Volume 12: Yaguna Kotor Chapter 574: Open Sesame
Ke Lan carefully checked the area around the liquid door, but found no mechanism related to opening the door.
He even had the urge to dig through the rock wall, drill into the mountain, and bypass this strange door.
However... although the active armor has strong combat capabilities, its claws are too sharp and thin to be used for digging earth and rocks.
He could cut the rock easily, but it would be difficult to dig it out, unless he cut the front rock wall into pieces...but in this case, the time required would be unacceptable.
"There is no mechanism... not even a groove for inserting energy crystals or a safety device like a mercury lock... so how do we open this door?"
Looking at the white "gate" in front of him, Ke Lan became a little anxious - the prophet had already obtained Dr. Renee's research results and his own cloned cells, and this place was a biochemical laboratory left over from the Alpha civilization used to produce "artificial monsters". For him, everything was ready, even the east wind was not owed... All the prophet needed was time.
The current situation is almost identical to the "meme infection" incident - in the contaminated area, Ke Lan needs to race against time to prevent the "meme" from causing uncontrollable mutations; and in this cave, he also needs to race against time to prevent the prophet from tinkering with something more tricky than the "Seraph".
With every second of delay, the difficulty and danger of the mission increased exponentially. What troubled Ke Lan the most was that he had no idea how much time he had left. The only thing he could do was to speed up and try to stop the prophet before his plan was completed.
He even ran all the way in, unable to hide his whereabouts - but he happened to bump into this strange liquid door, which stopped him.
Just when Ke Lan was planning to dig a hole to bypass the cave, a famous folk story from the old era suddenly popped up in his mind - "Alibaba and the Forty Thieves". In this story, the cave where the robbers hid their treasures had a very magical "voice-controlled door". As long as the spell "Open Sesame" was shouted, the door of the cave would open.
Although voice-controlled doors are common in this era and cannot be considered cutting-edge technology, in that period when electricity had not yet been discovered, it was as incredible as the name of the story collection "Arabian Nights".
Door locks that have appeared in human history are nothing more than these types: purely mechanical keys, password locks composed of numbers and characters, key magnetic cards using wireless radio frequency identification technology, and a series of smart locks that identify through fingerprints, irises, voiceprints, or facial bone structures and other physiological characteristics. There is also a relatively rare part, which uses the blood or body fluids of people with unlocking authority to open the lock. This type of lock rarely appears in the civilian market and is generally used in more important places such as reactors and virus libraries.
Of course, these locks can also be used in combination. For example, one door requires swiping a card, then entering a password, inserting a key, and then verifying fingerprints and voice. When recognizing the face, the iris is also scanned at the same time, and finally a blood sample of the person opening the lock is collected. If it cannot match the previous physiological characteristics, even if a single authentication is passed, the lock will not open.
This is a more extreme example. In reality, Ke Lan has never seen such a door. However, it is quite common to use two or three unlocking methods at the same time. For example, Miss Soma’s luxury car requires both the key card and voice recognition to be successfully authenticated before it can be started.
Ke Lan looked at the white door in front of him and ruled out these unlocking methods one by one. In the end, the only two methods left were voice control and blood.
No, blood can also be ruled out - when he inserted his finger into the door just now, the white liquid and his blood had direct contact, but the door did not open, instead he lost half of his finger.
As for voice control... there's no cost for trial and error, but I don't know whether the basis for judgment is the password or the voiceprint. If it's the latter, then Ke Lan really has no way out.
He took a deep breath, looked at the door, and slowly said in the language of Alpha civilization: "Open the door."
As soon as he finished speaking, ripples suddenly appeared on the white door. The white liquid that seemed to be solid gradually misted and began to become transparent... In less than thirty seconds, the white door that originally blocked Ke Lan had completely "disappeared", revealing the dark passage behind it.
"Fuck you, why?" Ke Lan couldn't help but curse... If he had known that the way to open the door was so simple, why would he have wasted nearly twenty minutes here.
But he did not rush forward - no one could be sure whether the gate that disappeared visually was really gone.
Ke Lan changed a finger and stretched it forward.
This time, the finger reached the original position of the liquid gate, and still nothing unusual happened.
Move forward another half foot, and the same thing happens.
Only then did Ke Lan become certain that the gate had indeed disappeared.
But he did not relax his vigilance. Instead, he raised his arm, used that finger as a "pioneer", and walked towards the passage behind at a constant speed.
This passage was much narrower than the one outside with the crystal jar embedded in it, and was barely wide enough for two people to pass through. There were no fluorescent lighting devices outside along the way, so Ke Lan walked in the dark for about a kilometer before the road ahead suddenly became clear.
This is an extremely huge underground space. The ground, walls and dome are reinforced with metal frames. The layout of the space is almost exactly the same as the basement discovered by the 776 Special Forces Team!
But what Ke Lan can be sure of is that the basement in front of him is definitely not the same one discovered by the 776 Special Forces Team.
There are neither quartz tanks more than ten meters high filled with turbid liquid, nor metal brackets with shackles attached, like torture instruments.
Or to put it another way, there is only one thing in the entire basement.
A "pyramid" located in the center - not the conical pyramid of ancient Egypt, but the flat-topped pyramid of Mayan civilization.
The pyramid is about eight to ten meters high, with a base side length of about twenty meters. On the top is a small platform with a side length only half the length of the base. On this platform stands a man wearing a wide sand-colored cloak. He lowers his head, seemingly looking at something at his feet.
However, due to the limitation of his vision, Ke Lan could not see the "thing" at his feet.
According to the photo the intelligence dealer sent him, the man in the sand-colored cloak should be the prophet... or one of the prophet's "stand-ins". Of course, the premise is that he did not give the cloak to someone else and let others pretend to be himself.
Even though it was just a "stand-in", Ke Lan did not dare to let down his guard at all - he had faced two "stand-ins" of the prophet:
The first time was in the "Sick Village" in the South District 16. The "stand-in" had extremely terrifying combat capabilities. If they hadn't encountered an unreasonably strong existence like Ze Luo, I'm afraid that Ke Lan and Chiron would have died in his hands at that time.
The second time was in the outer ring channel of Yaguna Tor. The prophet's "stand-in" used the identity of "Park Sang-woo" to deceive everyone. Even the Undead Crew did not see through his identity... Although Ke Lan and others later saw through his disguise, they were unable to stop his sacrifice ceremony at all.
The vitality of "Park Sang-woo" is much stronger than that of the black-robed bishop who launched the Holy Word during the Arasaka Rebellion. The thing it summoned is more than enough to kill everyone in the reconnaissance team.
At first, Ke Lan and the others thought that something went wrong during the sacrifice ceremony. The summoned monster was not stable, just like Ultraman who only stayed on Earth for three minutes. The monster might have a time limit on its existence in this space. But after he successfully started the battleship and talked with another prophet's stand-in in the Molten Mine Area, he realized that the reason why the monster summoned by Park Sang-woo died was most likely because it was deliberately "given away for free" at the instruction of the prophet.
The prophet did not want to kill Ke Lan in that passage. His original purpose might be to use Park Sang-woo to induce Ke Lan and his friends to enter the power room and activate the Aguna Tor. But the plot did not go according to the script set by the prophet - Ke Lan and his friends noticed that there was something wrong with Park Sang-woo, and used means to expose Park Sang-woo's lies... But in order for the Aguna Tor to be successfully activated, the prophet did not let Park Sang-woo kill Ke Lan and his friends, but changed the way and sent the "fruit core" that could activate the transmission mechanism to Ke Lan and his friends.
Up to this point, everything was still within the prophet's expectations, it was just a matter of changing from "Plan.A" to "Plan.B".
What the prophet did not expect was that the "crystal" in Ke Lan's body at that moment was not incomplete, but complete. With the help of the power of the "crystal", he not only successfully started the battleship, but also his self-consciousness was not destroyed by the battleship's control console as the prophet expected.
In this way, it was the turn of the prophet who originally wanted to kill two birds with one stone by launching the battleship and eliminating Ke Lan at the same time and reaping the benefits of the success. He was dumbfounded and did not even have the chance to negotiate terms. He was directly "killed" by the ancient battleship.
The prophet's plan did fail, but the monster summoned by Park Sang-woo left a deep impression on Ke Lan.
Its direct combat capability might not be as good as the first stand that sneaked into the "Sick Village", but its ability was much weirder than the first stand. If it wasn't deliberately "given for free", Ke Lan didn't know how long he would be confined in that abnormal space.
Moreover, taking a step back, if the monster chooses to self-destruct, with the energy contained in the "fruit core", its power would probably not be weaker than that of a top-level tactical nuclear warhead.
As for the four substitutes who were later killed by the battleship "Creation", they have always had different abilities, but in front of Yagunakotor's "absolute power", their abilities have no room to be fully utilized, and they can only die with hatred.
In comparison, Ke Lan would rather face the first type of stand - at least, in terms of fighting, he has some confidence with his living armor and time stagnation... He has made up his mind that if this stand is similar to "Park Sang-woo", he will choose to run away, and then contact the fleet to use heavy firepower to directly flatten this underground ruins... If the firepower of the human fleet is not enough, Ke Lan doesn't mind using Yaguna Tor to hit it again.
"It should be a substitute this time, right?" Ke Lan asked loudly - he did not hide his footsteps when he came in. In such an empty underground space, the echo was very loud. As long as the other party was not deaf, they should be able to hear someone walking in.
"Of course." The prophet's stand-in turned around and looked down at Ke Lan. "If I tell you that I don't have a real body... or that every stand-in is a real body, would you believe it?"
Ke Lan did not answer. Instead, there was a whistling sound that broke through the air.
He threw what was in his hand with force.
This was a piece of hollow steel pipe that he had removed from the sheds at the entrance of the cave. One end had been sharpened into a spear head.
Ke Lan carried six such "weapons" on his body.
The first steel pipe directly pierced the body of the prophet's substitute, followed by the second one.
The second steel pipe was not straight. Ke Lan tied a knot in the middle. Because this steel pipe did not penetrate the body like the first one, it flew directly up with the body of the prophet's substitute and was nailed to the dome nearly 50 meters high.
If an ordinary person was hit by a spear of this force, his body would have been torn into pieces long ago. However, the body of the prophet's stand-in was able to remain intact, which shows how strong it is.
Ke Lan threw out the third and fourth spears—
The fifth one——
The sixth root——
Throat, head, heart, spleen... Every one of Ke Lan's spears was aimed at the opponent's vital parts, except the first one.
The first javelin was aimed at the spine of the prophet's stand-in... As long as the opponent was still a humanoid creature, severing the spine would have a certain paralyzing effect, creating favorable conditions for subsequent attacks.
But for some reason, he felt that the other party didn't seem to have any intention of dodging from the beginning...
