Wasteland: My items are infinitely upgraded

"?"

Because he wasn't wearing a helmet or mask, the expression on Bai Ye's face was clearly visible: a face full of question marks.

However, seeing that Lin Feng's eyes under his mask didn't seem to be joking, she nodded slightly, agreeing with his view, and turned to leave.

Lin Feng left without looking back, seemingly very wary of the dark space behind him.

When Bai Ye entered the stairwell of the exit, she looked back and saw that the eighth basement level was very different from the upper levels.

Apart from the fleshy tentacles everywhere and the mutated eggs connected for nourishment, there was no bacterial toxic mist here, and no accumulation of slime on the ground.

It was like a truly sealed past.

But the longer she stared, the more uneasy she felt, especially after Lin Feng's nonsensical words, she felt even more that there was some unknown existence in the darkness, staring at the two of them.

The dense darkness seemed to condense into the outline of a human face, and the features of that face became clearer and clearer under observation.

The chilling feeling from just now surged into her heart again.

Bai Ye shivered and hurriedly turned back to follow Lin Feng's gradually receding figure.

She possessed the upper limit of second-order evolution, a powerful level of twenty-nine, and among this group of people, she had the highest resistance to mental pollution and gene radiation.

Those late-stage first-order subordinates, including Lin Feng, felt intense discomfort entering the lower three levels, but only Bai Ye could block these interferences.

Even with her spatial ability, she could effectively isolate her entire body surface from the outside world, cutting off the approach of pollution and radiation.

Therefore, even when fighting a third-order mutated king, Bai Ye was not afraid at all. With her spatial ability, it was difficult for the opponent to hurt her in the slightest.

It could scratch other second-order evolvers, such as the hunter team that entered the bottom of the ruins before, causing them to suffer gene pollution and become corrupted, but for Bai Ye, the mutated creature's proud methods were directly ineffective.

Moreover, the third-order mutated king was said to be a third-order existence, but there were only a few third-order cells in its body, and the rest were only late-stage second-order. Its overall strength was barely stronger than Bai Ye, far from a true third-order king.

This was why Bai Ye dared to go deep into the ruins. In addition, with Lin Feng's assistance, the two of them joining forces could suppress any third-order mutated creature's attack.

However, at that moment just now, when a third-order mutated creature suddenly appeared behind her, Bai Ye felt an unprecedented sense of fear.

You must know that she was only in the early stage of the second order back then, and had been living in the City of Salvation. She had never been so afraid even when facing the early stage third-order city lord.

Today, she has also reached the crossroads of creating an evolutionary path. Regarding the third stage of evolution, even if she doesn't understand it very well, she has at least explored a thing or two.

So even if she encountered an early or mid-stage third-order existence, she could still stabilize her mind and remain neither humble nor arrogant.

But now, at the bottom of the ruins, her hair stood on end uncontrollably.

That feeling of fear of unknown death also made Bai Ye fall into silence on the way out.

She gradually understood why her body would instinctively react so violently at first.

Because the danger came too suddenly!

Before that third-order mutated monster hung on the aerial meat tube of the stamping machine, Bai Ye's perception did not transmit any danger, nor was there any warning.

But the monster appeared unexpectedly, and then emitted a strong third-order aura, as if it was about to eat her in the next second.

This meant that third-order mutated monsters could appear anywhere in the eighth basement level, and not just those mutated eggs that were obviously hatching.

No wonder Lin Feng was so silent.

Bai Ye reacted quickly and thought of many possibilities.

She had also been to many ruins for exploration before, but this was her first time at the Mount Tai ruins, mainly because the path was far away from her area of activity.

This time, if it weren't for the news from the guild that there was a military factory here, this kind of ruin forbidden area would rarely be visited by flawless evolved individuals, mainly because they were worried about being genetically polluted.

Now it seems that the Mount Tai ruins, as one of the forbidden areas, obviously still contain many incomprehensible dangers compared to other ordinary ruins.

Returning all the way to the fifth floor, to a familiar space, Lin Feng found that Zheng Yanying and Chen Shanshan and others had already left, so he continued forward without stopping.

Until he entered the third basement level in one breath and saw the sunlight refracted by the focusing mirror at the exit, Lin Feng breathed a sigh of relief.

At this time, the members of the Salvation Army carrying four weapon production equipment had just arrived here.

They were in groups of four or five, struggling to move forward with heavy loads, especially when passing through the stairs, they had to use all their strength to move the ten-ton stamping machine.

Although the late-stage first-order evolvers have an explosive power of eight or nine tons, this is the limit, and they cannot maintain such output all the time, otherwise they will be exhausted in a few minutes.

Carrying it from the bottom of the eighth basement level to the third basement level in one breath is forty kilometers, and each person needs to carry more than three tons...

Before physical strength is exhausted, the stomach may be hungry first.

After arriving at the third basement level, there were only more than twenty kilometers left, so Bai Ye asked everyone to rest first and restore their state, so as to avoid accidents during the subsequent transportation.

After all, these are the future of the Salvation Army, and no carelessness is allowed.

After explaining, Bai Ye then said to Lin Feng:

"If you still have the strength, let's move one of the bullet-making machines to the surface first."

According to the agreement, one of the two bullet-making stamping machines belonged to Lin Feng, so the latter nodded and set off to cooperate with Bai Ye in moving it.

In the past, large cranes or gantry cranes were needed to move more than ten tons of mechanical equipment.

Now, in the hands of two second-order evolvers, it is steadily lifted and walked towards the exit leading from the third basement level to the second basement level.

When Lin Feng stood at the entrance of the stairs, the armor suddenly showed patches of white mist under the sunlight. Fortunately, Bai Ye was in front controlling the direction, and Lin Feng only needed to follow.

After walking another ten kilometers in one breath, when about to enter the first basement level, Bai Ye saw that Lin Feng's pace slowed down, so she asked him to put down the machine and take a rest.

The two sat on the steps and looked up.

The orange-yellow sunlight shone on the main road above, and the cotton-like dust floating in the air was covered with a layer of golden light.

"What exactly did you see in the eighth basement level?"

Bai Ye couldn't help but ask during the rest.

Lin Feng's eyes were fixed on a certain place, in the shadow on the side of the stairwell where sunlight could not directly shine.

It seemed that something had been chasing him all the way from the bottom, still haunting him.

Bai Ye followed his gaze, but there was nothing there, so she frowned slightly:

"Are you hallucinating? Mental pollution shouldn't be so easy to invade a second-order evolver."

Lin Feng glanced at the corner of his eye:

「Detected unknown energy invading the brain, do you want to spend ten points of life value to clear it!」

He remembered that the last time a similar reminder popped up was when he was contaminated with foreign gene impurities before. The system could clear it by spending some life value, preventing the body from being polluted by foreign genes and maintaining flawless evolution.

Now it appears again, but it is related to mental pollution.

In Lin Feng's vision, after seeing the weird scene at the top of the eighth basement level, a mass of black viscous substance condensed in the dark places in his field of vision.

It was like a magnetic fluid, but floating in mid-air, its shape was not fixed, and it changed constantly.

So much so that Lin Feng initially thought it was an illusion, or that he had been contaminated with something unclean.

It wasn't until the corner of his eye clearly reminded him, and Bai Ye couldn't see this black substance, that Lin Feng was sure that this was some kind of mental pollution, which had inadvertently invaded his spirit and consciousness.

And at this moment, that group of pollution is gradually condensing into a human shape from its irregular state.

Lin Feng wanted to see what exactly it was.

After all, the system can directly clear it, and as long as it's under the sunlight, it will disappear like the mutated mucus on the surface of the battle armor.

But instinct tells Lin Feng that this thing is definitely not a simple mental contamination or gene radiation, and may be related to evolution above the third level.

For example, at that moment, he felt the peeping gaze from the entire relic.

Lin Feng had felt this kind of feeling on the top of Laoshan Mountain, and also experienced it in the moonlight ritual in the Upper People's District…

But that was the curse of the blazing sun, and now a similar feeling can appear at the bottom of the Taishan relic.

Although the two are both forbidden areas, Lin Feng never thought that the bottom of Mount Tai would be like this.

Fortunately, this place is not like the blazing sun curse, directly covering one-third of the earth's surface, otherwise, the mutated bodies would attack humans all over the world.

Thinking of this, Lin Feng shook his head and replied to Bai Ye:

"It may not be an illusion, maybe it does exist, but it just can't be materialized for the time being."

Bai Ye frowned slightly. She seemed to have heard similar descriptions from some mad kings who had forcibly advanced to the third level.

Those lunatics were either schizophrenic or lost their ego, becoming muddled.

Is the relic so dangerous?

Now that everyone has completed the task and achieved their goals, and they have also walked into the sunlight, even if there are any changes in the relic, even piles of third-level mutated bodies, they can't withstand the blazing sun's rays.

The blazing sun is like a strong medicine that can remove all radiation and pollution, but the medicine is three-point poisonous, and it is still too much. Once the irradiation and absorption exceed a certain degree, it will form the most difficult and terrifying blazing sun curse.

However, considering that there will be a need to come and continue to move the production equipment in the future, Bai Ye then asked:

"You said the relic discovered us, did it sense something?"

"I use spatial abilities to isolate the inside and outside. External mental contamination cannot invade, and at the same time, my own perception of the outside world will be weakened to a certain extent."

"After the second-level evolvers achieve physical immortality, there will be some mysterious sixth senses. This is the self's extension of perception of reality. For example, when danger is detected, there will be a feeling of palpitations."

"In fact, it is a part of the body. The perceptive cell tissue predicts that there will be threatening factors in the environment and makes an early warning."

"So at that moment, Captain Lin, did you feel something, such as the illusion of being watched?"

Lin Feng nodded. Bai Ye was much older than him, and had been a second-level evolver for many years, so she might be able to answer the questions in his mind at this moment:

"What appeared behind you before was a mutated monster with a fleshy wall tube connected to its abdomen, hanging from the top of the negative eighth floor. Preliminary speculation is that it should be a mutated egg that failed to hatch."

After confirming that there was no danger on the negative second floor under the sunlight, Lin Feng seemed to open up and said intermittently:

"When I looked up, there was more than one monster on the top of the transport equipment, but hundreds of them densely packed. They were slender, like grotesque men stretched twice their length."

"The moment I looked over, they seemed to come alive suddenly, and looked at me in a unified manner…"

"If these monsters are mutated bodies, then why do they grow on fleshy tentacles? If not, what is controlling them?"

Speaking, Lin Feng gave his own speculation:

"I think it's the relic, the mutated flesh and blood in the shelter that is contaminated by radiation, and even the mutated bacteria floating in the air. They are a collective."

"The negative eighth floor is already covered with fleshy tentacles, and the negative ninth floor below is likely to be filled with mutated tissue. This is a huge mutated aggregate, and the third-level mutated individuals bred by the mutated eggs are more like an extension of the power of this aggregate."

"From its perspective, the third-level mutated bodies are more like hunting or resisting roles, and are the immune system bred by the entire relic to eliminate external invaders…"

Bai Ye's heart was shocked, and then she thought of a possibility:

"No… it shouldn't be…"

"Could it be that what happened here back then was not as simple as a city looting, and there are other hidden secrets behind it?"

Lin Feng narrowed his eyes slightly:

"Didn't you say that the Wolf King led the wasteland wolf pack to attack the Taishan Shelter when they were desperate, devouring the survivors in it to continue…"

Bai Ye nodded:

"That's right, this was the mainstream view at the time. After all, the major cities in various places at that time had adapted to the wasteland environment, and there were third-level existences sitting in them."

"And the Taishan Shelter was newly opened, and the survivors inside had just awakened, and most of their strength had not recovered. As a large shelter from the old Earth era that could accommodate tens of millions of people, even many human forces were eyeing this place."

"But the relic later became a forbidden area and has existed for thousands of years, not just because of the gene radiation of the third-level king. The things at the bottom of the relic have surpassed the scope of the third level."

Lin Feng took a deep breath and asked:

"Beyond the third level? That is above the third level, is it the same as the Holy Spring Lord of the church?"

"Will the third level and above turn into this kind of monster?"

The corners of Bai Ye's mouth rose slightly:

"Didn't I say that their evolutionary path is wrong, so even if they become gods who exist forever, they are fake gods and false gods…"

"The third-level evolution solves the problem of spiritual consciousness and will not decay in the long years. At this point, the defects of the evolutionary body itself have been compensated, completing the leap from passively adapting to the environment to being unaffected by the outside world."

"But self-evolution is far from the end of evolution, because the more you evolve and the stronger you become, the higher the demand for energy."

"You should be able to feel this personally after you evolve to the second level. The original first-level intermediate evolutionary meat is tasteless and has no satiety at all. Even the first-level late stage can only barely maintain the minimum needs of the second-level evolutionary cells."

"Then when you evolve to the third level, it will be fine in the early stage of the third level, and the second-level late stage evolutionary meat can cope with it, but what about the middle and late stages of the third level?"

Speaking of this, Bai Ye said quietly:

"You must know that the third-level kings in this world basically all have names and surnames, and the number is extremely limited…"

"After they solve their own problems, they will encounter another tricky external problem: maintaining self-consciousness for a long time requires a lot of energy, and the resources of the real world cannot well meet the minimum requirements."

"Then in the weak period when they can't find food, these third-level kings will also become other people's hunters."

"So they then believe that the next stage of evolution is to change the barren external environment so as to provide them with a steady stream of food."

"So how to change it?"

Lin Feng's pupils shrank and he blurted out:

"Use the gene radiation in the body, or even the life source, to vigorously cultivate descendants who follow their own evolutionary path!"

"As long as there are enough individuals who choose this evolutionary path, they can both avoid directly facing other existences of the same level, and can also fix and stably harvest believers whose evolutionary level is close to their own…"

"So the mutated flesh and blood at the bottom of the relic has become such an existence, and those slender monsters that fell down are not failures to hatch, but food that has been sucked dry!"

Bai Ye nodded and stopped speaking.

At this time, Lin Feng heard in his ear…

But a strange question came:

"Do you want to become a god?"

I saw the dark depths that the sun could not reach, and the floating viscous shadow that had been there before, had now transformed into Lin Feng's appearance, and said gloomily.