Alien Relic Hunter

"Damn it, then even if we want to throw away this piece of broken stone, we can't throw it away." The hound glanced at the spent nuclear beacon with some annoyance. When he remembered that he had objected to discarding the beacon, he said He had been brewing the curse words for a long time and then swallowed them hard.

"The top priority now is to find a way to contact Ke Lan. Only he can change the settings of the Yagunaktor console... As for the spent nuclear beacon, there is nothing we can do with it now." Zhuoligetuzhen He said, "But if there is really no other way... then we have to prepare for the worst."

"Worst plan?" The hound raised his head and looked at him.

"If the route cannot be modified, our destination is China Sea. Once we reach the sea area, things may take a turn for the better." Zhuoligetu continued.

"I understand what you mean." The Hound nodded, "But there are nearly 80,000 people on Yagunaktor. What are they going to do?"

"If Yagunaktor will hover above the sea, then we will leave these people in the boat." Zhuoligetu paused and then said, "If Yagunaktor takes all the People have entered the undersea city, and even reached the mysterious desert island that Ke Lan mentioned... Then we can only choose to resign ourselves to fate."

"But at least one thing is that compared to the 776 Special Forces Team back then, at least we will not be helpless against the Seed of Corrosion..." Layton continued, "After all, the only monster Ke Lan encountered on the island was the Seed of Corrosion. ."

…

…

Tower of Babel, second floor.

Ke Lan looked at the dark screen in front of him and was a little confused for a moment.

"What's going on? The connection is disconnected?" Thirty-three asked from the side.

"Yes, it's disconnected." Ke Lan nodded, "And the moment before the connection was disconnected, I saw that Yagunaktor's route was modified."

"The route was modified? Could it be that the operating system was invaded? Where was the route changed?" Thirty-three's reaction was almost the same as that of Hound and the others before, "Did the undead crew do it? Is the new destination near the Ark?" Or a suitable location for an ambush?”

"No..." Ke Lan shook his head with a complicated expression, "The destination of the new route is a sea area in the middle sea... Under that sea area, there is a sunken city."

"Are you talking about the eighteenth S-class ruins...the undersea city?" Thirty-three's expression suddenly became wonderful.

Although the underwater city has been banned by Ark's top brass, it has still been certified as an S-class ruin and is numbered "S-018" in the order in which it was discovered. The original No. 18 S-class bottomless sinkhole is It is automatically postponed one digit backward, and the number becomes "S-019".

"Didn't you explore that ruins once?" Thirty-three asked.

"To be precise, I am the only one who has explored it...and the extent of exploration is extremely limited." Ke Lan sighed.

There seems to be an invisible boundary between the Undersea City and the sea area. Only by breaking through that boundary can one enter the territory of the Undersea City. During that exploration operation, Ke Lan passed through without even noticing it. This was the boundary, but Liao Zilang, who was traveling with him, couldn't even touch the boundary, and was forced back to the surface by the turbulent undercurrent.

Ke Lan's experience was completely opposite to Liao Zilang's. The whole dive process was calm and calm, not to mention the undercurrent that was strong enough to sweep people away, and there were not even slightly abnormal changes.

Ke Lan remembered that at that time, he had just scanned the seabed directly below with his sonar. Based on the return time of the sound waves, he could determine that they were still far away from the seabed... But just when he told the sonar scan results When Liao Zilang looked up, he looked up and met the big dark green eye carved on the stone pillar.

From this moment on, Liao Zilang seemed to have disappeared from the world and never responded to Ke Lan's call.

But just a second ago, Liao Zilang was within ten meters of Ke Lan.

The maximum communication distance of the AF-6 radio communication equipment in the middle sea water is 22 meters. If Liao Zilang was swept away by the undercurrent in an instant, it would make sense... But the problem lies in what happened next .

Neither the shipboard sonar on the Pioneer icebreaker nor the portable small sonar carried by Ke Lan and Liao Zilang had ever scanned the city built on the sea platform below the stone pillar statue.

There is indeed a city ruins of Alpha Civilization on the seabed in that sea area, but it is not the one Ke Lan arrived at.

If the undersea city discovered at the beginning was called "City No. 1", then what Ke Lan saw should be "City No. 2".

"City No. 1" is located on the seabed three thousand meters deep. With the diving equipment Ke Lan was wearing at that time, it was impossible to reach that deep place. And the purpose of his initial dive was only for exploratory reconnaissance. I never thought about getting close to the underwater city.

If you want to reach "City No. 1", you must use a deep submersible. The deep submersible suit alone cannot withstand the pressure equivalent to hundreds of atmospheres.

Speaking of the deep submersible, Ke Lan thought of the diving cabin on the "Pioneer" icebreaker that was dismantled with only an iron shell left - no one who rode in this diving cabin survived. Ke Lan was joining the Undead After the crew meeting, they also checked the files on this matter in the black well. The cause of death recorded in the files was not "attack by unknown creatures" but "parasitized by flesh-eating worms."

When Ke Lan entered the undersea city "City No. 2", he also discovered the body of a diver that had been parasitized by flesh-eating worms - from this point of view, the "undersea city" that the diving capsule arrived at was most likely also "undersea city". "City No. 2", not the "City No. 1" located on the seabed three thousand meters deep.

As for the initiator who destroyed the diving cabin into that state...perhaps it was the fusion body dormant in the abyss hatchery?

There is a saying, if this diving cabin really escaped from the fusion body, then these people's luck is really not very good... But maybe because they used their luck to escape, these people In the end, no one was able to return to the surface alive - no one knows how the flesh-eating worms entered the sealed diving chamber and how they parasitized the occupants.

Moreover, the short English phrase engraved on the inner wall of the diving cabin, "Leave the bed"... This was the first time that this "secret phrase" appeared in front of Ke Lan's eyes. Later, Ke Lan also appeared in many places and on many occasions. I have seen or heard this sentence again next time, and even the heretical bishop who tried to initiate the self-sacrifice of the Holy Word reacted to this sentence - but until now, Ke Lan has not understood it. the meaning contained.

Ke Lan knows each of these three English words, and he also knows the three words connected together... But it is obvious that the message that this sentence wants to convey is by no means as simple as the literal meaning.

In addition to the undersea city, there is also the desert island, the nameless desert island where the flow of time is completely different from that in the normal world and where day and night are constant.

As far as Ke Lan knew, he and the 776 Special Forces Team were the only two groups of humans who had ever arrived at the unnamed desert island. However, the two groups of people, separated by forty-eight years, arrived at the desert island in completely different ways.

The 776 Special Forces Team was "teleported" to the island after the hydrogen bomb exploded, while Ke Lan fell into a coma after falling into a liquid cliff. When he woke up, he was already on a desert island.

During the time when he was unconscious, he must have been teleported...

The entrances to the two transmission channels are thousands of miles apart, but they have the same exit...

Is it a coincidence? Or is it a prearranged outcome?

Ke Lan prefers the latter.

One thing is certain now, the Alphas have been trying to create powerful biological weapons...or to put it more bluntly, powerful monsters.

In Ke Lan's view, these extremely suicidal behaviors seem to be the most important things to Alpha Civilization. Whether it is the hatchery in the abyss or the laboratory under the nameless desert island, they are obviously all for this " It was built with a "death plan".

According to the memory fragments in his mind, the Alpha people even imprisoned a creature that seemed to be a prehistoric species underground on an unknown desert island... That thing was not suitable for keeping as a pet, so there was only one explanation.

They are trying to analyze and copy the prehistoric species.

In this way, it is connected with the Leviathan incident - the red flesh worms that make up Leviathan's body should be the research results of the Alpha people. However, the progress bar of the plan has not yet been filled up, and the Alpha civilization will start from here. disappeared from the planet.

Otherwise, maybe they can actually create a mass-produced wild species.

Why does Alpha civilization create monsters? Is it to participate in the war between "gods"? No...no, that's the content of the prayers, and judging from the information on the floor tiles of Babel Square, those prayers are just a means to cover up the truth.

At least those "night watchmen" are by no means devout believers. They are always thinking about breaking away from the control of the "great god"... These plans to create monsters should be the same.

These monsters are not the Praetorian Guards used to support Him, but the resistance forces prepared to overthrow Him!

After sorting out all these things, Ke Lan suddenly felt a sense of enlightenment - although there are still many mysteries that have not been solved, at least half of the main body of the "iceberg" has surfaced. The original inconspicuous corner.

Alpha Civilization's plan was a failure.

Before they could even wait for the moment of duel with the gods, they were wiped out of the world by some mysterious force.

Ke Lan couldn't help but think of a metaphor: a group of ants, fearing the power of humans, decided to secretly accumulate power and overthrow human rule of the earth. They spent countless generations of life, an extremely long time for ants, to accumulate food, develop the colony, and train warriors... Finally, when the most powerful individual in the ant colony was finally able to challenge a dung beetle, a battle A heavy rain poured down without warning, washing away the entire ant nest and drowning all the ants.

Human beings will not know that in the corner of the playground, an ant colony that once harbored "ambition" was destroyed in a late summer rainstorm... Those children who rushed out of the classroom would only breathe greedily. In the fresh air after the rain, even if someone noticed the ant corpses wrapped in the damp sand, they would not have any special thoughts.

Perhaps only biologists and documentary directors would pay attention to a group of ants drowning in the rain. Perhaps only a writer with a weird imagination would write a "great story" about this group of ants trying to resist humans. .

But no matter the biologist, the director of the documentary or the writer, from beginning to end, they never felt that a group of ants would have any impact on them, let alone be a threat.

The gap between gods and mortals is really too big. Even though the Alpha civilization has been ahead of human civilization by countless levels, in front of "him", it is still no different from a group of ants... No wonder the words recorded on the floor tiles I would be so desperate and depressed.

When an ant recognizes the truth about the world, can it still muster the courage to overthrow human rule of the earth?

Ke Lan felt that if an ant could have such an understanding, it would probably go crazy if it saw the daily life of humans, let alone the truth of the world.

Just like those "forbidden knowledge", knowledge itself is harmless, but if an individual who is too weak tries to absorb "knowledge" that he cannot bear, the consequences will be terrible.

Perhaps, in some parallel world, there are no humans on the earth, and ants have developed their own civilization and become the rulers of the earth... But here, ants are always ants.

As if he felt the same way, Ke Lan felt a vague despair for no reason. The helplessness from the bottom of his heart crept up little by little, making him start to question, what is all this for?

Alpha Civilization has worked hard for who knows how many thousands of years, but even after taking the first step of the plan, it was wiped out by a "heavy rain" like a group of ants... As for humans, that is even more ridiculous.

What is the meaning of civilization?

What is the meaning of living?

Ke Lan slowly squatted down and hugged his head.

He suddenly felt very tired, and he wanted to give up... Maybe, just lying in this tower, looking up at the virtual moon and starry sky above, just waiting for the predetermined ending to arrive... It seemed good?

Anyway, no matter what you do, you can change the ending... So why not take a few breaths of air as much as possible before that "heavy rain" comes?

Breathe the air?

Ke Lan's nose twitched, and he suddenly noticed that there seemed to be a salty smell in the air.

This salty smell was not unfamiliar to him.

"Ke Lan, something is wrong." Thirty-three took a step back and stood back-to-back with Ke Lan, "There is water, there is water coming from all around."

"It's sea water." Ke Lan said.