Above the thick permafrost of Siberia, a long and fierce battle seems to have long been over. At this time, you can hear the howl of the cold wind, the chirping of birds from the sky, and the sound of frozen blood breaking in the snow.

The blood came from a torn body - what seemed to be the work of a beast. Most of the victims were tall Slavic people, and now their once-alive torso was scattered and mixed up in the snow, making it difficult to separate from each other.

And, of course, bullet casings scattered on the ground. The point 50 shell of the Imperial regular army's general-purpose machine gun Firehunter-334 almost covered the black soil behind the sand barrier. The blood coated in the shells and condensed into red ice, reflecting a blurry image of a fir tree next to the sand.

There was a human head on the tree. His eyes were attached to a lifeless dead gray, and he was silent as he looked at the tragic scene on the ground under his eyelids.

It is a vast snowfield with lush fir trees, and the forest is always covered with snow. But even today, blood and stumps were covered in snow - the blood of more than a hundred humans.

The epaulettes and seniority badges on the stump indicate that these tall Slavic people belonged to the Fifth Army of the Northern Naval District of the Reich, the Slavic Mixed Brigade.

A certain force raided the brigade's forward post and retreated.

When Li Zhen came here, there was only a little boy tilting his head under a fir tree and looking at him. The little boy clutched a military coat in his hand, which was stained dark brown with coagulated blood.

He seemed a little frightened, unsure whether he should leave or continue to search for something among the corpses.

Li Zhen was not puzzled by his calmness. Because this wasn't the first daring kid he'd seen these days. This is Siberia. Originally, the land was vast and sparsely populated, and the people were fierce. The child, apparently a Slav, was said to have picked up a shotgun and gulped vodka at the age of ten.

So he glanced at the child and asked in a low voice, "What happened?" ”

The child blinked. Li Zhen threw him a piece of dark chocolate wrapped in tin foil and smiled: "You live nearby?" ”

The boy settled down. He draped the heavy coat over himself, then stuffed the chocolate into his pocket, stepped back, and whispered in the heavily accented imperial Chinese: "Fir and eagle." ”

Li Zhen exhaled a breath of white air and waved his hand at him.

Then the boy turned and disappeared into the forest.

Fir with eagle. It wasn't the first time he'd heard the name.

He had been walking on the snowy fields of Siberia for more than ten days, but what he had seen was not as desolate and dilapidated as he had imagined. Opposite. This land seems to be more "vibrant" than the empire itself. This "dynamism" refers to frequent killings and pillage.

The armies of the Empire's Northern Naval District seem to have become a mess. Officers large and small pulled up the ranks to stand on their own and fought against each other. He was initially slightly shocked by this blatant treason, because at least on the mainland, a secessionist "general" would still claim to be under the authority of the central government.

Here, however, he had heard more than once about the emergence of another "Slavic people's own regime" somewhere.

This is, after all, Siberia. Historically, it was ruled by the Xiongnu and Turkic peoples. When he arrived at the Yongle Emperor, he set up the Nuergandu Division in Heilongjiang. Jurisdiction up to the Arctic Circle. However, this formal control is not very strong. Later, it was occupied by the Grand Duchy of Russia during the great transformation of the empire, and continued until after the First World War.

It has only been a hundred years since the land was re-annexed to the Empire. A hundred years is a long time for an individual human being. But for a nation, it is only a flick of the fingers.

For example, most of the imperial people now call the largest and deepest lake in this land "North Sea", while most Slavs still call it "Baikal". His greatest impression of the land as a child came only from the weather forecast every night, when phrases such as "cold air from the North Sea went south" appeared from time to time, and at the time, like most people in the Empire, he thought it was a desolate and cold land.

Now he knew there was a reason for that. Because the origin of Anyuan is here, it seems that the imperial government deliberately weakened the existence of this land in people's hearts.

Right now, it's more chaotic than any other part of the Empire. Military regimes large and small that split from the Northern Naval Region have established "independent kingdoms" and fought against each other for resources and interests. But they aren't the only protagonists in this land – there's also the Gate of Truth.

In addition to the Gate of Truth, there is another force that Li Zhen thinks is extremely interesting—the fir and the eagle.

It appears to be a mercenary organization.

The military's power does not seem to have made peace with the Gate of Truth, and it is said that there are still occasional clashes. However, after the nuclear explosion, the power of the Gate of Truth shrank, and such conflicts became rare. But the Fir and Eagle organizations seem to be at odds with each other - the mercenary organization seems to him to be at odds with the Truthgate, and not friendly to the military.

The stumps that he was strewn all over the ground were an example of this—the third small battlefield he had seen.

There is no doubt that this mercenary organization has a considerable number of capable people who can survive in the face of a regular army of more than a hundred.

According to his investigation, the main purpose of this group's attack on the military was for resources. It's not fuel, building materials, weapons, or even resources like Anyuan, but the necessities of survival, food.

That's kind of weird. Because at least along the way he had also penetrated into two military-controlled areas, and as far as he could see, there seemed to be no shortage of food here, even ordinary people had a fair amount of meat, perhaps because there were large areas of primeval forest where people could hunt on their own. Then, as a mercenary organization that relies on force to eat, it should not fall to the point of relying on plunder to maintain its own development and operation.

Li Zhen leaned down to observe the wound on the stump once more. It wasn't cut by a sharp weapon, but it looked like it had been torn apart by a tremendous force. The raiders do not use firearms, nor do they use other abilities, they rely only on brute force.

It stands to reason that this clash of forces should not have been on his radar, but from the first time he heard the name, a strange feeling appeared in his heart. He thought that maybe the organization had something to do with him, but he wasn't sure what was wrong.

He felt that his sixth sense had always been quite accurate, and this emotion may not have appeared by accident. Maybe figuring this out before getting closer to the north isn't a bad option.

So he got up, intending to leave the area before the arrival of military reinforcements.

However, after only two steps, his figure paused slightly.

There are footsteps. The visitor hid in the fir forest on the west side, deliberately hiding his whereabouts. But the sound made when the soles of his feet and the snow squeezed still betrayed him, and Li Zhen could even hear the slow and low heartbeat of the other party at this time. This man was quite bold, less than five meters away from him.

He pretended to brush the snow off his collar and glanced there with his peripheral vision. However, I saw only green fir branches and white snow, and not even a single footprint.

He hesitated for a second between picking up the other person and pretending to be unaware, then tugged at his collar and walked on.

A subtle cracking sound hits.

The sound was familiar. Burst 2K, equipped with an anesthetic needle bullet, is intended to capture rather than destroy.

He took the blow quietly, and then fell heavily to the ground.

The sneaker waited for two seconds and fired again.

Li Zhen cursed secretly in his heart. Because this shot hit him in the ass.

It didn't take much effort for the tissues in his body to digest all the powerful anesthetics, and his current state was no more tired than just smoking a cigarette. But to be on the safe side, he deliberately slowed down his heartbeat and breathing, until the other party walked over on the snow and congealed blood, and put two fingers on his neck.

Then they grabbed one of his arms and dragged him into the forest.

After a period of gliding, the footsteps of several other people are heard. He narrowed his eyes and looked at it, slightly taken aback.

The other person doesn't look like a human, more like a xenomorph.

They are slightly taller than normals, with tiny scales around their eye sockets, and occasionally baring their sharp teeth when talking in a low voice. However, xenos, even high-level xenos, could not have such a humane expression.

Now the three people around him are loading him into an off-road vehicle and are interacting with each other.

The man who knocked him down had a low, hoarse voice, and was silent for a moment after closing the car door, as if staring at him. After the buggy started, he said, "That's him." The first two times were in the vicinity, and they didn't look like military people. ”

"People from the north?" Another female voice came from the driver's seat and seemed to turn her head to look at him, "Not like that." ”

The third man was silent the whole time, and only when the car drove up a dirt road that was not so bumpy, did he say, "Go back and ask again." ”

Li Zhen has heard the voices of countless people, but it is this one that impresses him the most. Because this person's voice is not a human voice, but seems to be electronically synthesized. Some people with impaired vocal cords may use this method to make their voices sound like a dull computer, but certain pauses and turns in the synthesized sound still add some life to his words.

Li Zhen felt that if his judgment was correct, that one seemed to have some doubts. Obviously, the man also didn't know where he came from, but he didn't want to deal with it hastily. (To be continued......)