Volume 2: The Undersea City Chapter 80 Mission Log
Based on Ke Lan's understanding of this unit, the word "give up" has never appeared in the dictionary of the Navy SEALs. The training these soldiers have undergone is enough for them to face hell. Even if the enemy is a demon from the abyss, they will pull the trigger without hesitation.
He had his ammunition and food supplies intact, and he hadn't even encountered any battle... What else could have driven him to give up his desire to survive?
The instinct for survival and the will as a warrior combined are no match for the despair... What on earth happened to this non-commissioned officer named Collins?
Ke Lan searched the body again. In addition to some standard wilderness survival supplies, he also found a damaged walkie-talkie, a photo and a paper mission log.
The photo material is a kind of photosensitive plastic photo paper that has long been obsolete. Due to aging, the entire photo has turned completely white, and it is impossible to tell what was originally photographed.
Ke Lan could only put the photo aside and open the mission log.
Many pages of the diary had been torn off, leaving less than half of its thickness. The yellowed pages were covered with scribbled lines, and a few pages had even been pierced by the pen tip because of excessive force. The leaked ink spread across the paper, forming a black patch the size of an old-era coin.
Ke Lan flipped through the pages one by one. The contents of each page were similar. Collins seemed to be just venting his anger... Ke Lan could even imagine him holding a pen tightly, gritting his teeth, and scribbling on the paper anxiously...
These lines have neither any regularity nor any aesthetic appeal. Ke Lan tried to compare them with the coastline, but there was no match at all.
Not a code word, not a map, nothing at all, no information contained in them... at least that's what it seemed like for now.
I turned all the way to page 15 before a line of text finally appeared.
"I AM SORRY."
Sorry? Why did he say sorry? Who was he saying sorry to?
Although there was finally some content that Ke Lan could understand, this nonsensical apology made him even more confused.
Presumably, Sergeant Collins must have had some mental problems in the last period of his life, but what exactly caused him to become like this?
Ke Lan could only continue to flip through the pages, but after the word "I'm sorry" there were several blank pages...Finally, on page 22, some valuable information appeared again.
This is a simple drawing. It is a long object that looks like a stick, and at one end of the stick is an eye...
one eye!
Ke Lan took a deep breath - this was not a stick, but a stone pillar, the same stone pillar he had seen under the sea! The stone pillar with a giant eye carved on the top! !
Those stone pillars are everywhere in the underwater city, and have never appeared in the Alpha ruins elsewhere.
Collins had also seen such stone pillars, and like himself, he had also been to that place!
Ke Lan's breathing quickened slightly.
"No, this is not right..." Ke Lan glanced at Collins' body and shook his head vigorously.
The equipment on the corpses were all land combat equipment. Without equipment like deep diving suits, it would be impossible to reach the underwater city. One hundred meters is not deep, but it is deadly enough for humans without equipment to protect them... In Collins' era, biochemically modified people had not yet received official written approval and could not join the army.
Even if Collins was a top-notch diving expert, he didn't even have a out of a hundred thousand people. What's more, if Collins was immune to the toxins and radiation in the sea water like Liao Zilang, he wouldn't have the festering scars caused by radiation sickness on his skin.
"He couldn't have been to the underwater city... At least, he couldn't have come here from the underwater city..." Even Ke Lan began to become incoherent, his head was a mess.
" Nothing can be explained by common sense... Damn it... Even a normal person would be driven crazy." He curled his lips helplessly and continued to flip through the pages.
Blank, blank, scribbled lines, blank, a page full of circles, scribbled lines, blank, and blank again...Finally, the task log was turned to the last page, and when Ke Lan saw clearly what was written on the last page, he couldn't help but tremble slightly.
"LEAVE THE BED"
This was not the first time he had seen this text. The last time was on the Pioneer, on the inside of the outer shell of the submersible that had been salvaged...
Exactly the same content... Is this really a warning from the dead?
Ke Lan fell into deep thought .
Leaving the seabed? First of all, he had never reached the seabed. The underwater city was built on the seabed plateau, which was not the seabed in the strict sense. As for the abyss hatchery... although it was very deep, it definitely had not reached the bottom. Otherwise, Ke Lan's diving suit would not be able to withstand the water pressure at that depth of the seabed...
Or does this "BED" not mean the seabed?
"If it's in Chinese... it will definitely be much easier to understand..." Ke Lan tried hard to recall the several meanings of the word "bed" in Chinese: bed, seabed or riverbed, flower bed or nursery, etc. In addition to nouns, this word can also be used as a verb, meaning to sleep, place, embed or plant.
"Eh? Planting...seeds?"
Ke Lan suddenly recalled that in the exile settlement before, the "Apostle of the Prophet" recited a spell-like sentence in Alpha language before turning into a seed of erosion - "I am willing to offer my body as a breeding ground for the seeds of erosion to awaken and sprout."
Hotbed! This is what the word bed means! Ke Lan was startled, and he immediately realized that this warning was to keep him away from the hatchery under the abyss!
There lurks an out-of-control fusion being, whose danger level is unimaginable. If it is triggered, it will be an unimaginable disaster for humanity!
"But...it still doesn't seem right..."
Ke Lan bit his lip and stroked the wrinkled paper with his fingers. No matter from which angle he looked at it, the explanation just now could be said to be flawless. But he subconsciously felt that something seemed to be wrong... If he were Collins, would he leave such a warning after seeing the horrible monster in the hatchery?
"Leave the bed...stay away from that hatchery?"
No, if it were him, he would definitely write it differently: "A MONSTER IN THE BED" - a big monster is lurking in the hatchery.
Putting aside the question of who left the warning in the diving chamber, Collins obviously had plenty of time when he wrote this text, so why didn't he write things more clearly?
Or did Ke Lan misunderstand it from the beginning...this sentence was not a warning at all?
