Dark Ruins Dawn

Chapter 2 Fog
"Sure?"

The blond doctor strode over, snatched the instrument, and measured it again, which was also 0 mg/m³.

"Okay, okay, we've been searching for ten whole years..."

The blond doctor stared intently at Zhuang Fan: "Finally, we've found a young detective."

"Detective..." Zhuang Fan silently memorized the term, keeping his tone calm: "So, I passed the screening?"

"We need to continue testing."

The doctor in the white coat next to him shook his head. "The concentration of the eerie fog here is not high enough. We need to take it to the field and retest it."

The blond doctor nodded and looked at the guard: "Go and fetch Supervisor David."

The guard who had just kicked Zhuang Fan was now filled with fear and dared not look him in the eye.

Zhuang Fan breathed a slight sigh of relief, at least he wouldn't be fed to the zombies, so there was still room for negotiation.

Five minutes later, a burly, bald white man walked in. He was wearing camouflage pants and a black vest, his muscles were bulging, and his right arm was a mechanical bionic limb with a metallic sheen. He looked menacing.

David's status seemed quite high. When he learned the whole story, he only glanced at Zhuang Fan with surprise and waved his hand dismissively, "Let's go then, let's go for a walk and then come back."

Zhuang Fan glanced at David again, wondering what was with that familiar tone? Then, he was led out of the testing area by four guards.

Along the way, Zhuang Fan kept memorizing each passage and airlock, trying to reconstruct the specific divisions of the shelter in his mind.

He had a photographic memory, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized how terrifyingly large the shelter was.

Each sector spans thousands of square meters, with branching passages as dense as a spider web connecting other sectors, their spaces tightly interlocked, like a flattened giant beehive.

The passageways are separated by independent lead-sealed airlocks, requiring multiple layers of identity verification to pass through. Countless mechanical guards patrol back and forth, not to mention the hidden sentry guns and mechanical patrol dogs.

His chances of successfully escaping from prison are practically zero.

He thought the mechanical guards were strong enough, until he saw the soldiers covered in steel armor.

Those "armored giants" were nearly three meters tall, their helmets almost touching the ceiling. It was as if human tanks were rolling over them, and their heavy footsteps even caused the ground to tremble slightly.

The oppressive feeling coming at him made him feel that all his actions were being seen clearly.

He doesn't have much time left and must make a decision as soon as possible.

At the head of the group, David waved his hand, and six armored giants followed behind him.

He glanced at Zhuang Fan and grinned, "Don't bother looking, no matter how well you remember it, you can't escape."

Zhuang Fan coughed lightly, concealing his true intentions: "I'm just curious about these steel giants..."

"They are armored soldiers."

"Yes, what is the power supply system for armored vehicles? I see a battery compartment on the back, is it a cold fusion battery?"

"Hey, nuclear fusion power plants are practically dead, why bother with cold fusion? I've never even heard of that. Right now it's all about lithium solid, sodium solid, thorium-based molten salts and stuff like that. Oh, and there's also a nuclear decay battery, that thing is the most expensive. Damn it, just one battery weighs 500 kilograms, it's like something out of a movie."

After chatting with David for a few minutes, he tentatively asked, "Brother, could you tell me where this is?"

"What's wrong with you? You're already inside, and you still don't know who this is?"

David's accent, a mix of dialect and Esperanto, completely baffled him once again.

"Look at the signs on the wall, and then look at my name tag."

David patted his chest. "Nuclear Group, see that? Vault 331, one star and two bars, the newly appointed security supervisor of Sector C—David Du, that's me!"

Zhuang Fan held back for a while before repeating, "Big appetite?"

"What's the problem?"

"Your parents named you?"

"Hey, who doesn't have parents? I'm a management trainee specially trained by the company."

Seeing that Zhuang Fan was still thinking, David rubbed his smooth head and said, "I forgot you're a frozen old popsicle. No wonder you don't know Esperanto very well and can't read the words. Stay close to me."

"You really haven't studied Chinese?"

"Chinese language? What the heck?"

"..."

Zhuang Fan fell silent.

The group soon arrived at the giant lifting platform, which is ten meters wide.

The platform ascended rapidly, taking only fifteen seconds in total. Zhuang Fan estimated that the shelter was 200 meters deep.

With a dull "click" from the metal disc hinges at the top, the lifting platform reached the top and entered a massive military fortress.

The fortress was heavily guarded, with a large number of heavy weapons, armored troops, and guards deployed inside.

Through the dark bulletproof glass window, Zhuang Fan discovered that this was a hidden fortress built halfway up the mountain. A few scattered zombies were trying to climb the cliff, but they were quickly shot down by patrolling drones.

After David put on his powered exoskeleton, he stopped the guards who were preparing the hovercar: "Stop with that. We'll have to register to get out, it's too much trouble. Let's find a secluded spot and get this over with quickly."

"But boss, what about those hordes of zombies at the foot of the mountain..."

"You stubborn fool, who said we have to go to the foot of the mountain? We can just go around it. I think we don't even need to go down the mountain. It would be more convenient to find a cave."

The guards nodded solemnly, not daring to object.

David chuckled again: "No risk, no courage. What's there to be afraid of? Let's get going."

After glancing at him, Zhuang Fan became even more certain that the language integration process in this world must have been spiced up.

The alloy gates of the military fortress slowly opened, and blinding light instantly flooded in.

The heat wave that hit him made Zhuang Fan feel slightly suffocated; the air outside was unusually hot. David raised his hand to check his wrist device: "Temperature 53°C, UV index 14, humidity 26%, hey, the weather's alright."

Six armored soldiers, acting as the vanguard, walked out of the gate carrying rotary machine guns. Bronze-colored ammunition belts extended from the magazine boxes on their backs all the way to the guns, making them look imposing and extraordinary.

Twenty mechanical guards followed closely behind, surrounding Zhuang Fan in the center of the group.

When he stepped out the door and onto a hillside, the bizarre scene that greeted him completely overturned all his expectations.

Under the blazing sun and without a single cloud in the sky, the world showed no sign of sunshine or brightness, only heat and drought.

The entire sky, from the distant mountain ranges and forests to the nearby dilapidated buildings and roads, was shrouded in a haze, with extremely low visibility.

Zhuang Fan was very familiar with this haze; it was exactly the same as the eerie mist that emanated from the zombies in the previous test area.

In areas directly exposed to sunlight, the eerie mist is slightly lighter; the more shaded or dark the area, the thicker the mist becomes, sometimes even turning dark and black, as if it wants to devour all living things.

Zhuang Fan remained silent for a moment, confirming that it wasn't a problem with his eyes, but rather that the entire world had been uniformly polluted.

Several kilometers away, the area was densely packed with zombies. Although it was not very clear, the number was roughly estimated to be over 100,000.

They were extremely frenzied, charging wildly through a forest, their roars audible from a great distance.

Zhuang Fan asked with a hint of doubt, "What are they doing? Gnawing on the tree?"

"Let's fight."

"Ok?"

David glanced at him and said jokingly, "I heard that the roots of the Tree People have taken hold in the territory of the Walking Dead. Both sides are stubborn and neither will give way, so they've started fighting. I thought this would settle down in a month, but it's started making a fuss again these past few days."

The sheer amount of information contained in that short sentence almost caused Zhuang Fan to crash, and David even thoughtfully handed him an infrared farsightedness device.

He strained to see into the distance, and saw the trees twisting their branches and wildly slapping the ground, each slap sending several zombies flying. Some trees even extended leg-like roots, crushing the zombies into a pulp.

The horde of zombies howled and screamed, some of which were giant zombies that were three meters tall. They jumped on the spot, grabbed tree trunks, and frantically scratched and gnawed at them, creating a chaotic scene.

Zhuang Fan put down the farsightedness device, remained silent for a while, and then reorganized his thoughts: "Do these zombies have any sense?"

"Most of them are idiots who only listen to what the corpses say, so there must be a fat white worm dozing down here underground. Whoever catches it will be rich."

“Most of them are idiots, that is to say, a small number are…” Zhuang Fan grasped the key point.

"A small number of them have brains; we call them corpse people. You'll find out later."

David then patiently explained several mutated creatures in the distance.

For example, there is a huge fat man called "Meat Mountain" whose skin is bulging with countless green vesicles. He grabs up pebbles, tree roots, sheet metal, and even passing zombies and stuffs them all into his mouth.

"Eagle-men" with wingspans of up to six meters circled in the sky, but when their natural enemy, the giant eagle with a wingspan of twelve meters, flew in, they scattered in panic.

The nearly 20-meter-tall "mountain giant," whose entire body is made of stone, is picking up a boulder and smashing it flattening an approaching zombie in order to defend its territory.
There were also hunchbacked rats that looked like humans, camouflaged and hiding motionless in the ruins with crossbows at their backs, waiting for an opportunity to ambush.

"Where are those big rats?"

"You mean the Ratmen? A bunch of petty thieves who love to ambush and rob. Just a few days ago, we caught one who used a Gatling gun and injured several of my brothers. Guess what happened? We skinned him and roasted him. The sizzling sound was intoxicating, but I found it disgusting, so I fed the meat to the wolves."

Ratmen, Gatling guns?
Zhuang Fan felt that everything before him was too absurd. Was the animal world really this wild now?

Seeing him in a daze, David, who was clearly used to the mentality of these old fogies, laughed and said, "Welcome to the wasteland. You'll get used to it in a few days."

"I try my best."

Zhuang Fan agreed verbally, but secretly estimated the height from the cliff to the foot of the mountain, wondering what his survival rate would be and how likely he would be to escape if he jumped.

But David's gun was already pressed against his back, a grin spreading across his face: "Hey, what are you looking at? Bro, my attitude's been pretty good, right? I've figured out everything for you, so please cooperate, don't mess around, don't cause trouble. Once the test's over, we'll head back to base, understand?"

"Understood, don't worry."

"I just love dealing with clever little devils."

With the gun still pressed against his back, Zhuang Fan had no choice but to walk back to the middle of the group.

The eight mechanical guards at the front used flamethrowers to clear a path, burning away a small area of ​​the light-colored eerie fog in just a dozen seconds.

"Brother, are all these eerie mists created by zombies?"

"Nonsense, look at those guys outside, birdmen, rats, stone men, all sorts of things can spew out eerie mist."

David spoke eloquently, “If people and animals enter this eerie mist and stay there for too long, they will either turn into zombies or other monsters. Then the eerie mist will spread from one to ten, from ten to a hundred, and it will be completely unstoppable.”

Upon hearing this, Zhuang Fan shook his head slightly: "But I'm quite certain that some of the eerie mist appeared out of nowhere and has nothing to do with the zombies in the lab just now."

"That's the tricky part, no matter what we do, we just can't figure it out..."

David's expression darkened slightly: "If it's just those mutants who can generate the fog and spread it as mere aerosols, then we can have it easy. We can spend decades, at a huge cost, using all sorts of incendiary bombs, white phosphorus bombs, thermobaric bombs, or even three-phase bombs to figure it out."

Zhuang Fan understood this principle: no matter how strong a carbon-based life form is, it must kneel down within the range of truth.

"Hey, it's not that simple. Let me tell you, as long as there's a shadow on the ground, that thing will follow. The bigger and darker the shadow, the stronger the yin energy! So at night, the wilderness gets really lively, with lots of eerie fog!"

Zhuang Fan frowned. What kind of bizarre rule was this? How was a shadow defined?

He cleared his mind and gave an example: "Brother, for example, if I put my hands together now, palms bulging out, the dark areas inside..."

"It will also generate eerie fog. Try it yourself if you don't believe me."

Zhuang Fan tried it, and it really worked. A little bit of mist appeared out of thin air in the shadow between his palms, which startled him.

"What's this?"

David snorted, "Even your skull, chest, internal organs, intestines, anywhere dark enough, even the slightest shadow, that eerie fog can make it all clear to you."

(End of this chapter)