Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 920: Fire of Life
For some reason, a bold idea suddenly popped up in Ke Lan's mind: Could these people be experimental samples of some "social experiment"?
Perhaps, in the eyes of Nieto, the master and manager of the nest, these people are not "people", but just guinea pigs? That's why they are allowed to enter Yunding?
Just when Ke Lan was puzzled, a figure covered in flames ran out from a building on the right side. He wailed loudly, and beat the flames on his body with his hands as he ran... But the moment he raised his head and saw Ke Lan, he seemed to forget the pain of being burned by the flames, and even his screams stopped at that moment.
The next second, he turned around decisively and returned to the burning building...
However, the man’s burns were so severe that he fell to the ground before he could even run into the yard. After struggling for a few times, he became motionless.
"Am I that scary?" Ke Lan looked down at his current appearance speechlessly - although Ke Lan, who was wrapped in living armor all over his body, did look a little scary, but compared to those twisted monsters that could only be described as abstract and could be seen everywhere in the hive city of the Disaster Era, at least Ke Lan still maintained the general outline of a human being, and the style of the living armor was also closer to the standard armor of the army in the old era... Logically speaking, it shouldn't cause people to have such a fearful reaction.
Why did that person turn around and run away when he saw me? Why did he run into the burning house he had just escaped from, rather than asking me for help?
Ke Lan was a little confused.
Even though the man was dead beyond dead, Ke Lan still used a tentacle condensed from a living armor to drag his corpse over - this time Ke Lan was lucky: even though the distance between him and the corpse was more than twenty meters, there was no boundary of space debris within this distance, and the tentacle successfully dragged the corpse in front of Ke Lan.
The flames on the corpse had been extinguished , but this flame did not seem to be an ordinary flame. The man who could run and shout just a dozen seconds ago, now had his flesh and internal organs completely carbonized, and charred bones were exposed in many places.
In medicine, burns are generally divided into "third degree and four points", and the most serious "third degree burns" are only "injuries to the entire layer of skin, as well as deep muscles, bones, internal organs, etc., and the victim is in serious danger of life." The body in front of him looked like it had been immersed in molten iron at a temperature of thousands of degrees...
A dozen seconds ago, only his clothes and hair were burning, but a dozen seconds later, most parts of his body had been charred. Even the napalm bomb, which is known for its inhumanity, is not so efficient in burning people.
In fact, the most terrifying thing about napalm bombs is that the intense combustion can consume all the oxygen in an area. The proportion of those who died from napalm bombs due to suffocation due to lack of oxygen is actually much higher than those who were burned to death... Many of the charred corpses that look horrible were actually suffocated or choked to death by smoke before they were burned.
According to the feedback from the living armor, the oxygen in this area is actually quite sufficient, far from the point of suffocation... and the flames did not seem that scary. Ke Lan put them all out with just a few slaps of his tentacles. In fact, if this person just lay on the ground and rolled a few times, perhaps he could put out the flames on his body.
The ignition point of the human body is actually very high. Taking the corpse disposal facilities on the Ark as an example, the temperature of the crematorium must be above 800 degrees Celsius... Under normal circumstances, as long as there is no napalm or the like on the body, it is not easy to set a person on fire, unless all the clothes on his body are made of very flammable materials with a very high combustion temperature.
Burns are very common, but it is really strange to burn a person into this state.
The tips of the tentacles turned into two sharp scalpels, which cut open the charred corpse, removed the carbonized muscles and organs, and revealed the bones in front of Ke Lan.
Soon, Ke Lan discovered two things that didn't seem quite right.
The first unreasonable thing is that the skeleton of this corpse is very normal - in the hive city, normal is the biggest abnormality. Five hundred thousand years ago, the disaster had already swept the entire hive city, and even the owner of the hive city was not spared. Logically, except for the group of "tunnel dwellers", no one could escape. But this corpse did not show any signs of deformation, whether it was the bones or the charred organs whose outlines could be vaguely discerned.
Ke Lan recalled what this man looked like when he was still alive - although his whole body was covered in flames, it could still be seen that there was no obvious mutation on the surface of his body. No tentacles or growths were seen, let alone the large-scale deformations that were common on corpses.
There is a huge gap between the skeletons of an Erosion Corpse and human skeletons. Except for the "special model" of the Erosion Corpse like Wilson, the other Erosion Corpses that Ke Lan has seen can basically not maintain their original human form... If the person in front of him is also an "Phoenix", then he should not have been burned to death by fire - if it were Wilson, with this level of injury, he would have recovered and stood in front of Ke Lan.
The second unreasonable thing is the carbonization degree of the bones, which seems to be even higher than that of the flesh and internal organs... The thinner bones, such as the clavicle and ribs, broke into pieces with just a light touch of Ke Lan's "scalpel", while the thicker bones, such as the thigh bone, had fine cracks on the surface. Ke Lan only poked it a few times with the tip of the knife, and the charred and broken bone residue... no, to be precise, it should be carbon powder, which began to fall down. Perhaps with a little more strength, he could directly break the thigh bone.
It takes time for the flames to burn through the skin and muscles and reach the bones. The human body is an excellent thermal insulator. After more than ten seconds, the person's bones definitely should not be like this.
To make the bones crispy like this - although Ke Lan had never roasted human bones, but when the Hunting God Group had a dinner together, they used a large oven to roast cow leg bones. That leg bone was roasted for eight hours before the fork could easily penetrate the bone... Moreover, the oven is a closed environment, the temperature inside must be higher than that in an open environment, and the heating efficiency is better.
At the place where Ke Lan is currently, the temperature of the metal floor is about 360 degrees, and the air temperature is slightly lower, about 150 degrees Celsius. In this open environment, heat will continuously transfer to places with lower temperatures. Even if the body is wrapped in flames, it is not difficult to reach the high temperature of 700 to 800 degrees.
Moreover, there was another suspicious point, which was the most bizarre: if the bones were roasted like this, there should be no flesh left on the body - when Ke Lan and his team roasted the beef leg bones, the meat and fat on the surface of the bones were removed, and the real edible part was actually the bone marrow. But even if they didn't scrape off the meat attached to the bones, after eight hours, it would be difficult for anything to be left on the surface of the bones.
Ke Lan seemed to have remembered something, and the "scalpel" attached to the front end of the tentacle suddenly stabbed at the thigh bone of the corpse, cutting the already very brittle thigh bone in the middle.
"Sure enough... the degree of carbonization inside the leg bones is higher than the surface of the bones, and the bone marrow is almost evaporated..." Ke Lan muttered to himself.
The end of the autopsy, the man's behavior before death, and all the unreasonable things combined can only mean one thing: the fire was burning from within the body , or more precisely, from the bone marrow.
While the outside of the body looks intact, the inside has already been severely burned. When the flames penetrate the skin and flesh and appear on the body, this person is actually beyond saving... His organs and bones have been carbonized. The fact that he was able to run out of the house can be considered a miracle of life.
"Could it be that... the source of this fire is actually these people?" Ke Lan took a deep breath, "Is it the spontaneous combustion of human bodies that ignited these buildings?"
No... that doesn't seem right. The range of spontaneous combustion of the human body is very limited. Ke Lan has seen many examples of spontaneous combustion of the human body. Although these examples are very strange and have not been scientifically explained to this day, generally, the only things that are burned together with the person who is spontaneously combusting are things that are in direct contact with him, such as clothes, bedding, or nearby curtains. There has never been an example of an entire house being burned down along with the person who is spontaneously combusting.
Even if the blood flowing in the veins and the marrow in the bones of the spontaneous combustion person were all fuel, it would not be able to have such great power.
What's more, the flames on the body of the corpse in front of him went out after it died completely - Ke Lan only now realized that the flame was not extinguished by his own tentacles, but was extinguished by itself.
It seems that... the burning flame is neither human bone marrow nor human blood, but... human vitality.
When a person dies, it means that his vitality has returned to zero, and the flame that uses vitality as "fuel" naturally cannot continue to burn.
"Fire of Life", this name sounds like it is full of positive energy, but the true meaning of these four words makes Ke Lan feel a chill .
This kind of fire was obviously not an ordinary fire... He looked at the burning street in front of him and suddenly understood the terrifying power left by the existence that Neto mentioned.
As long as the person is not dead, the flame will not go out... This is an unsolvable killing move, no matter how strong the individual is, he cannot withstand it - the stronger the strength, the more vigorous the vitality, and the more intense the flame will be. The longer the time lasts, the more intense the pain will be... Just thinking about it is enough to make people shudder.
Death is the only means by which the "fire of life" can be extinguished.
Ke Lan began to hesitate whether to continue moving forward. If this fire touched him... with his current means, he might not be able to put it out.
Even if that kind of "fake death" can deceive the sight of that existence, the "fire of life" is actually fueled by vitality. Even if the host is reduced to ashes, as long as there is a trace of vitality that has not been completely extinguished, the flame can be preserved. After Ke Lan recovers, the small flame will instantly reignite... Even if Ke Lan cannot be burned to death, he will always suffer the burning pain deep in his bones.
This is like Monkey King being locked in an alchemy furnace. However, the alchemy furnace is an external fire source, while this fire of life is ignited from within one's own body. As long as life continues, the burning will never stop.
"What kind of sin has befallen these people..." Ke Lan looked at the charred corpses strewn all over the streets and couldn't help but sigh in his heart - if they were touched by such flames, death would probably be the only real relief.
"This space debris is too dangerous. We have to leave quickly before the fire spreads." Ke Lan began to extend his tentacles in all directions, trying to find a space boundary to leave... But even if he increased the search radius to thirty meters, he still couldn't find the place where this space "bordered" another outer space.
Unlike the space with only islands and abyss just now, this space is relatively complete. If we use a mirror as an analogy, the island space is like small pieces of glass, and this place is the larger piece among the fragments.
If he wanted to expand the search range, he had to extend his tentacles into the burning blocks, but Ke Lan would not do that unless it was absolutely necessary... Who knew if the tentacles would draw the strange flames to himself? If he really got burned, it would not be a problem that could be solved by "cutting off one's own arm".
Just when Ke Lan was in a dilemma, the scene around him suddenly changed. The flames and smoke suddenly disappeared, and the burning sensation from the air and the ground also disappeared in an instant - he found himself in a room with bright lights.
The walls, floor, and ceiling of the room were all made of metal, with closed doors on all four sides. There was no visible lighting on the ceiling, but a bright white light with a cool tone filled the entire room.
"When was I swallowed by another piece of space debris?" Ke Lan took a deep breath and tried to keep his breathing steady as much as possible - no matter what, it was a good thing to be able to leave that place.
At least the room in front of me doesn't look dangerous.
"Your luck... is really good." Just as Ke Lan was looking at the scene in the room, a voice suddenly rang out.
"Who are you?" Ke Lan subconsciously took a step back, and the living armor condensed into an airtight protective shield that wrapped his body.
"The one you were looking for."
"The owner of the nest?" Ke Lan was stunned. He had a very unreal feeling... To use a profound Chinese proverb to describe it, that is "no matter how hard you try, you still can't find it, but when you get it, it's effortless"... In the last second, he was still thinking about how to escape from the flames, and in the next second, he actually found the owner of the nest.
"So I said you are lucky. The third space fragment you arrived at is here, and even the timing is almost perfect." The voice continued, "In three minutes, disaster will befall this hive city."
