abyss rose

The lifting platform carrying the armored vehicle slowly rises upwards from the depths of the ground.

The hanging lights on both sides of the lifting platform illuminate the man-made "abyss" that can't be seen from top to bottom.

Everyone in the car was talking and laughing while filling their stomachs with dry food with cold water.

It has been more than a month since the No.13 mercenary team went to the ground last time, the underground has been turned upside down, and so is the ground.

It was still daytime, and it was not long before lunch, but the sun could not be seen in the sky.

In the past, there was no fog above the base, but now, the black vines have brought fog, and also brought those strange beasts who love to hide in the dense fog.

Lao Xiang couldn't help but sigh with emotion: "The fog is as thick as a medium-high risk area. It seems that there is no sunset to watch."

Lu Qi: "The beasts are all walking sideways underground, what kind of risk zone is there on the ground?"

Old Xiang: "That's right, captain, how do we do it? Really go for a ride?"

Chai Yuening nodded, silently holding the locator she got from the military tightly in her hand: "We must protect it well before rescue from the floating city comes."

"What is that thing that the base gave us?" Lu Qi stepped forward, looked at it with his head, but didn't see anything, and couldn't help being curious for a while, "Captain, they are all our own people, don't be so mysterious, this time Why did the military let us out?"

"A miniature locator, something from the Floating Void City." Chai Yuening spread out his palms, "It is the only hope of rescue for the base today."

"So small? Which ghost made the locator so small." Lu Qi came up to take a look, and couldn't help complaining, "I'm afraid that if I lose it, can I get it back?"

"As long as it is embedded in the human body, it will not be lost." Chu Ci on the side responded lightly.

"This..." Lu Qi couldn't help being taken aback, and looked at Chu Ci in surprise.

On the day the team moved to the main city, everyone heard the base's determination to survive.However, this determination, which should have been extremely firm, changed after Chai Yuening disappeared with Chu Ci all morning.

Everyone knows that Chu Ci comes from Floating Void City.

That day, although Chai Yuening only brought back one result, in fact, everyone could see that this result had a lot to do with Chu Ci.

If Chai Yuening didn't say anything, everyone tacitly didn't ask.

But at this moment, a miniature locator and an extremely calm answer made everyone react instantly.

What kind of person in this world needs to embed a positioning system in their body?

Even the heinous criminals have a prison or death destination, so they will never need to be located and tracked at any time.

No one knows what the floating city is like, but in the dungeon base, this positioning system embedded in organisms has always been only for experimental samples.

In the early years, the base research institute had embedded similar things in some samples with lower risks, and then released them to the ground to track and observe their fusion and evolution with other species.

But this is only used on inhuman beasts.

Chu Ci said that the micro-locator is a model embedded in the human body.

Chu Ci was the one who brought it to the dungeon.

Speaking of which, some things need not be said clearly.

Embarrassment spread at that moment.

After a short embarrassment, Liandong greeted this side: "Lu Qi, come here and do me a favor."

Lu Qi hurried over in a few strides like he was slipping away.

After an unknown amount of time, I turned the steering wheel and blew a little leaky whistle. The tune was an old-fashioned song "Unity is Strength" in the old world.

Liandong set up a heavy gun at the hatch of the rear compartment of the car, and Lu Qi, who had been helping for a long time, stood up, stretched his waist, and shouted that he wanted to "cut the song" all the time, but All he got was an extremely disgusting response.

Following the joking dispute between the two, the car became lively again, and the atmosphere was as good as if there had been no embarrassment just now.

The hatches between the cabins of the armored vehicle were not closed. Chai Yuening got up and walked into the cockpit, leaning on the chair in the back seat of the cockpit, and looked out the windows on both sides.

She hadn't come to the ground for so long, and she almost didn't know this plain covered by black vines.

A long time ago, the base tore down countless ground buildings, destroyed the ground ecology, and turned it into a sandy plain with great effort, just to prevent the black vines from spreading to the top of the base.

But the Great Western Desert, which once established the third base of mankind, can bloom flowers of despair one after another. What is this man-made desert plain?

Since the beginning of spring, the continuous drizzle has brought the most suitable climate for the growth of black vines.

In the end, the black vines conquered the sandy plain, climbed up the tall towers facing each other in the plain, and on the top of the towers, black flowers that symbolized disasters bloomed.

In the dense fog, the reddish-purple gleam emitted by the black vines faintly outlines their former shapes.

"This place is different from last time." Chu Ci's voice came from behind him.

Chai Yuening came back to her senses and nodded: "Obviously I have walked countless times, but I almost couldn't recognize it."

Chu Ci said lightly: "Any kind of strange beast likes this concentration of mist."

"This concentration is almost the same as the deep fog area before." Lao Xiang turned his head and glanced at Chu Ci, and then looked at the road ahead, "Speaking of which, I've lived most of my life, and I haven't seen it yet." The behemoth described on the radio, I heard that those things have appeared frequently recently."

Lu Qi suddenly became interested: "Me too! How big are they? The base said that they would cause a slight earthquake when passing by, but the base is too deep to feel it. Is this true?"

Liandong listened in the back cabin for a long time, and couldn't help refuting with disgust: "You don't really have an interest in that kind of thing, do you? Can't do it!"

Lu Qi: "How can we do it head-on? If you encounter it, you will definitely slip away. Can't you run away if you can't beat it? We have a good car now."

Liandong: "Did you forget how Luo Kun died? Du Xia said that there is not even a whole body! We have the same model of car as him!"

Lu Qi: "Bah, bah, crow's mouth. You can't learn from Du Xia, shoot more and talk less..."

Liandong: "You are the one who talks the most..."

Lu Qi: "Where is it?"

Old Xiang: "It really is, you kid is so fucking noisy."

Lu Qi: "Old Xiang, you don't have the right to talk about me. Every time you go to the ground, you talk to yourself the most. If I talk to you, you are afraid of embarrassing you!"

Old Xiang: "Is that what I call talking to myself? What I call is to ease the atmosphere, what do you know?"

Inexplicably, there was an argument in the car over the question of "who talks the most".

Chai Yuening walked back to the rest cabin and sat in the corner illuminated by the dim light bulbs in the car.

She yawned and dozed off to the sound of the enthralling, reassuring arguments in the car.

The armored vehicle bumped forward on the ground covered by black vines, and Chai Yuening could feel Chu Ci sitting beside her, as quiet as when they first met.

Half asleep and half awake, she couldn't help wondering if all this was just a dream.

When she woke up, she was still on the way back to the base, on the team's old armored vehicle that might break down at any time.

The top of the base is not covered by black vines, and the outer city is still as stable as before. There are no mutants in the fifth district, no contact loss, and no danger of spreading outward.

Except for the encounter with Chu Ci, nothing happened.

It's just that when she opened her eyes again, everything in front of her didn't change.

Chu Ci fell asleep leaning on her shoulder, and her own head naturally rested on Chu Ci's head.

At this moment, the car was much quieter than before she fell asleep.

Lu Qi was sleeping crookedly in the back seat of the driver, while Liandong was writing something earnestly under the lamp with a small notebook in his arms.

At some point, Lao Xiang parked the car in an open space with less black vines and thinner fog, chewing the extremely hard dried bean curd in his mouth.

There is no need to move on for the time being, the fog lights of the car were turned off by him, which made the surroundings look a little dark.

Chai Yuening took out his pocket watch and took a look, it was already past six o'clock in the afternoon.

This small movement woke up the person leaning on his shoulder.

Chu Ci rubbed his eyes and sat up straight, his hair a little frizzy from sleep.

Chai Yuening unconsciously stretched out her hand to help her straighten her hair. At the moment when her five fingers ran along her soft and long hair, an inexplicable nervousness hit her mind for some reason.

She retracted her hand calmly, but her eyes were a little dodged to the side.

Outside the foggy car, the sky gradually darkened.

It won't be long before night falls.

The ground is not like a base, there is light when the lights are on, and darkness when the lights are off, there is no difference between day and night.

But the day and night here are exceptionally distinct, the day is extremely bright, and at night, the darkness will swallow all the light, and those dangers that like to hide in the dark are more likely to come along with them, and they are always so silent .

Chai Yue watched quietly as the sky gradually sank.

The evening breeze gently blows into the half-opened windows of the cockpit.

There is a faint fragrance of black vines in the air.

After an unknown amount of time, Lao Xiang stood up, stretched his limbs, went to the back cabin of the car and picked up the dry food bag.

Lu Qi was woken up by his movement, so he simply yelled and called everyone together, sat around under the small dim chandelier in the rest cabin and had a not-so-rich, but lively dinner.

After dinner, everyone chatted about trivial matters.

It wasn't until the night gradually deepened that they closed their eyes one by one.

Lu Qi, who took a long nap during the day, volunteered to watch the first half of the night.

In order to be refreshed in the second half of the night, Chai Yuening forced herself to sleep for a while when she was not sleepy, until she couldn't sleep anymore, she simply got up and grabbed Lu Qi from the driver's seat, and drove him to rest with a few words cabin.

After two o'clock in the morning, she sat in the driver's seat, watched the danger monitor, and watched the long night.

After a while, Chu Ci walked into the cockpit lightly and sat in the co-pilot's seat.

Chai Yuening lowered her voice and asked, "Aren't you sleeping?"

Chu Ci shook his head.

Chai Yuening smiled, looked up out of the window, and said with emotion: "The night is still long."

Chu Ci: "That's why I accompany you."

Chai Yuening thought for a while, then said softly, "Can I ask you some questions?"

Chu Ci: "Yes."

Chai Yuening: "The time in the ventilation system operation room, and the time in Luo Kun's car, did you scare them away?"

Chu Ci: "No."

Chai Yuening: "Then why did they leave?"

"The beasts in the fog area hunt by breath. I can only hide the breath in a small area for a short time, and it won't last long. If they are lucky and they have other prey, they will naturally leave."

"I see." Chai Yuening nodded, "No wonder, I've always wondered, since you can scare away strange beasts, how could you be injured in the foggy area?"

"Then you won't ask me?"

"I'm afraid you won't be happy." Chai Yuening said with a smile, "Everyone has secrets, and curiosity is not a reason to pry into other people's secrets."

Chu Ci smiled, didn't speak, just looked out of the window quietly.

Chai Yuening looked at the place she was looking at. It was a signal tower not far away. On the top of the tower was a black vine flower that glowed red in the middle of the night. The surrounding fog was stained with a faint blush.

It was mentioned in the books left by the old world that during the initial resource exploration process, when people discovered black vines at a depth of nearly [-] meters and transplanted them to the ground, they praised its magnificence more than once. .

However, if they know that this plant will bring a devastating blow to human beings in the next few decades, they must regret the stupid act of bringing them from the dark abyss to the ground in a hurry.