The Death Knell

A huge black bear was crawling slowly in the wilderness. Its fur had large ulcers, and there were swarms of flies surrounding the wounds and rotten flesh, as if it was carrying a black cloud with it as it moved.

It is said that the eyes are the windows to the soul, so this bear must be very old. There is only numbness and sadness in its eyes, as if human beings have lost something important.

There are dark clouds in the sky, but it is not dark, and the air is much better than that in Delhi. At least you can smell various chemicals.

Maybe it was the incomplete combustion of gasoline and diesel, or maybe there was another chemical waste leakage accident nearby. In short, the smell of sourness was irritating the nasal cavity.

The huge bear climbed up a mountain of garbage. It first raised its head to look at the distant horizon, and then lowered its head to rummage for food.

It skillfully opened an abandoned refrigerator, and then escaped the rotten things inside to feast on it. It was not clear what it was eating from the death knell hundreds of meters away, but judging from the colorful colors of the rotten matter, it was not clear. Would be something good.

"This bear is so big. I have never heard of a big bear lying on the ground with a shoulder height of more than three meters in my hometown." Mysterio knelt down on one knee and whispered to the teacher beside him, and even if it was a subtle The sound also caused the big bear to raise his head and look here.

Fortunately, those flies may have affected its vision. When the big bear started to eat, those small flying insects naturally refused to lag behind the bear and swarmed around its mouth.

"Good luck." Su Ming sat on the ground, leaning against a tree stump, leaving only a bean sprout head exposed to observe like a periscope. He himself pointed at the white light river across the sky: "We have arrived in the Middle World. , as long as you follow the light, you can enter the end of the world and find the Dark Tower. In addition, this bear is also one of the targets."

"Is it one of the 12 patron saints?" Mysterio became interested. As a furry girl, she was only a teenager when she was abducted to hell, and she had never had any experience playing with bears.

The only pity is that this bear looks dirty and smelly. Even if it is a bionic animal, it is too real.

"It's called Killer, and it's indeed a product of the North Central Positronics Group. Look carefully inside its ears. There's a faintly visible trademark." Su Ming asked Mysterio to pay attention. Although the logo has been severely faded, The ears of this big bear are also full of dirt and abscesses, but if you use your imagination, you can still think of that logo.

The giant bear lowered its head and went down. It probably didn't realize the danger was approaching. As an intelligent advanced creature, it certainly knew that its body needed to replenish energy, so eating was a necessary behavior.

A large part of the program is missing. It no longer remembers where it came from and what its mission is, but it wants to live.

It used its paws to pull open the empty refrigerator, and then dug underneath, hoping that the next luck would be the same.

"Can you wait until it finishes eating? It's so pitiful." Liana likes the big bear a little bit, especially its round ears, so she wants to give it the treatment of a full-fledged ghost.

"Okay, you can sit down and have a rest for a while, and just let Strangler keep an eye on it, unless you like to watch other people eat garbage." The teacher patted the ground beside him. There was no garbage here, just enough for the girl to sit down.

While the two were talking, a red bullet train passed quickly on the viaduct not far away. The carriages were opened one by one, and a large amount of garbage was thrown out like a goddess scattering flowers, and it fell to the ground like hail. A sound like smacking the roof.

It's true that this is a wasteland, but there should be some urban Internet of Things nearby. They will transport garbage here via monorails on elevated rails, and discharge garbage as they travel.

Compared with the inner world where resources are scarce, the end of the middle world is more reflected in the social form, where there is no hope.

Take the viaduct as an example. The rails are hundreds of meters above the ground, in order to prevent the savages and untouchables in the wilderness from climbing up and sneaking into a certain city along the railway.

It is not that no one has done this in the past, but at this time, their corpses were placed in large iron cages together with the betrayed slave workers or the poor people who had offended others, and were hung on both sides of the viaduct.

There is a pier every ten meters, arching upward to hold a platform for sleepers. The long sleepers for the rails protrude from this platform. The monorail is like a suspended narrow road.

And almost every sleeper has such a large iron cage hanging at both ends.

The corpses in the iron cage are all in the same posture, without clothes, curled up like a fetus, but if you look carefully, they are all kneeling. When they died, their mouths were opened wide, and their fingers were bent in front of them, as if they were Begging for mercy or praying.

The speed of the train was very fast, and it brought with it gusts of strong wind. Not only did it completely dry the corpses and make them appear mummified for display to future generations, it also made them achieve the same effect as wind chimes, making a crisp metallic sound when they collided with each other.

Whenever the wind chime rings, Killer and the monsters in the surrounding wilderness know that it's time for dinner again, and they wait along the railway line for gifts falling from the sky.

Even though they are just eating garbage, in the inner world, how many humans want to eat garbage?

"What kind of world is here?" The mysterious guest's eyes followed the red train. It looked very beautiful, like a long ruby-like snake.

Especially when it is spewing steam and can reach speeds of 800 kilometers per hour.

She didn't even know how a steam engine did it, so curiosity was inevitable.

Noticing her gaze, her teacher took out two bottles of soda to share with her and told her:

"The train you just saw appeared from the dream of a madman. Before that person went mad, he was a train fan. After he became mad, he kept dreaming, and there was some kind of power that turned the train in his dream into a dream. reality, and then these trains are exploited by other humans."

Liana took the soda and took a sip: "Some kind of power? Is it the spokesperson Merlin?"

"Maybe, who knows, but this is a world where magic exists, and everything is possible." Deathstroke watched the train turn into a small red dot and disappear in the haze in the blink of an eye, and said while drinking soda: " This is just the beginning, strange things are happening here one after another, you will know after a while."

Sure enough, after the high-speed train passed, another small train came soon.

This small train is also a monorail train. The huge I-shaped rail is stuck in the central groove of its front, and it makes a harsh friction sound when it brakes.

Some people with huge iron hooks jumped out of the car.

They used tools to recover several iron cages, took out the dried corpses inside, pounded them into powder, put them into plastic bags, and moved them back to the train little by little.

Then he took out some new corpses from the car, put them in the cage, put them in that position, and hung the cage back up.

"Strange, are they still responsible for recycling the ashes?" Mysterio's expression was half-smiling, blinking.

"It seems that there is a steampunk-style city-state near us. Then it will not be a kind-hearted help to collect the corpses of the untouchables, but the capitalists will completely drain out any trace of surplus value. These dried 'mummy ash' will be taken Let’s go back to wall-paving it or make it into cosmetics. Maybe it’s fish feed? Anyway, it has many uses.”

Liana wrinkled her nose, her little face full of disgust: "Okay, anyway, if we pass by there, I won't eat the fish sold in the city."