The Death Knell

Flying on a clear winter day, looking at the endless white snow at your feet, and eating ice cream in mid-air is a good feeling.

It was just a little bit short, and they were finished before the flight arrived. Fortunately, dozens of seconds after finishing the dessert, the cloak had already taken the two of them thousands of kilometers away to their destination.

"Is this here? Where the dark energy appears?"

Su Ming and Wang landed on the ground and looked at the huge pothole in front of them to confirm with Cloak.

The collar of the cloak bent a few times, like a human nodding. It sensed that the dark energy was underground. Although it was just a faint breath, the main body did not know how deep underground it existed, but it should be here.

"This looks like a nuclear test site."

Wang probe looked towards the bottom of the pit. In front of them was a funnel-shaped pit with a diameter of several hundred meters. There was a hole at the bottom of the pit, which must have been the passage to the underground.

"No, not here. Look at those small houses opposite the big pit."

Su Ming pointed to the container-like houses on the opposite side of the pit. This kind of simple housing is often used by scientific expedition teams in the North and South Pole, but here it should be a Leviathan facility.

"No one would live so close to a nuclear bomb crater. It has only been ten years since the invention of the nuclear bomb. It is far from enough time for the nuclear radiation to dissipate, let alone a channel at the bottom like a funnel."

"But there seems to be no one over there." Wang put his hands on his eyes to make a shelter, and looked over there in the reflection of the white snow.

No human activity was seen at all, and even the chimneys on the small houses had no smoke. This was unimaginable in the Siberian winter.

Su Ming naturally observed this. He shrugged and walked towards the construction area: "This is Tunguska. Anything that seems unreasonable can happen here."

Tunguska was originally just a river in the Evenki Autonomous Region of Siberia, but after 1908, the name gradually came to refer to a mysterious phenomenon-the Tunguska explosion.

At 7:17 a.m. local time on June 30, 1908, a huge explosion occurred in the Tunguska River Basin 800 kilometers northwest of Lake Baikal. At that time, scientists estimated that the power of the explosion was equivalent to 20 million tons of TNT explosives, covering an area of ​​more than 2,150 square meters. 80 million trees within a kilometer burned down instantly.

A few years after the explosion, scientists discovered three explosion craters there that were similar to lunar craters and ranged in diameter from 90 to 200 meters.

A primeval forest covering an area of ​​2,000 square kilometers was knocked down by the shock wave. At least 300,000 trees died radially. The adjacent permafrost melted and turned into swamps. Some animals suffered radioactive mutations and genetic collapse.

The cause of the explosion is a mystery. Let alone the current year of 1956, even in Su Ming's past life and the future, there is still no unified opinion in the scientific community on how this place was formed.

Some people think it was caused by the crash of an alien spacecraft and the explosion of a nuclear power engine, but others think it was caused by an icy comet hitting the earth, or a trace amount of antimatter falling from the sky. Some even say that a black hole briefly came into contact with the earth.

Well, in this world, maybe Gu Yi knows what's going on, but since she's not here, Su Ming can only figure it out on his own now.

What the two of them are looking at now is the largest of the three giant pits. The other two smaller ones also saw it from the air just now, but they look like frozen winter ponds, with the ice sparkling in the sun. .

Unlike this one, there is no stagnant water, and there are traces of human activities around it.

To be precise, there are traces of a large number of human activities. Next to the sinkhole, there are densely packed footprints, as if an army used it as a playground for running.

Winter has this advantage, the footprints are obvious.

It's just that there are too many footprints, and it's impossible to tell how many people there are. There are not only circular footprints, but also footprints leading to the tunnel at the bottom of the pit. There are them in all directions, not only people but also animals.

"Well, it's interesting. It seems we came at the right time." Su Ming floated above the footprints and hurried towards the residential area.

The breeze stirred up snowflakes, and the slight sound of particles rubbed against the armor. Su Ming arrived at the living area in just a few seconds, stood on the top of a hut, and looked down.

Xiao Wang also arrived at him through the portal, but he frowned tightly. Although the mask blocked the lower half of his face, he could still see that his expression was solemn.

"They...are all dead?"

Just as Wang said, in the middle of this orderly arrangement of houses, many corpses fell messily everywhere. The ground seemed to have been swept by a typhoon. Large pieces of frozen soil and stones were blown away everywhere, exposing Black dirt underneath.

These corpses basically had no obvious external injuries, and Su Ming didn't see much red, except for the red flag flying in the small playground.

As for why it is determined to be Leviathan? Because almost every little house says this answer, with big slogans written on their walls:

‘Getting our place in the world. ’

Well, the location seems to be there, but they just don’t know if they are satisfied with the location in the other world.

Su Ming did not rush to answer Wang's question, but fell from the eaves and opened the door behind him.

The room was as simple as expected, with three bunk beds showing signs of sleeping, two tables piled with miscellaneous items, a coal burning stove, and dust flying everywhere in the sunlight.

"Not all of them are dead. If all the houses were arranged like this, they would have nearly fifty such houses here, but the corpses we saw were only about a hundred, which doesn't match the number."

Su Ming walked into the room to check in detail. After all these years, Leviathan's soldiers were still so unhygienic. This place was messier than Spider-Man's room.

On the table were dried bread and a half-drunk vodka bottle.

"Wang, go for the autopsy. I want to know the cause of their death and the time of death. Don't forget to calculate the impact of the weather."

"Yes, sir, but in this environment I can only estimate that if they are completely frozen, we will need professionals." Wang nodded in agreement, and added before walking towards the body.

"It doesn't matter, I just want to know if they died today." Su Ming reached out and touched the table and rubbed the thick dust on his fingers.

This military camp has obviously not been inhabited for a long time. The bread, beds, dust on the ground and the furnishings inside all show this. Even the stove is frozen.

But the corpse outside the door and the footprints at the door clearly said that this was not the case.

Su Ming walked around the room. There wasn't much in the small place. The only valuable thing he harvested was a box of matches. It was just because there was a beautiful painting printed on the matchbox, which symbolized a hairy girl. Under the shining red star of meaning, a tractor is driving to transport food.

As for the pack of Mohe cigarettes that went with the match, Su Ming didn't even look at it.

"Master, I discovered something strange. The core temperature of the corpse's chest is still warm. In the weather of minus 30 degrees..." A few minutes later, Wang returned to the hut, his eyes full of Shock.

"That means they died within an hour, right?"

Su Ming knew this would be the answer, because judging from the expressions and hair of the corpses, they obviously did not have rigor mortis. He asked Wang, who was good at medical skills, to check again, just to confirm.

The normal body temperature of the human body is dynamically stable due to heat production and dissipation in the body, and is generally around 37°C.

After death, due to the cessation of metabolism, the body cannot continue to produce heat energy. However, the original heat energy inside the body is still continuously dissipated to the outside world through radiation, conduction, convection, and evaporation of water. This causes the temperature of the body to decrease and gradually become colder until The temperature is close to or slightly lower than the outside temperature.

Under normal circumstances, the bodies of children and the elderly cool faster than those of young adults, and the bodies of fat people cool slower than those of thin people.

The bodies of those who died from chronic wasting disease, massive hemorrhage, drowning, or extensive burns cool down quickly. The cooling rate of corpses caused by sudden death, mechanical asphyxia, and carbon monoxide poisoning is slower.

In addition, the temperature of some corpses does not drop but rises within a certain period of time. For example, after death of patients with encephalitis, meningococcal meningitis, influenza complicated by pneumonia, etc., due to the action of bacteria and viruses, the decomposition rate in the body decreases. Enhanced, thermogenic activity increases, so the body temperature can temporarily rise.

Another is that strenuous activities before death will increase the body's heat production, so the body temperature will continue to rise for a short period of time after death.

The corpse of an ordinary adult, in a normal room temperature environment, will drop by about 1°C per hour on average within 10 hours after death. After 10 hours, the rate of decline slows down. After about 24 hours, the temperature of the corpse has dropped to basically close to the ambient temperature.

A corpse in an icehouse or in ice and snow can be completely cooled in about an hour. After a little longer, it can freeze. The liquid in the body can freeze into ice cubes. The limbs, brain and trunk are completely frozen hard, and the liquid in the eyeballs will freeze due to the frozen volume. Swells, causing the eyeball to protrude.

As for those corpses before, one could tell at a glance that they had died not long ago.

"It's just like what you said, sir, but now we have a problem. The footprints in the room are from about a month ago, but even if they are the same person, the footprints in the snow outside the door are from an hour ago. Before..."

Wang also had a boot in his hand. In order to compare the footprints, he took off the shoe from a corpse not far away.

Su Ming waved his hand to signal him to throw away his shoes. He could take other people's shoes casually without fear of athlete's foot: "I can probably guess what the situation is. It seems that in addition to Leviathan, we have two different waves of opponents. One of them may One has mastered part of the application of time, or the skills of psychic energy; the other has arrived one step ahead of us, before we grilled the meat.”

Xiao Wang slowly exhaled. It seemed that the next battle was inevitable.