Volume 1 Glacial Relics Chapter 30: Exile Settlement
"Okay, stop talking about irrelevant things. Hurry up and get to the transfer station before dark, otherwise we will all freeze to death."
…
Two hours later.
Ke Lan and the other three finally arrived at the place marked as "Transfer Station S0159" on the map, but what appeared before them was a deserted ruin.
"It looks like it was hit hard by a shell," Layton analyzed. "I wonder if there is anything left."
The hound that rushed in first had already circled around from the other side of the ruins and said, "It's empty. The underground warehouse has been completely emptied. It was done by the exiles. They are the only ones who would rob a transit station."
The hound's nose twitched slightly, and he continued, "There's a faint smell of gunpowder in the air, and um... there's also a smell of blood. It should be something that happened in the past two days."
"But there is no body, not even any limbs." Ivan came out of a relatively intact house and shook his head.
"Human beings are also a kind of resource. The living can be captured as slaves, the dead can be used as food or fertilizer, and even the mud rubbed off their bodies can be refined into two ounces of oil for you by those bastards." The Hound said expressionlessly. 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 concepts of being human, and cannibalism is simply the most normal thing in their eyes.
"There are wheel tracks here." Ke Lan, who was squatting on the ground, suddenly said, "The tracks are not shallow, so the load must be very heavy, and it went in that direction."
He pointed due south.
On the Ark's map, that place is an uninhabited area. There are no Alpha ruins worth exploring around, nor are there any resources such as minerals, so there is no transit station set up... From this point of view, there is a high probability that there is a settlement of exiles there.
"Should we go over there? The exiles will probably regard us as enemies, right?" Leighton hesitated. He was in a very bad state right now, so his confidence was naturally weakened.
"I have an idea." The Hound chuckled, "Fortunately we haven't had time to take a shower on the ship yet."
As he spoke, he gathered the Gauss rifles, individual howitzers and other weapons in the hands of the four men, dug a pit and buried them there, leaving only the two most basic Type 01 rifles. He then removed the optical sights and various tactical accessories from the Type 01 rifles, scratched all the paint with a stone, and finally tore off a few tattered strips of cloth from his clothes and randomly wrapped them around the barrel and receiver.
In addition to weapons, their clothes and equipment were also treated in a similar way, and their faces were stained with sand and water - now they were basically no different from those exiles who had been crawling in the wilderness for years.
They walked along the wheel tracks for another fifty kilometers, and finally found the exile settlement just as the sun was about to set.
This settlement, located on the leeward slope of the valley, is quite large, with hundreds of shacks made of wooden boards, plastic sheets and scrap metal crowded together. Assuming that each shack can accommodate five to ten people, this settlement must have at least two thousand people.
On the side close to the hillside was a simple farmland surrounded by a half-person-high fence. In the distance, one could vaguely see an exile in charge of oversight squatting on a stone with a wooden stick on his shoulder, staring at a dozen hunchbacked laborers working in the field.
There is an exit in front and behind the settlement, and a watchtower about seven or eight meters high is built at each exit, but there is no searchlight installed on the watchtower - during the day, the situation in the entire settlement may be monitored, but at night, the light from the torch can only illuminate 20 to 30 meters at most.
The defenses in the settlement were lax. The sentry who was supposed to be on duty on the watchtower had slipped away to somewhere unknown, and the few exiles guarding the exit gathered in a corner, warming themselves by the fire and playing cards.
"Can we get in?" Ke Lan turned around and asked the hound.
"It should be possible. Settlements of this size usually exchange what they have with exiles from other places. With so many people coming and going , it's impossible for the sentinels to remember everyone's appearance." The Hound stroked his stubble and said, "But such settlements usually have a core figure, just like the local emperors in the old era. Such people are the symbol of absolute power in this settlement, so we'd better be careful."
The sky was gradually getting dark, the temperature had dropped below zero, and was still dropping - if the people in the wilderness had not found a place to spend the night by this time, their only fate would be to become a lifelike ice sculpture.
"Let's go. Move more naturally and don't be so stiff." The hound blew his nose and walked towards the settlement first.
When they were still fifty meters away from the settlement, the guards who were playing cards had already spotted them, but no one was willing to leave the warm fire to question them - they didn't even look at these outsiders, but focused more on the homemade cards in their hands.
"They actually ignored us..." Ivan said in a low voice, with a hint of surprise and luck in his tone.
"That's because we carry guns... The main task of those guards is actually to prevent the captured slaves from escaping, and we are not slaves." The Hound curled his lips and swaggered into the settlement .
Ke Lan noticed that almost every shack was packed with half-naked exiles. These people were all slaves. They were so thin that they were almost skin and bones, and their skin had large patches of ulcers - they were all radiation sickness patients. They had to work in an environment exposed to radiation most of the day without any protective measures. It was impossible for them not to get sick.
Even the sentries and supervisors had very simple protective equipment, not to mention the slaves who could not even get enough food and clothing.
They stared at Ke Lan and the other three who had just entered the settlement with extremely dull eyes. The self-personality of these slaves had long been worn away by the heavy labor, and only the instinct for survival was still driving their zombie-like bodies. Apart from food, they had no interest in anything else. In the words of the hounds, these slaves were no longer human beings, they were just a group of captive livestock.
This should be a settlement whose main source of income is slave trading. More than 80% of the people living here are slaves who are treated as "commodities", and normal exiles only account for a very small part.
"This settlement should have a strong armed force. They will regularly plunder the Ark's transit stations or other weaker settlements, then train the captured captives into slaves and sell them to other settlements with which they have trade relations in exchange for daily necessities and weapons." said the Hound.
"Look, there's a store over there." The person who spoke was Ivan, and he was pointing at a shack that didn't look that shabby. Ke Lan turned her head and saw a wooden board hanging outside the shack, with the things that could be traded written on it in charcoal.
The hard currency used to purchase goods is not credit points or precious metals such as gold and silver, but gray potatoes, which are a native crop of Alpha. Similar to potatoes, they store starch in fat tubers and are the most important staple food for exiles - but compared to potatoes, they taste worse, carry radiation, and contain trace amounts of neurotoxins. The consequence of long-term consumption is radiation sickness and hemiplegia.
One pound of meat of "unknown origin" can be exchanged for five to ten pounds of gray potatoes, depending on the quality of the meat and the radiation content; an 8.8-caliber mm full-power rifle bullet used by the Type 01 rifle produced by Ark is worth 150 pounds of gray potatoes; as for an adult male slave who is "strong and able to do heavy work", he only needs 65 pounds of gray potatoes, which is not as valuable as a bullet.
The most expensive item on the price list is a drug called "Xiao Radiation Ning", which can reduce the radiation content in the human body, inhibit the progression of radiation sickness, and prolong the life of radiation sickness patients... The price of one pill is as high as 700 kilograms of gray potatoes, and only three pills are sold per week.
But this is not difficult to understand. Whether it is bullets or other things, as long as there are simple tools, the workshops in the settlement can imitate them. Although the workmanship is so rough that it is unbearable to look at, it is at least barely usable. But the radiation-killing ningin can only be produced on the Ark. If the exiles want to obtain the drug, the main way is to attack the transfer stations set up by the Ark in various places on Alpha Star - but this behavior is extremely dangerous. Once discovered by the Ark, it is very likely to cause a catastrophe.
"Does anyone need anything?" Seeing the four people stopping at the door, the owner hurriedly came out of the shack. He was a fat man - to be able to have a fat body in such conditions, it was obvious that this guy must be living a good life.
"We are selecting slaves. We will come to you when we have made our choice. Don't follow us. We don't like being stared at, and we don't need anyone to give us advice." The Hound said in an extremely arrogant tone, and touched the Type 01 rifle hanging at his side as if in a demonstrative manner.
"Okay, okay, no problem," the fat man nodded sensibly. "Starting from this side, all the slaves from the first shack to the corner over there are mine. You can pick any one you like. Further ahead is the territory of Mr. Li. His slaves are all sick and won't live long. If you buy one, you'll lose one."
"I can see for myself." The Hound said coldly, then ignored the slave trader and continued walking forward.
At this moment, Layton suddenly grabbed him and pointed to the nine o'clock direction with his eyes.
It was a shack that was even bigger than the "shop", about four or five meters high, and looked like a crane standing out from a crowd of chickens. The outside of the shack was covered tightly with black canvas, airtight, and even the door curtain was a thick black blanket with some strange patterns painted on it with white lime.
"What's wrong? Do you suspect that the person living inside is the leader of this settlement?" asked the hound.
However, Layton shook his head: "That's not the point. Look at the glass tube inserted into the door frame, the one that glows... That thing is not a light bulb, but a crystal tube with a complex structure. Only the Alpha civilization can manufacture it... It is one of the core components of the 'death ray'."
"The core component of the death ray? Are you sure? But... those who ambushed us are not exiles..."
" Sure , but there are tens of thousands of such crystal tubes in a 'Death Ray'. They might have picked them up from somewhere..." Layton said cautiously.
"Go and take a look." The Hound made a decision.
"Didn't you say not to cause trouble?"
"I'm already in trouble, how can I hide from it? Have you ever heard of this saying? "
After saying that, 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 hound's way.
"…'Praise the glory of the true God, sing the praises of the greatness of the true God.'" The two men looked the four of them up and down, and one of them suddenly said something like this without any context.
The hound's heart tightened: "It's over, why is there such a thing? Is this sentence a cut?"
He calmly grasped the dagger hidden in his sleeve and tapped the ground lightly with his right heel - this was the secret signal agreed upon earlier by the Hound and the other three: "Prepare for battle."
Praise the glory of the true God... Just when the situation was at a stalemate, Ke Lan felt vaguely that this sentence was somewhat familiar...
It was that inscription! There was this sentence on that inscription. Although it was difficult to translate it accurately into human language, the general meaning was something like this!
“Praise the glory of the true God and sing the praises of the greatness of the true God!”
This is the prayer of Alpha civilization!
So the next sentence should be... Sacrifice yourself? Or devote yourself? Ke Lan searched his memory as much as possible... If the next sentence on the inscription is expressed in a similar human rhetoric...
"'I will give everything I have for the victory of the true God'."
Ke Lan blurted out this sentence subconsciously, and even Hound and the others were stunned for a moment. After hearing this sentence, the two men in black were horrified and retreated repeatedly!
Oh no... Is this a revelation? Could it be that this has nothing to do with the stone tablet at all?
The hand hidden behind Ke Lan's back had already opened the safety of the rifle. As long as Hound drew out the dagger, he would immediately raise the muzzle of the gun and shoot at the two men in black.
As for what to do next, we can only escape from this settlement alive.
But what Ke Lan and the others didn't expect was that the next second, the two men in black knelt down together, pressed their bodies against the ground, and said in a trembling voice: "I didn't expect that it was the Prophet who came! We were unable to greet him from afar, and we only ask for the Prophet's forgiveness!"
Lord Prophet?
Ke Lan was confused. What the hell was that?
