"Why did you stop again?" Zhang Qifeng paced back and forth behind Li Feng anxiously.
"Yeah." Li Feng crossed his arms. Judging from the real-time information sent back by the team members, something had happened again, and Xing Bi once again controlled the three symbiotes.
But it's not a big problem. Qiu Shi's physical data is very stable. Of course, in Li Feng's opinion, Qiu Shi's psychological quality is better than more than 90% of the soldiers.
"Huh what?" Zhang Qifeng stopped behind him.
"It stopped again." said Li Feng.
"Are you sleepwalking?" Zhang Qifeng said, "How come Team One and Team Three never encounter any problems? All the problems are caused by Team Two."
"Because only Team Two went to Xima Town, Director Zhang," Li Feng said, "Xima Town is closest to Yuncheng, has the largest area, and is the least abandoned. It is the most suitable for a defense base, so it is also the easiest to run into trouble."
"Do you think they can handle it?" Zhang Qifeng whispered, "If not, let Team 3 go..."
"Don't worry," Li Feng said, "Team Three may have to support Team One."
Zhang Qifeng didn't say anything. After a while, he couldn't hold it in any longer and whispered, "What on earth is Colonel Xu thinking? What's the difference between sending a team to their deaths? It's a good thing they didn't ask me for help."
"Maybe he wants to prove that humans don't need to rely too much on biochemical bodies." Li Feng said.
"I think so too," Zhang Qifeng said, "but..."
"By the way, I'd like to prove that the people from the City Defense Bureau are useless." Li Feng said.
"Li, deputy team leader?" Zhang Qifeng looked at him, "What do you mean?"
"I'm going to meet Mr. Long soon," Li Feng checked the time and turned to walk out. "You stay here and watch. The first level ones that Old Wu activated may be completed soon. Come to the exhibition hall in the evening."
"Li Feng," Zhang Qifeng stopped him, "Zhang Sihai...are you really not going to interrogate him?"
"He really doesn't know anything," Li Feng said, "Don't bother him anymore. The relationship between father and son is in jeopardy, Director Zhang."
Zhang Qifeng snorted with a cold face and said nothing.
Recently, Li Feng and Mr. Long have been meeting in Director Wu’s office. I don’t know if it was to avoid suspicion, but on the surface they both went to the laboratory to learn about the progress of the symbiosis experiment.
Li Feng knocked on the office door.
"Come in." Mr. Long responded from inside.
Li Feng pushed the door and entered the office.
"How's it going over there?" The screen in front of Mr. Long was actually showing the scene from the command center, but he still asked.
"Teams 1 and 3 are on their way normally," Li Feng said. "Team 2 has a problem, but I haven't received any feedback yet. Judging from the physical information, there is no major problem."
"Is Director Wu's work almost done?" Mr. Long asked.
"Yes," Li Feng nodded, "You can take a look first."
"Yeah." Mr. Long nodded.
"The number of biochemical bodies activated this time is quite large," Li Feng said, "which has never happened before. We need... General, come and take a look?"
Mr. Long glanced at him and said, "Just sync it to the general."
Li Feng didn't say anything.
"What's wrong?" Mr. Long looked at him with sharp eyes.
"No," Li Feng said, "Then synchronize it to the general."
This time it was Mr. Long's turn to remain silent. He just looked at him thoughtfully.
"Mr. Long," Li Feng did not avoid his gaze, "Can the application I submitted yesterday be approved?"
"Looking for documents related to the Great Cleanup, right?" Mr. Long said, "You can approve it."
"Thank you Mr. Long and General for your trust." Li Feng was a little surprised. He didn't expect Mr. Long to be so straightforward.
"Didn't you expect that?" Mr. Long asked.
"Yes." Li Feng said.
"You are a talented person. Yuncheng needs young people like you," Mr. Long said. "You will always be given the trust you deserve, but you can't let yourself do whatever you want."
"I understand." Li Feng said.
Mr. Long’s meaning is still very clear. You have the ability to do things for the company and Yuncheng, so letting you know some core secrets is like a gift of acceptance, but that’s all.
The general was not something he could inquire about. Who the general was or where the general was were not things he could know now.
What's more, his questions were not limited to these. What he wanted to know was indeed beyond the maximum scope of the trust he could get.
Has anyone seen the General
Does the general exist
"Mayor Luo of Donglin wants to hold a video conference," Mr. Long finished the previous topic, "You and Old Wu go talk to him."
"Okay," Li Feng nodded, "Let me think about it."
The people Mayor Luo wants to meet are definitely not Li Feng and Director Wu, but Mr. Long is not someone who will appear in front of the screen as soon as he says he wants to have a meeting.
These two people have different styles of doing things.
Mayor Luo has a clear purpose. He is the one who can make decisions, and he wants to have a direct dialogue with the one who can make decisions. However, Mr. Long wants the dominant power. It is impossible for Donglin Town and Yuncheng to have an equal cooperative relationship.
"What are you thinking about?" Mr. Long asked.
"Think about how to let him know the correct way to cooperate and continue to cooperate." Li Feng said.
Mr. Long laughed and said, "Don't say anything."
"It's easier to make it clear," Li Feng said. "Time is tight now. Once Xima Town is taken, we have to send people there immediately. If there's a lot of noise, there will definitely be problems. The other side doesn't play a turn-based game with us."
"Yes." Mr. Long nodded, "Go on."
"Team 2 was ambushed in the valley. Whether it was an accident or a plan, both are plausible," Li Feng said. "But Team 1 and Team 3 are fine. Only Team 2 went to Xima Town. I can only suspect the worst. The people in Xima Town have known our plan, but how they knew it is still unclear."
"How do you plan to check?" asked Mr. Long.
"Let's not check it for now," Li Feng said. "We don't have the time or energy. The only thing we can do is to reduce the number of steps and make every step as fast as possible."
Mr. Long smiled and said, "You have guts."
"The main reason is that I want to investigate but I don't have a direction." Li Feng answered honestly.
Standing in front of everyone was a wall that had been buried in the snow in advance and was made of wood tied into a grid pattern. It was very cleverly made.
At each intersection, there is a long movable metal spike. When the wall is placed horizontally on the ground, the spikes are perpendicular to the wall. The spikes are hidden in holes on the ground.
But the moment the wall is erected, these spikes will be thrown out violently due to inertia. Even if the person who stepped on the mechanism has determined the position of the wall, he may not be able to avoid such long spikes.
This mechanism is much more sophisticated than the rock slab that fell in the valley before.
On the other side of the wall were three and a half people who had been killed in the explosion.
The half-dead one looked very painful and kept groaning.
Qiu Shi walked around the wooden wall and saw that this was an older man with white hair.
When he was about to walk over to pull the man up and question him, he noticed a large area of charred black on the ground. He suddenly stretched out his hand to the team member who was following behind him and said, "Don't come over!"
He originally thought that those black things were something burned after the explosion, but when he got closer, he found that they were the blood from these people.
At this moment, he felt that his breathing almost stopped.
"What's wrong?" Zhao Yi asked after stopping.
"An infected person?" Qiu Shi looked at Xing Bi who was coming around from the other side.
The white-haired man on the ground laughed, but it was a difficult laugh.
"No," Xing Bi walked over to the white-haired man and squatted down, reaching out to touch the black blood, "It's immune to humans."
"What?" Qiu Shi, who is also an immune human, was very shocked.
I had an urge to cut myself right away to see what color the blood was.
"Aren't these fungal infections?" he asked Xing Bi.
"Yes," Xing Bi said, "but it's not an infection."
"Accept... this... new world." The white-haired man said with difficulty.
"I accept your ancestors!" Qiu Shi cursed, and turned to look at Zhao Yi and the others without bothering to ask questions, "Add another dose of inhibitor."
"I understand." Zhao Yi said.
The team members stepped back a few steps, took out the inhibitors they carried with them and injected them into their arms.
The white-haired man did not give them the chance to ask any more questions. After saying those incomprehensible words, he died.
Now the only thing Qiu Shi knew was why these people were not shown on the map.
They are just like the symbiotic entity in Nest No. 1 that was covered with fungi. Their blood is full of fungi, forming a kind of interference shield.
"Going into the town?" Zhao Yi asked.
"We have to go in," Qiu Shi said, "otherwise we won't be able to get through tonight."
Xing Bi and Sang Fan brought down the wooden wall, and the team members returned to the car. Guns were sticking out one by one from the shooting ports. Zhao Yi was still in the passenger seat, but this time he directly ejected it.
Qiu Shi understood that the correct usage of this semi-finished product was probably in this situation.
"Not getting in the car?" Xing Bi looked at Qiu Shi and asked.
"No." Qiu Shi said that his fighting style was different from that of the team members on the car. He was not used to fighting with others in a small compartment with several shooting holes.
"Come here." Xing Bi nodded slightly at him.
Qiu Shi went over and followed him a little behind.
Sang Fan went to the back of the car, forming a diagonal position with Xing Bi, and Xiao Zuoyou also went diagonally behind him, one in front and one behind.
"Turn left after entering the town and go directly to the turret in the town," Qiu Shi opened the team channel, "The signals of these people cannot be detected, keep an eye on them."
"Got it." Zhao Yi replied.
The town looked similar to when Qiu Shi came here before, but Qiu Shi could clearly feel that the atmosphere was different. It was a feeling that was difficult to describe. This small town no longer had the extremely lonely temperament it had before, although everything seemed to have not changed much.
In this town, there are definitely not a small number of humans who are immune to black blood.
"The wind is too strong." Qiu Shi said in a low voice.
Although the snow had stopped, the wind was blowing so hard that every word he spoke seemed to be blown away by the wind, and he could not hear anything unusual.
"I can hear it." Xing Bi said.
"It still depends on your quality." said Qiu Shi.
"It was just maintained two days ago." Xing Bi said.
Qiu Shi didn't want to laugh at such a serious and tense moment, but he couldn't help it.
"There's someone in the house on the left." Xing Bi said, using the team channel.
Several guns were pointed at the house on the left at the same time. It was a pet shop. Qiu Shi had been there before. There were many photos of cute kittens and puppies in it.
"Don't shoot yet." Xing Bi said, "The people inside are hiding from us and have gone to the back of the house."
"Go forward," Qiu Shi said, "try not to get into conflict. They have more people."
The team continued to move forward, and Sang Fan stayed at the door of the pet shop.
Qiu Shi glanced at the side of Xing Bi's neck. The black mark was still there, but the shape was slightly different from before. On Xing Bi's fair skin, this black mark seemed to have life, with a strange beauty.
When he was half a street away from the turret, Xing Bi stopped.
The people in the pet shop seemed to have left, and Sang Fan returned to the car.
"Why did it stop?" Zhao Yi asked.
"There are people in the tower," Qiu Shi said, "wait for them to strike up a conversation first."
"Will it be fired directly at us?" Cao Shu asked.
"If they had artillery, they would have fired long ago," Qiu Shi said. "If they couldn't wait for us to enter the town, there would be no need to set up a trap like that."
As Qiu Shi expected, after they stopped for about half a minute, figures flashed past the lookout windows of the turret, but they could not see clearly whether there were any guns pointed at them or not.
"Is someone about to come out?" Qiu Shi said in a low voice.
"Yeah." Xing Bi responded.
"Do I need to shout something?" Qiu Shi asked.
"What are you shouting?" Xing Bi asked, "Have you been surrounded?"
“… They weren’t surrounded either.” Qiu Shi said.
"The Thirty-Six Strategies of Creating Something Out of Nothing." Xing Bi said.
"What the hell?" Qiu Shi frowned.
"No need to shout," Xing Bi said, "It's out."
"Your ancestors." Qiu Shi said.
There was more than one person coming out. At least a dozen people filed out from the small door under the turret, all holding guns. But even at this distance, Qiu Shi could see that the guns in their hands were not very good, only slightly better than the guns used by the corpse collectors in the early days.
After the group came out, they stopped for a while, and then a man walked towards them from the crowd, and the others followed him.
"There are people in both houses," Sang Fan said, "all on the second floor."
Xing Bi began to retreat, and Qiu Shi followed him. After taking a few steps, Qiu Shi stood in front of Zhao Yi on the right side of the car, and Xing Bi stopped.
Qiu Shi knew that if he opened fire suddenly, it would be to allow the car to block the attack from the house on the left.
The person coming over there stopped about ten meters away from them, took a breath, and shouted at them: "Who is the leader! Follow me!"
Just as Qiu Shi was about to move forward, Zhao Yi grabbed him from behind and said, "Don't do that yet."
"Everyone in this town belongs to us," the man shouted. "If you want to talk, follow me! Our boss wants to see your leader!"
"I'll go," Zhao Yi lowered his voice, "You don't have to go."
"It's okay," Qiu Shi tilted his head. He must tell Zhao Lu when he gets back that this Zhao Yi might really be his brother. He glanced at Zhao Yi and said, "Xing Bi, come with me. You guys wait here. If anything goes wrong, get in the car and run. Don't think about saving people."
"We are not corpse collectors." Zhao Yi was a little anxious.
"Why," Qiu Shi said, "I didn't ask you to collect my body."
"We are soldiers! This is not how we do our mission!" Zhao Yi lowered his voice.
"You are the captain now and you are the one collecting the bodies," Qiu Shi walked forward, "and this is also a real mission."
Xing Bi followed beside him, Sang Fan stood at the front of the car behind him, and Xiao Zuo and Xiao You protected the back of the car.
"You are not allowed to bring weapons." The man pointed the gun at the gun in Qiu Shi's hand.
Qiu Shi threw the gun back to Sang Fan. The man looked at the gun on his leg again. Qiu Shi clicked his tongue, took the gun off his leg and threw it to Sang Fan.
The man turned and led them towards the turret.
Qiu Shi's map was open, and he was quickly collecting information about the terrain and buildings in the surrounding towns, but he still couldn't detect the people in front of him.
They all looked like ordinary humans. Although their expressions were ferocious, the tension in their eyes could be seen at a glance, especially when they looked at Xing Bi.
Qiu Shi suddenly felt more at ease. At least it showed that there were no biological creatures among these people, and they were not in the same group as the symbiote army.
After entering the turret, someone behind me said, "Go up, to the third floor."
Qiu Shi had been to the third floor, which was the most spacious floor in the entire turret and was not divided.
They went up the narrow staircase twice and reached the third floor. A man holding a gun stopped them at the staircase and checked again. After making sure there were no weapons, he turned around and said, "We've got the person."
"Let them come over." someone said inside.
When he heard this voice, Qiu Shi was stunned for a moment.
This voice, which seems a bit old, always carries a certain ease.
He walked quickly up the stairs and turned into the house.
I saw a wheelchair and someone sitting in it.
"Fuck..." He couldn't help it, "Old man?"
"Show some respect!" The person standing next to the old man glared at him.
"It's okay," the old man waved his hand and looked at them kindly, "You... are from Yuncheng, right?"
Qiu Shi immediately realized that the old man was pretending not to know him.
"Yeah." He responded.
"Please take a seat," the old man motioned for his men to bring them chairs, "Sit down and talk."
Qiu Shi hesitated for a moment, glanced at Xing Bi, and sat down on the chair.
Xing Bi didn't sit down, but stood beside him.
"Excuse me, are you passing by, or..." the old man spoke slowly.
"This is Yuncheng's territory," Qiu Shi said, "We are just patrolling and deploying defenses as usual."
"We have been here for quite a long time," the old man said, "and we have never seen anyone from Cloud City come here."
How long is a long time? Is it counted from the time you disappeared
"Old clothes are just put there when they are not worn anymore, and you won't take them out and look at them every day," said Qiu Shi.
The old man smiled.
This smile seemed very fake to Qiu Shi. When he was on the second floor of the tavern, the old man never smiled so...sagely.
Qiu Shi felt that he was pretending to be an expert and didn't know how to continue the conversation.
The person standing next to him was a little unhappy and glared at Qiu Shi with a frown.
"You guys go out first and wait on the second floor," the old man said to his men, "I want to talk to them alone."
"Boss," a man said, "this is not safe, they..."
The old man smiled and shook his head, then raised his hand and snapped his fingers lightly.
But no sound.
Qiu Shi wanted to ask Xing Bi to demonstrate it to you.
Although this finger snap did not make any sound, it had another amazing feature. The moment the old man rubbed his fingers, a small flame ignited at his fingertips.
"They can't hurt me." The old man looked at the flame in his hand, "Don't worry."
Several men glared at Qiu Shi and Xing Bi, then retreated together, their footsteps heading towards the second floor.
Just as Qiu Shi was about to speak, the old man shook his hands quickly, blew on his fingers, and whispered, "It's so hot."
This sentence made Qiu Shi certain that the old man was still the old man he knew.
"Where have you been all this time?" Qiu Shi dragged a chair to sit in front of the old man, stared at him and lowered his voice, "What are you doing here?"
"I'm fine." The old man smiled.
"Who are these people?" Qiu Shi asked.
"There are nearly two hundred of your kind in this town," the old man whispered.
Qiu Shi looked at him for a while before asking, "Who are you?"
"I am the one who led you to escape the slaughter," the old man said, "it's a long story..."
"I have time." said Qiu Shi.
"There's no time now," said the old man. "The Jungle is coming in less than an hour."
"How do you know?" Qiu Shi asked.
"These people have put themselves in this state for a reason," the old man whispered, "Let your people settle down first..."
"Why should I believe you?" Qiu Shi looked at him.
"Because you have believed in me for more than 20 years." said the old man.
"I..." Qiu Shi felt that there was something wrong with this logic, but he didn't know what to say.
"We want the supermarket next door," Xing Bi said, "both floors."
Qiu Shi turned around and looked at him: "Huh?"
"Okay," the old man nodded, "I'll have them withdraw right away."
"Someone has to be here." Xing Bi said.
"No problem." said the old man.
"Who should be left here?" Qiu Shi asked.
"Sang Fan." Xing Bi said.
"No matter how you want to deal with things here," Qiu Shi looked at the old man, "I have to report to Yuncheng."
"Li Feng?" asked the old man.
"Yeah." Qiu Shi responded.
"Report it," said the old man, "he knows what to do."
Qiu Shi chose to believe the old man. After all, the old man had never cheated him over the years.
The second floor of the tavern has always been like a secret base for Qiu Shi, not only because it is really hidden, but also because of the old man.
He and his team members stood on the street, watching the old man's men withdraw from the supermarket next to the turret. Sure enough, there were quite a lot of people, more than a dozen coming out of this supermarket alone, mostly men, with only three women and no children.
"Isn't it a bit of a waste for Sang Fan to be there watching the old man? He can't run away. Xiao Zuo and Xiao You are enough to keep an eye on him." Qiu Shi glanced at the third floor of the turret. There was a window where the old man and Sang Fan were.
"It's also to protect him." Xing Bi said.
"Huh?" Qiu Shi was stunned.
"Is the old man an ambitious person?" Xing Bi asked.
"I can't feel it," Qiu Shi frowned, "It shouldn't be, but it could be hidden deep?"
"That's an old-fashioned trick," Xing Bi said. "If he's not ambitious about controlling these people, then he's trying to protect himself."
The author has something to say:
To be continued tomorrow⊙▽⊙.