Volume 15 Gray Fog Forest Chapter 766: Finding Direction
Valentina was stunned.
She clearly only took one step back into the fog... just one step!
Why...why is this happening?
He had not been far away from the wreckage of the "Shaojiang Kai" frigate, but now there was nothing around the Blasphemer mecha except for the fog that was so thick that it seemed to be real.
Even the mist trees that are ubiquitous in the Gray Mist Forest are missing .
Originally, the forest floor was very rugged, especially near the battleship crash site. The turned-over soil and land masses appeared in a wave-like shape... But now the land under the blasphemer's feet was solid and flat, and it didn't look like it had been impacted at all.
The fear in Valentina's heart kept driving her, giving her the urge to manipulate the blasphemer to escape from this place, but her reason suppressed this urge - she knew very well that if she ran around in the thick fog because of panic, she might never be able to meet up with Ke Lan and the others again.
"First, you need to figure out where you are..."
Valentina made the Blasphemer mecha kneel on one knee, support its arms forward on the ground, and dig its fingers deep into the soil, posing a posture similar to that of a sprinter's crouching start.
This posture allows the body to cling to the ground stably, and it is not easy to lose balance even if it is hit by a huge force.
"I can't escape... I have to control my emotions..." Valentina bit her lips tightly and kept saying to herself, "I can't let fear occupy my mind... I need to collect more information..."
She clenched her hands into fists, and her nails, which had grown a little long because she had not had time to trim them in the past few days, dug into the flesh of her palms through the gloves of her driving suit... After a few seconds of silence, she resolutely opened the cockpit of the Blasphemer mecha, turned over and jumped out.
The thick gray fog immediately engulfed Valentina's petite body. She held the outer armor of the Blasphemer mecha with one hand and carried the emergency tool box with the other hand. She slowly groped her way around the mecha, centering on the mecha.
She could clearly feel her calves trembling and her ankles feeling a little weak... Even though her feet were on flat ground, she always suspected that she would lose her balance and fall to the ground in the next step.
Fear mainly comes from the unknown. The thick fog makes visibility almost close to zero. In this environment, even if there is something standing next to you, you will not be able to detect its existence at all.
For those who have a keen sense of danger, staying in such an environment is simply a torture.
Valentina, who is good at high-speed maneuvers and close combat, is such a person. All her muscles are tense, her fighting instinct is reminding her all the time, and the warning signals for danger in her mind never stop.
After walking around the body, Valentina squatted down immediately. She felt that she was about to collapse. The high-frequency panting caused the white mist in the breathing mask to be covered again before it completely dissipated. The vital signs monitor on her wrist kept sounding the alarm - Valentina's heart rate once exceeded 200. In the case of non-strenuous exercise, this heart rate is extremely abnormal.
“Hoo…Hoo…”
Valentina crawled under the Blasphemer mecha, opened the emergency tool box, and took out a metal cylinder without being seen and fixed it to the ground.
Not long after, a faint green fluorescent light lit up on the top of the metal cylinder, and the surrounding thick fog that was as thick as substance was immediately dispelled.
Although the radius of the dispersion was less than one meter, it eventually created a clear area in the thick fog.
"SL-S1 Mist Repeller". The prefix "SL" means that the item was found in the ruins. It is a creation of the Alpha civilization rather than an instrument produced by the Ark. As for the "S" and "1" at the end, they represent "small size" and "single-person use".
There are very few of these fog dispellers. With Ke Lan's authority, he only got two without alerting other members of the Undead Crew. One is on Thirty-Three and the other is left in Valentina's emergency tool box.
Compared with the fog dispeller manufactured by Ark, the "SL-S1 fog dispeller" has a larger dispersal radius and stronger clearance capability... If it is used at a depth of 500 meters behind the red line, this fog dispeller can even disperse the gray fog in an area with a diameter of 100 meters. But here, the diameter of the clearance area is less than two meters.
The effect has been reduced by a full fifty times.
It's not just the dispersal range, but also the duration - at a depth of 500 meters, the "SL-S1 fog dispersal device" can continue to operate for at least two hours... But the faint green fluorescence on the top of the metal cylinder in front of Valentina is rapidly dimming. At this rate, the fluorescence will be completely extinguished in five minutes at most.
The dispersed fog will return immediately.
"We have to hurry..."
Valentina immediately found a special shovel for digging soil from the emergency tool box and inserted it into the ground.
The prototype of this tube shovel is the famous "Luoyang shovel" in the old era. The Luoyang shovel was first used by tomb robbers to determine the location and depth of ancient tombs, but later it was more used by archaeologists to conduct shallow drilling operations and identify soil and underground sites.
From a certain perspective, tomb robbing and archaeology actually have a lot in common... As for the relic hunters on the Ark now, what they do is actually more like tomb robbing between the two.
Valentina took several tubes of soil from different locations and depths... Soil is the only thing she can collect besides "fog" at present, and it is also the only "clue carrier" in the current environment.
These tubes of soil are very solid, with no signs of looseness at all, which basically rules out the possibility that they are soil from the area near the battleship crash site - even if the soil that was turned over by the shock wave is compacted again, it will still leave obvious marks, and these tubes of soil in front of us have obviously not been turned over for a long time.
When the "Shaojiang modified" frigate crashed into the forest, there was a huge noise, and the shock wave spread at least 500 meters away... In other words, Valentina's current position was 500 meters away from the crash site of the warship.
"Five hundred meters..."
Valentina frowned, staring at the tubes of soil in transparent polymer containers in front of her... She remembered clearly that the edge of the thick fog was only a dozen meters away from the wreckage of the battleship, and the Blasphemer mecha took a step back about six to seven meters. Her distance from the wreckage of the battleship should not be more than thirty meters.
The green fluorescent indicator light on the top of the "SL-S1 Mist Repeller" has turned into a dim orange-red and started to flash. At the same time, the surrounding gray fog began to close in again, and was about to swallow Valentina up again.
She quickly put away the soil sample, emergency tool kit and fog dispeller, and groped her way back to the cockpit of the Blasphemer mecha.
The moment the cockpit hatch closed, Valentina couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief - for her, the mecha's cockpit was her "comfort zone".
She did not choose to fully connect with the Blasphemer Mech, but only maintained a "semi-connected" state.
The so-called semi-connection means that only half of the neural tentacles are connected to the driver's spinal cord. In this state, the driver can issue some simple commands to the body through consciousness, but at the same time he loses control of his body.
But the result of trying to do two things at once was that the mecha could not be operated well, and one's own body could not be controlled well - Valentina once tried to eat in a semi-connected state, and her shaking fingers poked the spoon directly into her nose, and rice grains were all over her face. The next second, the blasphemer who was originally standing fell to his knees, and she, who was already in a very embarrassed state, buried her head in the plate.
Fortunately, this scene was not seen by anyone except Ke Lan and Ivan, who asked Valentina to conduct a "semi-connection" test. Otherwise, it would definitely be considered a social death.
After that, Valentina never tried "half-connection" again.
In order to facilitate movement, she emptied the filling fluid in the cockpit, and then sat sideways somewhat awkwardly on the fleshy driver's seat - the feeling of "semi-connection" was very strange, as if a person was half asleep and half awake, some of the commands issued by the brain would be transmitted to the driver's own body, and some would be transmitted to the body connected to the driver, but confusion would often occur during the transmission process.
For example, the driver wanted to reach out and dig his nostrils, but the driver's arm did not rise, and instead the arm of the mecha was directly pressed against the body of the mecha; or the driver wanted to control the mecha to shoot, but the mecha did not move at all, and only the driver's fingers sitting in the mecha were making the action of pulling the trigger in the air.
But if you just sit quietly, then there won’t be any big problems...but in this case, this "semi-connected" state will have almost no practical significance.
"Replay the previous battle video." Valentina gave the order to the Blasphemer mecha, and soon, a battle scene from the Blasphemer mecha's first-person perspective appeared on the screen. It was exactly the scene where the Blasphemer was covering the retreat of Ke Lan and others into the gray fog.
Valentina's pupils couldn't help but shrink.
She saw that in this scene, the ground beneath the Blasphemer mecha's feet was still cracked and broken, but as the mecha retreated into the gray fog, these cracked and broken ground became blurred.
And... there is another crucial point. Until the Blasphemer mecha retreated into the gray fog, the safety rope buckled on the back of the body was intact.
The safety rope was cut after entering the gray fog... But, wouldn't those biological weapons not attack targets in the fog?
"What's going on... Could it be teleportation?"
Only teleportation could explain why he was left alone and came to a place at least 500 meters away from the wreckage of the battleship.
"But if it was teleportation... why didn't Ze Luo sense the abnormal changes in space? Was it the thick fog that blocked her perception, or... were they also teleported to other places?"
Valentina thought hard, but no matter which guess she made, there were both rationalities and corresponding doubts, and she could not make any judgment at all.
This was a bit difficult for Valentina... She was just a soldier, not a decision maker. Even after joining the God Hunters, she spent most of her time executing the orders issued by Ke Lan instead of thinking about such things.
Her hands were shaking uncontrollably, and she herself didn't know whether it was due to fear or the negative effects of the "semi-connected" state... or perhaps both.
She had tried all the communication devices in the emergency toolbox, and none of them could be used in this place. As for the "SL-S1 type fog dispeller", the remaining energy in it could probably work for ten to fifteen seconds. Valentina regretted that when she collected the soil sample just now, she should have done a "blind collection". At most, she could have taken a few more samples, but she shouldn't have wasted the precious fog dispeller energy.
The energy source of this fog dispeller cannot be replenished with the Ark's existing technology. It is purely a consumable and can be thrown away after use.
Without a fog dispeller, you can't even see your own body when walking in the fog, let alone identify the direction and find lost teammates.
What's even more terrible is that where Valentina is now, there is not even a fog tree that can serve as a marker. The thick fog seems to have come from the void... If she moves forward rashly, she will most likely just go around in circles.
"Thick fog... is coming..."
Valentina suddenly seemed to have thought of something, she struggled to sit up, and opened the cockpit cover of the Blasphemer mecha.
Thick gray fog suddenly rushed in, occupying the cockpit that was not filled with filler fluid.
During this process, Valentina had been staring at the gray fog pouring into the cockpit - she noticed that the fog at the three o'clock position seemed to be pouring in the fastest speed.
This means that the fog in that direction is the thickest.
"Three o'clock." Valentina tore off a note and stuck it at the three o'clock position in the cockpit.
The light yellow sticky note paper was quickly corroded into ashes by the gray fog, leaving only a small amount of black non-stick adhesive remaining on the inner wall of the cockpit.
Although the story of carving a boat to look for a sword is a joke, it can play an unexpected role in some situations.
Valentina controlled the Blasphemer mecha to inject filling fluid, "squeezing" the gray fog in the cockpit out, and then repeated this "leading the fog into the jar" operation several times.
She eventually determined the direction in which the fog was most concentrated: about four degrees clockwise from three o'clock.
