Chapter 437 "Infectious Diseases" (8)

Chapter 437 "Infectious Diseases" (8)

Strangely, after Han Zu dealt with the invisible energy creatures in the corridor, the team members no longer received their attacks. After releasing the connected energy shield, while continuing to move to the upper floor, Han Zu walked to Xinle, pulled him to the front of the team, and started chatting with him.

"What do you think about those crew members who are like zombies? I think you have a smart mind."

"You mean... you have an idea?"

Han Zu took Xin Le two more steps forward and glanced back at the others who were on alert. Xin Le was a little nervous about Han Zu's behavior. It seemed that he was about to say something that was not suitable for everyone to know.

"What do you Tig people think about the soul?"

"Soul? Do you mean the soul in myths and legends, or the real 'soul' that we study?"

Just a short sentence was able to prove that the concept of soul also existed in the Tige people's system, so Han Zu continued the conversation.

"Has your technology reached the level necessary to analyze the soul?"

"Almost. After years of voluntary experiments with mortals, we have indeed figured out that after the death of the Tig people, a special energy will leave the body. The amount of this energy is not large, and it has almost no connection with the dead body. However, it will only be born in a completely dead body, or appear. Seventy years ago, the General Research Institute on the Tig people's home planet successfully used special equipment to capture the movement trajectory of this energy after leaving the dead body. According to the public research video, it can be seen that after moving for a period of time, these special energies will change from irregular shapes to a kind of... uh... a shape similar to a thin line, and then they will disappear out of thin air."

"But I guess the actual situation may be different from the public research video?"

Xinle also glanced back at the others, it seemed that he did know some inside information.

"Well, actually, according to the information I have learned, that special energy did not disappear, but automatically decomposed and merged into other energies in the space. However, some less "mainstream" researchers conducted some special experiments. It is said that they used some special instruments that have not appeared in the public eye. They used this instrument to capture an energy that had not had time to decompose, and then used the instrument to introduce this energy into a clone. Although there is no evidence of what happened afterwards, the news I heard seemed to be that the clone suddenly possessed all the memories of the body that originally provided the energy."

"Borrowing a dead body to bring back a soul?"

"That word is quite appropriate. Your culture is indeed very special. By the way, why are you asking about the soul? Do you think that the reason why those zombie-like crew members on the High Wall became like that is related to their souls?"

"Do you Tig people have a culture of horror literature?"

"Yes, and there are many kinds... Wait, you mean, those crew members lost their souls?!"

"To be honest, this statement is indeed ridiculous, but based on what we know so far..."

"It seems so... If your guess is correct, then what caused their souls to be lost? Before we arrived at Sector 4, the command network and the mission intelligence assigned to us said that the entire Sector 4 had suffered the same tragedy. If that's the case, what could have such a powerful force that caused the people of an entire sector to lose their souls?"

"If this problem is related to the energy creatures we encountered, it would be easy to explain. But if it is really related to them, how they appeared is the most important question. However, we have no way to be sure now. Although I can absorb those energy creatures, I cannot read their memories. I don't think they have that kind of thing."

"So what should we do now? How about telling others your guess? If we can discuss it with more people, maybe we can..."

"No, this will only create panic, unless one of you has relevant experience. But judging from everyone's performance just now, I don't think so."

"Then why tell me?"

"Didn't I tell you that you have a very smart mind?"

"Okay.. so what do we do now?"

"Continue to the navigator's room and find the cipher machine. Perhaps the captain's secret is related to the current situation. These energy creatures cannot appear out of thin air."

"Hey! Where are you going? This way!"

The two became more and more engaged in the conversation, and gradually walked farther and farther away from the team. Xin noticed something unusual about them and called them over.

"What are you talking about?"

"Floating cannon."

Han Zu patted Xin Le's shoulder, or to be more precise, his shoulder armor, and then returned to the team. Xin looked at Xin Le in confusion.

"We were indeed talking about the floating gun. He was very interested in the weapon system of the floating gun."

"Talking about this at this time?"

“I don’t know how his mind works.”

Xinle's brain was indeed very sharp. He evaded the question with just a few words, and his expression didn't change much, which sounded reasonable.

But her intuition told her that the two of them were definitely not talking about this. But it seemed that she couldn't find out by asking.

It didn't take long for everyone to reach the elevator leading to the upper level. The security door of the elevator was damaged for some reason, and the cargo compartment inside was stuck with fungus nets on all sides. Due to the lack of electricity, the surrounding magnetic kinetic energy equipment was in a shut-down state. If the fungus nets were cleared, the cargo compartment would fall directly down, but if they were not cleared, the cargo compartment would not be able to move even if the power was restarted.

The energy source responsible for the elevator's power was damaged, and Sinler was unable to restart it remotely. After inspection with a scanning device, the elevator shaft was found to be full of bacterial webs. Even if the cargo car was lowered, everyone could not reach the upper floor through the elevator shaft, so everyone could only find another route to go up.

"There is a gap at this location. It looks like someone used a melta weapon to burn it during a firefight. It's big enough for us to climb up from here. And after climbing up from this location, we are only around a corner from the navigator's room."

"What are the scan results?"

"There are a lot of life reactions and equipment reactions on board. They should be other crew members. Judging from the speed and direction of their movement, their conditions should be similar to those we encountered before."

"What about those energy creatures?"

"Nothing. But although the lighting facilities on the upper floor have also stopped working, the main circuits are not damaged. I can try to repair them remotely."

"Don't repair it yet. Those energy creatures seem to be very interested in energy. If we repair the electricity, it is likely to attract them back."

"Then go up first, who of you can help me?"

Although Han Zu, who is in liquid state, is now much stronger in lateral movement than before, due to the same liquid state, although he can accumulate strength and hold the edge of the gap with both hands, his body will flow and stretch downward due to gravity, and he cannot pull himself up, so if he needs to move up and down long distances, he needs help from others.

"Let me do it."

Xinle came over, opened the robot pool on his back, pointed with his finger, and Han Zu understood what he meant and flowed directly into the robot pool. Using the power propulsion device, Hai, who was responsible for fire support, and Wu arrived above the gap first. After confirming that there was no threat around, Xinle also flew up. After opening the robot pool again and releasing Han Zu, the others also flew up one after another.

With the help of the locking sequence and night vision equipment in the armored masks, everyone soon saw a number of "High Wall" crew members. Their movements were the same as those seen before, very stiff. Rather than humans, they looked more like robots with exhausted energy. They were either wandering aimlessly or standing still, leaning against the wall without moving.

"It must have been a long time since these crew members became like this. How did they survive without food and water for such a long time?"

Several team members raised doubts. Indeed, although the physical fitness of the Tigris is much stronger than that of humans in all aspects, it is impossible for them to survive without food and water for at least a month. This situation is indeed not right.

"I think this should answer your confusion."

Wu pointed to the corner of the wall next to them. Everyone followed the direction he pointed and saw several crew members of the "Gaoqiang" lying on the ground, eating something in big mouthfuls. When they got closer to check, they found that what they were eating was something similar to the fungal webs that can be seen everywhere now, but these things were softer and contained a lot of water.

"These things are a kind of... um... they are similar to fungi in all conditions, but they are actually living things. These fungus-like creatures are very low-level, have no intelligence, and can hardly move, similar to plants. According to my scans, these creatures are non-toxic and have the minimum level of nutrients required by the human body. As for the water, I detected something else in it. It should be the body fluids of this low-level creature. It is also harmless, but it has a very addictive component. It is a special substance we have never seen before."

"Now that I think about it, those fungus webs we saw on the way here are not necessarily all fungus webs. There should be quite a few of these strange organisms. If their number is large enough, it means that the other crew members on the High Wall are still alive?"

"Except for those who committed suicide, I think those who committed suicide must have witnessed similar situations to what we saw, and chose to commit suicide in order not to become like these people."

"Here we are."

As they were talking, everyone had already arrived outside the navigator's room. Due to a lack of electricity, the hatch was blocked and could not be opened. However, for the fully armed team, this was not a problem.

"Wait, don't open it yet. I scanned biological signals inside."

"Maybe it's a crew member who was trapped inside? Those energy creatures won't be blocked by these metals. Maybe someone thought that hiding in the room would be able to block those energy creatures, and then they were attacked by those energy creatures, and then the power failed, and they were trapped inside."

"But this was the navigator's room, and the navigator died in the pilothouse."

"Maybe it was very chaotic at the time, and someone just hid in there?"

"That's absolutely impossible. Putting aside the ship's safety regulations, the navigator knows that there is a secret hidden in her room. Do you think she would let anyone enter her room casually?"

"Maybe they went in after the power failed?"

"Do you think you can close this explosion-proof hatch without armor? The navigator must have removed the anti-jam device to prevent the secret from being leaked. Maybe the room has also been modified to some extent."

"Too."

"Let's make a small hole first and let him go in and take a look."

Sinler took out his cutting tool and opened a small hole at the bottom of the hatch. Through this small hole, Han Zu quickly entered the navigator's room. There was indeed a guy in the same condition as the other crew members, but the clothes on this guy were completely different from the crew uniforms.

"It's safe, come in."

After cutting the hatch open, Xinle and Wu entered the cabin. Due to the size of the cabin and the size of their armor, only two or three people could stand in the room.

"This guy is not a member of the High Wall. No information about him was found in the facial comparison."

"This should be the cipher machine. I didn't expect them to think of it as a combination lock."

The room is not big, with only a small workbench and a bed. Due to the advanced technology of the Tig people, the army's clothes are basically made of nanomaterials, which are convenient to carry and recycle, so there is no such thing as a wardrobe. The lockers in the room were pried open, but there were only some decorations inside, and a route map stored in a small storage unit. There was nothing important.

The bed that was integrated into the room had been disassembled. On the ground below the bed, there was an open secret compartment. On the door of the secret compartment was a small and complex device, which was the cipher machine that everyone had found before. It was treated as a combination lock that was difficult to unlock.

"It's empty inside, there's nothing there."

“It should be here.”

While Xinle and Wu were talking, Han Zu went to search the guy's body and found two things in the secret pocket on the inside of his clothes. One was a notebook. The content inside was similar to the captain's log in the storage unit of the captain's room, but with more of the missing part. According to the description above, before the accident, the captain provided a secret non-military cargo ship with docking permission, but this docking record did not appear on the ship's list.

The other thing was a strange small metal device. Han Zu didn't know what it was, so he gave it to Xinle.

"This is a special storage device with a miniature self-destruct device inside. It's not very powerful and can't even injure a person, but it's enough to destroy the information units inside the storage device."

"Can you read the information inside?"

"Sure, but I'll need a minute or two."

Xinle's skills far exceeded the level of an engineer. In addition, Han Zu noticed that Xin's team did not have a pharmacist or other medical staff. Xinle was responsible for this part of the work.

"What did you do before joining the army? I see you're pretty versatile."

The others looked at Xinle, but did not say anything and looked away. They seemed to know some secret of Xinle, but they all chose to keep silent.

"It's okay. It's okay to tell him. He's not from Tig anyway. Okay, I'll open it."

But it seemed that Sinler didn't want to say it, so he turned off the self-destruct device on the storage device and opened the contents inside.

"This is a cargo list. Judging from the cargo listed, it seems that the captain of the High Wall is smuggling. Almost nothing on it is legal."

"It's not our mission to investigate smuggling. Besides, this guy is already dead. It seems that this has nothing to do with the situation on the frigate. As for this guy, he is probably the captain's "partner" who came to destroy the evidence."

"Wait a minute, there are some familiar names on the third page. Is the fragment of the list found on the body of the maintenance engineer still there?"

"Give."

"The items above are the same, but they are not dangerous. The reason they are smuggled is simply because they evaded taxation."

"Maybe just a coincidence?"

"I always feel like something is wrong. Let me take another look..."