Volume 15 Gray Fog Forest Chapter 748: Five Hundred Meters
"Aren't you afraid of death?" Ke Lan glanced at her and asked with a smile.
"Anyway, my brother is safe..." Mo Jue said firmly, "Since you are not afraid, then I am not afraid either."
"You actually think your father might still be alive, right?" Ivan suddenly interrupted. "Although your mind tells you that the possibility is almost zero, you still hold a glimmer of hope in your heart... After all, your father is just 'missing', not 'dead', and you haven't seen his body with your own eyes, right?"
"You also hope that he is still alive, don't you?" Mo Jue asked back.
"Yes, I also hope that your father is alive. If he is alive, we should see him in person. If he is dead, we should see his body... Of course, if we can't find the body, it would be good if we can find the notebook your father carried with him." Ke Lan nodded. "By the way, I forgot to ask you one thing just now. How long has your father been missing?"
"It's exactly six years and one month since now." Mo Jue replied.
"Six years... If he had stayed in the Gray Mist Forest..." Ke Lan looked around the surrounding environment, "By the way, is there anything edible in the Gray Mist Forest? I mean food that can sustain life for a long time, not food that can be used as a temporary emergency food."
There is a huge difference between food and fillers. The latter can be radioactive flesh and blood, poisonous fungi, or even soil, bark, and corpses of the same kind... As long as eating it is not immediately fatal and can temporarily relieve the burning , it can be considered a filler.
But it is obviously impossible to survive in a forest for six years relying on this kind of thing.
If Mo Jue's father wants to survive in the forest, he must meet at least two hard conditions: 1. Clean and non-toxic air to breathe; 2. A long-term and stable source of food.
"Unless..." Ke Lan thought silently in his heart, "This guy has successfully crossed the Gray Mist Forest and found ruins similar to the wreckage of Engine No. 92 in the core area of the forest."
According to the records of the 776 Special Forces Team and the superdream image that Ke Lan had experienced, there were a large number of canned foods that met the human definition of food stored in the wreckage of Engine 92. Those "people" who woke up from the hibernation capsule relied on those cans to maintain their lives.
As for the air problem, as long as Mo Zhuorui can find such a relic, this problem will no longer be a problem.
"No." Mo Jue shook his head. "Everything in the Gray Mist Forest, whether it's plants or animals, even the soil, has been contaminated by the toxins in the gray mist over the years. For example, the Mistwood we cut down needs to be neutralized with special reagents before it can be processed into furniture... and this step can only be done on the Ark."
"Then how much food did your father have with him when he disappeared, and how many days would the oxygen generator last?" Ivan added another question.
"As for food, each of us will carry enough dry food in our backpacks to last for half a month. If we eat sparingly, we should be able to last for more than a month... As for oxygen generators, some carry four cans and some carry five cans, depending on each person's load-bearing capacity..."
"A standard-capacity can of oxygen generator can last for three days if it is in a 24-hour non-stop reaction. If the user is engaged in high-intensity physical activities that require a lot of oxygen, the life span will be shortened to two to two and a half days. To be conservative, we'll take the minimum of two days. So, how many days did it take you to reach a depth of 500 meters?"
"Three days," Mo Jue replied, "But when we enter the forest, we will bring a small trailer to store food, medicine, oxygen generators, some equipment and consumables. It will also be used to transport the cut down fog trees out of the forest, so everyone's supplies will be replenished at any time."
"Okay, the previous consumption can be ignored. Even if your father brought four cans, he has eight days before his oxygen runs out." Ke Lan raised one arm and pointed to the core area of the forest. "According to the straight-line distance, the distance to the core area across half of the forest is about fifty kilometers. Of course, according to the 'map' I found on the stone tablet photo, the route to the core area is not straight, so I will roughly triple the value, 150 kilometers. With your father's physical strength and experience, he can complete this 150-kilometer journey in eight days with enough rest time."
Ke Lan suddenly turned around and grinned at Mo Jue: "Maybe your father is really not dead, and... he has found the 'secret' he was looking for."
“Why do you think so?” Mo Jue’s eyes widened slightly. “This… this is the Gray Mist Forest. Traveling 150 kilometers in eight days… this is absolutely impossible! Even if you don’t multiply it by three, I still think 50 kilometers is impossible!”
"Because you think you only walked 500 meters in three days, so it's impossible to walk 150 kilometers in eight days, right?" Ke Lan laughed, "But don't forget, your current state is like crossing a river by feeling the stones, so it's normal that you can't walk fast. But suppose your father got a map of the Gray Mist Forest... No, to be more precise, suppose your father got a dynamic navigation of the Gray Mist Forest?"
"What?!" Mo Jue's face was half stunned and half confused.
"This map... or rather, this photo of the stone tablet with built-in 'navigation', is what we found on the golden retriever." Ke Lan shook the phone in his hand. "Although it is incomplete, since even the golden retriever has such a thing, as the leader of the lumberjack team, your father should have it too, and it should be more and more complete."
“But, but my father is not you. He doesn’t know the writing of the Alpha civilization!” Mo Jue said.
"When Jinmao disappeared, your father and his team probably hadn't yet 'deciphered' the information on the stone tablet. Otherwise, we wouldn't have seen Jinmao's body here." Ke Lan paused, then continued, "But I have a guess that your father may have discovered some clues, so he took advantage of the 500-meter-deep exploration to leave the team and act alone... And his motive for doing so may be that he didn't want to implicate you."
"My father left the team on his own?!"
"Like I said, it's just a guess... But having said that, as a father, I think he would want you to live a comfortable and stable life. You also said that he advised you to quit the 'Lumberjack' team many times."
"..." Mo Jue bit his lip and remained silent for more than ten seconds before he asked, "What do you think is the possibility that my father is still alive?"
"It's hard to say, but it shouldn't be higher than winning the lottery jackpot." Ke Lan shrugged. "I emphasize again that these are all speculations without any solid basis. I advise you not to hold out too much hope... As the saying goes, 'the greater the hope, the greater the disappointment'."
Mo Jue nodded slightly: "I understand..."
To be honest, Ke Lan had no idea what kind of relationship there was between Mo Jue and her father... But no matter what, there was a blood relationship between the two. Even if Mo Jue disliked her father, her emotions fluctuated significantly when she heard that her father might still be alive.
It's a pity that Ke Lan couldn't empathize with this... Regardless of whether he was a "clone" created by the undead crew, for him, the concept of "relatives" had never existed.
Although it feels a bit regretful, it seems that this is not a bad thing for Ke Lan. In many cases, the existence of parents means weakness. Assuming that he really has a pair of parents living on the Ark, then whether it is the Undead Crew or some other force, as long as they can control Ke Lan's parents, they can use this as a bargaining chip to force Ke Lan to do something he doesn't want to do.
This is definitely not the situation that Ke Lan wants to see.
"It's still a carefree life when one person is full and the whole family is not hungry..." Ke Lan sighed inwardly, then looked back at his companions following behind him, and then thought of those who stayed on the Ark...
If the crew knew that they had come to the Gray Mist Forest, would they control the hound, Zofia and others?
No, probably not.
Those who can join the Undead Crew are all smart people. They know very well that even if they control these people now, it will only be a way to remedy the situation after the horse has bolted. They will not be able to stop Ke Lan from continuing to explore the Gray Mist Forest. Instead, it will easily cause conflicts with Ke Lan and lead to a split within the crew.
For the mysterious "Zeroth Seat", the internal split of the undead crew is probably the last thing he wants to see?
No matter how many undercurrents there are, the members of the Undead Crew must "obey the rules" on the surface... Once the rules are broken, the organization will completely lose its meaning of existence.
The current Ark and current humanity cannot withstand any civil war.
It was easy for Ke Lan to ensure the safety of the Hound, Zofia and the others—as long as he could return to the Ark alive.
No matter what secrets were discovered in the core area of the Gray Mist Forest, as long as he could return alive, the Undead Crew would never harm anyone around him.
But if he died in the Gray Mist Forest, then those who stayed on the Ark might become the target of revenge by some bad-tempered guys... For the members of the crew, ordinary people on the Ark, even those who were powerful and influential like councilors, were just bugs that could be easily crushed to death. And people like Miss Soma, who came from an ordinary wealthy family, and Ye Yan, who was now "in decline", were even less important.
Unknowingly, the lives of these people have become tied to Ke Lan.
"I can't die, so I won't die here." Ke Lan repeated it silently as if it was a psychological suggestion, and then walked to the front of the team.
"Everyone line up in a vertical line. The last person puts his hand on the shoulder of the person in front. The mecha continues to maintain the autonomous following mode." Ke Lan said loudly, "There is one thing you need to pay attention to. The navigation route is not straight. In some places, you even need to turn back or even retreat. Everyone must follow my route and don't take a wrong step."
"Perhaps we can understand it in another way," Ivan added. "We should not think of ourselves as walking through a forest, but rather as a large enough screen to unlock an extremely complex graphics lock."
"That's a very good summary." Ke Lan gave Dr. Maozi a thumbs up.
"Hey, I just took two big gulps of vodka, and my mind suddenly became clear." Ivan smiled and shook the silver wine jug in his hand.
Ke Lan took a deep breath, and then activated the "navigation route" that had been "stored" in his brain. He said, "Let's set off now. The first target point is at a depth of 500 meters."
The end point of this navigation route is 35 kilometers deep, but Ke Lan still decided to explore at the depth of 500 meters, where "Mo Jue's father disappeared" - perhaps, Mo Zhuorui found some clues here, and then decided to leave the team and go deep into the gray fog forest alone...
It has to be said that with the "navigation", the efficiency is indeed different. It took everyone less than twenty minutes to reach a depth of 500 meters, which was previously considered an "absolute restricted area" by the outside world.
The fog here is much thicker than that a hundred meters deep, and the trunks and supporting roots of the fog trees are also much thicker.
Apart from this, there is nothing special.
"Are you sure this is 500 meters deep?" Thirty-three asked with a frown. "We've been going in circles and back and forth all the way... I think I have a pretty good sense of direction and space, but I'm almost dizzy..."
Ivan looked at Ze Luo and asked in a low voice: "Miss Ze Luo, do you have a way to determine our current location?"
Ze Luo shook his head: "Although I left signs along the way, I can't sense them beyond a certain distance."
"Why not ask the professionals?" Ke Lan asked Mo Jue, "How do you lumberjacks determine the depth of your location? Is it based on the concentration of fog?"
"It's difficult to quantify the concentration of fog. We usually rely on the density of the tree rings of the fog tree. The deeper the place, the denser the tree rings are, and they increase in a linear trend. The error of this calculation method can be controlled within ten to fifteen meters." Mo Jue said, taking out a tool similar to a vernier caliper from his backpack. "But due to the accuracy of the tool, we can only measure the depth within three thousand meters at most. For deeper places, we need to use laser equipment... We don't have that thing."
"Got it." Ke Lan waved to Asano Akira, who immediately drew his sword and cut a mist tree in front of him that was so thick that two people could hug it in half.
