Volume 9: Molten Mine Chapter 454: Supply Crisis
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Finally, Ke Lan and his team returned to the place where they had found the bodies of the three experts.
Previously, due to load issues, they only took away usable supplies from the three bodies and did not take the bodies away. When they came back this time, the bodies were still in their original positions, with no signs of having been moved.
Ivan walked forward, leaned over to check, and nodded to Ke Lan: "The marks left before are still there, there is no problem."
"Huh... Fortunately, there is no problem." The Hound let out a long sigh. "If the body had disappeared, or if it had been in a different position, then the plot would have become terrifying."
"The appearance of these three corpses here is already terrifying. Park Sang-woo was so scared before that he couldn't even speak complete sentences." Leighton said half-jokingly.
"But then again, Ke Lan, you said you wanted to verify a hypothesis. What is it? Can you tell me now?" asked the Hound.
Not only the hound, but even Aya Breya who followed over was looking at Ke Lan with confusion, waiting for him to speak.
Ke Lan turned the corpse over and fumbled around on its back. With a slight "click" sound, he pulled a silver-white metal tube as thick as a finger off the corpse's protective suit.
"Is this... a portable distress signal transmitter?" Aya recognized the name of this thing.
"Yeah." Ke Lan nodded and threw the metal tube to Layton. Layton cut a small hole in the metal tube and then inserted a metal wire pulled from the robotic arm into it.
Two seconds later, the high-frequency signal light at one end of the metal tube began to flash, and everyone present received the distress signal sent by the metal tube.
"This thing has never been used and the battery is fully charged," said Layton.
Ke Lan pulled out the signal transmitters from the protective suits of the other two corpses, and the results were exactly the same as the first one.
These signal transmitters have not been activated.
"My previous judgment was wrong. They didn't escape from 'Aguna Kator'." Ke Lan sighed, "They knew that it was impossible to send a distress signal in this place, so they didn't activate this thing."
"What do you mean?" Aya asked in surprise.
"Where we are now, here—" Ke Lan pointed, "I think it should be the interior of 'Aguna Kator'."
"How is that possible?" Aya's voice couldn't help but rise a few degrees, "Do you think this joke is funny?"
"Although... although I am very curious as to why their bodies appeared here, I think what Team Leader Aya said is right." Park Sangyou said in the lifeboat, "The signal transmitter doesn't mean anything. Maybe they forgot about it in a hurry, or maybe they found traces of a heretic sect nearby and had to remain silent. But this can't be 'Aguna Kotor'. This tunnel was discovered several years earlier than 'Aguna Kotor'. We have also conducted many explorations and found no problems... Your point of view is too ridiculous. It doesn't make sense at all!"
"The entrance to the tunnel is not far from here, Captain Breya, you can send your men to check... to see if the entrance we came in through is still there." Ke Lan said.
"You two, go to the entrance and take a look." Aya immediately assigned two agents.
…
Fifteen minutes later, the two agents came running back with terrified looks on their faces.
"The entrance... the entrance has disappeared!"
"What did you say?" Aya's eyes widened.
"The entrance disappeared. The place where the entrance was supposed to be turned into a passage exactly the same as here. Even the lava on the ground disappeared... We even walked forward another two hundred meters..." The agent glanced at Aya and shook his head.
"It is basically impossible to return to the original route through a one-way transmission node." Ke Lan said, "Sixteen years ago, a team of relic hunters encountered a similar situation when exploring the A-044 relic. Four hunters entered a narrow corridor and lost consciousness instantly. When they woke up, they found themselves in a wilderness more than 600 kilometers away from the relic. Unfortunately, the transmission device seemed to have a malfunction. Only the upper body of one person was transmitted out, and the lower body remained in the corridor. Later, people sent by the research institute conducted hundreds of experiments on the corridor. They found that everything that entered the corridor would be completely or incompletely transmitted to a random location in the wilderness. The maximum distance between the transmission destinations would not exceed three kilometers, but no space nodes such as wormholes could be found in the wilderness."
"Do you want me to use a drone to explore the way?" Leighton asked.
"There's no need. The maximum control distance of a drone is only two hundred meters. Since we are no longer in the original tunnel, we can't go back, let alone two hundred meters. Even if we go back twenty thousand meters, we can't go back." Ke Lan shook his head.
"Could this tunnel be a closed loop?" The Hound suddenly asked, "Didn't we encounter a circular ice path in the ruins of the Bottomless Sinkhole before?"
"No. That time was in a dream. Even if there is such a seemingly straight but actually closed channel in reality, it is probably achieved by interfering with our perception in some way. But this method is essentially a trick, just like the 'ghost wall'. It will not work for precise mechanical measuring equipment." Ke Lan said, "Unless they use a transmission device to connect the end of the channel when building this channel, it can achieve a similar effect."
"If that's the case, then what difference does it make whether we go forward or backward?" Layton said, "Will we be trapped here?"
His eyes couldn't help but stay on the three corpses... "Could these three people be trapped to death like this?"
"The tunnel's inclination angle has not changed. The size, texture, specifications and spacing of the lighting equipment are exactly the same. And the energy crystals we put in there..." Ke Lan suddenly turned to the agent who ran back, "By the way, when you approached the entrance... I mean, the place where the entrance was supposed to be, did you feel the temperature rise?"
"Uh... no." The agent shook his head.
"According to this calculation, the spatial node should be located at a point between the entrance and the three bodies. We were teleported unconsciously when we passed that point... But when we tried to return to the entrance, the temperature in the tunnel did not change..." Ke Lan analyzed quickly, "Then at least we can't go back to the tunnel at the entrance... As for whether this tunnel is connected from beginning to end, we will know as long as we keep going forward... If this is a closed loop, then we will eventually see these three bodies."
"But the biggest problem we are facing now is," Ke Lan turned around and said seriously, "our supplies won't last much longer."
As for drinking water, the purification cycle using urine can last for a long time, but the same cannot be said for food - there is indeed a device on the Ark that can recycle feces and extract the protein in it, and then process it into food, but that kind of thing is extremely large and consumes a lot of energy, and it is impossible to carry it with you.
"I still have two bags of self-heating rations, six energy bars, and two compressed biscuits left." Hound opened his backpack and took inventory . "How about you?"
