Volume 1 Crime and Punishment in Fog City Chapter 14: The Devil's Cave
"Cars 2 to 6 will be sent to the bathroom and then transferred to the cultivation department for training."
"The slave lab in carriages 7 to 10 is required for use to conduct a controlled experiment on dragon hemp hallucinations. Go to aisle 6."
"Carriages 11 to 14 will work in the workshop as machine slaves. The children in carriages 15 and 16 will be trained first and then likewise transferred to the workshop."
"All the people in carriages 17 to 20 are put in reserve. Go to the operation room and wait for orders. Kill all the people in carriage 21 and extract the substances in their bodies to supply the demon car. The demons are getting slower and slower. They seem very dissatisfied with us..."
"The priest is ready to start the ceremony to appease the spirit of steam. We need more machine slaves to do some simple work within their capabilities. All women are in the next five carriages. Four will be dragged into the breeding room, and the rest will be used as guardians and do other work. If there are any slaves who perform extremely well or are aware of problems, they will be selected as reserve supervisors--"
Ant.
These are a group of hard-working ants.
Although he was in a noisy station, Li Lin felt like he was seeing a group of ants.
After breaking through those magnificent illusions, what appeared before Li Lin was a structure like a huge black iron honeycomb.
Before Li Lin was imprisoned, he had watched many videos, one of which was a scene of pouring electrolytic aluminum liquid into an ant nest. The structure dug out of the ground was unusually similar to the inexplicably winding artificial building in front of him.
Countless people covered in black robes pointed at the carriage like selecting livestock. The people in the carriage were confused by the dragon hemp mist and showed confused expressions. Only a few people who looked like smart people who were framed, or those with strong wills, showed cautious and painful expressions. These people were quickly selected and sent to another group of people.
The entire train was running in an orderly manner, sending people one by one to where they were supposed to go. In the foggy place in the distance, Li Lin seemed to see another black train in the blur. It seemed that the same work was being done over there. This world system made Li Lin, as a player, feel a little novel. He couldn't help but get off the train and began to shuttle among the crowd, feeling this somewhat unusual but orderly atmosphere.
However, before he could be happy for long, a hoarse voice came from behind him.
"You should be waiting for us in the carriage, Sir Leeling."
Like a shadow, a dark figure quietly emerged behind Li Lin, and said in a low voice with some dissatisfaction:
"And you made the carriage too dirty. Our sanitation workers shouldn't be wasted on cleaning the carriage. Each of them is good at dealing with debris, but they wasted a lot of useless emotions and physical energy on you."
"I guess you did this to show me your power?"
"Yes, because I don't keep idle people here."
In response to Li Lin's somewhat teasing question, the ghost-like person in charge nodded and acknowledged it without hesitation.
"You'd better make achievements that we can recognize in a short period of time. For example, make those rebellious pagans and monsters go away completely."
"Well...can we kill them all?"
"You can't do it. They are too good at hiding. And there are too many of them. So far, there are already more than tens of thousands of them, and we don't have that much time to kill them all slowly. Their resistance consciousness has awakened. This is very troublesome."
The person in charge shook his head.
"Sodom hides too many secrets, and many areas are crisis zones, which can easily cause landslides and other effects. Simply killing people is meaningless and will only alert the enemy. If it really comes to the point of an endless war, that is not what the Earth wants."
"Oh, this is a mission to find clues, so the killing is restricted? But the evaluation is not lowered?"
"You can totally understand that."
"That's very pleasant."
Li Lin nodded.
Compared with the verbose bureaucracy on the ground, the straightforward and efficient performance of the people on the front line gave him some favorable impression.
The general manager came up and directly explained the requirements and location, and also allowed freedom of movement, and did not blow the whistle afterwards like on the ground. This is really great, which means that the players' methods can be .
This is a good thing, a very good thing.
Li Lin likes this kind of tasks that can make big news.
However, the person in charge seemed unaware of Li Lin's secret joy. He stood beside the car, his voice becoming increasingly low and cold.
"This is not a land with a slow pace of life. If possible, you should kill all the people here. But they are like bugs crawling out of the ground. No matter how many waves you kill, they will grow again. Their understanding of Sodom far exceeds ours. We don't know as many secret passages as they do, and the roads we have cleared are not as long as theirs. Even the poison made from mixed potions can't kill these bastards. God knows how many years they have been in this fog."
"The poison doesn't kill people? How is that possible? Are you trying to say that reproductive isolation has occurred?"
"Almost. The report made by the nursery this year proves that the chances of Sodom's natives and upper-class slaves having children have dropped countless times compared to hundreds of years ago. It can be considered the reproduction rate between humanoids and humans. It's not excessive to kill these deformed hybrids. But if possible, I hope you only bring the data and maps. We'll take care of the rest."
"So you're a hawk?"
"No, I'm a reasonable person. Do you see the high wall over there, the real hawk?"
“…I saw it. It’s a very impressive building.”
Li Lin nodded in the direction the person in charge pointed.
It can even be said that the only place in the entire underground that even smoke cannot completely cover is the flat high wall that spans the sky.
The whole thing was so huge that even basic visual distance measurement was useless. Li Lin didn't even know how far away the entire piece of high wall was from him. He just simply felt that it was too big.
It's like a sleeping giant.
"That's the Vale River, artificially propped up by Sodom to serve as Sodom's largest energy machine. And the Hawks are planning to blow that thing up and drown all the bastards. How do you feel now?"
"I think they're crazy."
"Anyone who stays here will have similar thoughts. Unless that legend reappears."
"What legend?"
"The sky."
The person in charge, shrouded in a black robe, turned around and pointed to the ceiling where countless pipelines and roads were entangled, twisting and circling.
After several hours of traveling, they arrived at an unknown depth of underground, and this base was not the top. Above it, there were countless machines in operation, spraying steam for useful or useless things.
But above, Li Lin could only see darkness. The ceiling, which was not covered by light, was like an unknown black fog, engulfing the pipes and routes layer by layer, and no one knew where they led to. The dizzying building structure and the layers of burdens that had accumulated over hundreds of years, as well as the longma fog that had almost become an ecological environment, made all visual detection methods return to nothingness.
After looking around, he couldn't find anything special, so Li Lin shook his head and turned to the person in charge.
"The sky? What's in the sky? I can't see anything special. Is there anything worth noting there?"
"Legend has it that there is a sealed main gate mechanism underground. If it is opened, the Vale will see the light of day again. The sunlight will pierce through the fog like a sharp sword, revealing the scars of Sodom."
“…Is this true?”
"Of course it's fake. We checked the basic support structure countless times, and there is no equipment that can be said to have been opened. Even the entire sky is tightly sealed with steel plates. You have to know that the blockade of the sky is entirely due to the accumulation of layers caused by population expansion. Where is the mechanism to open the sky? Our ancestors are also human beings, they are not crazy."
"So what's the reason you're saying this?"
"Those scum in the underground believe it."
Every word spoken by the person in charge revealed a sense of coldness and murderous intent.
" They are really crazy to believe this nonsense. Recently, they have been attacking the ground like crazy, hoping to find the so-called main control room. Your ultimate mission is to find their leader, kill him, and then destroy the pillars of their faith. Cut off this rumor at the root, and the rebellion of these rubbish will disappear."
"Is it that simple?"
"It's that simple, if you can find him. But the fact is that our intelligence services don't even know the leader's name."
"That must be because your people are too incompetent."
"...I really hope you'll say the same thing after you've been here for half a month."
After glancing at Li Lin, who seemed to have no worries, the general manager turned around and left the platform, seemingly not wanting to communicate too much.
"Oh, we'll see."
Looking at the hustle and bustle around him, which was beginning to look like a slaughterhouse where people were selecting meat, Li Lin shrugged his shoulders, pulled down his mask and lurked into the shadows.
