Alien Relic Hunter.

Chapter 858 Entering the Hive Capital
"Then why don't I try it?" 33 took off the helmet, hung it around his waist, unzipped the zipper on his upper body, tied the upper part of the protective suit around his waist, rolled up his sleeves, and tied it up. An extremely steady gait.

He slowly stretched out his hands in front of him, his eyes closed tightly, and his facial expression gradually became ferocious... Although this appearance looked like he was constipated, with 33's "strength", the two of them contained Nino alloy All the equipment and small accessories were suspended in the air one by one, trembling in small but high frequency.

It's a pity that the gate made of Nino alloy on the ground has remained motionless.

A line of thick nosebleeds flowed down 33's body, drop after drop, and landed on the sleeves of the protective clothing knotted around his waist... He tried for a full 10 minutes before he fell headfirst to the ground.

At the same time, all the floating Nino alloy objects also fell down.

"Are you okay?" Ke Lan immediately stepped forward and helped 33 up.

"It's...it's nothing, it's just a loss of strength." 33 casually wiped the nosebleed from his face, and waved his hand, "This door is too heavy, my ability...is useless in front of it. "

Although 33 can manipulate Nino alloy, there is an upper limit to this ability.When fighting against the military god "Alexander" before, he once controlled Augustus from a long distance to jam Alexander's gear... That level is almost the limit that 33 can do, but the door in front of him, The mass is dozens of times larger than that of Augustus.

33 Even if you fight for your life, you can't shake it in the slightest.

But when he saw 33's nosebleeds dripping down, an idea suddenly popped up in Ke Lan's mind.

Not long ago, Ke Lan used his own blood to activate the floor tiles on the core square. Since that's the case, it's better to try again. Anyway, it doesn't cost money to try... just need to shed a little blood.

Ke Lan strode to the middle of the gate of the hive capital, stretched out a finger, an invisible space blade flashed past, and a drop of bright blood dripped straight into the fist-sized inscription grooves .

Almost instantly, the blood beads were absorbed by the inscription.

"There is a reaction!" Ke Lan was delighted. He knew the material properties of Nino alloy very well, and it did not have any ability to absorb liquid. If liquid such as blood drips on it, if it cannot evaporate, it will remain in its original state. No matter how long it takes, it will not penetrate into the interior of the nino alloy and will not react with it.

There are even many components that are in direct contact with high-precision scientific research equipment and test products are made of Nino alloy, not only because of the high hardness of this alloy, but also because of its extremely high "inertness".

Ke Lan's blood was obviously not evaporated, and Ze Luo didn't find any small gaps or holes in the groove of the inscription that could not be seen by the naked eye. In other words, this drop of blood could only be "absorbed" into it. of.

Although Ke Lan doesn't know how the Alpha people managed to make the high-density metal of Nino alloy become like a filter that can easily penetrate liquids, but this is not important——

Ke Lan squeezed out a few more drops of blood from his fingers, and landed on the inscription of "Hive Capital".

"Om-"

There was a scalp-numbing sound of metal rubbing, and the "Nino Alloy Gate" that was originally tightly connected to the ground slowly rotated, and after a few seconds, it began to sink at an accelerated speed!
"Hey!" 33 let out a low cry, "I also said that the shape of this thing is like a bottle cork... Emotion is not a door at all, but a lifting platform!"

After the lifting platform sank for tens of meters with two people on it, a baffle made of the same material moved out from the side of the shaft, sealing the hole that appeared due to the sinking of the lifting platform, and at the same time blocking the outside. seawater.

"To be honest, I don't really like the feeling that the back road is cut off." 33 looked up at the baffle that was getting farther and farther above, "But then again, there are sea water everywhere on it, and there are sleeping people on the side. For monsters in the abyss, the way back...is almost a dead end."

Ke Lan did not answer the conversation, but carefully looked at the situation on the walls of the shaft—the descending speed of the lifting platform was actually not fast, similar to the elevator on the Ark, so he did not use the ability to stop and analyze frame by frame. The naked eye alone is enough to have a panoramic view of the surrounding scenes and things.

The section about 200 meters above the shaft is high-density rock, and the mechanical structure below it is a metal-like mechanical structure—even if he and 33 dug in from the edge of the lifting platform just now, they would eventually hit these iron lumps... and It is not difficult to see that there are a large number of deadly organs buried in these mechanical structures. Although these organs have not been activated now, if the two entered this well through "abnormal means", would these deadly organs still exist? It's hard to say that it's as quiet as it is now.

The lifting platform is closely attached to the sixteen slide rails on the hoistway. These slide rails do not adopt a repelling suspension design, but use the extremely "primitive and backward" gear set mechanism and the side of the lifting platform for the Alpha civilization. Mutual bite-this kind of mechanical structure full of lubricating oil and metal rust makes Ke Lan feel that he is not in a ruin of an alien civilization with highly developed technology, but in an overhead dieselpunk fantasy world inside.

The wear marks on the slide rails and the gear set are obvious, and the edges and corners of the gears have been polished so that they can even reflect the shadows of the lifting platform and the two people on the platform.And where the gear sets and movable structures cannot touch, there are a large number of oil lumps that are agglomerated, covered with dust and various impurities, just like the scale and scale accumulated in the sewer that has not been maintained for many years. Like corruption.

33 naturally also discovered these "unreasonable" places: "Although as a relic hunter, I should be used to it...but I always feel that this place is wrong, but I can't tell where it is wrong."

"Generation gap." Ke Lan continued, "This place... these sophisticated, ingenious but not advanced mechanical structures have a huge technological gap with the Alpha civilization we are familiar with."

"Technical difference?" 33 frowned slightly, "It seems to have this feeling... With the technology of the Alpha civilization, this lifting platform can be pushed by anti-gravity devices, or any other technology... Even the earth The rail trains of human civilization in the era have already popularized the magnetic levitation technology, but this extremely heavy lifting platform is actually controlled by the way of gear engagement... You are right, these mechanical structures are exquisite, spectacular and magnificent , but it cannot be called advanced, and the technological level of the Ark is also fully capable of doing it, and even going back 1000 years, humans in the old era can only manufacture such machines.”

33 paused, and then asked in an uncertain tone: "By the way, this is not a 'scenic area' or a 'theme park', is it? Only such buildings that do not pursue practical value will choose this building." A thankless design, huh?"

"Dieselpunk theme park?" Ke Lan shook his head, "This shaft and this lifting platform alone consume an astonishing amount of Nino alloy. For Alpha civilization, Nino alloy is also a precious resources... have you ever heard of people on earth using gold to build ferris wheels and carousels?"

"Uh... It seems that I have heard such stories." 33 picked his ears and eyes with his little finger, "For those rich people who want extravagance, there is nothing they can't do? It's too far away. It's far away... Back to the point, since it's not those non-practical buildings, is there a possibility that this place is the early remains of the Alpha civilization, that is to say, things built before their technology has developed to that level? Assuming that the earth is still there, if aliens come to see the skyscrapers in the metropolis and those ancient buildings in the archaeological excavation site at the same time, they will also lament the technological gap between different periods?"

"With the technological level of the Alpha civilization, it is not a problem to transform the entire Alpha planet. Do you think they are like the kind of civilization that has the sentiment to preserve ancient relics?" Ke Lan muttered softly.

His sentence is not a rhetorical question, but an interrogative sentence. He is asking 33, and he is also asking himself.

If this place is really the remains of the early days of Alpha civilization, then... Maybe we can find something from it, and find out the entanglement between Alpha civilization and that "great god", as well as the reason why the entire civilization disappeared.

If you want to find out the ins and outs of everything, starting from the "origin" in the earliest period is indeed a good way.

I just don’t know which period of Alpha Civilization this “hive capital” is the “masterpiece” of…

The lifting platform has been lowered to a depth of about 500 meters, and the surrounding narrow well walls suddenly disappeared, replaced by a huge oblate cylindrical underground space.

In this underground space, a large number of buildings made of metal materials and with a rough style are crowded. Countless houses and towers are piled up on this plane, and then they continue to climb high, and some places have even touched it. The dome of the underground space simply clings to the dome and expands in all directions... No matter how wide the space is, if it is filled with messy things, it will also give people a narrow and suffocating feeling.

The "illegal buildings" that can be seen everywhere are like tumors in this underground city. Even the most messy slums on the Ark can only bow down to this underground city... As far as the field of vision is concerned, there is hardly an inch of ground It is exposed, and even the streets can only be built on the roofs, passing through the poor gaps between buildings.

Ke Lan suddenly understood the meaning of the word "hive capital" - rather than saying that this is a city for "people", it is more like a nest of some kind of insect.

Living in this city, there is no need to think about such things as "comfort" and "private space", but from the structure of these buildings, you can roughly calculate the population of the city-assuming that it is raised and lowered according to the distance The nearest room on the platform seems to be an attic converted from a container. Looking in through the open window, you can see that there are 6 pieces of furniture that can barely be called "beds". When it is full, the population can reach about 8 million to [-] million...

For those metropolises on Earth in the old era, this population figure is not an exaggeration, but you must know that those metropolises, even the smallest one, are thousands or even tens of thousands of times larger than this "hive capital"... ...If the per capita area is calculated without the multi-layered building structure, the residents of the hive capital probably don't even have a tenth of a square meter.

Even if the per capita living area is changed, each person who lives here can only be allocated a small "foothold".

Ke Lan suddenly thought of a metaphor that has long been used badly in the field of literature-"crowded like a can of sardines".

"Even if it's a prison... no, even if it's a place to raise livestock, the conditions wouldn't be so bad, right?" 33 couldn't help sighing, "I thought that ruins like the 'Sandstone Abandoned City' It can already be regarded as a slum in Alpha City, but compared with here, the 'Sandstone Abandoned City' is not too much to say that it is a high-end residential area... Is the gap between rich and poor within Alpha Civilization so exaggerated?"

Ke Lan didn't speak, he walked to the edge of the lifting platform step by step, observing the underground city carefully.

He has a vague feeling: the architectural style of this city seems to be closer to the architectural style of human civilization than those Alpha civilization cities on the ground.

Not only the architectural style, but even the layout inside the building, those living facilities... seem to be very close to human civilization.

If there were humans living in this city instead of alphas, he wouldn't feel any sense of disobedience.

"Ke Lan, how much do you know about the social structure of Alpha civilization?" 33 turned around and asked.

"Rarely, relevant documents are rarely found... Even if there are, they are not accessible to me... and I have joined the Undead Crew Club for too short a time, so I can only pick up important things as much as possible. Maybe look at all the inventory in the black well."

"Although it's a bit weird, I still want to tell you..." 33 had a hesitant look on his face.

"You just say it."

"I don't know why, but I always feel that this hive...is like a... shelter." 33 said, "Although the living conditions on the ark are many times better than here, but in the worst situation In the past few years, it was not much different... I was thinking that after the Ark left the earth, in the last few hundred years before the earth was destroyed by the sun, if the human beings who could not continue to survive on the surface went underground, they would probably also Are you living in a shelter like this?"

(End of this chapter)