Hao Ren rubbed the corners of his forehead, trying to grasp the little residual feeling in his heart, but the voice that sounded in his head in the fog before had faded like a dream.He checked the previous psychic communication records and found that it was indeed blank, and the data terminal did not speak at all."
I seem to have heard someone talking just now," Hao Ren exhaled, turned his head to look at the monitor on the carriage, it seemed that the convoy had almost crossed the river, and the river bank on the other side was shining not far away, "It seems that the world is almost unsupportable......
"Your dreams are always very special, don't take it lightly," the data terminal rarely became serious, "You seem to have the ability to communicate with dreams and other consciousness." ”"I know, I know, but this 'connection' is too short for me to catch a clue.But I have a feeling that I made the right way to come to the Northland Ruins this time, and this place must be the key to this planet......
Aura is always in the center of events, isn't it?
”Three armored vehicles crossed the solidified Grey River unharmed, and the mercenaries were greeted by a world of death that was even more desolate than the wasteland outside, and everything here was even more eerie.The camera showed the front and sides of the armored vehicle, and Hao Ren saw that the earth was glowing with a silver-gray glow outside, and everything was covered with the same luster, as if the whole world had been transformed into a piece of metal.There were no plants, no buildings, not even a stone of normal shape, only a few strangely shaped bulges and round towers, which melted into the ground like melted cheese, and the smooth surface reflected the lights of armored vehicles, and the hazy light refracted between the mass of these metal structures, giving a bizarre appearance.Hao Ren tried to think about what the scene in front of him looked like, and finally he thought of one thing: the melting city.It's like casting a world of equal proportions out of metal, melting them halfway and then cooling them down suddenly, and that's what you're supposed to be in."
The Great Plains of Steel......" a young soldier looked nervously at all this with his gun in his hand, "everything has been converted to metal?"
”"It's not metal, the nano-swarms don't have the ability to change the properties of matter, they just make these things appear similar to their own materials," Ulanov said, touching the armor plate behind him with his gun, "Welcome to Old Sin Chew City, where you're driving on the wreckage of six million five hundred thousand citizens and two hundred thousand buildings — including one of my legs, one arm, all my liver, and three-quarters of my lungs.Now I really can't find them. ”The young soldier turned his head with a strange expression: "Your jokes are never funny. ”Ulanov laughed twice in a hoarse voice, apparently he was still quite satisfied with his "visceral joke".Hao Ren couldn't help but feel strange when he looked at the scene outside the car: the silver-covered land outside was the product of the raging nanomachine swarm, which looked strange and beautiful, but it was the accumulation of countless human bones and the ruins of the city.The tall bulges and round towers that looked like melting ice cream should have been once large structures – if you blow them up, will you still find a single trace of man-made inside?
If you dig deep into this land, will you still find the remains of the city's subway and the remaining pipes?
Or maybe they won't find anything, and the nano-machine swarm may have already infiltrated the land, transforming the entire Northland ruins from the depths of the ground into their own domain.In short, everything is only a guess, everything that happens here is unknown, and deep in the silver-gray earth there are areas that humans cannot touch, and since sixty-five years ago, no one has been able to understand what these nano swarms are doing on this land.Similar thoughts permeated the other mercenaries, and even these rough men who lived by fighting couldn't help but feel a lot of emotion when faced with the Northland ruins: fear and awe made them sensitive.Nolan, on the other hand, only yawned boredly when he saw the reactions of the people around him, as if he was not interested.Night was falling, and the sky covered in dust and mist was starless and moonless, and it was dark: in fact, humans on this planet had not seen a starry sky for decades.But instead of stopping the convoy, Nolan ordered it to speed up, saying that at night is when the nano swarm is at its lowest, and that those terrifying little devils still need to rely on solar energy for some of their energy, and although they can move at night, they are much slower than during the day.According to Nolan's calculations, if the journey goes well, everyone should be able to reach the Northland Ring Tower before the sun rises, just in time for the staggered time for the nanomachines to regain their vitality.The armoured vehicle was passing between two towering silver-gray "hills", and the bright lights shone on the metal "hillsides" on either side, reflecting circles of phantom light.Ulanov looked at the two symmetrical "hills" and said in a low voice: "This must be Locke?"
The Linton Twin Towers, they used to be the tallest buildings in the world, I visited a few times, while the city was still around. ”"Yes, the tallest building in the world, when the fleet went out of control, it set the world record for the largest number of deaths in the same building, but the fourth year was broken by the explosion of Far East Vault III," Nolan said, pressing the communicator next to him, "All vehicles, turn off the lights and use ultrasound to find the way, there is a danger zone in front of this, and the bright light may activate some less dormant nanomachines." ”All three armoured vehicles had their lights turned off, and after losing the only light, the small convoy was more like a few geysers wandering in the silent hell.In this cold, dead and desolate world, everything seems to be small and fragile, and the heavy armor plates do not give people much security, and there is no situation like here to make people realize how far away they are from the world of the living—and the direction of the convoy is going deeper into the depths of death.On the boring and drowsy journey, Hao Ren was in a daze many times between half-dreaming and half-awake, but he never heard any strange sounds again.Finally, he noticed that the sky outside was hazy and there was a bright light, and the armored vehicle was passing through a huge silver-white barrier.The material of this barrier is significantly different from the silver-gray material formed by the nano swarms, and its regular appearance makes it seem that it was made by humans.It was tens of meters tall and looked indestructible, but it had a huge hole in the lower half, and the hole looked as if it had been melted through by the heat.The first hole that the armored vehicles dissolved from the rampart was when the swarm was out of control, and they initially flowed out of the container opposite the rampart.Of course, now that the container had been swallowed up, and there were no nano swarms on the other side of the ramparts, they had all moved to the Grey River in the outlying areas for unknown reasons. ”After passing through the hole, Hao Ren finally saw the natural rocky soil for the first time in a long time, and the plants that had grown badly mutated and twisted between the crevices of the rocks.He knew he had arrived in the central hinterland of the Northland Ruins, a final island that had been fed by nanomachines but had not been dissolved.Nolan raised his hand and pointed to the center of the monitor's frame, "That's the Northland Ring Tower." ”In the heart of the Northland Ruins, the outer walls of the former Nano form a crater-like barrier, dividing the dissolved wasteland outside into two distinct areas from the normal land around the Ring Tower.Situated on a towering hill, it rises to a height of more than 400 meters and consists of three symmetrical zigzag conical minarets, with a huge ring installed at the top and half of the three-tower building, which is the origin of the name "ring tower".Those two giant rings were antennas, and in the days when computers were not down, they were the ones that released signals to control the nanomachines around them.After seeing the ring tower, the mercenaries were visibly relieved, they knew that the most dangerous area had passed safely, at least until they returned, they didn't have to worry about being swallowed up by the nanomachine swarm.The armored car drove all the way to the halfway up the hill, and the road beyond it had completely collapsed and was impassable for vehicles, but the entrance to the ring tower was already in sight.Nolan ordered everyone to get out of the car and walk to the building.Ulanov and Hao Ren got out of the car together, and he looked up at the building that had been separated for sixty-five years, and took a deep breath.Then he strode forward.
(To be continued.) )