Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 896 The Hunt Begins
Sanshisan, who fell into the pit, seemed to have broken some bones. He struggled for a few times but ultimately failed to stand up.
"Breaking a few bones is better than dying." Ke Lan glanced at Thirty-Three who was lying at the bottom of the pit. After making sure that the other party's breathing and heart rate were still stable, he turned and walked towards the jungle.
"Oh, I didn't expect that I would be the only one left in the end." Ke Lan sighed and rubbed the wound on his abdomen that had just healed.
When Ke Lan returned to the place where he had killed the Epsilon-class mutant before, the originally cleared area had gradually become lively, and some larger mutant creatures began to appear in Ke Lan's field of vision.
These mutants showed obvious hostility towards Ke Lan at first, but when Ke Lan completely crushed a few ungrateful "troublemakers", the remaining mutants obviously learned their lesson and basically avoided Ke Lan when they saw him. Even if some of them had the courage not to run away, they would just hide in the dark and observe, not daring to come forward to provoke Ke Lan.
The IQ of these mutants is not low. In this small and competitive jungle hunting ground, a creature that has been able to survive for 500,000 years without being extinct must have unique survival wisdom, even if it does not have great physical strength.
However, this saved Ke Lan a lot of unnecessary battles... This time, from the time he entered the jungle, it took him less than fifteen minutes to reach the center.
The gunshot that he and Sanshisan just heard came from the center of the jungle.
That is to say, the person who fired the gun... or "thing" should be not far away from Ke Lan... if "it" has not moved during this period of time.
Ke Lan began to become cautious. He took cover from tree trunks and bushes and moved in an "S" shaped route. This way, he could conceal his body and search the area to the greatest extent possible.
Ke Lan was more inclined to believe that some inanimate mechanism had triggered the pistol. This was most likely a trick of Neto's. As for the purpose, it was also very simple. If a normal person heard gunshots in a forest with poor visibility, their first reaction would most likely be to look up into the sky. Although the flame and smoke from the muzzle of the gun could not rise that high, as long as they found the place where birds were startled and flew up, they could basically determine the location of the shooting.
If Ke Lan and Sanshisan had looked up at that time, the first thing they would have seen would not be the birds startled by the gunshots in the forest, but the "dome" that Neto had tried so hard to make them see.
No...that's not right...
Ke Lan carefully recalled the details of the gunshots he heard earlier, and overturned this guess in just a few seconds: If Neto's purpose was really to trick him into looking up, let alone the success rate of this trick, its timing was simply a mess - at that time, Ke Lan and Sanshisan had already gone deep into the jungle hunting ground, and the tree canopy was so dense that it completely blocked the sky above the entire hunting ground. Even if Ke Lan and Sanshisan looked up at that time, they could only see dense branches and leaves.
Although Ke Lan showed disdain for Neto, he also knew that a biological computer with super intelligence like this would not make such a low-level mistake.
There was another reason for the gunshot.
Ke Lan suddenly squatted down and carefully observed the ground in front of him. The soil about five meters away from him showed signs of being recently turned over, but the signs were not obvious. The person who turned the soil had obviously covered it up when filling it back in... Could it be the nest of some mutant pattern? Ke Lan thought to himself.
Since the "shooter" was most likely lurking nearby, Ke Lan, in line with the principle of less trouble is worse than more trouble, did not intend to alarm the mutant in the nest... But just as he looked away, Neto's voice suddenly rang out.
"You actually found it after all...Are you really not going to dig it up and take a look?"
"What's buried in the soil?" Ke Lan asked in a low voice, "A high-level mutant? A bomb that can blow up half of the upper city? Or a mirror that can reflect the scene of the dome through the leaves?"
"Neither. I assure you in the name of the great gods that the things buried here are not dangerous at all." Nieto said, "Moreover, according to your memory, you should know him."
"Him? There's a person buried in there?" Ke Lan's heart skipped a beat. If the person buried in the soil was really someone he knew, then it was most likely a teammate who had entered the Gray Mist Forest with him...
Valentina? Asano Akira? Ivan? Or the "woodcutter" Danning who disappeared earlier?
Could it be that some of them have already died?
Although Ke Lan knew that the person buried in the ground was most likely a corpse, he couldn't help but walk closer and insert the engineering shovel.
"Huh? Don't you suspect this is a trap?" Neto asked curiously.
"If you dare to swear in the name of that damn god, I will believe you this time." Ke Lan said.
But despite what he said, while digging the soil, Ke Lan calmly pulled the pull ring of a high-explosive grenade and held it in his palm. At the same time, he shifted his gaze elsewhere, trying his best to observe the excavation work with the corner of his eye to make sure that there was really a huge mirror or a display screen underneath.
However, the probability of this happening should not be high - if Neto could really get a display screen that could show the real scene of the dome, then he would have more than a hundred ways to make this display screen appear in front of Ke Lan, and there would be no need to use such a lame method to deceive Ke Lan.
The soil had been intentionally compacted, but it was still much looser than the surrounding ground , so the excavation process was very easy. After a while, two white leg bones appeared in Ke Lan's field of vision.
"..." Ke Lan took a deep breath and continued digging.
Judging from the length of the leg bones, the deceased should be a male, and a tall male. Valentina and Asano Akira can basically be ruled out. The remaining options are only Ivan and Danning.
This was not much different from what Ke Lan had expected. It was not difficult for Valentina, who had the Blasphemer mecha, and Asano Akira, who was abnormally strong, to survive in the Gray Mist Forest. In comparison, Ivan and Danning's combat effectiveness was much weaker than the two of them.
Not to mention the weird gray fog forest, if Ivan and Danning were left in this jungle hunting ground, they would probably be killed by the mutants in the jungle within a few hours.
"Don't be Ivan... Don't be Ivan..." Ke Lan kept repeating to himself as he quickened his movements. After a while, he dug out a complete human skeleton from the soil.
But at this time, Ke Lan was confused.
The height of this skeleton is approximately between 1.83 and 1.85 meters, while Ivan's height is only 1.78 meters, which is totally inconsistent.
If we talk about who in the hunting group is of this height, it is probably only Zhuo Ligetu who is 1.85 meters tall, but the problem is that Zhuo Ligetu is not even in the team for this operation.
As for the guy named Denning in the "Lumberjack Team", although Ke Lan's memory of Denning was a little vague, he could still be sure that this skeleton was definitely not Denning.
Danning is a decent height of over 1.8 meters, but he has a very distinctive feature, so prominent that even if Ke Lan has forgotten his appearance, she will never forget it - Danning's little finger on his right hand is only half.
According to him, he accidentally made a mistake while operating the logging machine and was cut by the saw blade. Later, because the impact was not serious, he did not install a cyborg prosthesis which is expensive and requires frequent maintenance.
The little finger of the right hand of the skeleton in front of us is intact.
It was impossible for Denning to receive bone-setting surgery in this place. Even if it did, there would be obvious signs of growth and healing between the connected finger bone and the original bone. However, there were no such signs on the finger bones of this corpse - until death, all ten of its fingers were "original" from the mother's womb.
"It's not Ivan...it's not Danning...then who could it be?"
Ke Lan examined the corpse but found no clues, so he had to focus his attention on the dug-out soil and the pit where the corpse was buried.
Ke Lan soon discovered some fabric fragments mixed in the soil. These fabric fragments should be the clothes that the deceased wore when he was alive - but these fabric fragments were severely corroded and did not look like they had just been buried in the soil... If Ke Lan had not dug this pit himself, he would even suspect that this corroded body had been buried here for more than ten years...
He held the fabric fragments between his fingertips and rubbed them gently. The fabric with its damaged fiber structure soon turned into fragments, but from the texture of the fiber fragments, Ke Lan got some important clues.
This is a high-molecular polymer fabric that is very common on the Ark. This fabric has excellent performance in all aspects and is not expensive. It is very popular among mercenaries and relic hunters... But the people in Ke Lan's hunting group will not wear clothes made of this fabric.
Anyway, they have money, so the equipments chosen by Ke Lan and his friends are all top-notch, and they don't even consider cost-effectiveness. For them, even if they spend a hundred times more, as long as the performance can be improved by one percent, it is worth it... Apart from anything else, the windbreaker on Ke Lan, which has been torn into a torn fishing net and was originally of ordinary style, is expensive enough to buy the flagship supercar launched by Anaheim Electronics this year - and it is the top-of-the-line one .
As for consumers who value cost performance the most... two words popped up in Ke Lan's mind: "army".
Is this man a mercenary? A relic hunter... or a soldier?
Ke Lan's brain was spinning rapidly as he dug out more pieces of fabric from the dirt...Finally, at the bottom of the pit, he found a rusty ring - even though the inscriptions on the ring were no longer legible, Ke Lan still recognized the style of the ring...
This is the safety buckle on the Ark Air Force Fleet pilot's uniform. It is a device used to secure the pilot to the seat. In the event of an unexpected situation, simply pulling the buckle gently will quickly release the seat belt. It is a very important safety design.
The design of this safety buckle has a very long history. In the beginning, it was only found on driving suits, but later it developed into a practical decoration on pilots' uniforms.
Is this person a pilot of the Air Force Fleet? But... do I know such a person?
If it was someone he knew, then this person definitely had nothing to do with Heruni and the others - he might not even have been born when Heruni and the others found the nest.
How did the pilot of the air fleet appear here? Who killed him?
If someone was killed and buried here, why did the body and clothes rot so quickly?
A series of questions popped up in Ke Lan's mind, but just when Ke Lan was extremely puzzled, white mist gradually seeped in from all directions and filled the forest.
"What's going on with this fog?" Ke Lan stood up vigilantly , took a few steps back, leaned against a tree trunk that was so thick that it took more than a dozen people to hug it, and looked around - the jungle hunting ground filled with fog was 90% similar to the gray fog forest "outside". The only difference was that the fog in the gray fog forest was gray, very thick, and extremely toxic and corrosive, but the fog now was just fog, and its color was closer to white.
"Do you like hunting games?" Neto asked with a hint of smile.
"I don't like it." Ke Lan rejected it casually.
"But the people who lived here back then loved it very much," Nieto said. "This hunting ground was the best entertainment in their boring lives. They released all kinds of cloned creatures here and hunted to their heart's content... Later, they felt that hunting wild animals had lost its fun, so they began to genetically modify the animals and turned them into powerful monsters... Later, even the monsters began to bore these people, so they turned their attention to their own kind. Hunters... hunters of 'people'."
"I'm not interested in listening to you about this. What's going on with this fog?" Ke Lan knew everything that Neto said - in his memory fragments, he saw with his own eyes that the children of the powerful and wealthy living in the upper city hunted the "contestants" selected by the Bottom Nest as prey. In their eyes, there was no difference between those Bottom Nest people and animals... Perhaps, the Bottom Nest people had even more points.
"In order to satisfy those people's interests, the hunting ground can simulate many kinds of weather, including foggy days," Nieto said. "Now, the hunting begins... I wish you a happy hunt."
