Alien Relic Hunter

"There is a discovery." Ivan, who was sorting the remains of Wu Feng, the "Uncle Hong" in Mo Jue's mouth, suddenly said, attracting everyone's attention.

"What did you find?" Ke Lan asked impatiently.

"I, I may have found the cause of his death." Ivan said, lifting up the two ribs he was holding in his hand, "This is because they are the fourth and seventh ribs of the deceased. You can see in the bones There are obvious marks left by a sharp weapon on the side... The fiber of the fog perch and the fog vine cannot cause such trauma. I am more inclined to believe that this person was killed by a human with a sharp weapon such as a dagger."

"If we follow this inference, the direct cause of death should be that a sharp instrument penetrated the chest multiple times..." Ke Lan nodded, and then asked, "Have you found any signs of damage on the bones similar to those of fighting? Where are the joints of the limbs?"

Ivan nodded solemnly: "Both...and I didn't find the wood fiber of the Wuqiu tree in the bones of this corpse. His flesh and blood should not have been sucked by the Wuqiu tree, but naturally decayed over time." Yes, so..."

Ke Lan immediately turned to Mo Jue, stared at her and asked, "Apart from Wu Feng and your father, were there any other missing people during that exploration operation?"

"No, no." Mo Jue was stunned for a moment, then shook his head, "It's just the two of them...Wait a minute, you mean, the person who killed Hong...who killed Wu Feng was my father?"

"It's not certain yet, but there's a high probability that it won't be wrong." Ke Lan pondered, "But Wu Feng is also one of the core members of the lumberjack team, and he also knows the 'secret' that your father has been pursuing... and because What is the reason why two people who originally had a common goal suddenly turned against each other and even killed each other?"

"Are you so sure that it was my father who killed him?" Mo Jue argued, "But you have to know that among the core members of the team, Uncle Hong and my father have the best relationship. They are life and death friends. It’s not an exaggeration!”

"Friends of life and death..." Ke Lan subconsciously looked at his companions. He thought for a while and then asked Ivan: "What will happen to make you kill me?"

Ivan shook his head: "I don't know under what circumstances I would choose to kill you, but I know that if the corrosion seeds in my body lose control and turn me into a container like a walking zombie, then you It will definitely help me end my pain.”

"Then has this guy ever been parasitized by a corrosive seed or some other monster?" Ke Lan asked again.

"No. The sternum and ribs of the vessel infested by the eroded seeds will be deformed to varying degrees. This situation has not been found on this skeleton." Ivan replied.

"Then there's something else hidden."

"Why do you think my father is the murderer?" Mo Jue was still a little unwilling.

"I'm telling the truth, do you want to hear it?" Ke Lan tilted his head and said.

"you say!"

"Intuition." Ke Lan laughed, "But my intuition has always been very accurate."

"Based on intuition alone, you suspect that my father killed his friend?" Mo Jue looked a little unkind.

"Let's skip this question for now." Ke Lan said, "Why don't we check Wu Feng's belongings to see if there are any clues... It would be great if we could find a 'navigation route' like Golden Retriever. ”

"Don't think about it, there's nothing!" At this time, Thirty-three stuck his head out of the pit and said, "This body was stripped naked and buried here. There are no belongings at all."

"It seems that the murderer is really Miss Mo Jue's father." Ivan held his chin and analyzed, "The two of them probably had differences on some things, and no one could convince the other, and then..."

"There is no point in discussing this now." Thirty-three walked up from the pit, "What should we do next? Continue to explore at a depth of 500 meters, or go in?"

"Keep walking in... I am now more and more convinced that Mo Zhuorui may have... arrived at the core of the Gray Mist Forest." Ke Lan said.

…

…

The distance of thirty-five kilometers is not that far. Even for an untrained ordinary person, it only takes half a day to walk thirty-five kilometers. Of course, this refers to the speed of traveling in a straight line on a flat road. As for Ke Lan and the others, not only did the road under their feet be rugged, but the total distance traveled back and forth in circles and turnarounds amounted to hundreds of kilometers - they took a full It took a day and a half to reach the end of the navigation line, a depth of thirty-five kilometers.

This is a depth that humans have never set foot on - even when the "special operations fleet" relied on the armored energy shield of the battleship to rush into the center of the gray fog forest, it only crossed the red line for more than ten kilometers. It's not even half as deep as Ke Lan and the others.

"I used to feel that the gray fog at 500 meters was as thick as a solid. Now, I take it back." Thirty-three murmured, he controlled a black flying blade to pass through the space barrier and pierce into the outside world. In the thick fog, he stirred gently - from a visual perspective, it seemed that what he stirred was not the fog, but a ball of sticky asphalt.

The thirty-three apostles let the black flying blade fly farther, but as soon as the flying blade was completely submerged in the mist, his expression suddenly changed.

"What's wrong?" Ke Lan, who had been staring at him, asked in confusion.

"The flying blade had just submerged into the mist not far, at most twenty or thirty centimeters, when the connection between me and the flying blade was cut off." Thirty-three said, "I can't feel the flying blade anymore. Let alone continue to manipulate it.”

"I remember that the maximum distance you can control these flying blades is more than 150 meters, right?"

"If I only control a single flying blade, the control radius can be doubled to 300 meters. If I am willing to bear a small price to perform overdraft operations, the maximum distance can be more than 500 meters... But this is only the operating distance, these flying blades have been marked by me, and as long as they are within three kilometers of me, I can sense their existence."

"Then at a place of five hundred meters just now, how far could you detect the flying blade?"

"I haven't tried it at the extreme distance. Anyway, I can control the flying blade to come and go freely in the thick fog fifty meters away from us without being affected at all."

Ze Luo pushed the space barrier forward another meter, and the thick asphalt-like mist was pushed away, revealing the black flying blade that fell to the ground.

The black flying blade fell only twenty-five centimeters from the edge of the previous mist.

But when the fog receded, the black flying knife immediately trembled twice, floated from the ground, and flew back to Thirty-Three.

"Everyone, be careful. This fog is very weird...and I feel that the fog here is completely different from the fog at a depth of several hundred meters." Thirty-three pinched the black flying blade that had just lost contact briefly. Although there was no mist left on the flying blade, he always had the feeling that the flying blade had been contaminated.

"Valentina, help me unload container No. 13." Ke Lan said.

The Blasphemer mecha slowly squatted down, and a rectangular engineering plastic box marked "No. 13" on the shelf on its back was pulled down by Valentina.

Ke Lan opened the lid of the box, and inside were six transparent breeding boxes side by side, each containing a live white mouse.

Ke Lan caught one of the white mice and injected a tube of medicinal solution into the mouse's body with a syringe.

"What did you give it?" Mo Jue, who was a little curious, couldn't help but ask.

"Anti-neurotoxin drugs... although they have serious side effects, they are the most anti-toxic drugs currently available in Ark. I just injected this mouse with a dose of forty standard units, even for humans. , this dose is fatal, but this potion has one advantage - "

"What's the benefit?"

"No matter how high the dose is, even if the side effects kill a hundred people, it will take several hours for the side effects to be triggered after being absorbed by the organism." Ke Lan put the empty syringe into a recycling bag, and then He held the white mouse and walked towards the thick fog, "Although this white mouse has been sentenced to death, in the few hours before it died from the side effects of the anti-venom, as far as neurotoxins alone were concerned, it was almost invincible. Intrusive."

As soon as he finished saying this, Ke Lan had already stuck the mouse's head into the thick fog - and the next second, the mouse's body began to twitch violently!

"Is this... is this a normal reaction to the drug?" Mo Jue asked.

"Obviously, no." The mouse only struggled for less than ten seconds before its body stopped moving.

Ke Lan took the rat's body back and saw that black and red viscous blood was constantly overflowing from the rat's eye sockets, nasal cavity, ear canal and mouth. The muscles all over the body became very stiff due to high tension. Although the rat's brain It has stopped moving, but its slender tail and hind limbs will still twitch violently every ten seconds, as if to tell everyone that it is not walking peacefully at all.

"It seems that the dosage of forty standard units is still too low." Ke Lan shook his head and grabbed the second white mouse.

This time, he frantically injected the mouse with 800 standard unit doses of ultra-concentrated anti-venom - twenty times more than the amount of anti-venom the first mouse received!

Even a ninth-level enhanced person may not be able to withstand the side effects of this dose of anti-venom. And for a mouse, even if it is not poisoned by the gray mist, its remaining survival time will probably be difficult to exceed an hour.

But in fact, the second mouse only lasted two seconds longer than the first.

"It seems that there is no need to continue testing." Ke Lan closed the container No. 13, "The anti-venom produced by Ark is ineffective against the toxins in this gray mist, or it is like what Thirty-Three said, the poison here is The toxicity of the fog is no longer the same as that outside, or the concentration has reached an alarming level, and you will die if you touch it."

"And this thing is not weakly corrosive." Ivan said, looking at the mouse's fur that looked like it had been soaked in a strong acid solution. "Ordinary explorers, even with a full set of protective equipment, would not be able to persist here. How long...the air valves, oxygen pipes, and the various joints of the protective clothing, once these weak points are eroded by the fog, you will instantly die."

"Then you still think that Mo Jue's father may have arrived at the core of the gray fog forest? But he can't even get through the thick fog in front of him." Thirty-three said, "He is not like us. The ability to expel the fog directly."

"Thirty-three, do you know about 'ablative armor'?" Ke Lan suddenly asked a seemingly irrelevant question.

"Of course I know, it is a kind of armor that vaporizes the material itself to take away the energy contained in the attack... It is often used on space shuttles in the old era and some return capsules that need to pass through the atmosphere. It is also used on early warships. Ablative armor is used as a means of resisting energy attacks...but since the discovery of Alpha Civilization's shield generator, energy shields have basically replaced the role of ablative armor, whether on battleships or mechas." Thirty-three quickly replied, "Wait... you mean, that guy is wearing a thick enough protective suit? This protective suit is thick enough for Mo Zhuorui to pass through before being eroded by the fog. Fog area? But where can he find such protective clothing?"

"Actually, you already mentioned the correct answer in that paragraph." Ke Lan smiled and said, "Mo Zhuorui doesn't need to find a thick enough protective suit. What he wants is actually in this forest. You can find them here, and there are quite a lot of them.”

"What?" The person who asked again was Mo Jue.

"Mecha." Valentina said the correct answer. "The armored force that was destroyed in the forest, the mecha cockpits they were equipped with were completely sealed, and the fog could not penetrate. And they were of military specifications. The body frame and armor also have high requirements for corrosion resistance. As long as he can find a mecha that can operate and slightly strengthen the armor and sealing of the cockpit, he can drive this mecha through the fog area safely. ."

"It turned out to be a mecha! I didn't expect it at all!" A look of excitement flashed in Mo Jue's eyes, and then a complicated expression appeared, "Suppose...I mean suppose, Uncle Hong was really killed by my father. Yes, he also buried the body with his own hands... In addition to the corpse, there was a tank and a mecha in that place... It is entirely possible for my father to find another more intact mecha and drive that mecha there. In the heart of the forest...could it be that he really succeeded?"

"I just proposed a feasible plan." Ke Lan sighed, "Whether your father successfully crossed the last fifteen kilometers or not, the situation we are facing now is also confusing... What happens next? , but you really have to cross the river by feeling the stones.”

[P.S. Thank you for the 500 starting coins for the reward of "Faith Needs to Live Forever"; thank you to book friend 160723102712661 for the 100 starting coins. 】