Volume 5: Bottomless Sinkhole Chapter 256 Stone Chamber and Stone Platform
"That is to say, if something finds our true form now, we won't even have the ability to resist... Damn, it's scary just thinking about it." said the Hound.
"Even if there is no external threat, our bodies will go into shock due to dehydration over time, and eventually die of organ failure." Ke Lan added, "So, the most urgent thing is to find a way to escape from this dream world."
"Will we not be awakened by thirst?" asked the Hound.
"I don't think so. Even if the body sends a signal to the brain that it is dehydrated, this symptom of thirst will only appear in our dreams and will not wake us up... You just drank a whole bottle of soda. Do you feel your abdomen bloating due to the carbon dioxide escaping from the soda?"
"Now that you mention it, it seems like it's not the case... I felt my throat was a little dry just now, and it's still very dry now..."
"So how are we going to get out?"
"I have an idea," Ke Lan glanced at the gun in Hound's hand and said, "Try to kill me."
"Beat you to death... I won't kill you in real life too, will I?" The Hound said worriedly.
"Then let's try shooting him in the leg first?"
"...Okay, get ready, I'm going to shoot." The Hound nodded, raised the gun in his hand, and aimed at Gates - that is, Ke Lan's leg, "Three, two... one!"
"Bang!"
The 10.5mm caliber armor-piercing bullet easily tore through the polymer armor on Gates' leg, and rotated into the leg muscles. Then, the deformed bullet began to roll, forming a huge cavity in the flesh - from the front, there was only a coin-sized bullet hole, and behind the bullet hole, several kilograms of flesh were torn off, and blood splattered more than ten meters away.
If a normal person was shot in the leg like this, he would have fallen to the ground long ago, but Ke Lan just felt unsteady...
"You...you don't feel any pain?" The hound also noticed the abnormality and asked.
"I can feel a little... but only a little, like the dull pain of being bitten by a small insect through the clothes... I think it may be because this body does not belong to me." Ke Lan replied.
"Then even if I shoot you in the head, it's only Gates who's killed, not you, right?"
" That's the theory."
"Then I really shot." The Hound said no more, aimed the crosshairs directly at Gates' head and pulled the trigger.
"Bang!"
At the moment when the bullet pierced Gates' head, Ke Lan only felt dizzy, and the scene in front of him began to gradually distort - through the perspective of Gates after he fell, Ke Lan could see that the hound was grabbing his shoulders and shaking him hard, his lips opening and closing rapidly, as if he was saying something loudly, however, Ke Lan could no longer hear anything.
…
There was only darkness left in the field of vision.
After an unknown amount of time, Ke Lan regained consciousness again. Although the surroundings were still dark, he could vaguely smell a faint sour smell.
Sour?
This is the unique smell of a highly efficient oxygen generator after it reacts to produce oxygen. The equipment that Ke Lan and his team carried when they explored the deep pit this time included a high-pressure tank containing this oxygen generator.
"Am I...back to the real world?!"
Ke Lan's first reaction was to reach out and feel around his body - he first felt the hard powered exoskeleton on his chest, and then the cold-proof and weight-resistant suit worn inside the exoskeleton.
He reached down and luckily, the equipment bag hanging around his waist was not lost and the things inside were still there.
Ke Lan found a cold light stick and gently twisted the metal cover at the end of the stick. The faint green light immediately dispelled the darkness around it.
This is a stone chamber of medium size, with an architectural style very similar to the one in ruins A-087. In the center of the chamber there is a rectangular stone platform more than one meter high. It was on this stone platform that Ke Lan woke up.
He flipped over and jumped off the stone platform, pulled out his pistol, and loaded a bullet into the chamber.
"Why is it such a ghost place..."
The last time they explored the glacial ruins, they encountered a monster as powerful as the flesh centipede in the stone chamber. If Asano Akira hadn't suddenly appeared, Ke Lan and Layton would probably have died there... and this stone chamber now gave Ke Lan a very familiar feeling - if a "big guy" jumped out at this time, it would be a lot of fun.
Ke Lan knew that the gun in his hand could not pose a threat to that kind of thing, but holding it in his hand could at least give him courage...
Holding a gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other, he walked along the stone platform. There was no secret passage under the platform, and the ceiling above was intact. The only entrance and exit was a stone door at the three o'clock direction of the platform.
What puzzled Ke Lan the most was... why did he wake up in such a stone chamber after falling into the tiankeng?
Could it be that something moved itself here?
He looked back at the stone table behind him... and a very uncomfortable feeling surged in his heart: this stone table was like a dissecting table, and he, lying on it, was like a biological specimen waiting to be dissected.
Fortunately, when he woke up, he didn't have any parts missing from his body. In the horror movies Ke Lan had seen, the unlucky protagonists woke up to find themselves disemboweled. The lucky ones only lost a kidney, while the unluckiest ones not only had all their parts intact, but also had a lot more stuff in their bodies...
Ke Lan subconsciously pressed her stomach... Well, there shouldn't be an extra arm or something else inside...
The stone platform was solid, and there were no alien technological devices left by the Alpha civilization in the stone chamber. The only thing with some technical content was probably the stone door that was opened with energy crystals. On this stone door, there was a warning sign written in Alpha: "Experimental area, entry is strictly prohibited for personnel without level 6 clearance or above."
"An important experimental site... Is this a laboratory?" Ke Lan muttered to herself, "But the problem is that there are no experimental equipment here... Could it be that this is an observation room, and I am the experimental sample being observed?"
He raised his head again and scanned every corner of the ceiling, but just like the first time he checked, he did not find any surveillance devices.
However, Ke Lan knew that with the technological level of the Alpha civilization, even if there were surveillance devices installed in this stone chamber, it would be difficult to find them with his naked eyes.
The gap between human civilization and Alpha civilization is too huge... It's like throwing a chimpanzee into the ruins of a human city... The chimpanzee has no idea how humans built such a magnificent city, and humans cannot understand to what extent Alpha civilization has developed.
…
Ke Lan opened the equipment bag and checked everything inside. As he expected, all the electronic equipment had failed - this was another manifestation of technological dominance: in most of the Alpha civilization ruins, human technological equipment could hardly play its due role, while Alpha civilization's own things would not be affected at all.
It is said that the research institute has made major breakthroughs in the research of crystal structure in recent years. If this Alpha civilization technology can be transplanted into human electronic equipment, the electromagnetic interference in the ruins will no longer interfere with these equipment... But to really reach this step, it will probably take an extremely long time.
However, in addition to this method, hunters have another way: directly use the things excavated from the Alpha ruins as their own equipment. Among these things, there are also some things that are very practical but not very technologically demanding, such as the chip that Ke Lan took out of the bag.
This is a diamond-shaped chip, made of a material similar to energy crystals. Inside the chip, there are two light spots, one red and one blue. The blue dot will always point to the North Pole of Alpha, while the red dot is just the opposite.
This thing is the compass used by the Alpha people, but it will not be affected by any magnetic field, so it is far more versatile than the compass made by humans.
In order to take a picture of this little gadget, Ke Lan spent a full 680,000 credit points, but it was worth the money - if he had had this thing on the deserted island last time, he would not have lost his way in the underground maze.
Following the guidance of the blue light, the other side of the stone gate is due north.
"There's no other way to go anyway..." Ke Lan walked to the stone door and stuffed a few energy crystals into the grooves on the door.
There was a teeth-grinding friction sound, and the stone door slowly moved to the side, but behind the stone door was still an identical stone chamber.
However, on the stone platform in the middle of this stone chamber, lying was a person that Ke Lan did not recognize at all!
He walked forward and carefully looked at the man who was in a "coma" - he was wearing an old winter suit with a set of safety belts on the outside of the suit, but the buckles at the shoulders and waist were broken, and the surface of the winter suit was torn open, revealing the filling inside.
There was a hexagonal armband on his right arm. Although Ke Lan had never seen the emblem on the armband, he still recognized the Chinese characters below: "Polar Star Hunting Group·Fourth Team·Intern Hunter·Cao Feng·Blood Type: O"
This guy is Dana's subordinate, and he is one of the unlucky guys who were deceived by the Polaris Hunting Group and used as a mining tool.
This person is obviously immersed in the dream world. Judging from his pale face and beads of sweat on his forehead, his situation is probably not optimistic.
If he continues like this, he will most likely become a madman who has lost his mind, just like the group of patients in Nottingham Hospital.
Just when Ke Lan was about to try to wake him up, the stone door on the other side of the stone chamber suddenly opened!
"Who?" Ke Lan raised his gun, only to see Hound also pointing his gun at him.
"Ke Lan?!"
"Are you awake too?" Ke Lan put down the gun and asked.
"Well, I don't know what happened, but after you... or rather, Gates died, my dream world stopped... even the bullets I shot out were suspended in mid-air. Then, everything suddenly went black in front of my eyes, and when I came to my senses, I found myself lying in this stone chamber." The Hound put the pistol back into the holster and pointed to the stone chamber behind him.
The stone chambers of the Hound, Ke Lan and Cao Feng of the Polaris Hunting Group are exactly the same. The only difference is that there is a stone door on the four walls of the stone chamber where Cao Feng is located - if these stone chambers are distributed in a cross shape, then Cao Feng's chamber is exactly located at the horizontal and vertical intersection of the cross.
"This guy...is he from Polaris?" The Hound looked at Cao Feng lying on the stone platform and asked.
"Yeah." Ke Lan nodded. "His condition is not good. I want to try to wake him up."
Although forcibly awakening a person immersed in the dream world may lead to unpredictable consequences, if left alone, he will only sink deeper and deeper until his self-consciousness is completely devoured by the nightmare - in layman's terms, he will go completely crazy.
"It's okay to give it a try... But you have to hurry up. Besides us, other people might be trapped in that damn dream world just like this guy."
"I know." Ke Lan moved Cao Feng down from the stone platform, laid him flat on the ground, and then took out an injection and several small medicine bottles from her bag - most of these drugs were psychiatric drugs, which Ke Lan prepared specially for this exploration mission. Among them was a sedative named "WAKE116", which could quickly calm people with unstable .
He mixed the powder with saline solution and then drew it into the syringe, while the hound at the side used a dagger to cut open the sleeve of Cao Feng's winter coat and simply disinfected the skin surface with an alcohol cotton ball.
Ke Lan found the blood vessel and inserted the needle. As the medicine was slowly pushed in, Cao Feng's body began to twitch slightly.
"What's going on? It seems to be getting worse?"
"I don't know." Ke Lan shook her head. "WA KE116 is a strong sedative, but it doesn't have the effect of relaxing muscles. It stands to reason that such a special drug reaction may occur..."
"But this guy's convulsions seem to be getting more and more severe!" said the Hound. At this moment, he had already pressed most of his body on Cao Feng, with his hands tightly grasping the other's wrists. Despite this, Cao Feng's body was still shaking as if he had been electrocuted.
"Then this is the only thing we can do—"
Ke Lan took out a sealed injection and injected it and another medicine into Cao Feng's body - finally, Cao Feng's convulsions stopped and his breathing gradually became normal.
"I just injected him with the Dream Date Preparation and the Neutralizer... Although this stuff can calm him down, he will have to sleep for at least twelve hours..."
