Alien Relic Hunter

"Damn it, I didn't feel anything at all, but now that you say that, I feel a little bit scared..." Hound said.

"Fart, you have been scared to death from the beginning." Chi Hanfeng cursed in a low voice, "You are still trying to show off to me, right? How many pounds are you carrying in your dog's belly? Do I understand?"

"Hey, what's the use of exposing my background now? Don't think that I can't see your pale face even if the lights are turned off." The hound counterattacked, "I tell you, on the battlefield, even if my face is scared, As white as paper, I can still pull the trigger on the enemy and hit him accurately... As for you, after a defeat, your hands are shaking like a sieve and you can't even hold a joystick. How did you do it back then? The one who got the title of ace? In my opinion, you just didn’t see enough blood. You old soldiers who stay on the empty ship all day are not very good at anything else, but your ability to pamper yourself is top-notch."

"You old dog!" After being exposed by the hound, Chi Hanfeng's originally pale face suddenly turned green and red in the darkness, but he couldn't find anything to refute, so he could only say fiercely with a sullen face. Staring in the direction where the hound sat.

Although the two people's words were spicy and merciless, this gag inadvertently eased the tense atmosphere in the deep diving cabin, and even the tense nerves of Ghost Owl and Zhuoligetu relaxed a little.

"Okay, let's get down to business." Hound's tone became slightly more serious, "We are just taking it one step at a time. Have you ever thought about something..."

"What's going on?" Ghost Owl and Chi Hanfeng asked in unison.

"What if we get to that pyramid and find that there is no door and we can't get in?" said the hound.

"You also said that we are taking it one step at a time. There is no point in worrying about this kind of thing now... If it doesn't work, let Valentina use Blasphemer to break out a hole..." Chi Hanfeng said.

"This kind of reckless plan is not your style, Lao Chi..." Hound smacked his lips, "If possible, I still want to keep the pyramid as sealed as possible... assuming it was originally sealed."

"Why do you think the pyramid was originally sealed? This is an undersea pyramid. It has been soaked in seawater for so many years. Maybe the inside has been eroded by the seawater."

"You have never been a relic hunter, and you don't know much about the construction technology of Alpha civilization..." Hound pouted angrily at Ghost Owl and Zhuoligetu, "I'm too lazy to tell you this kind of basic knowledge... you two , whoever has nothing to do, please explain to Lao Chi."

"Let me tell you," Ghost Owl took a breath and said, "The Undersea City is a city built underwater. Since it is a city, there must be residents. According to the excavations of the Alpha Civilization ruins over the years, work, one thing we can be sure of is that the Alpha people need to breathe - many ruins buried deep underground are equipped with quite advanced air circulation systems, rather than being completely sealed like tombs. There must be something inside the underwater city that can A dry space for people to live in is basically a given.”

"But... this building is at least tens of thousands of years old. No one has maintained it for tens of thousands of years... The dry space may not still exist, right?" Chi Hanfeng muttered.

"Many ruins are tens of thousands of years old, and the mechanisms and equipment inside are still functioning as usual. They kill people as quickly as if they were brand new. It is just a water-proof layer. I believe that with the technology of Alpha Civilization, it can be maintained without anyone taking care of it. Tens of thousands of years is not a problem at all." Hound added.

"Old dog, you have overlooked one thing." Chi Hanfeng suddenly said seriously, "If the underwater city was built on the seabed from the beginning, then the building may indeed have the function of water isolation, but according to the clues obtained so far, This underwater city may have sunk from the sea... Do you still remember the building that our deep submersible crashed into? Wasn't it filled with seawater? There are also those used for vehicle movement Aerial rails... If this is a city built on the bottom of the sea, is there any need for such a thing as aerial rails? Seawater itself is a very good supporting medium."

"But that pyramid is different." It was Zhuoligetu who spoke, "Even if the entire city is not waterproof, that pyramid must be waterproof...even if it was originally built on land."

"Why do you say that?"

"Obviously, this pyramid should be the core control module of the city... The core control module of Alpha Civilization City can even withstand a direct hit from a hydrogen bomb. Compared with a nuclear explosion that destroys the world, seawater can only be considered a child's play." The hound stretched out his hand and patted Chi Hanfeng on the shoulder, "Old Chi, if we still live to go out, I will take you to visit the ruins more next time, and you won't have so many problems."

"When you say that, I'm a little curious...how you got here in the years after you retired." Chi Hanfeng's tone softened slightly.

"How else can I live like the same old life, just risking my life for money... As a ruin hunter, the survival rate is not higher than that of being a soldier." The hound picked his two nostrils with his index finger and middle finger at the same time, "But at least , I still have the right to choose, I can decide whether to accept this job or not... Even if I accept it, when the end comes, as long as I am not locked in the ruins and cannot get out, I can choose to give up at any time, as long as You only need to pay a small amount of liquidated damages... It's not like before, when an order comes down from above, even though you know it's a life-threatening mission, you still have to go ahead and carry it out."

As soon as he finished saying this, the hound's expression suddenly changed. His huge aquiline nose twitched vigorously a few times, and he said urgently: "Stop chatting now, something is wrong..."

"What?" The atmosphere in the deep diving cabin that had calmed down became tense again.

"The smell of the seawater seems to have changed..." the hound murmured, "I thought it was my imagination just now and wondered if the boogers had blocked my nose... But now I find that the smell has changed. It has nothing to do with my nose...it just changed, it’s not my imagination.”

"What's the smell of sea water?" Chi Hanfeng was slightly startled, "Old dog, what nonsense are you talking about... The deep diving cabin is completely sealed. If the sea water from outside could come in, we would have died long ago. How can you smell it? Get the smell of sea water.”

"My nose is different from yours." Hound shook his head solemnly, "Although compared with guys like Ke Lan and Asano Akira, my ability is not good enough, but at any rate, I can rely on this to die. I have escaped several times..."

"Then tell me, what did you smell?"

"Previously, the smell was the normal smell of seawater, with the unique smell of the poisonous and radioactive seawater in the Central Sea... Well, even if I tell you, you don't understand, unless you dare to fill this seawater Go into your nose and smell it carefully, but I guess your nose will be rotten before you can sniff out the door... But I can smell it. Even if I sit in the deep diving cabin, I can still smell the smell of the sea water outside... …This is also the place where the sea water in Zhonghai makes me feel the strangest…”

The hound paused for a moment and continued: "It's not that my nose is very sensitive, but this smell has a strong penetrating ability. Even if the shell of the deep diving cabin can isolate the sea water, it can't isolate this smell... You use The cotton has blocked my nose, and if I put a glass of good spirits to smell it, I might not be able to smell it, but if it is a glass of sea water from the middle of the sea, I can smell it... Nothing can block that smell. it."

"There are indeed many weird things about the seawater in Zhonghai... I believe what you said." Chi Hanfeng nodded seriously, no longer doubting, "Then tell me, what happened to the smell of the seawater just now?"

"...There is an extra smell...that is hard to describe..." the hound said, sniffing hard again, "Wait a minute, let me look for words to describe it...Tsk...how to say it, It smells a bit like some kind of metal rust, but I can’t tell what kind of metal it is... Anyway, it gives me a very damp feeling."

It might seem a little strange to say the word "moist" on the bottom of the sea, but at this time, the other people didn't pay attention to the somewhat "inappropriate" adjective "hound".

"The smell of metal rust?" Chi Hanfeng hesitated, "Why is it emitted from the buildings of the Undersea City? The building materials of the Undersea City contain a large amount of metal materials. After being soaked in seawater for so long, even if the Alpha civilization No matter how good the metallurgical technology is, it will inevitably rust... And we are diving now, getting closer and closer to the underwater city, so you can smell this smell? "

"No, it's not because of this." Hound immediately objected, "It's not like we haven't been to the Undersea City before. I didn't smell this smell at all at that time... Even if we were pushed into that building by the shock wave of the torpedo explosion I didn't smell it... Moreover, even if it was the smell of rusty buildings, it would gradually dissipate... But I smelled it suddenly just now... The concentration of this smell did not go from zero to one, and then again. It was added little by little to two, but it jumped directly from zero to one hundred... Can you understand what I mean?"

"Understandable." Chi Hanfeng nodded, "Cliff-like stratification. When we break through a certain depth, we go from a water area that has no such smell at all to another water area that is full of this rusty smell. Here, there is an invisible boundary between the two bodies of water, and the seawater between them does not flow...or, in other words, the substance with this rusty smell does not flow."

"It makes sense. After all, we haven't been to this water area just now." Zhuoligetu whispered, "So it makes perfect sense for such an area to exist."

"Could it be that the smell comes from the rusty parts of the deep submersible, and it's not coming from sea water at all?" Ghost Owl interjected.

"Impossible." This time, it was Hound and Chi Hanfeng who said in unison.

"My nose can still tell the difference... This rusty smell is mixed with the fishy smell of sea water, just like two snakes entangled together, it is impossible to mistake it." Hound said.

"The internal parts of the deep submersible are all made of special alloys. Even those non-Nino alloy parts will not have any rust problems and will not show any signs of oxidation for at least a hundred years. I can guarantee this. "Chi Hanfeng followed.

"There must be something wrong with this smell," said the hound. "Brace yourselves... I guess trouble will come sooner than we expect..."

The four of them all tensed up in unison.

At this moment, Valentina's voice came over: "Major, Uncle Nick, according to the report of the Blasphemer's detection equipment, our current depth is still one hundred meters away from hitting the bottom."

"One hundred meters..." The hound pondered for a moment, and then said resolutely, "Turn on the lights!"

With a snap, the searchlight that had been extinguished for a long time turned on again, illuminating the shadowy ruins below, but the hound and the others only took a glance, and uneasiness already covered their faces.

"Where's that pyramid? Why is it missing?" Ghost Owl murmured, "It...it should have been in that position..."

"Could it be that the coordinates are wrongly determined... No, it is impossible to be wrong. Even if there is a certain deviation, it is impossible for such a large landmark building to completely disappear from the field of view..." Chi Hanfeng also said, " Even if our dive location is on the edge of the city... no, this is the central area, we have not deviated!"

"That can only mean one thing..." Hound said solemnly.

The four of them may have remembered the other architectural details of the Undersea City incorrectly, but the fact that the pyramid disappeared was definitely before them - not to mention, the purpose of their actions was to enter the interior of the pyramid. But now even the goal has disappeared, and the original plan has become a meaningless piece of waste paper.

"This is another city under the sea."

"Another underwater city?" Ghost Owl opened his mouth slightly, "Why...we will come...No, I should ask, why does it appear in front of us?"

"No one knows." The hound pinched his nose, "But one thing I can tell you is that when Ke Lan dived, he went to another undersea city... If there is not a third identical undersea city... As for the city, the one we see now should be the one he visited at that time."

Hound recalled the architectural style of the underwater city described by Ke Lan and himself, and it basically matched the buildings in the field of vision - compared with the ruins of the first city that sank to the bottom of the sea, the architectural style of this city was Real underwater buildings: The tops of many houses are designed with vaults in order to disperse the pressure of seawater to the greatest extent, so that the buildings will not deform or even be directly crushed under the weight of seawater.

"I remember Ke Lan said that he was in the process of diving, and he didn't know how he came to this place." Zhuoligetu recalled, "At that time, Liao Zilang encountered an underwater undercurrent, but Ke Lan didn't touch anything, the waters around him were completely calm... just like us now."