Steel steam and flame

There were dead leaves all around, and there were no traces of living things moving. The light here appears to be dimmer. I don't know why, but with a little comparison, I can keenly notice that the growth conditions of the trees in a small area are much better than those not far away.

The branches and leaves of the ancient trees are more luxuriant, and the dark green color still has a bright luster as if it had been washed by heavy rain. The thick trunks of ancient trees even have fresh bark growing out of old bark. The deep forests of the south have existed for a long time. They are like an unchanging record left in time. Unless they are in the core area, the ancient trees have already reached the growth limit of their long life in history. There is a limit to the height that can break through the laws of nature. When the trees in non-core areas reach this limit, their growth is just to maintain life.

In an irregular circular area with a radius of several hundred meters, not every ancient tree can break through the old bark and grow again like a second spring. On the thick bark full of irregular cracks, and on the trunks of the ancient trees that have grown again, there are crooked symbols, like the graffiti of a child who has not learned to write.

With a point as the center, the ancient trees spreading out in all directions have more or less distorted symbols with unknown meanings. As for the ancient tree in the center, the bark full of historical flavor has been mostly replaced by new bark. The thick tree trunk has grown again by a small half circle, and the unfolded dark green crown is thirty or forty meters higher than the surrounding area.

After the sound of "Hmm, ah,", a whole piece of ground covered with dead leaves looked like a huge iron door opened there, which was opened by a claw covered with dark scales. The blood-red cross pupils reflected a faint light in the crypt under the "door". Those eyes were full of confusion, a state of confusion after being woken up from a deep sleep.

The eyes regained their proper look after that. In the dim light, there was a head in the crypt under the "door" leaning sideways against the ground, as if catching the weak vibration signal coming from the distance.

"Ah...,,,,,,,,,,,,," this kind of unclear self-talk seems to be the owner of the giant eyes saying that he understands what happened. A huge dragon head poked out from the crypt, its pupils looked towards the place where the rumbling sound came from, and then retracted. The "door" was closed, and then there was a vibration on the ground. The vibration was transmitted up the surrounding ancient trees. The dead leaves that had been placed on the branches at an unknown time were shaken off, and the "door" was covered again unevenly. , plays a simple camouflage role. A faint sound came from under the ground, getting smaller and smaller until it disappeared completely, and there was no more movement here.

At the same time, the frigate-class airship completely stopped deep in the forest. It broke many ancient trees along the way. Fortunately, the navy blue shell did not flip over after contacting the ground. It plowed out a kilometer-long belt on the ground and hit several ancient trees again before stopping.

The lift device completely fell off, and all the devices outside the airship were scraped off, leaving only the caterpillar-like shell. A small part sank into the ground, and stopped at a slight angle at an ancient tree that was crooked by the impact. forward. Gray smoke continued to spread out, and soon turned into a small open flame. A large amount of steam splashed out from the broken copper pipe of the lift device, and the connection gap between the shells also began to leak steam soon after. But the leakage became smaller and smaller, until finally it was just a few wisps - the steam furnace was shut down.

There was a roar of impact inside the airship, followed closely by vibrations and the sound of shattering glass windows. People wearing wild camouflage clothing climbed out of windows one after another, with blood stains on their faces, arms, and bodies. Their steps were sloppy, and the discomfort caused by the impact of the crash landing had not yet disappeared from their bodies, so they needed to rest for a while.

"Boom!" The deck used for unloading the airship opened at this time. Several people holding red-hot pneumatic weapons destroyed the locking mechanism and the opening pillar before jumping out. A large amount of unfinished steam accumulated in the boat finally found a vent, and it was spit out in big mouthfuls, but it soon lost its turbulent momentum.

Some people began to throw down various supplies in the boat, while more people found a place around to sit down and rest, and did simple emergency treatment for injuries. Nearly thousands of people quickly gathered in a place under the call of the person in charge of the airship. Some of them used soil to deal with the open fire, smoke and steam, while others began to sort out materials and prepare for evacuation.

After the crew came down, they returned to the control room and wanted to use the communication device on the airship to contact the headquarters here. But communications are off, just electronic noise.

"Afraid of being captured by the enemy. In the event of an attack, the headquarters will close the communication channel. Emergency communications are the easiest time for the enemy to capture information." A team of nearly 20 people has gathered around the person in charge. They all had the logo of the Holy Emperor's Hall on their clothes. "How are the losses, and the specific number of personnel." When asking, the person in charge looked at the thousands of prisoners scattered in the nearby area, and felt awe-inspiring. This is not a good sign. Under the current circumstances, this group of criminals is not easy to deal with. There is also gloating in these people's laziness, because this is not a good job in the first place, and they have no good intentions in letting them come.

"So far, there are 1,174 people including us, and 32 people are confirmed dead and their bodies can be found. But compared to the total number of 1,350 people, 114 people took advantage of the chaos to escape. This place is close to the edge of the forest. The distance is very far, but if the number of people and the number of weapons and ammunition are sufficient, it is still very possible to resist the attack of the second-category creatures and get out."

"Let them run. Those more than a hundred people don't want to think about why so many people stayed here on their own initiative and didn't take advantage of the panic to be like them? It would be fine if the threat was only a second-class creature, but they don't know yet. After you break away from the main team, you will become enemies with us, Qila Andi and everyone else."

"Determine our current position as soon as possible, and let the communication personnel on the crew side pay attention to the contact at all times. Let everyone bring enough supplies, rest for another fifteen minutes, and deal with injuries as soon as possible. After that, we have to leave here. The goal is big, although We can't worry about the enemy's attack now. They haven't gone deep here yet. But the second-type creatures who heard the noise won't think so. There will definitely be some who want to come and take a look. Although there is no problem in killing some people, it is too If there are too many, it will be hard for us to explain." The person in charge took a deep breath and sighed.

Most of the space on the airship is filled with various supplies. It was originally good equipment to bring to the joint team, but now it is cheap for these people. Most of the prisoners have not been active for a long time, but their physical foundation is there, and they were injected with medicines prepared to promote recovery on the way here, so their injuries are not serious. Everyone was fully armed and carried a full backpack. Under the leadership of the team from the Holy Emperor Hall, they rushed towards the location where the joint team was stationed.

The entire team spoke little and the atmosphere was dull. As time passed slowly, it was inevitable that some small groups in this thousand-person team would start talking privately.

Behind the team, in the Holy Emperor Hall and the crew team, there were people with keen senses reporting the changes in the team to the captain. But the captain barely listened to a word, or after a certain point, his energy was distracted by other things.

"It's too quiet here, which is not a good sign." The captain looked around and said to the surrounding members, "It shouldn't be like this. This place has already passed the standard line deep in the forest. According to the density of second-class creatures, even if it is affected by The impact of the landing just now disturbed some people leaving, but there was no other sound at all, which is very abnormal."

"The territory of a powerful second-class creature?" Someone replied, "This may be a good thing for us, because the number is individuals, and we are a team of a thousand people, and it is easy to solve them after encountering them."

"According to common sense, this is the case." The captain once performed a mission here and knew some of the situation, but he did not fully agree with the words of the people around him.