Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 1003: The Roots of the Giant Tree (Part 2)
Ke Lan sighed in disappointment. It seemed that he could not obtain any valuable information from the controlled soldiers. He had to find another way.
"Hmm... After being controlled by the thing in the castle, the soldiers were completely unconscious, but they knew how to use guns and weapons, and also some simple fighting techniques. From this point of view, the thing in the castle should have a high IQ. Then it must be able to tell that I am the leader of this team. The reason why I was not controlled was not because of luck, but because 'it' could not control me."
After confirming this, Ke Lan finally felt a little more relaxed.
Ke Lan left Ze Luo on this side of the roadbed as a safety measure, and returned to the guy's control range - and nothing happened, which once again verified Ke Lan's guess: that thing could only control ordinary soldiers, but could not control "elite units" like Ke Lan or Ze Luo.
Ke Lan knocked out the controlled soldiers and brought them back. After giving the order to "stay where they are" to the other soldiers, he and Ze Luo walked towards the castle alone.
Although this castle is not on the route to the research institute, the things in the castle have already discovered them and launched an attack. Ke Lan naturally cannot just sit there and do nothing - what if the things in the castle notice that there is something wrong with the two "people it cannot control" in this team and report it to the Undead Crew, then there will probably be endless troubles coming.
…
Ke Lan walked to the entrance of the castle and took a look at the signboard erected at the door. It was engraved with a retro cursive relief, indicating that the castle belonged to the Gustav family.
The Gustav family is one of the most mysterious wealthy families on the Ark. The mystery here does not only mean that the outside world knows very little about this family. The biggest reason is that this family does not engage in business, does not participate in politics, and no one serves in the army, but has been able to stand for hundreds of years without falling... No one even knows how this family rose in the past.
The Gustav family has a lot of private property, but most of it cannot bring direct benefits to the family. There is no consortium under its name, no member of the United Parliament with the surname Gustav, and no missions from this family in the military top brass... All information about this family seems to be hidden in a thick fog, and very little information is made public. But when those commercial and entertainment magazines count the wealthy families on the Ark every year, the name of the Gustav family is always included.
At one point, some people on the Internet suspected that the Gustav family was doing gray business, or was helping the government do some shady things in order to make huge profits... But this statement is completely untenable. It is difficult for such families involved in gray industries to come to the fore. Even if a very small number of them can become big and strong, they will eventually choose to whitewash themselves and find ways to use the obvious industries to cover up those things that can only be hidden in the shadows.
Among the wealthy families on the Ark, some have made their fortunes through honest means, while others have connections in both the black and white worlds. However, there is absolutely no such thing as a family that has risen entirely through the gray industry without undergoing any transformation... In any case, they have to do enough surface work.
The Gustav family is an outlier.
However, when Ke Lan kicked open the castle gate and entered the main hall of the castle, most of his doubts were immediately dispelled.
In the most conspicuous place on the main wall of the main hall, there is a portrait hanging. The middle-aged man in the painting, wearing an exquisite black suit and looking intimidating without even getting angry, looks 90% similar to the virtual projection of "Zeus", one of the members of the Undead Crew.
"No wonder... the Gustav family can stand for hundreds of years without doing anything. It turns out that these people are descendants of 'Zeus'." Ke Lan muttered in his heart.
Of course, the man in the portrait is not necessarily "Zeus" himself, but in terms of time, Zeus can definitely be regarded as the longest-lived among the existing members of the Gustav family. The Gustav family also benefited from his "success", so it is not an exaggeration to say that Zeus is the "ancestor" of this family.
"That thing is in the basement of the castle." Ze Luo said to Ke Lan.
"Basement...basement...tsk, there's really nothing new about it." Ke Lan shook his head and asked, "Where is the entrance to the basement?"
"It's right under our feet." Ze Luo replied.
"Under your feet? The entrance to the basement is located in the main hall?" Ke Lan's expression suddenly became a little strange. "Okay, I take back what I said and apologize to Mr. Zeus. The location of this entrance... is really... quite trendy."
"There are no signs that anyone has ever lived in this castle." Ze Luo continued, "The things in the basement are the only living things in the castle."
"Except for that thing, this is an empty castle?" Ke Lan looked at the shiny new ornaments in the main hall in confusion. There was not a speck of dust on them, and they did not look like they had been idle for a long time. "Could it be that all the people living in the castle have died, or turned into corpses?"
"No, I can't sense any human presence...at least no one has lived in this castle in recent years." Ze Luo shook his head.
"It looks like it should be hired workers who clean on schedule... No, if the entrance to the secret passage in the basement is set in the main hall, this castle should not allow outsiders to enter easily, so it can only be intelligent robots that clean on schedule..." Ke Lan glanced at both sides of the main hall and went up the spiral staircase to the second floor of the main building. There were two covered bridges more than 20 meters above the ground connecting the main building and the two towers on the left and right. The three buildings formed an inverted triangle. Inside the triangle was a neatly trimmed lawn. In the center of the lawn was a fountain statue. The subject of the statue should be a mythological story from the old era, but Ke Lan couldn't remember which story it was for a while.
Since no one has lived in this castle in recent years, exploring other rooms has a very low priority. Ke Lan stomped his feet lightly, and Ze Luo immediately understood. A powerful force of space instantly penetrated the expensive hand-woven carpets and solid wood floors, and chiseled open the half-meter thick alloy secret door under the floor!
The two sank underground and came to a dark tunnel.
"There is a strange fishy smell... This fishy smell makes me feel familiar, as if I have smelled a similar smell somewhere." Ke Lan said softly.
But he couldn't say where he had smelled such a smell... For a relic hunter, the fishy smell is too common, whether it is the nest of indigenous creatures, the smell of blood in the traps that have killed countless people, or the fishy smell of the sea with mild neurotoxins floating over the sea... There are too many similar smells, and for a person whose sense of smell is not particularly sensitive, if you smell them together, you may be able to distinguish one or two fishy smells, but if you smell different fishy smells at different times in different occasions, then the feedback given by the brain will become very similar.
If I really want to describe what that smell is like, I can't find the words.
"If the old dog was here, he would probably be able to smell what this smell is...but the prerequisite is that he has smelled it before." Ke Lan thought as he walked into the tunnel, with Ze Luo following closely behind him. The invisible space barrier surrounded the two of them, even covering their heads and feet.
Less than twenty steps into the tunnel, the surrounding environment began to become very humid. The stone walls of the tunnel were wet, as if water was constantly seeping out of the stone...
Logically, there should be moss in this environment, but this tunnel is very clean. There is nothing except the seepage on the stone wall.
Ke Lan pulled out his dagger and scraped off a little liquid attached to the stone wall - he soon discovered that this liquid was not water, but a thin mucus similar to egg white.
The fishy smell in the tunnel comes from this mucus.
Ke Lan suddenly remembered where he had smelled this fishy smell - this was the smell of LCL "Water of Life". After he escaped from the underwater city, he soaked in a medical cabin filled with this liquid for three full days... But when this liquid fills your nasal cavity and lungs, you can no longer smell the fishy smell. Only LCL liquid exposed to the air will release this faint fishy smell that is a bit like fermented rotten eggs and a bit like serum.
"LCL liquid... It seems that this castle should be a breeding ground set up secretly by Zeus, and the thing being cultivated should be the guy with the ability of mind control." Ke Lan analyzed, "Zeluo, that guy must know that we came in to find it. Does it have any reaction?"
"I can't feel it. Its 'emotions' are completely blocked by that special power." Ze Luo replied, "But its heartbeat frequency has not changed significantly."
"Heartbeat?" Ke Lan was stunned for a moment, put his ear against the stone wall of the tunnel, listened carefully for a while, and then said to Ze Luo, "Turn on shared senses."
Ze Luo placed one hand on the back of Ke Lan's neck, and the five white, slender, green jade fingers turned into five black tentacles within a few seconds, piercing through the skin on the back of Ke Lan's neck and crawling up along the spine... After a while, the rhythmic "heartbeat" sounded in Ke Lan's head.
After listening for only half a minute, Ke Lan's face showed an understanding expression: "This is not the heartbeat of a living thing, it is some kind of artificial heart, or a device that pumps blood to various organs. Since it is a machine, it is not surprising that it maintains a stable heartbeat."
As for the reason why its "heart rate" accelerated when Ze Luo first discovered it, it might be because it wanted to activate its mind control skills, so it needed to increase the blood and oxygen supply. But now, its control skills were ineffective against the two of them, so naturally there would be no change in the blood and oxygen supply.
"Although it's an 'artificial heart', we must always pay attention to changes in frequency. When the frequency speeds up, it means that this thing is about to activate some skill." Ke Lan said to Ze Luo.
The shared sensory state is not suitable to be maintained in combat, because Ke Lan merely "listened" to the heartbeat and Ze Luo terminated the shared state - when Ze Luo pulled his fingers out from the back of Ke Lan's neck, the five puncture wounds healed in an instant, even the scabbing process was skipped, and there was no scar or color difference left on the healed area.
Even though Ke Lan sealed the power of his body, the strengthening effect on his body was still real. His current self-recovery ability was much stronger than when he entered the nest - now even if he was seriously injured, he could grow a new body from his broken neck.
For him, a fatal injury would probably require the entire head to be crushed, or thrown into the fire and burned like the "corpses" of the men in black. Otherwise, as long as there is enough energy, Ke Lan's body will be reborn infinitely.
The two continued to move forward. There were five half-meter-thick airtight doors in the tunnel. However, in front of Ze Luo's spatial power, even if the thickness was doubled, the high-strength alloy was almost like plasticine and deformed with a pinch. After passing through these five doors without any hindrance, Ke Lan finally saw the true appearance of the thing.
It was a huge brain immersed in a glass tank...or rather, a mass of wildly growing brain tissue...it had broken through the shackles of the glass tank and spread everywhere, even the life-support equipment beside it was wrapped in the pink soft tissue. As for the machine that replaced the heart and pumped blood to various parts of the brain tissue, it had already merged with it.
"The core brain? No , this should be... a replica of the core brain?"
