Volume 5: Bottomless Sinkhole Chapter 247 Biological Weapons Testing Site
Ke Lan first found a cutting machine from the equipment depot of the "Greece" and cut off the ice that wrapped the stone tablet, leaving only a two-centimeter layer of ice on each surface as protection. Then he used a flame spray gun to melt the last two centimeters of ice bit by bit. This step must be done with extreme caution. If the temperature of the flame and the burning time are not properly controlled, the body of the stone tablet may be damaged.
The second step took more than an hour to completely remove the ice on the entire stone tablet. After wiping all the water stains on the surface of the stone tablet with absorbent filter paper, a new problem appeared in front of everyone -
Who will be the first to touch this stone tablet?
According to previous experience, after the first person touches the stone tablet, it will shatter into a pile of powder, and then no one else who touches this pile of powder will react.
In other words, the stone tablets that can pass on the Alpha language are disposable items, and each one can only be triggered once.
"How about we all put our hands on it and try it at the same time?" Layton suggested.
"I don't agree..." Ke Lan shook her head. "Let's not talk about whether this will make everyone accept the inheritance. If there is any uncontrollable accident, it will be too late to regret... This is like a computer terminal performing a one-to-one data transmission. If the receiver changes from one to multiple, the transmitted information will also be fragmented, and each terminal will receive a piece of garbled code that cannot be interpreted. For storage devices, only one formatting is needed to completely delete these garbled codes... But our brains are not computers..."
"Even if the information storage technology used by Alpha Civilization is very different from human computer technology," Ke Lan continued, "I think doing this is still a very risky behavior."
"Even if only one person comes into contact with the stone tablet, there are still unknown risks." The Hound sighed, "This is a gamble."
"Let me do it." The person who stepped forward was Ivan. He took out a dagger made of a stone awl from his pocket and handed it to Ke Lan. "Anyway, the half of my life that is left is picked up by chance. Instead of lingering on, I might as well devote myself to science... If I succeed, I can also use this ability on those topics that have been stagnant in the academic world for a long time and cannot be broken through."
"If I'm crazy," Ivan suddenly changed the subject, "don't hesitate, kill me with this dagger, and then burn my body and the monster's cells inside it together..."
"Don't talk nonsense." The Hound rolled his eyes at him. "It's not that easy to go crazy. Natasha is still waiting for you to come back--"
"Don't talk nonsense, old dog..." Ke Lan covered the hound's mouth, then looked at Ivan, "Ivan, are you sure you are ready?"
"Yeah." He nodded, then stretched out his intact hand and gently placed it on the stone tablet...
…
Nothing happened.
The stone tablet did not break, and there was no abnormality on Ivan's body.
"It seems...it seems to have no effect..." Leighton couldn't help but say out loud.
"It seems that not everyone can have such bad luck as Ke Lan." The Hound complained, but for some reason, although everyone felt a little disappointed, they all felt vaguely relieved.
"But we can't say that we have gained nothing. At least, based on the contents recorded on these stone tablets, we can roughly infer what the original purpose of the 'Bottomless Sinkhole' ruins was." Ke Lan said, "There are two possibilities. First, this relic is likely to be a biological weapon testing site built by the Alpha people under the glacier; second, this tiankeng is simply a place to store information... Its function is similar to that of an archive or library in the human world."
At this point, Ke Lan suddenly paused, took out his pistol, put it on the table, and looked at everyone: "Do you remember what I said in front of the stone gate when we first formed a team?"
"I remember... you saw a lot of hallucinations at that time..." The Hound stopped talking abruptly. His expression suddenly changed, and even his tone was slightly trembling. "Could it be that those things were not hallucinations? What you saw was real?!"
"That should be the case, otherwise there's no way to explain it... In your memory, I never fired a gun in the ruins, but when we were sorting out our equipment on the battleship, the magazine in my pistol was empty, with only the last bullet left." Ke Lan said.
At this time, Asano Akiya, who had been silent, stood up. He raised the sword in his hand horizontally in front of him and said, "Although I don't remember fighting anything in the stone room, my sword remembers that it was a strong enemy."
"That is to say, our memories were modified..." The Hound pondered, "But why was you missed? You hadn't touched the stone tablet at that time..."
"It's a mental attack. The reason why our memories changed is because we were attacked mentally... just like those crazy hunters, and Ke Lan happened to be the one who luckily escaped the attack." Ivan analyzed.
"Ruins A-087 and S-018 are twin ruins... or rather, they should have been the same ruins. The core area we found during that exploration was only the control hub of the upper ruins, and the lower ruins was this bottomless cenote." Hound said slowly, "In this case, it makes perfect sense that we were attacked mentally... Damn it, I didn't expect to end up back here after going around in circles."
"So, those biological tissues that you saw sealed in the ice, Ke Lan, are real? And that huge eyeball that can move freely in the ice, and..." Ivan said, and couldn't help but glance at the hound.
"There's also a piece of meat that can become exactly like me." The hound continued Ivan's words, "To be honest, just thinking about it gives me goose bumps. If I really encounter such a thing, I will definitely shoot its head off!"
"The situation doesn't look good!" Layton suddenly said in a hurry, "If there are really a lot of monsters frozen in the ice of Ruins A-087, then wouldn't all these monsters run out after the glacier collapse?! They... they can't be hiding under this sinkhole, right?"
"Hiss... Now that you put it that way, I find it quite scary..." Zhuo Ligetu took a breath.
"However, it is also possible that these monsters were buried alive by the collapsed glacier..." The Hound rubbed his chin. He hadn't shaved for several days, and his originally short stubble had grown to almost one centimeter long.
"There is a high possibility that they are alive. This kind of monster cannot be viewed with ordinary eyes... Let alone other things, do you think that a huge eyeball that can move freely in ice hundreds of meters deep and whose hardness is comparable to steel due to its weight will be crushed to death by the collapsing glacier?" Ivan said solemnly.
"If we go down, won't we... run into these ghost things?" Leighton subconsciously clenched his fists and said in a deep voice.
