Twenty minutes later, a piece of paper covered with strange graffiti was delivered to the table in front of Ke Lan and the others - this was what the survivor had drawn with a pen in his hand while in a hypnotic state.

Apart from a large number of messy and meaningless lines, there are only three patterns of different sizes left on the paper. These three patterns are the same and look a bit like stick figures in simple drawings, but the limbs and torso are stretched very long, and at the position of the head, many stacked lines are added, which looks like overgrown weeds.

"This is a bit too abstract..." Layton muttered, "It looks like there are three... people?"

"What is this?" The old dog pointed at the heads of the three matchstick men. "Is it because they haven't had a haircut in a long time, and their heads are covered?"

"Did this guy see Sadako in the mine?" Layton scratched the back of his head, "But Sadako lives in a well, not a mine."

"Sadako" is a very famous horror film from the old era. Ke Lan has also seen it. The protagonist Sadako is a female ghost whose hair is so long that it covers her entire face.

"It's definitely not Sadako. Sadako's long straight black hair is obviously much smoother. This looks like a messy bird's nest... You should know about bird's nests, right? The nests built by birds on Earth in trees are usually made of branches and weeds, and they look about the same as this." Liao Zilang retorted.

"Stop talking nonsense, you're bringing it all up to the ghost girl." The old dog cursed irritably, "But then again, the things down in the mine must be related to hair. Do you remember that guy just now, after looking in the mirror, he started pulling his hair like crazy?"

"That's not right. Didn't Ke Lan take off the cardboard on her head just now? Why didn't he pull Ke Lan's hair?" Leighton said unconvinced.

Yeah, why don't you come pull my hair?

Thinking of this, Ke Lan subconsciously reached out to his hair, but he pulled nothing - just the day before leaving, he had just shaved his head into a neat crew cut, and now his hair was less than one centimeter long, so his fingers couldn't pull it at all.

The mentally ill survivor's hair was already very long, and it was somewhat similar to the messy hairstyle he drew himself.

"Hair...long hair...messy hair..."

Ke Lan tapped the table with his index finger, thinking hard: he would feel fear when he saw a human, but not when he saw a head... and he would fall into madness after seeing his own long hair... No, it's not madness. To be precise, that emotion should be closer to despair... But why did he feel despair after seeing his own long hair?

Could it be that... he thought he had also turned into one of those monsters in the mine?

Ke Lan suddenly had a hunch that she seemed to be very close to the truth...but she always felt that there seemed to be some deviation.

There is very little information from this survivor, and what little there is is very misleading...

"What about the other survivors? Did they really see nothing? About what was down in the mine?"

"Everyone who is still conscious has been interrogated at least three times, and their answers are almost the same." Manstein pointed to the survivor who had fainted in the confinement room and said, "I'm afraid only the fourth group of hunters saw the true appearance of those things. However, he is the only one in the fourth group who came back alive."

The first three groups of hunters who entered the mine were equipped with thermal imaging night vision goggles, so they did not carry any lighting equipment. However, after discovering that those creatures could not be seen by thermal imaging, the fourth group of hunters changed their decision - they abandoned the thermal imaging night vision goggles that would be seriously interfered with by the lights, and instead equipped the team members with a large number of lighting equipment - but these lighting equipment were equivalent to dazzling live targets in the dark mine. Before they could even engage in close combat with those creatures, the strong acid sprayed out from the shadows had killed half of them.

The only device that recorded the battle was the communication headset worn by the crazy survivor. However, after extracting and analyzing the contents of the headset's storage chip, only chaotic gunfire and screams could be heard, which was no different from the video recording that Yu Yi played for Ke Lan in the car before.

"Anyway, I still want to meet the survivors who remain in the base." Ke Lan said to Manstein.

"Of course, please follow me."

…

The base's medical room is a three-story tower built with standardized building modules. According to Manstein, the original rated bed capacity was fifteen, but now it has to be increased to twice the original number. Even the corridors are filled with beds and medical equipment.

"There are still 29 injured people stranded here, all of them are survivors of the third exploration operation. Four are seriously injured, 15 are slightly injured, and the remaining 10 have only some minor scratches..."

In fact, except for the four seriously injured, those with lighter injuries had already recovered. However, in order to keep it secret, the Soma Consortium had to keep them all under house arrest in the tower which was used as a medical room. Not only them, but even those hunters who had returned to the Ark had their personal freedom temporarily restricted.

“By the way, after this commission is completed, do we have to be locked up for a few months?” The old dog glanced at the monitoring bracelets worn by the hunters and asked unfriendlyly - that thing, in the name of real-time monitoring of the physical condition of the injured, but in fact it also contains a tube of concentrated explosives. Although the power of the explosives is not enough to kill a person, it can easily break an arm.

"Of course not. You are different from them." Manstein whispered, "Besides... if you can complete the commission, Mr. Ke Lan, this secret will not be that important."

"What? Are you planning to share the super-pure crystals with other consortiums?" Leighton asked in confusion.

"The Soma Group has never thought of monopolizing all the ultra-pure crystals," Manstein narrowed his eyes. "If you have too big an appetite, it will only damage your body."

"You guys are quite smart," the old dog nodded, "but...what if this thing is only found in your mine?"

"If that's the case, it depends on what the decision-makers of the consortium think... This kind of thing is not something that someone at my level can decide."

"Let's not talk about this for now. Is the commander of the third group of hunters here? I have something to ask him." Ke Lan looked at the survivors who were sitting on the hospital beds and looking at them with confusion.

"The commander of the third group of hunters was Keller, the security director of our base... He failed to escape from Mine No. 7." Manstein sighed and said.

The security director of the base was almost equivalent to Manstein's right-hand man. Unexpectedly, even a manager of this level was killed in the mine. It has to be said that the Soma Group suffered a heavy loss this time.