Volume 15 Gray Fog Forest Chapter 751: Close to the Core Area
"There's a discovery." Ivan, who was sorting out the remains of Wu Feng, or "Uncle Hong" as Mo Jue called him, suddenly spoke up, attracting everyone's attention.
"What did you find?" Ke Lan asked impatiently.
"I, I may have found the cause of his death." Ivan said, holding up the two ribs in his hands. "These are the fourth and seventh ribs of the deceased. You can see that there are obvious marks left by a sharp weapon on the side of the bones... The fibers of the mist tree and the mist vines cannot cause such injuries. I am more inclined to believe that this person may have been killed by humans with a sharp weapon ."
"If we infer this way, the direct cause of death should be that the chest was pierced multiple times by a sharp weapon..." Ke Lan nodded, and then asked, "Did you find any signs of damage similar to fighting on the bones? What about the joints of the limbs?"
Ivan nodded seriously. "All of them... and I didn't find any wood fibers from the Mist Tree in the bones of this corpse. His flesh and blood should not have been sucked by the Mist Tree, but should have rotted naturally over time, so..."
Ke Lan immediately turned to Mo Jue, stared at her and asked, "In that exploration mission, were there any other people missing besides Wu Feng and your father?"
"No, no." Mo Jue was stunned for a moment, then shook his head, "Only the two of them... Wait, you mean, the person who killed Hong... killed Wu Feng, was my father?"
"I'm not sure yet, but it's probably correct." Ke Lan pondered, "But Wu Feng is also one of the core members of the lumberjack team. He also knows the 'secret' your father has been pursuing... And what is the reason that made two people who originally had a common goal suddenly turn against each other and even kill each other?"
"Are you so sure that my father killed him?" Mo Jue argued, "But you have to know that among these core members of the team, Uncle Hong and my father have the best relationship. It's no exaggeration to say that we are friends for life and death!"
"Friends of life and death..." Ke Lan subconsciously looked at his companions. He thought for a moment, then asked Ivan, "What would have to happen for you to kill me?"
Ivan shook his head. "I don't know under what circumstances I would choose to kill you, but I know that if the seeds of corrosion in my body get out of control and turn me into a zombie-like container, you will definitely help me end my pain."
"Has this guy ever been parasitized by the Seed of Invasion or some other monster?" Ke Lan asked again.
"No. The sternum and ribs of a container infested by the erosion seed will undergo varying degrees of deformation, but this is not found on this corpse," Ivan replied.
"Then there is something else going on."
"Why do you think my father is the murderer?" Mo Jue was still a little unwilling.
"I'm telling the truth, do you want to hear it?" Ke Lan said, tilting her head.
"you say!"
"Intuition." Ke Lan laughed, "But my intuition is always accurate."
"Just based on your intuition, you suspect that my father killed his friend?" Mo Jue looked unfriendly.
"Let's skip this question for now." Ke Lan said, "Why not check Wu Feng's belongings to see if there are any clues... It would be great if we can find a 'navigation route' like the golden retriever."
"Don't think about it, there's nothing!" At this time, Sanshisan poked his head out of the pit and said, "This body was stripped naked and buried here. There is no personal belongings at all."
"It seems that the murderer is very likely to be Miss Mo Jue's father." Ivan analyzed, holding his chin, "The two of them may have had a disagreement on something, and neither could convince the other, and then..."
"There's no point in discussing this now." Thirty-three came out of the pit. "What should we do next? Continue exploring at a depth of 500 meters, or go further in?"
"Let's keep going inside... I am now more and more convinced that Mo Zhuorui may have... reached the core area of the Gray Mist Forest." Ke Lan said.
…
…
Thirty-five kilometers is not far. Even for an untrained person, it only takes half a day to walk thirty-five kilometers. Of course, this refers to the straight-line speed on a flat road. For Ke Lan and his friends, not only was the road rough and bumpy, but the total distance of going back and forth and turning back was hundreds of kilometers. It took them a full day and a half to reach the end of the navigation route, thirty-five kilometers deep.
This was a depth that humans had never set foot on before - even when the "special operations fleet" relied on the armor and energy shields of their warships to force its way into the center of the gray fog forest, they only crossed the red line by a dozen kilometers, less than half the distance that Ke Lan and his team had penetrated.
"I used to think that the gray fog five hundred meters away was as thick as solid. Now, I take that back." Thirty-three murmured. He controlled a black flying blade to pass through the space barrier and pierce into the thick fog outside, stirring it gently - from the visual effect alone, it seemed that what he was stirring was not fog, but a ball of sticky asphalt.
The Thirty-Third Apostle let the black flying blade fly a little further, but just as the flying blade was completely immersed in the mist, his expression suddenly changed.
"What's wrong?" Ke Lan, who had been staring at him, asked puzzledly.
"The blade just sank into the mist a short distance, only about 20 to 30 centimeters at most, and the connection between me and the blade was cut off." Sanshisan said, "I can no longer feel the blade, let alone continue to control it."
"As I recall, the longest range you can control these flying blades is about 150 meters, right?"
"If I only control a single flying blade, the control radius can be doubled to 300 meters. If I am willing to bear a small 'cost' to perform overdraft operations, then the maximum range can reach more than 500 meters... But this is only the operating distance. These flying blades have been marked by me . As long as they are within three kilometers of me, I can sense their existence."
"Then just now at a distance of 500 meters, how far away could you sense the flying blade?"
"I haven't tried the extreme distance, but I can control the flying blade to move freely in the thick fog fifty meters away from us without being affected at all."
Ze Luo pushed the space barrier forward another meter, and the thick asphalt-like fog was cleared away, revealing the black flying blade that had fallen to the ground.
The location where the black flying blade fell was only twenty-five centimeters away from the edge of the previous fog.
But when the fog dissipated, the black flying knife trembled twice, floated up from the ground, and flew back to Sanshisan.
"Everyone be careful, this fog is very strange... and I feel that the fog here is completely different from the fog at a depth of several hundred meters." Sanshisan pinched the black flying blade that had just lost contact briefly. Although there was no residual fog on the flying blade, he always had a feeling that the flying blade had been contaminated.
"Valentina, help me unload cargo box number 13." Ke Lan said.
The Blasphemer Mech slowly squatted down, and a rectangular engineering plastic box marked "No. 13" on the shelf on the back was pulled down by Valentina.
Ke Lan opened the lid of the box, revealing six transparent breeding boxes placed side by side, each containing a live white mouse.
Ke Lan caught one of the mice and injected a tube of medicine into its body with a syringe.
"What did you inject into it?" Mo Jue couldn't help but ask out of curiosity.
"Anti-neurotoxin drugs... Although the side effects are severe, they are the strongest anti-toxic drugs that Ark can find at present. I just injected this little white mouse with a dose of 40 standard units. Even for humans, this dose is lethal, but this drug has one advantage -"
"What's the benefit?"
"No matter how large the dose is, even if the side effects kill a hundred people, it will take several hours for the side effects to be triggered after being absorbed by the organism." Ke Lan put the empty syringe into the recycling bag, then held the little white mouse and walked towards the thick fog. "Although this little white mouse has been sentenced to death, in the few hours before it died from the side effects of the antidote, it was almost immune to all poisons as far as neurotoxins are concerned."
As soon as he finished saying this, Ke Lan had already stuck the little white mouse's head into the thick fog - the next second, the little white mouse's body began to twitch violently!
"Is this... a normal reaction to the drug?" Mo Jue asked.
"Obviously, not." The little white mouse struggled for less than ten seconds before its body stopped moving.
Ke Lan took the mouse's body back and saw dark red sticky blood continuously overflowing from the mouse's eye sockets, nasal cavity, ear canal and mouth. Its muscles became very stiff due to high tension. Although the mouse's brain had stopped functioning, its slender tail and hind limbs would still twitch violently every ten seconds or so, as if telling everyone that its death was not peaceful at all.
"It seems that the dose of forty standard units is still too little." Ke Lan shook his head and picked up the second mouse.
This time, he was so crazy that he injected the little white mouse with 800 standard unit doses of super-concentrated anti-toxin - a full twenty times more than the anti-toxin the first little white mouse received!
Even a level nine enhanced person might not be able to withstand the side effects of this dose of antidote, and for the little white mouse, even if it was not poisoned by the gray fog, its remaining survival time would probably be difficult to exceed an hour.
But in fact, the second mouse only lasted two seconds longer than the first one.
"It seems there is no need to continue the experiment." Ke Lan closed the No. 13 cargo box. "The anti-toxin agent made by the Ark is ineffective against the toxins in this gray fog. Either it is like what Thirty-three said, the toxicity of the fog here is different from that outside, or the concentration has reached an alarming level, and anyone who touches it will die."
"And this stuff is quite corrosive." Ivan said, looking at the mouse's fur that looked like it had been soaked in a strong acid solution. "Even if ordinary explorers are wearing a full set of protective gear, they can't last long here... The air valves, oxygen pipes, and the joints of the protective suits are weak spots that will die immediately if corroded by the mist."
"Then you still say that Mo Jue's father may have reached the core area of the Gray Mist Forest? But he can't even get through the thick fog in front of him." Sanshisan said, "He doesn't have the ability to directly clear the fog like us."
"Thirty-three, do you know 'ablative armor'?" Ke Lan suddenly asked a seemingly irrelevant question.
"Of course I know. It's a kind of armor that vaporizes the material itself to take away the energy contained in the attack... It was often used in the space shuttles of the old era and some return capsules that need to pass through the atmosphere. Early warships also used ablative armor as a means of resisting energy attacks... But since the discovery of the Alpha civilization's shield generator, energy shields have basically replaced the role of ablative armor, whether on warships or mechas." Thirty-three answered quickly, "Wait... You mean, that guy wore a thick enough protective suit? This protective suit is thick enough to allow Mo Zhuorui to pass through the fog before being corroded by the fog? But where can he find such a protective suit?"
"In fact, you have already mentioned the correct answer in what you said just now." Ke Lan smiled and said, "Mo Zhuorui does not need to find a thick enough protective suit. What he wants can actually be found in this forest, and in large quantities."
"What?" The person who asked again was Mo Jue.
"Mecha." Valentina gave the correct answer. "The armored unit that was destroyed in the forest had mecha cockpits that were completely sealed, so fog couldn't get in. Military-grade mecha frames and armor also have very high requirements for corrosion resistance. As long as he can find a mecha that can be driven and slightly strengthen the armor and sealing of the cockpit, he can drive this mecha through the foggy area safely."
"It's actually a mecha! I didn't expect it just now!" Mo Jue's eyes flashed with excitement, and then revealed a complicated expression, "Suppose... I mean suppose, Uncle Hong was really killed by my father, and he buried the body himself... In that place, there was a tank and a mecha besides the body... It is entirely possible that my father could find another more intact mecha and drive it to the core area of the forest... Could it be, could it be that he really succeeded?"
"I just proposed a feasible plan." Ke Lan sighed, "Whether your father successfully crossed the last 15 kilometers or not, the situation we are facing now is also unpredictable... From now on, we really have to cross the river by feeling the stones."
