Volume 5: Bottomless Sinkhole Chapter 278 Trance
"This mission was actually a private job that Ryan took, and the company didn't know about it... They might have thought that Ryan and I were on vacation... That bastard Ryan seemed to have signed another agreement with his employer. We get paid more than the Bison Mercenaries, but because of this, we have to do more things than those Bison Mercenaries."
"Taking money to do things, isn't this the professional code of conduct in your industry?" Ke Lan said.
"I know, that's not what I meant... I just... I just regret why I listened to Ryan and came to this damn place to carry out this damn mission... Damn Ryan... Oh, he's dead... Damn it!" said the mercenary hatefully.
"It's useless for you to complain. You might as well tell us everything you know. Only when we find a way out can you return to the Ark alive. Although you may spend a few years in prison... or even be exiled directly, it's better than dying here." Ke Lan said, "Go on, tell me what happened after you went into the water."
"After we put on our gear, we started to dive... but Ryan, another Bison man and I had no idea where to go, so we just followed the two exiles... Let me think... it should be southwest, and we swam about a hundred meters. As for the depth, I remember checking the depth gauge halfway, it was thirty-seven meters, and then we dived a little deeper, but it shouldn't be more than fifty meters deep."
He took a breath and continued, "There was a tightly closed stone door on the rock wall at that location. However, the leading exile just fumbled with the stone door and it opened... Then we walked inside along the passage behind the door. I can't remember how far we walked. At that time, my consciousness seemed to become a little dazed until I surfaced..."
"Consciousness is hazy?" Ke Lan repeated the word. As someone who had personally experienced those nightmares, he naturally knew why the mercenary's consciousness was hazy . Obviously, this was also related to the mental attack. This should be a defensive method of the ruins... But the problem is that after the mercenary suffered a mental attack, it is hard to say whether the things he saw were real or illusory...
"That cave is very big, almost as big as this one," the mercenary said, "but there is no water inside. It must be higher than the lake surface... because after we surfaced, we had to walk up a long flight of stone steps before we entered the cave."
Ke Lan looked towards the southwest, but he could only see a stone wall covered with fluorescent fungi. As for the stone door, passage and stairs mentioned by the mercenaries, he could only rely on his imagination.
There are complex architectural structures inside the mountain, which they already knew before coming to the tiankeng... It was also for this reason that when Ke Lan was in the nine stone chambers, he felt that it was a real world - after all, with the technology of the Alpha civilization, it would be easy to build such a mechanism. He subconsciously associated , completely unaware that it was just an illusory dream world.
"The shape of that cave...how should I put it...is very much like...very much like a big funnel..." said the mercenary.
"Funnel? You mean... something like a stepped auditorium? Low in the middle and high around?" Ke Lan tried to describe the appearance of the cave he imagined.
"Yes, yes, yes! That's exactly what it is. I originally wanted to say a stepped auditorium, but I couldn't think of the word for a moment, so I used a funnel to describe it..." The mercenary nodded repeatedly, "There is a platform at the lowest point in the center of the cave, and the jar is placed on the platform... Oh, that platform is very regular, and there are some obvious cutting marks on the edge. It's obvious that it was not formed naturally."
"Of course it wasn't formed naturally," the Hound couldn't help but interrupt. "In my opinion, this underground lake and this seemingly natural erosion cave are all the work of the Alphas. This area is not a karst landform, so how could such a large volume of natural water appear inside the mountain!"
"What is karst landform?" the mercenary asked in surprise.
Unlike relic hunters who need to master a lot of knowledge and various special skills, the entry requirements for mercenaries are terribly low. To exaggerate a little, anyone who can pull the trigger can become a mercenary. There is no such thing as an entry assessment in this industry, and the quality of practitioners is uneven. The guy in front of him has obviously forgotten almost everything he was taught during the compulsory education stage on the Ark.
"Karst landform refers to the general term for the surface and underground forms formed by soluble rocks under the erosion of water. It mainly refers to caves, underground rivers and dark lakes. Karst landforms are generally located in areas with high temperatures and abundant flowing water resources. The geological composition is mainly calcium carbonate rock layers... The area where this glacier is located is called periglacial landform, or frozen landform. Although ice and snow can also erode rocks, the eroded appearance is still very different from karst landforms." Ke Lan explained, "And the most important point is that after the glacier melts, fresh water is formed, and this is a saltwater lake."
"That's not right... I remember I accidentally choked on a mouthful of water in that passage. It was fresh water... not salty!" the mercenary said in surprise.
"Then you want another taste?" The hound took a coat spread on the stone and squeezed it hard on the mercenary's head. The squeezed water immediately dripped onto the other's face. The other stretched out his tongue to lick it, and immediately spit it out with a bitter face.
"It's really strange. You've been staying by the lake for so long, but you don't even know whether the water is salty or fresh?" the hound complained.
"No, old dog, this is not his fault." Ke Lan seemed to have thought of something, and patted the hound's leg, motioning him to sit down first. "He just said... he had symptoms of confusion when he passed through that passage."
"You mean... he was also in a dream at that time? So the lake water he tasted was fresh? Doesn't this mean that the Funnel Cave was also an illusion and didn't exist at all?"
"The cave may be an illusion, and the jar is real... After all, the people left on the shore did not suffer a mental attack." Ke Lan analyzed, "We can try to change our thinking: Is there a possibility... that the place where the jar is located can only be reached in a state of half-sleep and half-wakefulness?"
