Volume 13 Ancient Bronze City Ruins Chapter 608: Moving Plots
"And running fast doesn't necessarily mean you can avoid them... Those multiple walls of light often move in opposite directions, trapping people in the middle," Ghost Owl continued.
"What about upwards? How high is the wall of light? Can you avoid it by flying?" Layton couldn't help but ask.
With the technical support of the Ye Group and an almost unlimited budget, his cyborg prosthesis has recently undergone several major changes. He even installed a flight module with seriously excessive power, giving himself the ability to stay in the air for a long time.
"Flying in the Bronze City is pure suicide - even if you fly low over the ground. Although we don't know the triggering mechanism of the horizontal light wall, the triggering rate of the vertical light wall is almost 100%." Ghost Owl paused and continued, "Inside the building, no matter how high you go, as long as there is a ceiling above your head, the light wall will not appear. But if you are in an open space, as long as you are more than five meters above the ground, the vertical light wall will always be triggered - it will press down directly from above you, and the speed is much faster than the horizontal one, and you can't avoid it at all."
"Five meters high... In other words, if you jump too high, it will also trigger the light wall, right?"
"right."
As if to verify the words of the ghost owl, just as the group of hunters in the video turned into an alley, a wall of light appeared in front and behind them at the same time. A tall hunter with mechanical prosthetic limbs on both hands and feet saw this and climbed up the wall of the building directly. Just when he was more than five meters above the ground, a curtain of light pressed down from above at a speed that ordinary people could hardly react to. The hunter only had time to let out a short scream before most of his body was swallowed up by the curtain of light.
His flesh was vaporized instantly, leaving only a portion of melted and deformed prosthetic parts scattered on the ground, emitting a bright red light.
But what made everyone feel relieved was that the light curtain only pressed down to five meters from the ground and then stopped... Although the hair of the other hunters was curled by the heat emitted from the light curtain, at least they temporarily escaped the fate of being wiped out.
The video got stuck here, apparently due to the impact and high temperature causing an internal component failure. A black and white snowflake flashed across the screen, and the scene cut back to the shot of the ghost owl.
"What happened next?" Ye Yan asked, his breathing a little hurried. "How did you escape?"
"We were lucky. We found the entrance to a building and hid inside before we were trapped by the two walls of light." Ghost Owl said, "The wall of light will only clear the streets outside and will not cause any harm to the creatures inside the building..."
"That means the building is safe." The Hound muttered to himself while stroking the stubble on his chin. "But now the ruins of this city have been occupied by the heretical sects. They will definitely seal the entrances to most buildings... Even if they are not sealed, I'm afraid they will just be traps left behind."
"According to official records, the Gray Bird Hunting Group was the first team to discover the mobile light wall mechanism of the 'Ancient Bronze City Ruins'... Didn't the previous hunters encounter this thing?" Ivan asked.
"This has to start with the structure of the Ancient Bronze City Ruins." Ghost Owl took out a sensor pen and drew a circle on the screen. "The Ancient Bronze City Ruins is a perfect circle. With the center of the circle as the intersection point, six straight lines running through the entire circle divide the circle into twelve sectors of equal area. Inside the circle, there are two concentric circles with completely equal spacing that divide the Ancient Bronze City Ruins into three areas - based on the depth, or the distance from the center of the circle, these three areas are called the 'inner ring', 'middle ring' and 'outer ring'...
Of course, the geometric figures I drew look simple, but the actual terrain is much more complicated. Various streets and passages are crisscrossed in each block. Each block is equivalent to an independent maze, and each independent maze is interconnected through clever design... That's why I associate it with the "array" in Chinese legends. "
"The urban division of this ruins looks very similar to that of the Ark... I just wonder if the housing prices in this 'inner ring' are the same as those on the Ark, dozens or even hundreds of times that of the 'outer ring'..." the hound muttered.
"The reason why the previous explorers did not encounter these light walls and light curtains is that we are the first hunter team to penetrate into the 'Middle Ring' area." Ghost Owl said, and made a few marks on the sketch of the Ancient Bronze City Ruins with a sensor pen. "We entered the third sector of the Middle Ring from the third sector of the outer ring--"
The induction pen slid across the screen, and a striking orange line appeared on the sector marked with the number three on the sketch, passing from the outer ring area through the concentric circle dividing line and entering the middle ring area.
"We lost a total of nine hunters before we managed to escape from the middle ring area to the outer ring area..." Ghost Owl said, "But it was not until we walked out that we noticed that we came out of the eighth sector of the outer ring area..."
"You were in such a panic that you went all the way from the third sector to the eighth sector?" Layton scratched his head. He didn't know why the ghost owl had such a complicated expression on his face - wasn't it normal to take a detour in the ruins?
"No." Ghost Owl shook his head. "The routes we moved are all recorded. Since the light wall appears randomly, we all choose the closest route possible. Even if there is a slight deviation, we should have come out from the adjacent second or fourth sector... With the distance we traveled, it is absolutely impossible for us to go around to the eighth sector... unless we cross the entire ancient bronze city ruins."
"Maybe you really crossed the entire ruins... In the maze built by the Alpha civilization, no matter whether it is a compass, a radio positioning device or human's own sense of direction, none of them can be trusted." said the Hound.
"I am sure that we did not cross the ruins, because there are very clear dividing lines between the outer ring, middle ring and inner ring of the Ancient Bronze City Ruins. If we mistakenly entered the inner ring, we would definitely cross that dividing line... But from the beginning to the end, we have been active in the middle ring area and have never seen the dividing line between the middle ring and the inner ring."
"If you have never entered the inner ring area, then the shortest route from the third sector to the eighth sector should be like this—" Ivan also took out a sensor pen and drew an arc that was almost close to the edge of the inner ring.
"Even if this is the shortest route, it's much longer than the distance you moved when you escaped, right?" Ivan asked.
"That's right." Ghost Owl nodded. "Even if the positioning device is interfered with, a mechanical pedometer cannot make mistakes. Even if the calculation error is increased to more than five times the standard value, this distance is still far from enough."
At this moment, Ke Lan, who had been silent for a long time, suddenly tapped the table in front of him and said to the hound, "Old dog, do you still remember the 'Nine Stone Chambers' we encountered in the bottomless cenote?"
"Nine stone chambers... I remember them, but wasn't that a dream of ours?" The hound nodded. "In fact, we have been lying in that cave the whole time and have not been anywhere else."
"Although the nine stone chambers are a dream, theoretically, they can be completely replicated in the real world... I suspect that there may be similar mechanisms in the Ancient Bronze City."
"You mean... movable blocks?" The Hound was stunned. "I don't think it's strange that the stone chamber can be moved, but the entire block can be moved without anyone noticing... This is impossible, right?"
"It doesn't have to be an entire block. It could be a street, half a square, or even a single building... As long as the city adopts a modular design, all of this is possible. As long as the buildings within the Gray Bird Hunting Group's field of vision do not change, it will be difficult for them to perceive the displacement of external plates."
Ke Lan paused for half a second and continued, "Moreover, when they are being chased by the light wall and are running around, even if the plates under their feet are moving, they may not be able to detect it as long as the movement is not too large."
Ghost Owl was silent for a full minute, then nodded seriously: "Captain Ke Lan, your analysis makes sense. As far as I can remember, there are really no landmark buildings in that area that can be used as a reference. The clouds in the sky are also very thick, and there are no independent clouds that can be used as a basis for direction judgment... If the ground is moving slowly, we really can't find it..."
"Wow, a city where the modules can be moved around at will like a Rubik's Cube...it's really a huge project!" The Hound couldn't help but sigh.
Although the Ark also adopts a modular design, the plots of land in each area are fixed on the base... If you want to make these plots of land movable, it is not something that can be solved by simply adding a few engines and pulleys.
"Blocks change, modules move..." Ke Lan's index finger tapped the table rhythmically, "It really looks a bit like the 'maze' with rich fantasy colors in the legends."
The so-called formation is actually the formation arranged when the army is marching and fighting. People are alive, so the military formation is naturally alive as well. A military formation that cannot be changed is easily broken by the enemy. All those famous military formations are unpredictable and difficult to find flaws in. Even if there are some unavoidable flaws, the "flaws" can be turned into "traps" by quickly changing the formation... or even become a killer move that determines the outcome.
When people are alive, stones are dead - Zhuge Kongming used huge stones to set up the Bagua Formation to block tens of thousands of troops from Eastern Wu. This kind of story can obviously only appear in novels like "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" which contain a lot of fictional plots... unless these huge stones can move.
"If that's the case, you could have come out from anywhere in the ruins, not to mention the eighth sector...hiss." The hound said as he pulled out a thick, long nose hair. "You should be thankful that you weren't sent directly to the inner ring...the middle ring is so dangerous, and if you enter the inner ring, I'm afraid few people will be able to get out."
"The Bronze City Ruins are now controlled by the heretics. If the blocks of this city can really be moved at will, then the method of control must be in their hands." Layton said with difficulty, "Let alone let us break into the ruins and seize control. As long as those bastards of the heretics have a little bit of brains, we will never be able to reach the core area of the ruins."
"There are worse things to come." Ivan sighed. "Suppose we just killed a group of heretic defenders, and the next second the ground beneath our feet might lead us into an encirclement of a group of mutants - they don't even need to move, they just need to wait for the moving plates to deliver their prey to them, not to mention the overwhelming light curtain chasing us..."
"Once we enter this ruins, we will be like the turtles in the water, and can only be slaughtered at will," Leighton agreed.
"Like a turtle trapped in a jar... Big guy, if you don't know how to use idioms, please don't use them. Our hunting group can't afford to lose this person." The hound rolled his eyes at Layton and turned to look at Ke Lan, "Ke Lan, this mission is much more difficult than exploring S-level ruins. It's not an exaggeration to say that there is a 100% chance of survival... But I also know that we can't refuse this mission. You see, why don't you go and persuade the people above to change their tactics?"
"How?"
"To deal with a target like this, don't use your troops to attack...wouldn't it be better to just use long-range firepower to saturate the area and raze the ruins to the ground?"
Before Ke Lan could say anything, Layton spoke first: "Old man, aren't you more embarrassed than me? Do you think that's an ordinary exile settlement? Can it be flattened by a few missiles? That's an Alpha civilization fortress, and it's a fortress with fully activated defense facilities! Our human weapons are just a tickle to it even if they are at full firepower... Let's not talk about anything else, just talk about this light curtain covering the entire city. Do you know how powerful this system is if it is used as an external defense shield?"
"How big?" the Hound asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Remember the Kirin that nearly killed Leviathan? If we use the Kirin to ram the energy shield of the Ancient Bronze City, it won't be able to hit any buildings in the city until the entire battleship is vaporized! If you want to break the shield this way, I can only think of two things."
"Which two?"
"Noah's Ark and Aguna Tor - only their mass and volume can ensure that they can penetrate the shield without being completely burned." Layton asked immediately, "Do you think the decision-makers above are likely to adopt such a tactic?"
