Alien Relic Hunter

After finishing the conversation with Demeter, Ke Lan turned around and headed to the Black Well.

Since the undead crew members would be unwilling to tell themselves those secrets, the worst possible solution would be to use a clumsy method - looking for a needle in a haystack to search for archives from those years that might be involved in these events... mobilizing so many special forces and detonating them. The sound caused by the small hydrogen bomb and the engine explosion... there are so many traces, it is impossible for the undead crew to erase them completely.

There will always be some clues left in those black hard drives.

Ke Lan stayed in the black well for five days.

I don't know if it was just his luck, but he actually found a clue by searching for a needle in a haystack, and it was a very crucial clue.

In the core of the Gray Mist Forest, there is also an "engine wreckage". The number given to it by the undead crew is "No. 63"... In two years, there were a total of four special teams like the 776 Elite troops were sent to carry out the task of blowing up the "Wreckage Site of Engine No. 63", but no troops were able to successfully cross the gray fog forest...

Of course, this is purely Ke Lan's personal speculation that no one of the troops could successfully pass through the gray mist forest. According to actual records, these four troops lost contact shortly after entering the gray mist forest. They neither wanted to send any messages to the outside world nor did they send any messages to the outside world. People come out of the forest alive - not even corpses.

Several transfer stations and military bases set up at the border of the gray fog forest did not detect any vibrations in the forest... In other words, none of the small hydrogen bombs carried by these four troops was detonated. .

Due to the confidentiality of the mission, Ark did not organize a large force to enter the gray fog forest for search and rescue. Instead, after the fourth special team lost contact, it dispatched a heavy cruiser, a frigate and three ships to the gray fog forest. A "special operations fleet" composed of high-mobility support ships.

But just as this fleet crossed the "red line", it was attacked by a large number of flying indigenous creatures. The frigate and a high-mobility support ship crashed in the forest. The heavy cruiser and the remaining two high-mobility support ships were severely damaged and were unable to survive. Do not exit the airspace of the gray mist forest.

Speaking of the red line... I have to focus on the Gray Mist Forest, a very special area on Alpha Planet.

Although the Gray Mist Forest is not considered a relic of the Alpha Civilization, in the eyes of all soldiers, mercenaries and relic hunters, this place is no less dangerous than an S relic.

However, they are referring to areas within the "red line."

The "red line" refers to a "danger warning line" five kilometers after entering the gray fog forest... The area beyond the red line is not very dangerous. Experts from the institute collect samples and do various things in this area. You don’t even need to carry many guards during the experiment... But once you cross the red line, the situation is different...

In the area behind the red line, the danger level will increase significantly every fifty meters deep. Everything here, even the plants and the land under your feet, are deeply hostile to outsiders.

According to official records, only one expedition team, all composed of high-level enhanced people and modified people, successfully retreated after crossing the red line 400 meters, but even so, they also showed up for nearly a third of the time. Two attrition.

In the fourteenth year of the New Era, an armored force retreated from the frontal battlefield and entered the gray mist forest, pursued by indigenous creatures... About 1,500 people, plus nearly a hundred tanks and almost fifty vehicles The fearless warrior armors all disappeared silently into this "man-eating forest".

More than 90% of the trees in the gray fog forest are woody indigenous plants called "fog perches", but the most troublesome thing is another kind of indigenous plant that is parasitic on these fog perches. : Kirito.

When the fog vines are breathing, they will release a gray mist. The mist released by countless fog vines are connected together to form a mist that lasts all year round. This mist can greatly obscure the field of vision, while also It contains a strong neurotoxin. Except for those creatures that live in the gray fog forest all year round and whose bodies have developed resistance to the toxin, outside creatures entering the fog without protective measures will be poisoned in a short time... The deeper you enter the forest, the heavier the fog and the higher the concentration of toxins. Especially after the red line, the fog concentration will rapidly increase geometrically. The main means used by people to determine the exact location of the red line, in addition to distance, is to rely on Observe the changes in fog concentration.

Take humans as an example. Suppose a strong male soldier, who has not undergone intensive surgery or received toxin resistance modification, moves in an area outside the red line without wearing a gas mask or taking anti-venom agents. He would feel seriously unwell in two hours, and fall into coma in four hours... Even if he was taken out of the Gray Mist Forest at this time, if he did not receive timely treatment, he would die of organ failure within forty-eight hours.

In the area within the red line, the time for toxins to accumulate to a fatal level is shortened to six minutes.

As for going from coma to death, it only takes half an hour.

Another point is visibility - beyond the red line, the visibility in the gray fog is about ten to fifteen meters, but as soon as you cross the red line, the visibility quickly drops to within five meters. The further you go, the lower the visibility. ...The expedition team even recorded the description of "being unable to see even the five fingers of their hand" in their records.

The remaining one-third of them were able to come back alive thanks to several powerful blowers, which blew away the nearby gray fog, allowing the expedition members to find their way back.

However, the gray fog is very "sticky", and the limit distance that the blower can blow is less than 30 meters... This is only 400 meters away from the red line, and the center of the gray fog forest must be at least 50 kilometers away from the red line. Miles and above.

Although the gray fog is very sticky, its density is not high at all. They can rise hundreds of meters into the air, shrouding the entire forest below. In the center of the forest, the height of the gray fog is even Over a thousand meters, from a distance, it looks like a gray mountain peak.

As for the chaotic magnetic field and radio interference... at least one-fifth of the surface of Alpha Star has such characteristics, and the area where the Gray Mist Forest is located happens to be among these one-fifths.

Someone once thought about using napalm to open a "corridor" for passage in the gray fog forest, but after actual operation, they found that fog perches and fog vines are extremely fire-resistant... and have extremely strong resistance. The flammable gray mist squeezes out most of the air in the forest. With a severe lack of oxygen, it is difficult for fires to burn.

The wood of the mist perch is extremely dense, as hard as iron, and has a ignition point between 1,500 and 1,700 degrees. This would have been a good material. However, these woods are extremely difficult to process, difficult to cut, and cannot be smelted. , completely inferior to various alloy materials...

There are no ruins, low resource value, and the level of danger is comparable to S-class ruins... Except for experts and scholars who are interested in forest ecology, almost no one is willing to come to this place. Naturally, this forest has gradually disappeared from the public consciousness. within sight.

Ke Lan tried to search for relevant information about the Gray Mist Forest on the public Internet, but apart from a small number of exploration records in areas outside the red line, there was very little information that could be found... And among this information, the ones that appeared most frequently The words are "maze", "red line", "extreme danger" and... "eat people without spitting out bones".

Like the ruins of the Ancient Copper City, the Gray Mist Forest is also a "forgotten" place.

As for how the undead crew members learned that there was an "engine wreckage" in the core of the Gray Mist Forest, Ke Lan had no idea. According to his judgment, it was most likely through learning from other ruins or other "engine wreckage." "It was deduced from the clues obtained in... After all, until now, the core area of ​​the Gray Mist Forest is still the same as the abyss at the bottom of the sea, a mysterious restricted area that has not been visited by humans.

In fact, in Ke Lan's view, there is no need for the Undead Crew to send people to blow up the engine wreckage hidden deep in the core of the Gray Mist Forest... If they are trying to cover up something, the Gray Mist Forest can definitely be considered It is an excellent barrier.

No one can pass through the gray fog forest, and no one can see the engine wreckage hidden in the gray fog.

Perhaps it was for this reason that after the fourth special team lost contact and the special operations fleet failed, the Undead Crew shelved their plan to blow up the "Wreck of Engine No. 63".

If there is an Alpha man left inside this engine wreckage...

When he thought of this, Ke Lan's breathing became rapid.

He still remembers what the Alpha man who was killed by the 776 Special Forces Team said before his death in the "Mewtwo" video -

"I'm not stopping you."

"I know what your leaders are doing... they are right... the truth cannot be made public... otherwise, everything will fall into chaos."

"Because of the paradox, most of us disappeared."

"A small number of survivors have left this planet. At least a handful of individuals like me have stayed, wanting to witness some things and trying to communicate with you."

"But unfortunately, there is no 'symbiont' among you. It seems that I can't communicate with you."

There is no symbiote... These were the last words of the Alpha before his death. It is precisely because no one in the 776 special team can understand the language of the Alpha civilization... They can't even hear the "voice" of the other party. ”, so they mistook the Alpha man for trying to stop their mission and shot him dead.

But as a symbiote, Ke Lan knew very well that the other party was not only not hostile, but even wanted to take the initiative to communicate with humans!

It probably represents the will of the entire Alpha civilization.

Assuming that Ke Lan can find a living Alpha man in the "Wreckage Site of Engine No. 63", all the problems that trouble him will be solved.

But before that, there was a question before Ke Lan: How could he pass through the gray mist forest?

The area within the red line is a restricted area for humans. The expedition team only crossed the red line by 400 meters and completely lost its direction. The distance between the core area and the red line was at least 100 meters deep into the limit of the expedition team. More than times.

The armored troops of 1,500 people were swallowed up by this forest, and the heavy cruiser that could instantly kill the Fusion Plus was severely damaged and had to return without success... These cases all illustrate the dangers of the gray fog forest among those on the Internet. The description is not an exaggeration.

Even if Ke Lan could assemble as large a force as he did when attacking the ruins of the Bronze City, there would probably be nothing he could do against this forest.

Hundreds of thousands of people sounds like a lot, and if they are gathered into a neat square formation on the plain, it will look very spectacular... But if so many people are scattered in a vast forest with a depth of more than a hundred kilometers, it will look like... If a 500-gram bag of edible salt is poured into a freshwater lake covering an area of ​​several hectares, the salinity of the lake water will not change at all.

Theoretically speaking, the best way to operate is to set fire to the mountain - of course, you cannot use conventional methods such as napalm bombs, otherwise even if you use up all the Ark's inventory, you will only be able to open up a very small open space. To burn, you must burn a "big one".

For example, directly airdropping large-yield nuclear weapons, using plasma cannons to continuously bombard forest areas, etc...

Doing so would indeed eradicate the entire forest from the surface of Planet Alpha, but it would also destroy the engine wreckage hidden in the deep forest and kill the Alpha man who might be staying in the engine wreckage.

What's more, the undead crew may or may not approve Ke Lan's plan... If they agree to transfer the command of the fleet to Ke Lan, Ke Lan won't even use the Ark fleet, he only needs to drive Yagunaktor directly Just crash into the mountain peak made of gray mist.

With the thickness of Yagunaktor's armor, those flying indigenous creatures cannot pose any threat to it at all.

[P.S. I’m not in a good state lately. I’m always feeling weak, groggy, dizzy and nauseous. I don’t know if it’s because of the high temperature, heat stroke or poisoning (the epidemic is over recently, and a factory in a nearby industrial area has started to secretly discharge poison in the middle of the night. There is industrial waste gas, and I have been woken up in the middle of the night with the windows open several times at night. Even if I want to report it, I can’t find any evidence...), of course, there is also the worst possibility that I don’t want to think about, which is white brain... …

Let’s not talk about it anymore. Let’s go to the hospital during the day tomorrow. I just had a blood draw two weeks ago and all the indicators were very good... The result is that I started to feel uncomfortable after smelling the smell of burning plastic in the middle of the night for the past few days. Already...]