As night fell slowly, with the increasingly bright twilight, the hunting group chose a suitable place that was drier and surrounded by bushes to set up camp. For the convenience of packing the next day, the two team members shared a tent, and Zhang Xun, as Adam's mechanic, naturally had to live in a tent with Adam.
In order not to attract the attention of the mechanical soldiers, all of them did not dare to cook rice, and all of them ate compressed food. After hastily swallowed the chewy biscuits, most of the people burrowed into the tent to rest, leaving four people on guard.
Except for Zhang Xun and Adam, the other team members were divided into four groups, and each group kept a two-hour vigil. On a silent night, through a thin layer of military canvas, the shadows of the trees can be seen swaying with the wind that smells of pine leaves. The hooting of owls accompanied the howls of wild wolves in the darkness, and there was a thin layer of insect chirping in the background.
Zhang Xun carefully looked at the small windows displayed on the tablet computer in his arms, which were the images of the surroundings sent back by the bugs he released. Under the night vision goggles, the forest exudes an eerie green, a bit like a scene from a horror movie.
After confirming that he still did not find any trace of the mechanical product, Zhang Xun raised his head, only to find Adam sitting diagonally in front of him, with his head half-turned, listening intently.
Zhang Xun didn't want to care about him, but the other party listened so carefully, as if he was listening to something he couldn't hear... Zhang Xun couldn't help but ask, "What are you listening to?"
Adam turned his head and said in a very serious tone, "It seems that it is a good season for mating and reproduction."
"…??"
"Wolf, worm, owl, these are the typical calls to attract the opposite sex." Adam turned around, leaned slightly towards Zhang Xun, and said in a slightly hoarse voice with a hint of seduction, "Probably apart from humans, most of the species in this mountain are trying to reproduce tonight."
Zhang Xun suddenly felt that the tent was a little too small... The temperature was slightly higher.
He put the computer aside, got into the sleeping bag, and said with a sullen face, "Sleep. We still have to travel in the early morning." He turned around and closed his eyes with his back to Adam.
After a while, there was a rustling behind him, and it seemed that Adam also got into the sleeping bag.
Zhang Xun didn't know why, he couldn't sleep for a long time. His sanity wanted to fall asleep, but an invisible little paw was scratching the inside of his skull indiscriminately. There also seems to be grass growing on the back, and it is not always safe...
After a while, there was another rustling. Another stuffed sleeping bag was crammed with him. Zhang Xun turned his head angrily, only to find that Adam also turned his back to him, but squeezed him with his back, until he was close to the canvas of the tent, and he couldn't squeeze any more...
"Go to sleep!" Zhang Xun ordered in a low voice.
Adam didn't answer, taking long, long breaths.
Fell asleep
Zhang Xun turned back in frustration and stopped talking. He didn't see a faint smile on the corner of Adam's mouth with his back turned to him.
However, in the middle of the night, a series of beeps of alarms came from Zhang Xun's tablet, short and anxious. Zhang Xun woke up immediately, seeing the picture displayed on his screen, a chill immediately flowed through his body. A bug wandering about 400 meters away from them detected a non-carbon-based moving object, that is to say, at least one mechanical soldier was approaching them.
Adam sat up alertly when the first alarm sounded, immediately put on his battle suit, and handed the helmet to Zhang Xun, "Do you want to inform others?"
"Of course!" When Zhang Xun was scrambling to put on his helmet, Adam had already rushed out and whispered to the night watchman, "There are mechanical soldiers approaching!"
Within three minutes, everyone rushed out of the camp, spraying pheromones on their bodies, and hiding in the depths of the forest in the opposite direction as instructed by Zhang Xun. But the mechanical policeman moved very fast. They only had time to get into the bushes and turn on the stealth function of the battle uniforms, and they saw the dark woods opposite the camp began to shake violently, and the scalp-tingling salsa sounded like in the night. The quirky smile of the monster. They were afraid to move, fearing that moving would cause the cloak to fail.
The hard branches poked at Zhang Xun's helmet, the night wind was cold, but he was already sweating. The heartbeat was so loud, he was worried that he would be heard by those mechanical soldiers.
Adam lay beside Zhang Xun and didn't tell Zhang Xun that he noticed that all the team members' guns were aimed at him at this moment.
Anything Adam did that might mislead him to communicate with the mechanical soldiers would be slapped into a sieve right now.
The rustling became more and more rapid, and the branches and leaves shook more and more violently. Then, a long thing stretched out first. Like the arthropods of some kind of mutated giant insect, under the translucent membranous "skin", an eerily bright blue electric current is rapidly transmitted along a certain metallic-colored mucus-like substance. It looked soft and boneless, but the tip was sharply serrated and inserted effortlessly into the ground. One after another, the same "arthropods" stretched out, poking into the depths of the ground like steel bars again and again, bringing out a disc-shaped body covered with circular blue lights like eyes, which kept spinning. The round body covered with a layer of metal shell kept making strange noises similar to the sharpening of knives or the operation of machinery.
When Zhang Xun left Paradise Lost and infiltrated the cities of the ordinary world ten years ago, he also saw mechanical policemen and mechanical soldiers, but those were robot shapes that were very much in line with the human imagination and definition of robots. But the thing in front of him, those metal slime and translucent unknown materials with a fleshy mucous texture, almost resembled... a real animal. To be more precise, like a giant spider magnified hundreds of times.
Eden's design of mechanical soldiers has changed significantly, becoming closer to living things, but different from living things.
The line between machines and life is blurring.
why
The mechanical monster found the camp they had no time to put away, raised a huge leg, and cut it mercilessly towards the tents of Zhang Xun and Adam just now. The razor-sharp legs cut the tent in half like tofu, and ripped apart all the other tents with impunity. If Zhang Xun hadn't released the bugs, if they hadn't escaped in time, they would have been chopped into meat sauce by now.
When it cut all the tents into infinitely small pieces with great speed, it still did not leave. The flat and round body kept spinning, and after looking at those blue lights for a long time, it seemed that a trace of bloodthirsty malice could be seen. It's still looking, and it thinks it's not enough, maybe there's something more important.
Everyone was soaked in cold sweat, and the atmosphere did not dare to come out. The fear made Zhang Xun tremble slightly.
At this time, Adam suddenly stretched out his hand and gently returned his shoulder, just like he had hugged Adam during the bombing, but this time it was Adam who hugged him.
Adam was trying to reassure him, as he had done in the first place.
The machine monsters gradually approached their direction, and the rotation speed of the disc seemed to be faster than before. It hunted for pheromones in the wind, but found none of the samples in its database. It got so close that Zhang Xun could even feel some kind of weird electric field emanating from it, making every hair of his hair stand up, the static beeping in the air, ironing every inch of his skin .
There is a hollow smell unique to electronic products.
The nerves were tense, almost ruptured. When the fear accumulated to the point of shaky, it finally took a few steps back.
It was about giving up and continuing to search for possible hostile targets, and suddenly several beams of the same color shot out from its countless rotating blue eyes. The light fell on the remains of their tents and munitions, and suddenly everything, including metal products, was broken into the smallest molecules in less than a second and scattered in the air.
If such a light beam shines on a person, the person will disperse into countless carbon atoms and hydrogen atoms in less than a second, and disappear without even a drop of blood.
Everyone shuddered at the same time, even Adam included.
After cleaning up all traces of human beings, the mechanical soldiers finally walked in the other direction with huge arthropods. They still dared not move their bodies, for fear that the thing would suddenly come back. It wasn't until Zhang Xun's worm confirmed that it had left a distance of more than 400 meters before they finally dared to move their stiff body. Jabari lifted the visor of his helmet, revealing a sweaty face, and spat on the ground, "Fuck, it's a big spider again. Why is there so much of this stuff lately?"
These eccentric-looking mechanical soldiers are no strangers to the hunters who are going outside for a long time. On the contrary, Zhang Xun, the mechanic, stared at the direction where the mechanical soldier disappeared.
He Yuxin walked to their original camp, turned around and couldn't find a single ash, "How much equipment and rations have we lost?"
After everyone checked it, they found that almost all of their food and several weapons had been burned, and the worst thing was that the radio transmitter that Adam was going to use to hack the people in the land of the Quetzalcoatl was also burned.
Now they are faced with a choice, whether to declare the mission failed and go back to Paradise Lost to accept punishment, or bite the bullet and continue to try to track the whereabouts of those Feathered Serpent City people.
Several soldiers were blushing, but Zhang Xun sat silently on a dead tree, looking solemnly at the images sent back by the bugs displayed on the tablet computer. Adam got out from behind some bushes, shook the needles on his head, leaned against the trunk of a cedar next to Zhang Xun, and looked at him curiously, "Why don't you join the discussion?"
Zhang Xun said calmly, "I'm not good at tracking and hunting, so I can't make the most correct decision."
"But you don't want to go back, do you? You want to find James."
"Yes, I don't want to go back now. But if the price of looking for James is that everyone is trapped here without food and enough weapons, of course it is not a sensible decision. Maybe most people should go back and report first, Leave one or two and keep looking." His throat was dry, filled with unspeakable anxiety. He didn't know if James was hiding now or had been caught. Who was caught, did they or they embarrass him...
Jabari, like him, wants to keep looking for his captain. But unlike his restrained silence, Jabari was arguing hoarsely with the other hunters who wanted to go back, almost starting. Zhang Xun listened to their argument and thought that maybe he could propose to let the other hunters take Adam back first to avoid more casualties. He and Jabari stayed behind and continued to search for James. Anyway, he has already come out, he can ignore the round table's order, the big deal is to go back and accept the punishment. There are bugs, so long as he and Jabari avoid them in time, the probability of survival is not low.
Just as he was about to speak, Adam suddenly turned around, squatted in front of Zhang Xun, and asked him earnestly, "If one day I also disappear, will you come to me too?"
Facing Adam who suddenly started asking some inexplicable questions, Zhang Xun's expression softened slightly, "Of course. I am your mechanic."
"What if you can't find it?"
"There is no situation where you can't find it." Zhang Xun stretched out a finger and gently placed it on Adam's diamond-shaped device embedded in his forehead, "I will know where you are."
Adam squatted motionless in front of him, like a huge golden retriever, raised his face and let the owner touch his forehead.
"What if I'm looking for you?" Adam asked. "What if you're gone?"
Zhang Xun frowned, "It's fine, why can't I see you?"
"Did you just think about letting me go back with the others and find James by yourself?"
... Zhang Xun thought to himself, he doesn't seem to have the ability to read Adam's mind...
Adam suddenly smiled again, his eyes were curved, as if there had never been any haze. He stood up and looked down at Zhang Xun, "A Xun, I am very useful. I will help you find the person you are looking for."
Then he turned to the arguing people, and said aloud, "I just saw a carved mark on a tree in the woods, which I think may have been left by James."
The argument stopped immediately, and everyone looked at him.
Adam stretched out his finger, drew a circle in the air, and drew a cross in the middle, "Is this mark the mark that you hunters use to send messages to the people behind you when they are tracking?"
Jabari yelled, "Yes! Yes! Thank God! Where did you find it?!"
The author has something to say: Thanks to the little angel who threw the mine~~: Xia Ran Xia Ran 1;
Thanks to the little angel who irrigated the nutrient solution~~: COIORLESS? 20 bottles