Volume 15 Gray Fog Forest Chapter 737: Entering the Forest
"What did you say?!" The female sniper looked at Ke Lan in disbelief. "The... core area of the forest? Are you kidding?!"
"I'm not joking. I'm very serious and earnestly asking you to be our guide and take us to the core area of the Gray Mist Forest." Ke Lan said solemnly.
"Are you crazy? No one has ever been able to enter that place!" The female sniper glared at Ke Lan and took several steps back. "If you are here for the Mistwood, then not only can I give you this batch of wood, I can also take you to the area where we cut wood... But if you want me to take you into the core area of the forest, I'm sorry, we can't do that."
"Not only can we not do it, I think no one or any organization on the Ark can reach that place." The female sniper's companion, another "woodcutter", said, "There was once an elite armored unit of the Field Corps, more than 1,500 people, who entered the Gray Mist Forest and never came out. The horror of this forest is far beyond your imagination."
"The deepest place you have ever been to, how many hundred meters is it?" Ke Lan asked, looking at the group of "lumberjacks".
"Two...two hundred meters." The man said with a guilty conscience, "You are right. This batch of wood was cut down two hundred meters away from the red line."
"Will you set your exploration limit depth as your operating area?" Ke Lan suddenly laughed, "There are loopholes everywhere in this sentence... You might as well keep silent."
The female sniper turned around and looked at her companion in annoyance, then said to Ke Lan: "Okay, I admit... two hundred meters is indeed just the depth of our daily logging. As for the maximum depth of our actual exploration..."
She paused and lowered her voice a little: "About... 500 meters."
Ke Lan raised his eyebrows: "So, your exploration record broke the record of that expedition team that was recorded in history? It seems that you are all a group of down-to-earth people. Compared with the illusory fame, you prefer practical benefits."
"..." The female sniper did not answer, which was tantamount to agreeing with Ke Lan's statement.
Making a fortune quietly is what smart people do.
"Tell me more about your experience of exploring at a depth of 500 meters." Ke Lan walked up to him and put his arm around his shoulders. "During the exploration, what dangers and emergencies did you encounter? How did you deal with them? How many casualties did you suffer? I'm very interested in these things. "
The female sniper tried to struggle, but found that her strength could not shake Ke Lan at all. She asked in a discouraged manner: "What you want to know is how to get through the gray fog forest, right?"
"Chatting with smart people saves effort." Ke Lan grinned.
"Before that, let's introduce ourselves to each other." The female sniper said, "My name is Mo Jue. He guessed correctly that I retired from the 1st Regiment of the 1st Division of ODST. The injured one is Mo Xin, my younger brother. The other two are named Daning, who used to serve in the Field Corps and is a veteran in our 'Lumberjack' team. The other one is nicknamed 'Lone Wolf', who just joined us not long ago. This is his second time participating in a logging operation."
Ke Lan noticed that many of Mo Jue's "parts" had been replaced with cyborg prostheses... In the Ark's military system, the main reason for soldiers to retire before the age of 30 is disability.
"I used to be a lone relic hunter, but I was unlucky and lost both legs in the ruins... I spent nearly ten years recuperating from my injuries, and almost spent all my savings from my early years. I had to find a way to make a living. An old friend of mine asked me to join this team, but unfortunately..." The lone wolf, whose legs below the knees were mechanical prostheses, looked at a corpse next to the overturned SUV with a trace of sadness in his eyes.
"We have told you our names, so you should be honest with us, right?" Mo Jue glanced at Ke Lan, "Also, can you let me go? I... I'm not used to being hugged by a man like this."
"Of course." Ke Lan immediately let go of Mo Jue, and the latter instantly distanced himself from him by several meters.
"But what I said may mean letting you go. As for what you said about 'being honest'... I really want to remind you that if you knew our true identity, I'm afraid it would cause you a lot of trouble. Especially after returning to the Ark, you'd better pretend that you have never seen us."
"Who are you?" Mo Jue's heart, which had just been at ease, was lifted up again. She put one hand behind her back and gestured to the others calmly, while her eyes looked back and forth at Ke Lan and the others vigilantly.
Ke Lan did not answer her question directly, but snapped his fingers crisply.
Accompanied by a harsh sound of gas rubbing against the ground, Valentina appeared behind Ke Lan driving the Blasphemer mecha, surrounded by several meters of dust.
"Ahem..." Ke Lan, who was covered in dust, wiped the dust off his face... Although this way of pretending was very cool, he would definitely not adopt this plan next time.
Or, we should ask Ze Luo to help block the dust in advance.
However, at this time, the lumberjacks had no time to pay attention to Ke Lan's embarrassment. Their attention was completely attracted by the ten-meter-high Blasphemer Mech, and their mouths were wide open enough to fit a whole egg.
Especially the guy named Denning, the gun in his hand fell to the ground after seeing this mobile mecha. He walked out from behind the temporary fortification formed by the three off-road vehicles with a look of astonishment, walked shakily to the end of the Blasphemer mecha, and swallowed hard.
Danning glanced at Ke Lan and asked, "Is this... the mass-produced version of the Fallen Angel? I have been following the battle at the Ancient Bronze City Ruins. I have seen it in the official video clip."
The mass-produced Fallen Angel model that Ark copied based on the Blasphemer mecha did not look much different from the outside, and no one except the military brass and the Undead Crew knew about the living CPU. Ke Lan simply went with the flow and nodded, "Yeah, that's right."
"Are you from the official Ark?" Mo Jue reacted immediately.
"Whatever you think, that's correct," Ke Lan replied, "We are carrying out a confidential mission... In fact, according to the mission requirements, we should have wiped out you and the remnants of these heretical sects..."
"But we don't know what your mission is!" Mo Jue took another step back, "You can't..."
"There cannot be any witnesses on this mission, especially since you now know that our destination is the core area of the Gray Mist Forest."
"You told me that yourself!"
"But you already knew it, didn't you?" Ke Lan clapped his hands, and Thirty-Three immediately cooperated and manipulated the black flying blades that had long been buried in the sand to fly up and stop at the throats of several "lumberjacks".
"Are you planning to... silence us?" Mo Jue was forced to raise her head. Although she didn't understand why the black blade that was resting on her throat was suspended in midair, she knew very well that if the other party was willing, the lives of these people would be ended in an instant.
"I said, if I intended to silence you, I would have launched an indiscriminate attack from the beginning." Ke Lan shrugged and reached out to pinch the blade at Mo Jue's throat, "But I didn't do that."
"Because we are still useful to you..." Mo Jue's expression was a little complicated, "You want us to take you into the Gray Mist Forest. After all the useful information on us is drained, you will still kill us to silence us."
"Although I really want to tell you not to think of me in such a despicable way, it seems that it is not convincing to just say it verbally." Ke Lan "took" off the black blade, and as soon as he loosened his fingers, the blade automatically flew back to Thirty-three.
Well, brother Thirty-three cooperated well and knows how to act. I'll give him a big chicken drumstick later...
"How about this, to show my sincerity, I can let half of you stay outside the forest, and the other half go into the forest with us. This way, even if I really want to kill you, at least half of you can survive, right?" Ke Lan suggested, "You'd better not bargain. You know, if we hadn't intervened just now, you would all be dead now."
"Okay." Mo Jue nodded decisively, "My brother is seriously injured. Let him stay outside. I will go in with you."
"We still need one more person." Ke Lan raised a finger, "You can discuss who will stay to take care of the injured, and who will go with your boss."
"I'll go with you." Danning looked at Lone Wolf and said, "Old Wolf, although you are older than me, you have just joined our team. You know that our rule is that the veterans are responsible for the rear guard. You stay and take care of Xiao Xin. The boss and I will go with them."
“Remember to collect the bodies of the others.” Mo Jue also said to Lone Wolf.
Lone Wolf hesitated for a moment, but did not refuse. He nodded vigorously and said, "I will bring Mo Xin and the others back."
But at this moment, Ke Lan suddenly pulled out his pistol and fired a few shots, blowing up the tires of several off-road vehicles and the spare tires hanging at the rear of the vehicles. Valentina walked to the trucks of the remnants of the heretic sect and gently swung her armor-piercing sword a few times, breaking the trucks into several pieces.
"What are you doing?!" Mo Jue asked in shock and anger, "Without the car, there is no way they can return to the Ark alive."
"I didn't say not to let them go back, but I can't let them go back right now." Ke Lan said, "The four of you, take our car and go to the Gray Mist Forest together. When we reach the edge of the forest, I will hand the car over to your brother and Lone Wolf. But by then, I will set a timer lock on the car for several hours. When we go deep into the Gray Mist Forest, the timer lock will be unlocked, and they can drive the car back to the Ark. This car is much safer than your vehicles. We are not afraid even if we encounter indigenous creatures on the road. Of course, the most important thing is to keep the action secret."
"What about you? Without a vehicle, are you planning to walk back to the Ark?" Mo Jue asked after being stunned for a moment.
"Let's talk about this issue after we can get out of the Gray Mist Forest alive." Ke Lan waved to the lumberjacks, "Get in the car."
…
After two and a half hours of travel, Ke Lan, Mo Jue and the others finally arrived at the edge of the gray fog forest. After handing over the locked armored off-road vehicle to Mo Xin and Lone Wolf as promised, Ke Lan and the other six people, together with Mo Jue and Daning, walked into the dense forest shrouded in thick fog.
The mist trees grow very tall. Even on the outskirts of the forest, the shortest adult mist trees are more than twenty meters tall. The dense tree canopy and the thick fog released by the mist vines make the light in the forest as dim as a cave.
Mo Jue and Daning skillfully took out gas masks from their backpacks and put them on their faces, then connected the oxygen generator tank to the breathing tube. After doing all this, Mo Jue turned his head and looked at Ke Lan and the others who did not make any moves. He asked in surprise, "Didn't you prepare gas masks? You know so much about Wuqimu, you should also know that the mist is poisonous, right ?"
"Not yet." Ke Lan said.
“Even if all of you are high-level cyborgs with high resistance to toxins, you must still wear gas masks.” Mo Jue said seriously, “Even if the toxins in the mist are not fatal to you, they will affect the body’s reaction ability and cause hallucinations. This is the most dangerous——”
Mo Jue was stuck in the middle of her words because she was surprised to find that when Ke Lan just walked into the fog, the thick gray fog actually moved away on its own, and a clear area with a radius of about two meters appeared around Ke Lan.
Not only him, the other people were in the same situation. The fog seemed to be blocked by an invisible barrier. No matter how it churned, it could not intrude into the two-meter area around these people at all.
"This...what kind of equipment is this?" Mo Jue couldn't help but ask.
"Don't look at what you shouldn't look at, don't ask what you shouldn't ask." Ke Lan smiled and put his index finger on his lips - he finally understood why the people from the Undead Crew always liked to say this to him. Although the pleasure brought by pretending to be cool is very low-level and vulgar, it is really cool...
Although he was extremely curious, Mo Jue suppressed his curiosity and said to Ke Lan, "I know you are very powerful... but if you take the Gray Mist Forest lightly because of this, you will definitely not be able to get out of it."
She turned her head to look at Ke Lan and continued, "This forest is man-eating. It's a real man-eating forest."
