least solves the problem for Ke Lan that the shield machine needs fluid as a medium when discharging debris.

The slurry mixture piled up more and more, gradually covering Ke Lan's head. Ke Lan simply used the remaining living armor to prop up a solid protective cover, completely wrapping himself in it - he was not worried about digging. If it is too deep, it will be buried alive by these mixtures. Anyway, as long as seven and a half minutes are up, everything will be reset back to the original point.

Just as Ke Lan expected, not long after, he returned to the pool from nearly a hundred meters deep underground, and the deep shaft had completely disappeared.

Naturally, there was no gain in this attempt.

"Huh..." Ke Lan let out a long sigh of frustration, and rubbed his cheek vigorously, but at this moment, a white light suddenly lit up right in front of him.

This sudden change immediately refreshed Ke Lan's spirits, but he did not relax his vigilance because of this - the living armor was summoned instantly, condensing into a giant shield with an observation window and a spear more than two meters long. .

Through the observation window on the shield, Ke Lan found that the light source was about fifty meters directly in front. He took a deep breath, and like a heavy infantryman from the Roman era in the old era, he held the giant shield and leaned closer step by step. past.

In the white light, there are one after another bright yellow metal bars - of course Ke Lan knows what these are, "gold bars", synonymous with "wealth" in the old era, the ultimate hard currency that surpasses all currencies. , even in this era, gold, a precious metal, as an important and scarce industrial material, still has extremely high circulation value.

"Why do gold bars appear here..." Ke Lan was full of doubts, but soon his doubts turned into consternation.

The gold bar disappeared, and a body with graceful curves appeared in the white light. Although the face of the owner of this body was invisible in the white light, Ke Lan still recognized her identity.

[P.S. Thanks to Uncle Xuan for the 500 starting coins. 】