Steel steam and flame

It was about six hours' journey from the station to the assessment range. After taking a look at the other people in the car, Cassia closed her eyes again. The back door had been frozen by ice and snow, and under a flickering lime lamp, only the white breaths of about thirty people breathing regularly predicted that this group of people who had all gone silent were still alive.

The snow vehicle is comparable to a small truck, and one can carry thirty-five examiners and the various weapons they carry. The violent shaking and occasional roar of the engine told them that the road conditions were not very good. From time to time, there was the sound of the tip of the snowmobile hitting the hard ice, but no one opened their eyes, and the atmosphere and environment were normal, dropping below freezing point.

Cassia's spirit was highly concentrated and excited at this time. The induction force field drove the blood to burn, and she could not feel the cold at all.

When the people in this car opened their eyes one after another, a window in the front of the car was pushed open, revealing the co-pilot with frost on his eyebrows: "It is expected that all snow vehicles will arrive at the assessment area in ten minutes. Outside the edge, I won’t talk about the rules. The handle of the carriage door is not locked and can be opened by going up on the board. Please be prepared and choose the time and place to get off. By the way, I will tell you something here. The speed of the vehicle will be maintained within a certain range and will not slow down when someone gets off the vehicle. Of course, those who attack delivery vehicles will be disqualified immediately."

After saying that, without waiting for anyone else to ask, the co-pilot closed the small window. Ten minutes later, maybe not that long, with a long sound of the car horn, the snowmobile started for the first time. Everyone closed their eyes again, their perceptions immediately dissipated, and they were all measuring the approximate speed of the vehicle to estimate their exact time to get off.

It was already dark outside. There was a small window behind everyone, but nothing could be observed. The peaks used as reference points were all hidden in the darkness at this moment. This situation surprises many people. When the vehicle is random, the distance calculated through perception will not be very accurate. Cassia noticed something. The speed of the vehicle was indeed within a range, but it was controlled by the two drivers and kept changing erratically. This makes it difficult to determine the drop-off location from the map.

Five hours later, the first person silently opened the compartment door and jumped out of the vehicle. The number of people in the carriage gradually decreased. At exactly two o'clock in the morning, Cassia stood up from her seat and jumped into the snow.

After landing, he rolled a few times to the side. He immediately controlled his body temperature and stood still in place. The sound of snowmobiles is fading away. In the windless night, the sound ripples spreading layer by layer act as another pair of eyes.

No one followed, so Cassia looked around at the almost identical darkness, and with her excellent sense of direction, she walked towards the place where she had buried the iron box.

The second type of creature will start to be released a few hours after everyone is sure to get off the vehicle. Now, there must be several large airships for communication hovering above that layer of black clouds, receiving numerous snow vehicles. Release all the signals.

The assistance of sound reflection ripples allowed Cassia to move forward at a very impressive speed. There was no impact from the snowstorm, and there was only the "crunching" sound of the snow in the quiet night. Taking a break every hour, Cassia was in no hurry to rush.

While on the road, Cassia often opened the cover of the mechanical watch to check the time. About seven hours later, when he was about to start his journey again after resting, other assessors finally appeared in his perception. The darkness had subsided a little at this time, but his vision was still trapped within a range of less than one or two meters around him.

It was about eight or nine hundred meters away from him, almost reaching the limit of sound ripples that Cassia could perceive. The body temperature has always been kept at a safe temperature. In the dark night environment and the waist-deep snow, it would be very fatal to be caught by someone ambushing him.

Choosing to wait for the man to leave, Cassia buried herself in the snow and "watched" the man silently move in another direction. The speed was very slow, and Cassia felt that he had discovered something, so he increased the frequency of the sound and explored all around him.

Afterwards, Cassia lurked motionless in the snow and wrote down the frequency of meeting the assessors. While thinking this way, at the edge of perception, the person moving forward suddenly stopped moving. For about six seconds, a detailed and dull gunshot swept through the thick snow and reached Cassia's ears.

"A sniper with temperature sensing ability." Cassia said in her heart. After waiting for about ten minutes, the sniper entered the sound detection range and came to the dead man's side. They were probably looking for anything that could be used on the corpses. Among the large number of examinees, many were born into large families and had some special weapons and equipment.

A minute later, Cassia "saw" the sniper start to move, with the same caution, perhaps because he was still worried about the sniper rifle equipped with a silencer. Such a dark night is too quiet, and the crunching of snow can become a noise in a place.

Holding a firecracker in the snow, Cassia once again controlled to lower her body temperature: "If the direction does not change, according to his speed, we will reach the nearest position in about half a minute, about three hundred meters. Left and right." The sound ripples in his head were like delicate and even mapping drawings. Cassia was observing the man's movements and reactions, and the muzzle of the gun had already locked the sniper's body. When he sensed something was wrong, he half-pressed the trigger. Bullets can be fired out in an instant. There was no wind and no snow, and the traces of progress in the snow were very obvious. This was what Cassia was worried about.

Cassia, who was not consistent with the environment, sensed that the night was as concealed as it should be. Half an hour after the sniper left, Cassia poked her head out of the snow and continued to move forward. On the way, I passed by the man who died not long ago. A big hole was opened in his chest. His whole body was frozen into ice. There was white and green in the vague black. The bag he was carrying was opened, and a pile of bullets fell into the snow.

Soon after, the field of vision expanded rapidly, reaching thirty or forty meters away. As Cassia moved forward, she could occasionally see traces of other people's progress on the snow. And a deep red light was also projected on the gray snow at this moment. In an instant, the white world was coated with red light, as if it was infected by falling blood.

Cassia raised her head, and several huge dark red patches appeared on the black clouds. Then the crimson color became brighter, and several fiercely burning huge red flares finally broke through the black clouds, carrying a billowing tail of smoke to the sky under the snow clouds. After burning for only a few seconds, the flare turned into a cloud of smoke and scattered.

This was a signal sent by the empire's communication airship, which meant that all examiners had left the snow vehicles. After eight hours of adaptation time, the second-type creatures specially cultivated by the Avalon Agency for this assessment will also be released.