Volume 13 Ancient Bronze City Ruins Chapter 623: Empty City?
"You two, go check the building where the local sniper was hiding just now." The officer casually pointed at two soldiers and said.
"yes!"
The two men immediately walked forward, ran a short distance, and then activated the thruster backpack mounted on the back of the exoskeleton, jumped into the air, and flew towards the window of the building.
Seeing the two people flying directly up, the officer was stunned for a moment, and he suddenly remembered something... But just when he wanted to let the two people return to the ground immediately, the two people had already crawled into the window that was still emitting thick smoke.
The officers finally realized what was wrong: before the battle started, the officers of the participating troops all participated in a brief online combat meeting. The content was to share the known intelligence about the ruins of the Ancient Bronze City... and the source of this information was the hunters who had explored the ruins in the past.
One point has been emphasized repeatedly: any vehicle over five meters in height is strictly prohibited from entering the urban area. At the same time, no one is allowed to climb more than five meters above the ground outdoors, otherwise the protective light curtain of the ruins will be triggered.
The situation on the front battlefield was so shocking that the officers themselves had forgotten about it. But now, not only were the tanks and mechas that were over five meters high safe and sound, but even the two scouts who flew directly into the air were also unharmed.
And above their heads, the air force fleet was still advancing slowly and steadily.
As for the light curtain described by the relic hunters in their reports, it has never appeared since they entered the ruins.
Not only were the defense facilities of this relic not activated, but even some of the trap mechanisms that originally existed seemed to have been shut down.
The four words "walk into a trap" suddenly appeared in the officer's mind.
He immediately called the signalman and sent these findings and his own speculations to the warships in the sky, which were then transmitted back to the headquarters in the rear by the high-power communication equipment on the warships.
In less than five minutes, he received a reply - "If there is no abnormality, continue to move forward."
My guess... the superiors should have already considered this, right? The officer thought... maybe the superiors had already discovered these anomalies?
But no matter what, he had to obey the orders of his superiors. Even if he felt that there was something wrong with the ruins, he had no choice but to bite the bullet and continue moving forward with his subordinates.
The two scouts who flew into the window came back soon, bringing back a sniper rifle that had been blown to pieces and two completely dismantled assault rifles - both the sniper rifle and the assault rifle were old models that had long been retired and had been refurbished and modified many times. They were standard Exile-style weapons.
The so-called sniper rifle is actually nothing more than an old bolt-action rifle with a crooked mechanical sight with non-standard scales welded on the gun body.
At this distance, being able to hit the gap in the powered exoskeleton with this weapon in one shot, I don’t know whether to say that the sniper was too lucky or Pierre was too unlucky.
"How is Pierre?" the officer asked the medic casually.
"It's not serious for now...but if the number of casualties continues to increase, our spare plasma may not be enough..." the medic replied.
His worries were not without reason. The previous attack by the fusion tentacles had caused a large number of casualties in the field corps. Now even the field hospitals in the rear were facing a huge shortage of plasma, not to mention their frontline troops.
"Bang!"
Another gunshot was heard, but this time the shooter was a soldier from the 10th Armored Division.
A bird-like creature that was completely black, shaped like a crow but had six pairs of eyes fell to the ground. The soldiers of the field corps were not unfamiliar with this "Twelve-eyed Crow". It was not a native creature that evolved naturally on Alpha, but a product of the biochemical transformation of the Alpha civilization.
Used in conjunction with this "Twelve-eyed Crow" is a parasitic organ the size of a fingernail. The "doctors" of the heretical sect will use a crude surgery to implant this parasitic organ under the human skull. As long as the person undergoing the surgery does not die from infection or heavy bleeding, within a few days, this parasitic organ will drill into the human cerebral cortex and connect with the central nervous system.
In this way, the person who receives the transplant can not only gain control of the "Twelve-Eyed Crow", but also share vision with it - for the heretic sect, these black birds are perfect scouts, not only have performance that is no less than that of electronic drones, but their control radius is more than a hundred times that of electronic drones.
For example, if this "Twelve-Eyed Crow" appeared inside the ruins of the Ancient Bronze City, then its operator could be hiding in the White Ridge Mountains or even further away, and the connection between the two would not show any signs of weakening.
Just to study how information is exchanged between the "Twelve-Eyed Crows" and parasitic organ transplants, the institute set up a special experimental team of nearly 30 experts... However, until all members of this experimental team died in the "memetic transmission incident", the research did not make any substantial progress.
Since the "Twelve-Eyed Crow" appeared here, it means that the heretic sect has been monitoring their movements... But why didn't they take any measures?
Apart from anything else , as long as those moving light walls are triggered, the troops attacking the ancient bronze city ruins will suffer considerable damage.
The reason why the 10th Armored Division arranged several heavy defense mechas every several dozen meters was to guard against these light curtains. Once the light curtains appeared, the heavy defense mechas could rely on their own energy shields and physical giant shields to buy time for the infantry to escape, minimizing casualties as much as possible. In addition, a large number of laser cutting machines were also equipped to cut open the doors of the surrounding buildings so that the soldiers could hide inside the buildings in time.
But now, these preparations seem a bit unnecessary...
This is like reviewing like crazy the night before the exam, doing dozens of advanced math simulation papers, but when you get into the exam room and take a look at the papers, you find that the test is just some elementary school math addition, subtraction, multiplication and division operations...
However, if this happened in an examination room, apart from feeling confused, one would mostly feel secretly happy and relieved - but the problem is that it's on the battlefield, and the nature of the situation is completely different.
"Keep moving at the same pace and continue to advance towards the center of the ruins," the officer ordered. "If you find anything unusual, report to me immediately!"
…
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Six kilometers away from the ancient bronze city ruins, in a collapsed tunnel.
"Ke Lan, we just received news from the mining base saying that the main force has already attacked the interior of the ruins from the left and right wings of the Ancient Bronze City!" Layton suddenly opened the cockpit and shouted excitedly.
"So fast?" Ke Lan naturally had a hint of doubt in his heart, "Weren't they blocked by the heretical sects?"
"It is said that before entering the ruins of the Ancient Bronze City, there were no enemies along the way, nor any traps... After entering the ruins of the Ancient Bronze City, although there were sporadic resistance and attacks, the number of enemies was small and the intensity of the battle was also low. Not even one person from the main force was killed after entering the ruins... The resistance in such a large Ancient Bronze City is not even as strong as that in an ordinary exile settlement."
"What about the fleet? Did the fleet also enter the sky above the ruins?" Ke Lan asked again.
"Yes, the fleet has been following the ground forces... but they said that the defense facilities of the ruins themselves were not triggered at all." Layton held the headset with one hand and supported the edge of the cockpit with the other hand, and said, "Oh, by the way, there is one more thing. An officer in the vanguard specifically mentioned that even if the height above the ground is more than five meters outdoors, the light curtain . In addition, there are a total of fourteen troops entering the ruins, with about 20,000 people, and there has not been a single report of eyewitnesses of the light wall."
"I think..." Layton scratched his head, "Could it be that in the past few years, the reserve energy of the ruins' defense device has been exhausted...so it can't be activated?"
"Ke Lan, what do you think?" Thirty-three turned his head and stared at Ke Lan and asked.
"I think... it's like a trap." Ke Lan pondered for half a second and gave an answer.
"That's what I think." Thirty-three nodded immediately. "The energy supply method adopted by the core module of the Alpha civilization ruins is basically permanent. Even if the energy stored in the crystal is exhausted, it can still be replenished through solar energy, geothermal energy, rock pressure, etc. There is no such thing as exhaustion. I think someone deliberately turned off the defense facilities of the ruins."
"Empty city plan?" Ivan asked.
"Very likely."
"That is to say, the heretic sect deliberately left the place undefended, waiting for the Ark's large forces to enter the ruins, and then activated all the defense facilities at once, killing all the hundreds of thousands of people inside the ruins..." Layton continued, "But will the Ark be fooled?"
"Probably not." Thirty-three said, "If I were the commander, after discovering this, I would choose to let the vanguard directly attack the core control area in the center of the ruins, and as for the majority of the follow-up, they would stay outside the ruins and keep their troops in place. Anyway, the vanguard's advancement is very smooth, and these 20,000 people alone are enough to occupy the entire ruins, so why bother to invest more troops."
"So what should we do now? Should we continue digging the tunnel?" Layton asked. "According to Thirty-Three, even without our 'special forces', the vanguard can still occupy the core control area. So there is no need for us to take this risk, right?"
"Let's dig first and keep moving forward. Stop when we reach the edge of the ruins." Ke Lan thought for a moment and said, "Then, let's see how the heretic sect will deal with this situation."
…
…
Just as Sanshisan said, after discovering that the resistance inside the Ancient Bronze City ruins was extremely weak, the commander-in-chief of this battle stopped allowing follow-up troops to enter the ruins - up to this point, the vanguard troops entering the ruins were exactly 25,000 people.
Although the ruins of the Ancient Bronze City are considered large among the many ruins on Alpha, compared with the scale of cities on Earth in the old era, it is at best just a relatively large town. Twenty-five thousand soldiers, plus three fleets in the air, are enough to search every corner of the ruins within 24 hours.
As of 6:00 p.m., more than three hours had passed since the first troop entered the ruins of the Ancient Bronze City. The Ark Army had suffered a total of thirty-four attacks by heretical sects - each attack was carried out by a small combat unit of three to five people. Although the followers of these heretical sects were all containers of the Seed of Corrosion without exception, the weapons they used in human form were very simple. The sniper team with the strongest firepower had only a few more old-era-style RPG rocket launchers, which failed to cause any damage to the vanguard troops.
Most of the vanguard troops are heavily armored. Even if these rockets hit directly, they cannot hurt the soldiers protected by the heavy armor, not to mention that the accuracy of this type of rocket launcher is terribly low, and the heretic sect members have extremely short time to aim - as soon as these people lean out from their hiding places, they will be locked by various machine guns and artillery. If they don't pull the trigger within one second, the subsequent rain of bullets and explosives will instantly tear the sect member into pieces.
As for the seeds of corrosion that enter a rapid transformation period in their bodies after their death, they will be dealt with by a special hunting and killing team and will not pose any threat either.
Some soldiers had even removed magazines containing active ammunition and replaced them with regular ammunition.
At this moment, a piece of news that made people feel a little strange came from outside the ruins...
The super-giant Seed of Erosion on the front battlefield crawled out from the ground. Its huge body split directly into two halves, and it slowly moved towards the two wings of the Bronze City with its wriggling tentacles.
Although it was "slow", because the size of this super-giant erosion species was so huge, each "step" it took was a span of more than ten kilometers. Soon, it appeared in the sight of the troops on standby outside the city.
It was heading for the main force, even ignoring the commander-in-chief's flagship, the Pegasus-class assault airship "Cyan Fortress", which took the initiative to attack as bait. It crawled towards the troops left outside the city despite the bombardment of the "Cyan Fortress".
With the terrifying destructive power of the super giant erosion seeds, it would not take much time to massacre these tens of thousands of people... Not long after, the troops on standby outside the city received the latest order - "All enter the ruins of the Ancient Bronze City and lure the super giant erosion seeds to attack the ruins."
But what no one expected was that as soon as the two troops entered the ruins of the Ancient Bronze City, the super-giant Seed of Erosion suddenly turned around and used its tentacles to pull down the "Blue Fortress" that was chasing behind it!
