Alien Relic Hunter.

Chapter 32 Exile Colony
"Okay, don't talk about those extraneous things, hurry up and get to the transfer station before dark, so we don't have to freeze to death."

……

two hours later.

The four of them finally arrived at the place marked "Transit Station S0159" on the map, but what appeared in front of them was a ruin that had long been empty.

"It looks like it was hit by a cannonball." Layton analyzed, "I don't know if there is anything left."

The hounds who rushed in first came around from the other side of the ruins and said: "It's empty, the underground warehouse has been emptied, it was the exiles who did it, and only they would do the looting of the transit station. "

The hound's nose twitched slightly and continued: "There is a faint smell of gunpowder in the air, um... and the smell of blood, it should be the matter of the past two days."

"But there are no corpses, not even stumps." Ivan got out of a room that was still intact and shook his head.

"Humans are also a kind of resources. The living can be captured and used as slaves, the dead can be used as food or fertilizer. Even the mud that has been rubbed off from the body can be made into two liang of oil for you." He said with a blank face, among the four people present, he knew the exiles best, but the more he knew, the more he hated these people... In order to survive, those guys have completely abandoned the most basic moral concept of being a human being , cannibalism is a normal thing in their eyes.

"There are rut marks here." Ke Lan, who was squatting on the ground, suddenly said, "The marks are not shallow, and the load should be heavy, so we went in that direction."

He pointed in the direction of due south.

On the map of the ark, there is a no-man’s land there. There are neither alpha ruins worth exploring nor resources such as mines, so there is no transfer station... From this point of view, there is a high probability that there will be There is a settlement of exiles.

"Should we go? The exiles should treat us as enemies, right?" Layton hesitated, he was in a bad state now, and his confidence in speaking was naturally a bit weaker.

"I have a way." The Hound smiled, "Fortunately, we haven't had time to take a bath on the ship."

With that said, he gathered the Gauss rifles, individual howitzers and other weapons in the hands of the four, dug a pit and buried them, leaving only the two most basic 01-style rifles, which were then dismantled. The optical sights and various tactical accessories on the 01-style rifle were scratched with a stone. Finally, a few tattered rags were torn from the clothes, and they were randomly wrapped around the barrel and machine. above the box.

In addition to the weapons, the clothes and equipment on their bodies were similarly treated, and the faces were stained with sand and water—they are basically no different from those exiles who have been scrambling in the wilderness all the year round.

They walked about [-] kilometers along the rut, and just before the sun set, they found the settlement of the exiles.

The scale of this settlement located on the leeward slope of the valley is really not small. Hundreds of shacks made of wood, plastic sheets and scrap metal are crowded together. There must be more than 2000 people.

The side close to the hillside is a rudimentary arable land. Outside the arable land is a circle of half-person-high fences. You can vaguely see an exile in charge of the overseer carrying a wooden stick and squatting on the stone, staring at a dozen or so in the field. Crooked hard work.

There is an exit at the front and back of the settlement, and a sentry tower about seven or eight meters high is built at the exit, but there is no searchlight installed on the sentry tower—maybe the situation of the entire settlement can be brought into surveillance during the day, At night, the light from the torch is estimated to be able to illuminate a distance of 30 meters at most.

The defense of the settlement was very lax. The sentries who were supposed to be standing guard on the tower did not know where they had slipped away, and the few exiles guarding the exit were gathered in the corner and played cards while heating the fire.

"Can I get in?" Ke Lan turned his head and asked the Hound.

"It should be possible. Generally speaking, a settlement of this size will communicate with the exiles in other places. There are many people who come and go, and it is impossible for those sentries to write down everyone's appearance." The hound touched himself. Hu Zhuo said, "It's just that such settlements usually have a central figure, just like the emperor of the old era. This kind of person is a symbol of absolute power in this settlement. We should be careful."

The sky has gradually darkened, the temperature has dropped below zero, and it is still falling - if the person in the wasteland has not found a place to spend the night at this time, the fate to meet him is to become a lifelike ice sculpture.

"Let's go, let's move naturally, don't be so rigid." The hound blew his nose and walked towards the settlement first.

They were 50 meters away from the settlement, and the guards who were playing cards had already spotted them, but no one was willing to leave the warm fire to question—they didn't even look at the outsiders. , but focused more on the homemade cards in his hand.

"They actually ignored us..." Ivan whispered, with a hint of surprise and luck in his tone.

"That's because we have guns... The main task of those guards is to prevent the captured slaves from escaping, and we are not slaves." The hound pouted and swaggered into the settlement.

Ke Lan noticed that almost every shack was crowded with unclothed exiles. These people were all slaves. They were skinny and skinny. Radiation sickness patients have to be exposed to radiation for most of the day and work without any protective measures. It is impossible to not get sick.

Even those sentries and overseers were wearing very rudimentary protective equipment, not to mention these slaves who could not even satisfy themselves with food and clothing.

They stared at the four Ke Lan who stepped into the settlement with a very dull look. The self-identity of these slaves has long been wiped out by the heavy labor, and only the survival instinct is still driving this walking dead body. They have no interest in anything other than food. In the words of the hounds, these slaves are no longer human, they are just a group of captive livestock.

This should be a settlement with slave trading as its main source of income. More than [-]% of the people living here are slaves who are regarded as "commodities", and normal exiles only account for a very small part.

"This settlement should have a strong armed force. They will regularly sack the Ark's transit station or some other weak settlements, and then train the captured prisoners into slaves and sell them to others who have trade relations. settlements in exchange for living supplies and weapons," said the Hound.

"Look, there's a store over there." It was Ivan who was speaking, and he was pointing at a shack that didn't look so broken. Ke Lan turned his head and saw that there was a wooden board hanging outside the shack. Charcoal pen writes things that can be traded.

The hard currency used to buy goods is not credits or precious metals such as gold and silver, but gray potatoes, a native crop of Alpha, which, like potatoes, stores starch in the fat tubers, They were the most important staple food for exiles - but compared to potatoes, they tasted worse, carried radiation, and contained trace amounts of neurotoxins. The consequences of long-term consumption were radiation sickness and hemiplegia.

One catty of "unknown source" meat can be exchanged for five to ten catties of gray potatoes, depending on the quality of the meat and the radiation content; the 01 mm full-power rifle ammunition used in a Type 8.8 rifle produced by Ark is worth 150 As for an adult male slave who is "strong enough to do heavy work", he only needs 65 catties of gray potatoes, which is worth less than a bullet.

The most expensive drug on the price list is a drug called "Xiaofuning", which can reduce the level of radiation in the human body, inhibit the development of radiation sickness, and prolong the lifespan of radiation sickness patients... The asking price for one tablet is as high as [-] catties of gray potatoes, and only three pieces a week.

But it's not difficult to understand. Whether it's bullets or other things, as long as there are simple tools, the handicraft workshops in the settlements can be imitated. Although the workmanship is so rough that it is impossible to see, it is at least barely usable.But Xiaofuning can only be produced on the ark. The most important way for exiles to get medicine is to attack the transit stations set up by the ark in various places on the Alpha star - but this kind of behavior is extremely dangerous. If the ark finds out, it is very likely to lead to disaster.

"Do you all need anything?" Seeing the four of them staying at the door, the shopkeeper hurriedly got out of the shack. This was a fat man with a chubby body-to be able to have a fat body under such conditions, it can be seen that this guy's life Must be doing well.

"We're picking slaves, and we'll come to you after we've chosen—don't follow our ass, we don't like being stared at, and we don't need others to advise." The Hound said in a very arrogant tone, and demonstrated He touched the Type 01 rifle hanging by his side as if he were there.

"Okay, okay, no problem," the fat man nodded wisely, "starting from here, the first shack to the other corner is my slave, you can choose whatever you want, and then there's the one named Li. The land is gone, and all the slaves in his family are sick and don’t live long, so buying one loses the other.”

"I'll read it myself." The Hound coldly dropped a sentence, then ignored the slave trader and continued to walk forward.

At this moment, Layton suddenly grabbed him and gestured for the direction of nine o'clock with his eyes.

It was a shack even bigger than the "shop", almost four or five meters high, and from a distance it gave people a feeling of standing out from the crowd.The outside of the shack was covered tightly with black canvas, which was airtight, and even the door curtain was a thick black blanket with some strange patterns painted on it with white lime.

"What's the matter? Do you suspect that the leader of this settlement lives inside?" the Hound asked.

However, Layton shook his head: "That's not the point, you look at the glass tube that is inserted on the door frame, the one that glows... That thing is not an electric light, it's a transistor with a complex structure that only Alpha civilization can manufacture. ...is one of the core components of 'Dead Light'."

"The core component of Death Light? Are you sure? But... those people in ambush aren't exiles..."

"Sure, but there must be tens of thousands of such transistors in a 'Dead Light', maybe where they picked it up..." Layton said cautiously.

"Look over there." The Hound decided.

"Didn't you say don't cause trouble?"

"This is already being ridiculed by trouble. How can you hide? It's a blessing, not a disaster. It's a disaster that can't be avoided. Have you heard this sentence?"

After he finished speaking, he walked towards the shack, but before he got within ten meters, two people in black cloaks came out from the corner and blocked the way of the hound.

"...'Praise the brilliance of the true God, and sing praises to the greatness of the true God'." The two men looked up and down the four of them, and one of them suddenly said such a rambling remark.

Hound's heart tightened: "It's over, why is there such a stubble? Is this sentence a cut?"

He calmly held the short knife hidden in the sleeve, and at the same time tapped the ground with the heel of his right foot - this was the code that the hound and the other three agreed upon earlier: "ready to fight".

Praise the brilliance of the true God... Just when the situation was deadlocked, Ke Lan vaguely felt that this sentence was a little familiar...

It's the inscription!There is this sentence on the inscription. Although it is difficult to accurately translate into human language, the general idea is almost the same!
"Praise the glory of the true God, praise the greatness of the true God!"

This is the prayer of Alpha Civilization!

Then the next sentence should be... Sacrifice yourself?Or are you giving yourself?Ke Lan scoured his own memory as much as possible... The next sentence on the inscription, if it is said in similar human rhetoric...

"'I would like to give my all to the victory of the true God'."

Ke Lan blurted out subconsciously, even the hounds were stunned for a moment, and after hearing this, the two men in black were even more shocked and backed away!

Oops...is this a leak?Does this have nothing to do with the stone tablet at all?
The hand behind Ke Lan's back had already opened the safety of the rifle. As long as the hound pulled out the short knife, he would immediately raise the muzzle to shoot at the two men in black.

As for what to do next, we can only escape from this settlement alive first.

But what Ke Lan and the others didn't expect was that in the next second, the two men in black knelt down together, pressed their bodies to the ground, and said in a trembling voice, "I didn't expect it to be Lord Prophet! If you can welcome it from afar, I only ask Lord Prophet to grant forgiveness!"

Lord Prophet?

Ke Lan's face is stunned, what is that?

(End of this chapter)