Chapter 381 Alien Battlefield (10) Clues

Chapter 381 Alien Battlefield (10) Clues

21 minute later.

Following the marks left by the two teenagers on the wall, Han Zu found the location above. This is a fork in the road.

The fork road is divided into two sides, front and back, leading to different heights. The front fork road leads to the garbage disposal system, which is used to break up the large pieces of garbage that flow into this location through the waterway in the sewer system into pieces of suitable size, and then spray disinfectants on these pieces through a special device in the center, and then these garbage pieces together with sewage are discharged from the city through the terminal sewer system below the garbage system.

Although it is essentially a large-scale crushing equipment, a scan of this long-out-of-service large crusher by the equipment confirms that even when it was operating normally, its speed was not very fast. On the contrary, it was very slow. Moreover, although it is said to be crushed, in fact, even the things processed by this crushing equipment are not very small in size.

And although theoretically this is still a very dangerous thing for ordinary people, as long as you stay calm and find a good opportunity, as long as you don't have hand or leg disabilities, even an elderly person can pass through the middle before the teeth turn to a dangerous position.

Of course, you can also climb down directly from the maintenance ladder with guardrails.

After the equipment scan, the structural diagram from here shows that there are four pipes under this crushing equipment, all leading to the same location, and all four pipes lead to the city 70 kilometers away from this location. However, according to the understanding of modern sewage systems and the design drawings of the sewage system found in the contractor's equipment, the sewage pipes under the garbage disposal system were all below the water surface. In other words, if you want to leave through those sewage pipes, you must use auxiliary breathing equipment. After all, there is no place to ventilate in the sewage pipes below.

Excluding the possibility that the two teenagers left here, there are two possible scenarios. One is to return by the same route, but based on the situation at the time, this is basically impossible. The only possibility left is that they chose the fork in the road at the back.

It is not quite accurate to call it a fork in the road, because the fork at the back is actually a ladder leading upwards. However, this ladder does not lead directly to the wellhead on the ground, but to another level of the sewer system. According to the design drawings provided by the contractor's equipment, that level should be part of the emergency maintenance passage.

With a light leap, Han Zu jumped onto a platform on that level and climbed over the railing. However, after he climbed up, the platform immediately made a friction sound due to its weight. Although this metal platform should be very strong, it had not been repaired for thousands of years. In order to prevent it from making a louder sound and causing it to break, Han Zu reached out and stabbed into the rock wall next to it, and continued to move forward from the wall.

Continuing along the platform, we soon arrived at a small room built against the wall. Inside was some metal junk, covered with a lot of dust. There was also a vague mark on the wall. The two young men should have stayed here for a while.

These metal garbage covered with dust should be the maintenance tools and firefighting equipment placed in this small room. This room should have been a material room and a temporary rest room. According to the urban structure planning map found on the contractor's network, this kind of maintenance material room in the sewer system is a very common building. Basically, there are such buildings in important locations in the sewer system.

"Restoration in progress..."

"Restoration completed, 50% accuracy."

"Serving all restore results."

After a minute or two of scanning and analysis, the contractor's equipment successfully restored the original appearance of the mark. However, after all, it was too old, so the accuracy of the restored mark was not very high. However, the equipment marked all the remaining possibilities, and there were not many, just two. According to the marks above, one led to the depths of the maintenance passage, and the other was one hundred meters away, an exit to the ground.

These two locations are very interesting, they are actually connected together. However, the closest location to Han Zu's normal way is not the exit 100 meters away, but the depths of the maintenance passage.

This is about the structure of the sewer system. The sewer system used in this empty city is a multi-channel parallel structure. Simply put, there are several waterways in the same location, separated by walls. There is no direct connection between the waterways, but they can be connected through fixed confluence locations. This can save underground space while reducing the drainage burden of the sewer system.

That means taking a detour.

Although Han Zu could easily pass through the wall and reach the exit using a variety of methods, this might affect the structural stability of the sewer system, at least at this location. Secondly, the two teenagers at that time did not have the physical fitness of Han Zu. If they wanted to move forward, they could only go around to the confluence of multiple waterways and then continue from there. Fortunately, the confluence location and the location deep in the maintenance channel were in the same direction.

After crawling on the wall like a monster for more than ten minutes, Han Zu arrived at the depths of the maintenance channel, which was a certain location marked by the mark. Some clues were found here. On the platform below his right side, where the water level of the waterway was observed, there were more than a dozen skeletons. Judging from their falling positions and postures, their cause of death was the same as those on the ground, all of them fell to the ground and died suddenly.

"So the cause of their death is not less potent because of the location of the sewer system."

After scanning and confirming that the platform was strong enough, Han Zu descended to the platform and began to search the skeletons. Although he also found some broken equipment around them, they were basically no different from garbage and could not read any information at all. So Han Zu could not clearly understand what happened at that time.

"Ok?"

However, it is not that nothing was found. Two of the relatively intact skeletons had a hole in the shoulder blade. Based on my own experience and the scanning and detection of the contractor's equipment, I can basically confirm that this is a bullet hole made by live ammunition. The cause of death of these two people does not seem to be sudden collapse, but being shot.

According to the analysis of the size of the hole, this weapon was not any of the weapons that the man with the mechanical eye gave to the two teenagers before his death. Although they also had live ammunition weapons, the caliber was larger than this hole.

"Reading the anatomy data of ancient contractors..."

"completed."

According to the data of the ancient contractors' human body structure extracted by the equipment, these contractors who still had flesh at that time had a body structure very similar to that of humans, but they had several more organs than humans, were larger in size, and had larger main blood vessels and brain capacity. Their body recovery ability was much stronger than that of humans. As long as they did not suffer fatal injuries or open wounds that could not be healed, they could automatically heal within a few hours. However, they also needed medical equipment and treatment methods such as blood transfusions. But in general, killing a contractor is much more difficult than killing a human.

According to the comparison with the position of the bullet hole in the shoulder blade, in the contractor's body, under the shoulder blade at this position, there is an organ unique to their race. The scientific name of this organ is difficult to translate into human language, but according to the function of this organ, it can be called a second heart. This extra organ has both advantages and disadvantages.

The benefits are very powerful. When the contractor's main heart loses its function or is irreparably damaged, as long as the blood loss is no longer continued, the second heart can immediately replace the main heart and continue to maintain the contractor's life activities. Moreover, if there are sufficient medical conditions, the main heart that has lost its function or has been irreparably damaged can even be directly removed and replaced with this organ. After the treatment is completed and fully recovered, the person who has undergone the operation will not experience any negative effects on the body, which is completely the same as if he had never been injured.

But the disadvantages are equally obvious. First, if this organ is attacked and damaged, heavy bleeding will occur immediately. This kind of damage cannot be repaired by the contractor on its own, and can only be effectively treated with medical treatment. If it is not treated in time, the possibility of death or irreversible damage to the body is very high. Secondly, after this organ replaces the original heart, its consumption is very large. For example, if a normal contractor needs to eat one portion of food every day to maintain basic body functions, then when this organ replaces the heart, it will need to eat three portions of food to achieve the same effect. And the last point, which is the most important point, is that when this organ replaces the original normal heart, the life span of the contractor will be irreversibly shortened, which will reduce the theoretical maximum life span by 27%.

According to the information provided by the equipment, the contractor's theoretical maximum lifespan is 300 years, which means that once this organ replaces the original heart, the lifespan will be reduced by 81 years.

"Even so, they are still much stronger than humans."

According to the current situation, no matter who fired the gun, they should have known the specific situation of the deceased. Judging from the location of the bullet holes, they should have known that the second hearts of the two skeletons should have replaced the original hearts. That's why they shot at the shoulder blade.

Suddenly, an idea immediately flooded into Han Zu's mind. By connecting the clues he had currently, he suddenly thought of a possibility for this disaster that happened thousands of years ago.

"Massive death... Shooting... The killer may know that these two people had undergone surgery..."

A conspiracy theory-style idea gradually became clear. According to Han Zu's speculation, something happened in the empty city that year. Perhaps it was a group of people, perhaps the contractor's government, or perhaps the enemy, who wanted to completely and once and for all eliminate all the people in the city. Han Zu guessed that the flash that appeared at that time, combined with the collective death of contractors that soon appeared later, was probably a special weapon, such as a gene bomb. The power of this thing when it exploded was not great, or even very small, and it could not shatter the glass of surrounding buildings with shock waves. Moreover, according to recollections, in the video footage at that time, many pedestrians were holding pets. When the contractors died collectively, those pets were fine. If it was a virus weapon, the pets should also die.

"Special organ... second heart... um..."

If we continue to speculate based on the situation of the gene bomb, then the teenagers who did not die after the explosion and were still alive and kicking a few hours later must have some abnormal genes, which is why they are immune to the attack of the gene bomb. You know, according to the situation on the street in the video at the time, this kind of large-scale death situation spread very quickly.

It just so happened that Han Zu discovered the contractor's second heart, a special organ. He always felt that there was some connection between them. In addition, the shooting at the second heart, which seemed to be excessive killing, made him suspect that the mutant gene that was immune to gene bomb attacks might have some connection with the second heart organ.

"Reading ancient contractor gene sequence... Completed."

Sure enough, after retrieving the data, Han Zu saw what he had guessed. The contractor's special organ was related to the mutation of genes. Although the possibility of mutation was only a few tenths of a percent, considering the number of contractors in the entire city, at least a few thousand people were immune to the attack of the gene bomb.

"So what happened that would make people kill all the contractors in the city at all costs? It's not easy to find thousands of people with genetic mutations, let alone clean them up specifically."

If these people who were specifically responsible for cleaning up the genetic mutations could be found, Han Zu might be able to understand the incident faster. However, from the information currently obtained, there was no mention of their existence. However, according to Han Zu's idea, these guys must exist, and they should have been in the city before the gene bomb was detonated. After all, according to the records of all the exits in the city, there was no record of anyone entering or leaving after the gene bomb exploded.

"That's the information I have and my analysis, Gloria."

"But we cannot rule out the possibility that they may have entered the city through other locations, such as the terminal sewage pipe you mentioned earlier. If they can accurately find thousands of genetically mutated targets from the population of a city, I think it would not be difficult for them to get some diving equipment."

"That's possible. How's your situation?"

"I searched the floors and found some marks left by the three teenagers. It seems that the 'river bank' they mentioned is really important to them. The marks and words I just found also mentioned that they should meet up at the river bank. It seems that we should find the location of this so-called 'river bank'."

"Keep searching. I'm going to continue to the exit they marked and see where it leads to. Contact me later."

"it is good."

After the communication ended, Han Zu, who had no more clues, prepared to head for the exit. He soon arrived at the confluence of the waterways and prepared to head towards the exit from this location.

"Zizzi."

However, Han Zu seemed to hear a sound that sounded familiar, but Han Zu couldn't remember what it was. Looking at the exit that was just around the corner, Han Zu hesitated for a moment, and finally chose to look for the location where the sound came from, and did not choose to leave. The source of the sound seemed to pass through the confluence of the waterway behind, and came from another waterway. This waterway seemed to be completely blocked by something. From the front, it looked like a pile of unprocessed construction waste.