"He's in."
"Damn, I'm really not afraid of death." Fatty Jiang cursed, "Get out all the drones we have and monitor every exit in the city. Fat Grandpa will trap him to death."
This city is not too big. After all, it was built on nuclear facilities.
"Fortunately, I was prepared and brought a radiation detector."
"Gan, it's too high."
Fatty Jiang glanced at the index on the display.
The terrifying over-standard multiple scared him to the point of breaking out in a cold sweat.
"It's been two hundred years, why is there still such strong radiation?" The team was puzzled.
"Who knows? Hurry back and retreat to a safe place."
Everyone drove back five hundred meters, away from the city.
More than thirty micro-drones hovered over the city, observing every move of the target.
The whole city is in full view.
"He stopped, parked in an abandoned amusement park, smoking, and looked up at us. He was so arrogant."
"He knew we didn't dare to go in, so he was waiting."
"Wait for an extreme weather event, preferably a sandstorm. The overwhelming yellow sand will affect the observation, and we must avoid it, so that he will have a chance to escape."
Extreme weather is common in no-man's land.
The man should have made adequate preparations before escaping. The dry food and water he brought with him were enough to last him for several days.
There is a high possibility of extreme weather in these few days.
"It's a pity that the drones we brought this time were for observation and did not carry weapons. Otherwise, we would have beaten that guy until he ran away with his head covered."
"It looks like... only Lu Wen can go in."
Everyone's eyes were focused on Lu Wen.
As a mechanical life form, his advantages are too great.
"Are you sure?" Xia Chuluo looked at him.
"As long as there are no accidents, it won't be difficult to kill him."
Not really big.
Moreover, the other party relaxed after entering the city and was not alert.
"Actually, there is no need for Lu Wen to take risks. As long as we stay here for a few days, that guy will be finished for the rest of his life. All kinds of cancers and lesions will not let him go in the rest of his life." Lu Yang said.
"But look at his arrogance, I really can't bear this tone." Fatty Jiang pointed at the monitoring screen.
"It's okay, nothing unexpected happened."
Lu Wen reassured everyone.
He looked at the city in the distance.
The wind and sand passed by, and everything you could see was desolate.
Ruins always have a different kind of beauty, incomplete and dilapidated.
Lu Wen drove the vehicle slowly into this city where radiation seriously exceeded the standard.
Scattered cement boards and bricks pieced together a broken silence.
These ruins silently tell stories from another era, and these stories are most loved by painters and poets.
"Click..."
Wheels rolled over decaying street signs.
Time has eroded these metal objects until only dark brown rust is left. It has been rolled over, leaving debris scattered on the ground and scattered in the wind.
Not every piece of metal and machinery can endure the long years like Zero's main body.
There are signs of life in the city.
The place where the city center was intensively bombarded by nuclear weapons is now a small lake surrounded by various green plants.
The intertwining of withered yellow and emerald green announces the death and rebirth of the city.
This city is different from the ruined cities Lu Wen has seen before.
Although those cities in the past have experienced the baptism of war, most of them can maintain their original appearance. There are not too many collapsed buildings. They were abandoned simply because they were no longer suitable for habitation.
And this city... is almost completely broken.
As far as the eye can see, there are only a few intact buildings.
Not long after entering the city, Lu Wen stopped the car.
He heard something different.
"呲...呲..."
A sharper cry.
From beneath the ruins.
Lu Wen lifted up a cement board, which was very heavy. Fortunately, his strength was far beyond that of ordinary people.
Down there is a creature that has never been seen before.
[Matching failed]
[Preliminary judgment is that it is a creature of the order Squamata]
As expected, Azure's biological database failed again.
This strange creature is no bigger than a basketball. It is covered in black scales with sharp protrusions and sharp lips.
A bit like a pangolin, but pangolin scales are not like this.
This little guy was very fierce and grinned at Lu Wen.
"The existence of this kind of creature shows that the city has a complete ecosystem."
Lu Wen put down the cement board.
This little guy prefers to stay in dark corners. He just lifted up the cement board, and the sunlight makes him uncomfortable and makes him feel that his territory has been violated.
"Sure enough, where there is water, there is life."
Lu Wen chose to move forward on foot.
The target is not hiding, it is right in the center of the city, next to the lake, in a former playground.
It took a long time to walk towards the center.
During this period, Lu Wen encountered several strange creatures.
There is an ugly strange bird with three eyes, and a slender snake has grown four legs again and crawls on the ground...
The further you go, the more vegetation you can see.
Dark red moss began to spread on those fine stones and decayed cement slabs.
These mosses seem to be alive.
In one piece.
It is moving slowly on the ground at a speed that is almost impossible to judge by the naked eye, and it feels furry.
Lu Wen cut off a piece with a short knife. The entire piece of moss shrank, as if he felt pain, and dark red liquid flowed from the cut place.
Small crimson flowers swayed on the street.
As soon as Lu Wen approached, these small flowers closed and retracted into the ground.
A dark red lizard clung to the ruined wall beside the road. There was also such a small dark red flower growing on the top of the lizard's head, which seemed to bloom from the skull.
The city's landmark building is a clock tower located in the southeast corner of the city, which is also where the amusement park is located.
The bell tower survived the war and withstood the tempering of the years. Thick gray-black vines clung to the surface of the bell tower. From a distance, it looked like a building composed of plant vines.
The hands of the big clock on the top floor are still turning.
Those dark roots wrap around the pointer, controlling its movement bit by bit.
There are gradually fewer animals.
"Just now we could see some animals on the periphery, but now we are getting closer to the center and there are more and more plants."
It stands to reason that these animals should need to drink water, and the center is the water source.
Along the way, Lu Wen saw more than ten kinds of plants that he had never seen before and that were not recorded in the blue database.
He recorded it all.
These images are precious.
Almost no one is willing to explore such a heavily polluted place. One reason is that they are afraid of death, and the other reason is that there is no economic value and there is no need to customize a special robot to explore.
It's a pity that Lu Wen has no friends in botany.
[Attack intent detected]
[Attack intent detected]
[…]
The system keeps giving him this prompt.
Normally, if someone is looking at Lu Wen from behind for a long time or approaches him quickly, the system will give this prompt.
But now the whole city is silent.
Even the wind noise is quite small.
Lu Wen looked around and found that there were indeed only plants here.
Those animals may have been frightened by the sudden arrival of humans and hid, or they may not have had time to move.
The plants in this place are quite strange, mainly vines.
All kinds of vines.
Lu Wen came under a tree made of vines. The vines were entangled together, and there seemed to be some quite regular rhythm inside the twisted body.
"heartbeat?"
He stretched out his hand and pressed it against the vine.
It does sound like a heartbeat.
There is also the sound of liquid flowing inside these vines, like blood flushing blood vessels.
"Are the plants here all predatory or parasitic, so animals don't dare to come? But those animals have to drink water..."
Lu Wen came to the lake.
The lake surface is very calm, with occasional waves rippling.
He slowly squatted down.
The water of the lake is very clear, and some dark red algae are attached to the rocks on the shore.
A swimming fish slowly swam to the shore, nibbling the red algae on the stone bit by bit. Every time it nibbled, red liquid overflowed and dissipated in the lake, as if it was the blood flowing from the algae.
This fish doesn't look normal
There are dark red threads protruding from between the fish's scales and even from its eyes. The tops of these threads are split, like tiny tentacles. The lines on them are clearly visible. They should be a kind of plant.
But there is liquid flowing rapidly inside the silk thread.
Lu Wen stood up slowly.
From an outside perspective, everything here seemed a little weird, but there was nothing that threatened his safety at this time.
So he walked towards the amusement park in the southeast direction.
It was a once prosperous place, and it is still the only place to see in the city.
The rides had obviously collapsed.
But for some reason, in the following years, they were tied together bit by bit by those plants and vines, and slowly changed into what they were before.
The city's iconic clock tower should be like this too.
After all, this city has been hit by nuclear weapons. Although the clock tower and amusement park here are not the center, there is no possibility of the buildings being preserved.
In the paradise, the lonely Ferris wheel is still spinning slowly.
Thick vines support the decayed metal supports. It can be said that those supports and even the cockpit are being replaced by plants little by little.
"It's amazing, isn't it? These plants seem to have the consciousness of animals, slowly restoring the city to its previous appearance, this amusement park, that clock tower..." The man sat on a bench at the entrance of the amusement park.
The benches were originally made of wood but have been eroded by time.
Those vines replaced the original material.
Even the colors are very close.
These vines are earthy yellow. If you don't look carefully, you would think they are things left over from the past.
That man was sitting on a chair made of woven vines.
His motorcycle was parked nearby.
Lu Wen looked at this man's pale face and understood immediately.
"It turns out it's not that you don't want to leave, but that you can't leave."
It was outside the city.
Surveillance via drones.
Everyone saw this man park his motorcycle next to the amusement park, smoking a cigarette and looking up at them with an indifferent expression.
At that time, everyone thought the man was resting.
But he rested for too long, and never got up once he sat down. He seemed to be provoking, as if he was asking the team members outside the city through the drone if they had the courage to come in.
But everyone thought wrong.
Perhaps when he sat down in the first place, he really wanted to rest for a while.
But after sitting down, there was no chance to get up.
Those withered yellow vines slowly wrapped around his legs and arms for a moment when he wasn't paying attention.
Blood dripped slowly.
This vine-like plant was sucking his blood.
(End of chapter)