Alien Relic Hunter.

Chapter 1014 The Root of the Giant Tree

Ke Lan sighed in disappointment. It seemed that he could not get any valuable information from the controlled soldiers, so he had to find another way.

"Well... the soldiers are completely unconscious after being controlled by the things in the castle, but they know how to use guns and weapons, and they can also use some simple fighting skills. From this point of view, the things in the castle should have a lot of power. IQ. Then it must be able to tell that I am the leader of this team, and the reason why I am not controlled is not because of luck, but because 'it' cannot control me."

After confirming this point, Ke Lan finally felt a little more relaxed.

Ke Lan left Ze Luo on the side of the roadbed as an insurance measure, and returned to the guy's control range—nothing happened, which once again verified Ke Lan's guess: that thing can only Control ordinary soldiers, but cannot control "elite units" like Ke Lan or Ze Luo.

Ke Lan directly knocked out the controlled soldiers and brought them back. After giving the other soldiers the order to "stand by", he and Ze Luo walked towards the castle alone.

Although this castle is not on the only way to the research institute, the things in the castle have already discovered them and carried out an attack, so Ke Lan can't let it go - in case the things in the castle notice that the team is Those two "people it can't control" have problems, and if they report it to the Undead Crew Club, then I'm afraid there will be a steady stream of troubles coming to the door.

……

Ke Lan walked to the entrance of the castle, and glanced at a standing sign at the entrance, engraved with a retro curlicue relief, indicating that the castle belonged to the Gustav family's property.

The Gustav family is considered to be one of the most mysterious giants on the Ark. The mystery here does not only mean that the outside world knows little about this family. It can stand for hundreds of years without falling... No one even knows how this family rose up back then.

The Gustav family has a lot of private property, but most of the private property cannot bring direct benefits to the family. It has no consortium under its name, and there is no member of the joint parliamentary group named Gustav, and there is no high-level military The missions that come out of this family... all the information of this family seems to be hidden in a thick fog, and very little information is disclosed to the public.However, when those commercial and entertainment magazines count the wealthy families on the Ark every year, the names of the Gustav family are always indispensable.

Some people on the Internet once suspected that the Gustav family was engaged in gray business, or that they were helping the government to do some shady things in order to make huge profits... But this kind of argument is totally untenable. This kind of family participating in gray industry is very It is difficult to get on the stage, even if there are very few who can become bigger and stronger, they will choose to wash themselves in the end, and find a way to use the bright industry to cover up those things that can only be hidden in the shadows.

Among the wealthy families on the Ark, there are those who started their careers honestly and honestly, and some who took both black and white. But if you want to say that the rise of the gray industry is completely dependent on the gray industry and does not undergo transformation, it is absolutely non-existent... Anyway , the surface work must be sufficient.

This Gustav family is an outlier.

However, when Ke Lan kicked open the gate of the castle and entered the main hall of the castle, most of the doubts in his heart were immediately dispelled.

On the most conspicuous part of the main wall of the main hall, there is a portrait hanging. In the painting, the middle-aged man in an exquisite black suit, who is not angry and arrogant, has a similar appearance to the virtual projection of "Zeus", one of the members of the Undead Crew. Nine points alike.

"No wonder...the Gustav family can stand for hundreds of years without doing anything. It turns out that these people are the descendants of 'Zeus'." Ke Lan muttered inwardly.

Of course, the man in the portrait is not necessarily "Zeus" himself, but in terms of time, Zeus can definitely be regarded as the longest-lived member of the Gustav family, and the Gustav family is also entirely because of him. "One person attains the Tao, chickens and dogs ascend to heaven", it is not an exaggeration to say that Zeus is the "ancestor" of this family.

"That thing is in the basement of the castle." Ze Luo said to Ke Lan.

"The basement...the basement...tsk, there's nothing new about it." Ke Lan shook his head, then asked, "Where's the entrance to the basement?"

"It's right under our feet," Zelo replied.

"Under the feet? The entrance to the basement is set in the main hall?" Ke Lan's expression suddenly became a little weird, "Okay, I take back what I just said and apologize to Mr. Zeus. The location of the entrance...is really... quite fashionable."

"There is no trace of people living in this castle." Ze Luo continued, "The things in the basement are the only living things in the castle."

"Except for that thing, is this an empty city?" Ke Lan glanced at the bright as new ornaments in the main hall with some doubts. There was no dust on them, and it didn't look like they had been idle for a long time. Are the people who lived in the castle dead, or turned into skeletal remains?"

"No, I can't feel any human breath... At least in the past few years, this castle has not been inhabited." Zelo shook his head.

"It seems that it should be a hired worker who cleans regularly... No, if the entrance to the secret passage in the basement is set in the main hall, this castle should not easily allow outsiders to enter, so the only intelligent robot that cleans regularly..." Ke Lan glanced at both sides of the main hall, walking up the spiral staircase is the second floor of the main building. There are two covered bridges more than 20 meters above the ground connecting the main building with the left and right towers. The three buildings present an inverted The triangular branch, inside the triangle, is a lawn that has been trimmed very evenly. In the center of the lawn is a fountain statue. The theme of the statue should be a mythical story from the old era, but which story is it? Ke Lan couldn't remember for a while.

Since no one has lived in this castle in recent years, the priority of exploring other rooms is very low. Ke Lan stomped lightly, and Ze Luo immediately understood, and a majestic force of space instantly penetrated the price. Expensive hand-woven carpets and solid wood floors, and by the way, a half-meter-thick alloy secret door under the floor was dug open!

The two sank into the ground and came to a dark tunnel.

"There is a strange fishy smell... This fishy smell makes me feel familiar, as if I have smelled a similar smell somewhere before." Ke Lan said softly.

But he couldn't tell where he had smelled this smell... For a relic hunter, the smell is too common, whether it's the lair of native creatures, or the bloody smell in the traps that have killed countless people , or the sea fishy smell with a slight neurotoxin floating over the sea... There are too many similar smells, and for a person who is not particularly sensitive to smell, the fishy smell, smell it together , may be able to distinguish one or two, but if you smell different fishy smells on different occasions and at different times, then the feedback given by the brain will become very close.

I really want to describe what kind of smell it is, but I can't organize the words.

"If the old dog was here, he might be able to smell it... but the premise is that he has smelled it before." Ke Lan walked along the tunnel while thinking, and Ze Luo was tight He followed behind him, an invisible space barrier surrounded the two of them, not even missing the top of their heads and the soles of their feet.

After walking along the tunnel for less than twenty steps, the surrounding environment began to become very humid. The walls of the stone tunnel were wet, as if water was constantly seeping out of the stone...

Logically speaking, there should be moss in this environment, but this tunnel is very clean, except for the seepage on the stone wall, there is nothing.

Ke Lan pulled out his dagger and scraped off a little liquid attached to the stone wall - he soon discovered that this liquid was not water, but a thin mucus similar to egg white.

And the fishy smell in the tunnel came from the mucus.

Ke Lan suddenly remembered where he had smelled this fishy smell—it was the smell of LCL's "water of life". After he escaped from the underwater city, he was in the medical cabin filled with this liquid Soaked for three full days... But when this liquid fills your nasal cavity and lungs, you can't smell this fishy smell. Only the LCL liquid exposed to the air will release this smell, which is a bit like The rotten eggs are fermented and have a faint fishy smell like serum.

"LCL liquid... It seems that this castle should be a breeding ground secretly set up by Zeus, and the thing cultivated should be the guy with mind control ability." Ke Lan analyzed, "Zero, that guy must know that we came in I found it, did it respond?"

"I can't feel it, its 'emotion' is completely shielded by that special power." Ze Luo responded, "However, its heartbeat frequency has not changed significantly."

"Heartbeat?" Ke Lan was stunned for a moment, put his ear on the stone wall of the tunnel, listened carefully for a while, and then said to Ze Luo, "Open the shared senses."

Ze Luo put one hand on the back of Ke Lan's neck, and the five white and slender green onion fingers turned into five black tentacles in a few seconds, penetrating the skin of Ke Lan's back neck, along the I climbed up with my spine... After a while, the rhythmic "heartbeat" sounded in Ke Lan's head.

After only listening for half a minute, Ke Lan showed a clear expression on his face: "This is not the heartbeat of a living thing, it is some kind of artificial heart, or a device that pumps blood to various organs. Since it is a mechanical , then there is nothing surprising about maintaining a steady heartbeat."

As for the reason why its "heartbeat rate" accelerated when Ze Luo first discovered it, perhaps it was because it needed to activate the skill of mind control, so it needed to increase the supply of blood and oxygen.But now, its control skills are ineffective for the two of them, and naturally there will be no change in the supply of blood and oxygen.

"Although it is an 'artificial heart', we must always pay attention to the frequency change. When the frequency increases, it means that this thing is going to activate some skills." Ke Lan said to Ze Luo.

The shared sensory state is not suitable for maintenance in the combat state, because Ke Lan just "listened" to the heartbeat, and Ze Luo released the shared state——when Ze Luo pulled his fingers from the back of Ke Lan's neck , The wounds left by the five punctures healed in an instant, and the process of scab formation was directly omitted, and there was no scar or color difference left in the healed place.

Although Ke Lan has self-sealed the ability of the body, the strengthening effect on the body still exists. His current self-recovery ability has been greatly enhanced compared to when he entered the hive capital-even if the owl head is seriously injured , he can also regrow a body from a broken neck.

For him, the so-called fatal injury probably needs to crush the whole head, or throw it into the fire and burn it like the "corpse" of those men in black.Otherwise, as long as there is enough energy, Ke Lan's body will be reborn infinitely.

The two continued to walk forward, and there were five airtight doors half a meter thick in the tunnel. However, in the face of Ze Luo's space power, even if the thickness doubled, the high-strength alloy was similar to plasticine, and it would deform when pinched.After passing through the five doors without hindrance, Ke Lan finally saw the true face of the thing.

It was a huge brain submerged in a glass tank... or rather, a mass of brain tissue growing crazy... It had broken through the shackles of the glass tank, spreading everywhere, and even the life support equipment beside it was covered in pink The soft tissue is wrapped in it.As for the machine used to replace the heart and pump blood to the brain tissue, it has already integrated with it.

"Core mastermind? No, this should be...a replica of the core mastermind?"

[PS Thanks for the 1500 starting coins rewarded by the giraffe who read the book. 】

[PPS was originally going to be hospitalized last month, because some things have been delayed for a while, and I just went through the admission procedures today, and I will be hospitalized tomorrow for bone piercing. Do a slightly more comprehensive inspection. After all, it has been more than half a year since the last inspection.

The last two days should be part of the archives (in fact, they are not considered archives, they are some monsters, enemies, etc. that were set before, and pulled out some battle plots set in the detailed outline in advance. ).Originally, these chapters were intended to write about Ke Lan’s entry into the root system of the giant tree, and everyone also saw that the title of the chapter was "The Root of the Giant Tree".

But because there are a lot of things recently, so I dragged on and on until I reached the root of the giant tree, and the protagonist has not yet reached the root of the tree... But it is very troublesome to change the chapter name at the starting point, so everyone will just ignore it Bar.

In addition, let me state that these battles are not considered to delay the plot, they are some small bosses that have been set up before, but the time of encounter has been brought forward in the plot arrangement.Because the root part is a relatively important plot, I want to wait until the state is adjusted before writing. Please forgive me a little. 】

(End of this chapter)