Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 900: The True Coffin of Eternal Life
In the center of the pit, there was a pool of blurry flesh and blood mixed with crushed rocks. Dark red blood was splattered all around like an explosion. It was obvious that the person was deader than dead.
Even the large-caliber pistol that the opponent used to attack Ke Lan was crushed into a thin discus.
This is a fourth-generation R-type large-caliber hunting pistol produced by Magnum Industries, using 0.5-inch caliber full-power Magnum bullets, which is exactly consistent with Thirty-Three's judgment.
However, when Ke Lan's eyes moved to the grip of the pistol, his brows furrowed.
There is a string of laser-etched inscriptions on the grip of the pistol, which are used to indicate the production batch number and ownership of the gun. Although the inscription on this gun has been crushed into a lump, Ke Lan can still see the six characters at the end of the inscription - "15SSHT"
"HT" means hunting group, and "SS" is the pinyin abbreviation of the name of this hunting group. The "15" in the front refers to the fifteenth hunting group with the pinyin abbreviation "SS" among the registered hunting groups... and the fifteenth hunting group with the pinyin abbreviation "SS" is exactly Ke Lan's Hunting God Hunting Group!
There is also an inscription with this suffix on the handle of the pistol that Ke Lan uses.
"Is this guy... a member of the hunting group?"
Ke Lan squatted down and picked out the piece of clothing that was pressed as thin as paper from the pile of rotten flesh - judging from the fabric and style of the clothes, it should be a uniform of the engineering department of the Hunting God Group.
"Engineering?"
Ke Lan was stunned for a moment. The engineering department of the God Hunter Group was mainly managed by Layton and Chi Hanfeng. Recruiting people and assigning positions were all the responsibility of these two people. Ke Lan seldom asked about it on weekdays... He only vaguely remembered that when he left the Ark, the size of the engineering department had expanded to more than a hundred people, but he couldn't really tell each person's name, background, or specialties.
"Why are the people from the engineering department here?" Ke Lan pondered. He knew that the Undead Crew had already made a move against the God Hunters, but with the protection of the Aguna Tor and the body named "Joker", the lives of the Hounds should be guaranteed - if it really doesn't work, at least they can drive the Aguna Tor to escape from Alpha and run to the space area that the Undead Crew Club cannot control, so they can temporarily avoid the attack.
It doesn't have to be far, as long as it escapes the Alpha Planet's Earth-Moon Circle, it will be difficult for the Ark's fleet to lock on to Yaguna Tor's position.
But the inexplicable appearance of this " engineering operator" made Ke Lan nervous - although he was reluctant to think in that direction, it now seemed that the other members of the hunting group might have been implicated as well.
"Could it be that Lao Gou and the others are worried about my safety... so they drove the Yaguna Kator directly into the Gray Mist Forest?" Ke Lan flipped through the engineering uniform in his hand that was soaked with blood plasma. "But... if it was someone from the hunting group, he should be my teammate instead of an enemy. Why would he ambush me? Could it be that he accidentally saw the dome and his whole body was corroded? But the hand I just saw... doesn't seem to have signs of corroding..."
Just when Ke Lan was about to dig the big hole made by the gravity gun upside down, the paste-like flesh and blood suddenly began to wriggle... No, to be precise, it should have begun to boil. A large number of bubbles appeared on the surface of the flesh and blood. These bubbles quickly grew and burst, releasing a strong fishy smell into the air - even though Ke Lan did not have direct contact with the flesh and blood, he could feel that the temperature in the air was rising rapidly!
"Not dead yet?"
Ke Lan suddenly jumped back, jumped out of the pit, picked up the gravity gun, and pulled the trigger again.
"BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!"
The gravity gun fired three times in succession, and the originally half-meter-deep pit was turned into a vertical shaft in just a few seconds. The light of the crystal column sealed in the glass tube above the gravity gun was completely extinguished - the energy was exhausted. Before finding a backup energy source of the same specification or mastering the charging method, this weapon could not be used for the time being.
Ke Lan had just fired three shots at maximum power, and he was even worried that the ground of the upper city would be directly crushed through - but it turned out that he was overthinking it. The depth of the vertical shaft had exceeded 100 meters, but the wall at the bottom was still soil and rock, and even the alloy nest structure was not seen. This meant that the ground depth of the upper city was much deeper than that of the lower city and the bottom nest.
The fourth floor of the Hive City, "Cloud Top"... I'm afraid it's an incredible place...
But if you want to enter the fourth floor, you must first get rid of the third floor manager "Nietto"; and to find "Nietto"'s body, you must first pass through this jungle hunting ground; and to pass through the jungle hunting ground, you must eliminate the current threat...
That person... or rather , "that thing" still did not die after taking three maximum-power gravity gun shots... The flesh and blood gathered together to form a dark red, slug-like creature that crawled up the wall of the pit.
The "slug" squirmed its fat body, and within just a few seconds the mucous membrane on its surface hardened and formed a shell-like structure. Ke Lan picked up a stone and threw it hard. The stone smashed into pieces on the shell, but not even a scratch was left.
The hardness of the shell is no less than those high-strength alloys used as the front armor of tanks. Ke Lan was too lazy to take out his gun... Instead of wasting bullets, he might as well see what this thing can do.
The other party did not make Ke Lan wait for long. In just one minute, cracks like tea eggs began to appear on the surface of the hard shell. The next second, the shells were shaken off like a layer of dead skin, and a naked white man stood up from the debris on the ground.
"Who are you?" Ke Lan asked directly.
He did not see any madness, confusion or fear in the other party's eyes. The other party's consciousness was in a very clear state - this meant that the attack just now was most likely his own intention.
"Wilson, an engineer from the God Hunter Group." The white man replied, "You can call me by that name."
"You know... I'm asking about your real identity." Ke Lan raised the gun, with the black muzzle pointed at the center of "Wilson's" brow - although the gun could not pose any threat to "Wilson", the deterrent power of pointing a gun was definitely greater than pointing an engineer shovel.
"I don't know either." "Wilson" said calmly, as if the person who had just fought a life-and-death duel with Ke Lan was not him. "The person who created me only told me what the mission was, but didn't give me a name. If you insist on me saying a name, then it's Wilson... I have lived with this name and the identity it represents for more than ten years. Sometimes even I forget my true identity... From a certain perspective, most of my life has been 'Wilson'."
Manufactured? Lived as "Wilson" for more than a decade?
Ke Lan immediately captured these two key pieces of information from the other party's words.
The time node more than a decade ago was very sensitive - Ke Lan and the "Prophet" were also "created" by the Undead Crew more than a decade ago , and there were a large number of "defective products" in the same batch as them. Those "defective products" were either destroyed directly or used as consumables for deciphering the Alpha Documents...
Could it be that apart from himself and the prophet, there are actually three other "symbiotes" who can survive for a long time?
"Who created you?" Ke Lan continued to ask.
"I don't know either." Wilson shrugged. He was very cooperative with Ke Lan's series of questions. "Actually, my memory is also incomplete. Most of the time, it was Wilson who was awake. As for me, I was in a dazed and semi-sleeping state most of the time."
Dual personality? Ke Lan was slightly startled. If the other party was not lying, it meant that there were two personalities in this body... Logically speaking, this was impossible...
Ke Lan collected very little information about the symbiote, but there was one very specific item in it, which stated that if the "symbiote" had any mental illness, it must be destroyed immediately after being detected to prevent any accidents.
If this guy has a split personality, the Undead Crew should just throw him into the incinerator...
No... maybe not...
After all, a "symbiote" that can survive for a long time is too rare. There is no guarantee that the members of the Undead Crew will not take risks and risk losing control to keep this "Wilson"...
"The people who made you...are the Undead Crew, right?"
"I don't know." Wilson's attitude was very cooperative, but he seemed to be clueless. Ke Lan couldn't be sure whether he really didn't know or was just pretending to be stupid...
"Why are you attacking me? Is this a task assigned to you by the person who created you ?" Ke Lan asked while sizing up the other person's condition - the Wilson in front of him looked no different from an ordinary human being. Apart from his stronger physique, he showed no signs of enhancement or transformation, and those monster-like mutated tissues were completely invisible... Only the eggshell-like shell fragments on the ground reminded Ke Lan how the "person" in front of him had just been "resurrected".
"My mission is to retrieve your brain... This thing is very important." Wilson said, "As for whether you are dead or alive, I don't care. If you are willing to give up resistance, then I can take you back intact."
"What good is my brain? Where are you taking me back to? The Ark?"
"No, there is no place on the Ark where the ceremony can be held." Wilson shook his head. "Your brain should be placed inside the 'White Coffin', not inside this body that is about to be over-eclipsed."
"The White Coffin... is it the coffin that appeared inside Aguna Kator?"
"That's the 'Black Coffin'... The 'Black Coffin' symbolizes power, and the 'White Coffin' symbolizes wisdom. Power without wisdom will only bring about raging disasters and destroy everything." Wilson continued, "You were supposed to wake up in the 'White Coffin' and eat the fruit from the 'Black Coffin', but something went wrong with the ritual. You were not placed in the 'White Coffin', but were mixed into the symbiote's cultivation container."
"You...you mean...I'm not a symbiote?" Ke Lan's eyes twitched violently. The amount of information contained in the other party's few short sentences was enough to cause his brain to crash briefly. He couldn't help but feel a little suffocated...If "Wilson" did not lie...he was not a symbiote...then what was he?
White coffin, black coffin...what is the so-called "ritual"?
Ke Lan clearly thought that she had already grasped a lot of the truth, but at this moment she found that all the truths she thought were overturned by the other party's words.
It was still unclear how much truth there was in Wilson's words, but there was one thing Ke Lan was certain of, that the body in the "Black Coffin" had an inexplicable connection with herself... Since the "Black Coffin" was connected to herself, the "White Coffin" should be the same.
But... what exactly are these "Black Coffin" and "White Coffin"? Why did they appear inside Yagunakotor?
Were these two "coffins" made by the undead crew, or did they already exist in Yaguna Tor?
What are their functions?
Ke Lan sighed helplessly - although he successfully joined the Undead Crew, there were still too many things that the Crew hid from him. None of the core secrets had ever been revealed to Ke Lan. He knew even less than the "Wilson" in front of him who suffered from schizophrenia.
"What would happen if you put my brain into the White Coffin?" Ke Lan asked tentatively, "If you can tell me the result, I can cooperate with you..."
"The full name of the Black Coffin and the White Coffin combined is 'The Coffin of Eternal Life'." It was not Wilson who answered Ke Lan, but Nieto. "You may be surprised why its name is the same as the hibernation capsule those people use to preserve themselves. That's because the hibernation capsule they made is actually a poor imitation of the 'Coffin of Eternal Life'."
"How do you know these things?" Ke Lan asked in a deep voice. It is still unclear whether Neto and Wilson are on the same camp. If for some reason these two sides join forces, the situation will be a bit bad for Ke Lan.
"Because the 'Coffin of Eternal Life' was originally made in the hive, and the people who made it wanted to use it to fight against disasters..."
"How do you fight it? Like the undead crew, seal your body to slow down the erosion?"
"No, I said, that's just a poor imitation... The real immortality should be... becoming a god itself."
"Become... a god?"
"But this is blasphemy against the great God, so, there is no doubt that they failed," Neto said in a sarcastic tone.
