Chapter 378 Alien Battlefield (7) Empty City

Chapter 378 Alien Battlefield (7) Empty City

After walking in the direction of the sound for about ten minutes, the two left the cave and soon found the source of the sound.

"This should be the internal door of the facility. It seems that there is a problem with the operation group above, which is why this sound is made. Even without using equipment to analyze, we can understand from these sounds that this door is ridiculously heavy."

"I think it's more appropriate to call it a city gate."

Using his perspective ability, Han Zu quickly found the parts of the operation group that had failed, and then learned how to repair them based on the drawings that the contractor's equipment had found in the internal facilities. After using his precise ray control ability to open up a suitable opening in the outer layer of the gate, he spent some time successfully restoring the operation group behind it.

As the gate's operation team returned to normal, the noise finally disappeared. The operation team continued with their work and smoothly opened the gate. A city sleeping in the darkness came into the eyes of the two. Even though many places were dilapidated and dusty, in the eyes of Han Zu and Gloria, who could see at night, it still could not conceal the spectacular scene in front of them.

"Although we already knew that this place was huge through the structural diagrams found by the equipment, it was still very shocking to see it with our own eyes."

“This looks like a car?”

"You mean transportation?"

"No, it's a car. It's the same military jeep you got on the black market two months ago, just in a different shape. It also has a reactor engine and six wheels."

"what?"

According to the records Han Zu remembered, the contractors would not use such backward means of transportation for them. In fact, for these contractors who basically only moved by teleportation, Han Zu even doubted whether the means of transportation still existed within their company.

However, looking in the direction of Gloria's finger, Han Zu did see the means of transportation she was talking about. Although its appearance was different from the current vehicles, if you ask anyone who knows what a car is to describe it, this thing will definitely be considered a car.

"It's all solidified dust, the tires are completely worn out, and a lot of the parts are rusted, but you're right, it's a car. How long has it been here?"

"According to the analysis of the contractor's equipment, the last time this car was in operation was 3193 years ago. However, it is not yet confirmed whether it was finally parked in this location or was moved here later. Many places inside the city have suffered considerable damage, which cannot be confirmed. However, more than 8% of the foundation of the entire city is intact, so the possibility of an earthquake can be ruled out."

"I think this car should be parked here normally. Do you see the building next to it? I used the equipment to translate the contractor's text on it. Do you want to guess what this place is used for?"

"Let me see..."

"Vehicle repair shop."

"what?"

After analyzing the contractor's equipment, it was discovered that there was a repair shop next to where the two were.

"I have also scanned this repair shop. The last time the mechanical equipment inside was operated was also 3193 years ago."

"Go over and have a look."

The dust inside the repair shop was enough to build a two-meter-high sand castle after cleaning it up, which was enough to prove how long it had been abandoned. The two observed the interior of the repair shop while scanning with the contractor's equipment. They found that although the shapes of many things were different from the human technology they were familiar with, the way they were used were almost the same as in today's human society. With a little learning, the two could even use any of the equipment inside skillfully.

"So the contractors' technological level was at least the same as ours 3000 years ago?"

"It's really exaggerated, but since there is such a repair shop in this place, maybe you are right. This may not be a secret facility, but a city where contractors once lived."

"So I'm more curious about why this place was shelved. No, it should be more accurate to say that it was abandoned. The technology level of the natives of this planet is only at the level of prenatal education, even compared with the contractors 3000 years ago. Moreover, according to their current way of moving, they still mainly rely on animal power. It is not an easy task for them to reach the outside of this city. Even that lake, as well as the swamps and canyons before, require a lot of manpower and resources for them to pass through."

"Maybe it's related to the race that fought a war with the contractors before? Maybe they didn't win the war, so they ran away?"

"Regarding this point, I suddenly realized something when we entered the city. I think what the equipment searched and what the information equipment in the city recorded might not be correct."

“But contractors never use lies when communicating, right?”

"It's like this now, but it wasn't necessarily the case thousands of years ago. And the state of the entire city, especially the entrance and the huge mountains outside that serve as cover, doesn't it remind you of something, Gloria?"

"Status? Many of the entrances we searched, including the one we came in through, have some damage that is not caused by human factors, but due to time and disrepair. Most of them are structural collapse caused by natural environmental factors, or some wildly growing plants have destroyed those entrances for a long time. The mountains outside have been scanned by equipment and no signs of human damage have been found... Wait, there are no signs of human damage in the mountains outside?!"

"If there was a war between two races, don't you think the degree of destruction is too small? You have to know that most of the nearby mountains have been hollowed out. Let me give you an analogy. If you were the commander of one of the races, knowing that attacking the mountain would cause large-scale damage to the enemy and effectively kill a large number of enemy troops, what method would you choose?"

"Of course it was bombed... Wait, there are no signs of human damage in the mountains, and only the city was damaged. According to the data we obtained, the damaged urban area actually only accounts for one twentieth of the entire city size... Han Zu, what you mean is..."

"There is no second race at all. The city was abandoned and shelved because of a civil war among the contractors. And judging from the scale of the damage to the city, it may not even be considered a civil war, but just a local conflict. Or a large-scale terrorist attack."

"And I haven't detected anyone here. If it's just a local conflict or a terrorist attack, I don't understand what could have happened to leave no one alive in the entire city. Logically speaking, with this level of city damage, even a contractor with thousands of years of experience must have enough resources to repair it."

"Although the equipment inside the city, except for the equipment that is still running at the lowest power and controls the signal to the star destroyer, has the latest equipment that has operation records from hundreds of years ago, this does not mean that there were still contractors in the city at that time. It is very likely that the equipment is still running automatically. So there must have been some extreme situation that could not be handled at that time, which led to the city being completely shelved."

"There are only two scenarios I can think of. Either a large-scale, incurable plague broke out, or the city was in danger of being completely destroyed. I prefer the latter. After all, I don't think a virus or plague would have any effect on a life form like the contractors. They don't have a body, at least I don't think their bodies are made of biological materials."

While discussing the possible situation in the city at that time, the two walked along the road in the city towards the city center. The information storage device that the contractor's equipment was connected to at the beginning was located in that direction.

"You can't be too definite. The words on this building next to me roughly translate to a restaurant."

"Maybe they were eating some kind of energy block or something?"

"You'll know if you go in and take a look."

I don’t know if it was luck or something else, but in a place similar to the back kitchen, Han Zu and Gloria found a device with similar functions to a refrigerator. Although it had lost power long ago, the sealing of this thing was still good. After opening it, an indescribable disgusting smell emanated from it. Fortunately, Han Zu was very familiar with this smell.

"Uh! The smell of rotting meat, I'm 100% sure."

"Are you sure? After all, as far as we know, this thing is at least thousands of years old. Could it be a different flavor?"

"It shouldn't be. I took a look at this... It should be the refrigerator. Although it has no power, it is well sealed, so the rotten smell has not come out. The refrigerator in my warehouse is sealed to a similar degree. There have been a few times when I turned off the power to the refrigerator because I was working on other things, and then forgot to plug it back in. After being out for a while, I came back and opened the refrigerator, and there was this smell."

"So those contractor guys do need to eat? But it doesn't look like that at all."

"That's now. Maybe thousands of years ago they still had bodies. Who knows what happened to them."

"Ok."

After leaving the restaurant-like location and walking forward for a distance, they found a large amount of vehicle wreckage at the intersection of several main roads. Judging from their location, there must have been a large-scale car accident at the time.

"So it was the time that caused this chain accident. I took a quick look and found that there were at least hundreds of cars here. Apart from the dozen or so cars in the front, the cars behind did not have time to brake and rear-ended each other, which led to this situation. What could have caused at least a hundred people to fail to brake and cause such a big car accident? Was there something special happening in front?"

Passing through the wreckage of vehicles, the two men quickly arrived in front of the first batch of vehicles. They could see the wreckage of a building collapsed to the ground about ten meters away, blocking the entire main road.

"So this is the reason for the massive chain reaction. But that shouldn't be the case, right? This building is so big that it can be seen from a long distance. Even if the first batch of vehicles and some of the cars behind them had a car accident, that's normal. But are the drivers of the hundreds of cars behind them all blind? They couldn't even see such an obvious accident?"

"The collapsed building is indeed a possible cause of the accident, but I think there may be more reasons than that. We saw a lot of skeletons in the wreckage of the vehicle behind us. We can use the contractor's equipment to scan it and maybe get some clues."

"I don't quite agree. These bones are probably thousands of years old. Even if the equipment is advanced, there is a high probability that nothing can be detected."

"After entering this empty city, our equipment has enough distance. I have used the equipment to crack the operating protocol of the signal transmission system as soon as possible. So now unless someone else hacks the contractor's equipment on the two of us, the satellite's star destroyer system will not be triggered. In this way, we don't need to rush to find a transmission device or node. We have plenty of time."

"Okay, you're the boss, you decide."

But Gloria was right. Due to the long time and the fact that the skeletons were not very complete due to the ravages of time, the two did not find any useful information from them.

"So what do we do now, boss?"

"Let's continue moving in the direction of the information storage device. However, we have plenty of time, so we can keep an eye out for other clues along the way. Perhaps we can find out why something happened here at that time."

The two men walked around the wreckage of vehicles and buildings and continued forward. Not long after they started walking, the same prompt popped up on the contractor equipment on both of them.

"An extractable information storage device has been detected. Device location is in progress..."

"Positioning completed, the best route is being planned."

Following the route given by the device, they did not walk far before they found an incomplete skeleton on what should be a sidewalk. On its tightly grasped but incomplete finger bones was a severely damaged device that looked like a mobile phone. The information storage device that was scanned before should be referring to this device.

"This thing is broken like this, can it still be read?"

"Didn't the device say it was an extractable information storage device? I guess it works. It doesn't cost money to try it anyway."

However, when Han Zu picked up the device, it broke into pieces again. Fortunately, the parts storing information seemed to be usable, so Han Zu immediately used the contractor's equipment to read the information stored inside. It was a hastily shot video. The location of the video happened to be the direction of the previous car accident.

The video was a bit blurry, and one could only vaguely see a blinding light flash in the distance, followed by a violent tremor. The people in the video were running away in panic, away from the direction of the light.

The cause of the car accident was not just the collapsed buildings. The vehicles seemed to be suddenly out of control and the drivers lost control of the vehicles, which eventually led to this large-scale car accident.

But there is one strange thing. In the middle of the video, the person who shot the video seems to have suddenly fallen to the ground. Before the picture is completely blocked, a large number of pedestrians fleeing on the street can be seen, and the same thing happened to them. From this point on, the video has always been in the same perspective. The person who shot the video does not seem to have moved the position of the camera again until the device completely ran out of power.