The car drove through the vast sea of sand, and the wheels rolled up the sand and lifted them in the direction of the rear of the car.

On the way back to the east, Ding Xiu cut off all the cacti he encountered along the road and put them in the back compartment as a food reserve on the road, and he also planned to hunt a few mutated creatures, but the time was not allowed, because the sun was about to set.

The most important issue in front of Ding Xiu was no longer the shortage of food, but the safety after dark.

He had spent the night in the desert, but the luck of that night could not be replicated, and the safety of the two of them would not be guaranteed if they had not found a suitable place to stay after dark.

The setting sun shone on the window glass, and the girl looked out at the desert in distraction, and she had not had many opportunities to come into contact with such a view since she had lived in the glorious city since she was a child.

Chen Jianing didn't know how dangerous the night in the desert was, and when she turned her head and was about to share the beautiful scenery she saw with Ding Xiu, she saw that Ding Xiu's face was very solemn.

"What's wrong?" The girl asked.

"We're going to have to find a place to stay, we can't stay outside after dark." Ding Xiu said as he looked around.

"Why?" Chen Jianing was a little curious.

"In the camp I'm in, people who haven't come back since the sun went down have never come back, and for so many years, without exception." Ding Xiu didn't tell her that he was the only exception, because luck couldn't be replicated, and he still had the girl with him.

Ding Xiu's words made Chen Jianing's expression become solemn, and she asked, "What kind of place is a safe place to stay?" ”

"I'm looking." Ding Xiumu didn't squint, still searching for the direction around him.

The car continued to drive, and Ding Xiu's eyes keenly caught a bright light in the distance on the right. He turned the front of the car away from the previous direction and drove towards the bright light.

Along the way, he listened to Ding Xiu talk about a lot of new things in the desert, and Chen Jianing couldn't help but start admiring this young man who didn't even know about the Elbrand Empire, and his trust in him also increased a lot.

Ding Xiu came to the place where the light was shining, and found that it was actually a glass window that was more than half buried on the sand dune, and the bright light just now was the sunset reflected by the window.

"Whew~ Let's go inside and take shelter." Ding Xiu breathed a sigh of relief, parked the car next to him, and got out of the car with Chen Jianing.

There was a broken hole between the windows, and the glass in the window should have broken a long time ago.

"Be careful." Ding Xiu motioned for Chen Jianing to follow behind him. He took the gun that the guard had left in the car and jumped in from there.

Chen Jianing came to the breach, and by the afterglow of the setting sun, he found that there was a deep pit inside, and the sand poured in from the outside had built a slope.

Walking down the slope to the bottom of the pit, the light was much dimmer than outside, Chen Jianing rummaged in her backpack, and then a bright light shone out of her hand.

"You've got a lot of little things." Ding Xiu said that Chen Jianing was surprised by the compass and flashlight he carried.

"You didn't help me find the backpack I hidden." Chen Jianing smiled mischievously, and the two began to look at the environment in the pit by the light of the flashlight.

This is not actually a sand pit, and judging by the furnishings around it and the decoration on the walls, it is likely that it is the site of a former research institute.

The wind and sand have been brought in by the years, and in addition to building a slope at the breach, the ground is covered with a thick layer of gravel.

"What a strange place." Chen Jianing said, looking at the dark place, a little uneasy in his heart, "Shall we go inside?" ”

Ding Xiu nodded, "Believe me, no matter how dangerous it is inside, it must be safer than outside." ”

"Okay, as long as you're here, I'm not afraid."

Chen Jianing didn't know when the sun went down, she followed Ding Xiu and walked in for a while, and the surroundings became pitch black, and only the light in her hand could see clearly.

Fragments of equipment were piled up around them, the walls were in tatters, the air smelled old, and the only sound of the two of them was left breathing.

In the darkness, Ding Xiu found a way. He continued to walk inside, and Chen Jianing behind him tugged at the corner of his clothes and followed cautiously.

"Are you afraid?" As if sensing the girl's nervousness, Ding Xiu slowed down his steps.

"Sort of." Chen Jianing seemed to have forgotten what she had said before that she would not be afraid if Ding Xiu was there, and she was really nervous in her heart, because she had never experienced such an environment, and in the dark ahead, she didn't know if there was an unknown danger waiting for her.

"If you're scared, you can sing." Ding Xiu told Chen Jianing the method that Zhang Rongshe taught him when he was a child, "Don't think about what you're afraid of, and divert your attention." ”

"Good idea." Chen Jianing also knows this method, but it is not easy to remember it when she is nervous.

The soft song broke the silence in the darkness, like a yellow warbler out of the valley flying into the forest. Chen Jianing just hummed softly, but her innate musical talent made every note that came out of her mouth graceful and wonderful.

Sure enough, the tension gradually disappeared.

"I was singing to a strange man." Thinking of this, Chen Jianing's singing was interrupted for a moment, because she was laughing dumbly, but the singing immediately picked up again.

"He's not a stranger, he's a friend."

The change of mood gave this dark road a warm taste, and the two slowly walked through the research institute buried by the yellow sand, continuing to move forward just to search for possible dangers inside.

The singing stopped, because one of Ding Xiu's hands suddenly blocked in front of Chen Jianing.

The light of the flashlight shone on the ground, and some messy footprints appeared in the sand ahead. Ding Xiu stopped, took out a biometric identifier from his waist bag and put it on his ear. When he and Chen Jiansen went to Luxu Town this time, they didn't bring a satchel, but brought a more convenient fanny pack to hold some belongings.

"Biometrics?" Chen Jianing recognized this thing at a glance.

"Hmm." Ding Xiu responded.

"But the footprints on the ground are human, you see, and some are shoe prints." Chen Jianing said.

"In this environment, there may be mutated creatures where there are people, because for those monsters, humans are food."

Ding Xiu's concerns are not unreasonable, he has killed Steppenwolf and mutant mole crickets, and these mutant creatures have humans on their recipes.

"Someone has been here." Ding Xiu squatted down and carefully observed the footprints that spread forward, the footprints in the near places were shallower, and the ones in the distance were deeper.

The shallower to deep footprints are due to the fact that the gravel buries faster near the breach, while far away the footprints cover much less gravel.

Based on this characteristic, Ding Xiu also deduced that the people who left the footprints were not here recently, and those people should have come here a long time ago.

Ding Xiu and Chen Jianing continued to walk forward in the direction of the footprints, and it didn't take long for the two to find an iron door welded with iron bars, and a layer of transparent soft rubber was embedded in the iron door, blocking the sand and gravel blown in from outside in front of the door. Through the soft glue between the iron bars, Ding Xiu observed the situation inside by the light of the flashlight.

The ground inside the iron gate was covered with iron plates, and the ground was covered with large dark brown marks, which Ding Xiu knew were bloodstains.

Next to the iron shelf in the corner of the wall are more than a dozen large buckets for pure water, all of which are empty. Next to the bucket, there are many bottles and cans, and in the farther corner, something like a futon is stacked.

"We need to open the door." Ding Xiu squatted down and tried to pull up the iron door, but found that the iron door was not locked.

The iron door was pulled up, and a musty smell choked Chen Jianing and hurriedly took two steps back.

"This one for you to wear." Ding Xiu took off the mask around his neck and helped Chen Jianing put it on his face.

"What kind of mask is this, it seems to have the effect of filtering the air?" Chen Jianing tried to take a deep breath, and found that there was not a trace of the smell in the air passing through the mask.

"Uncle Chen helped me make it with the thin wings of mutant mole crickets, which is very useful for shielding the wind and sand, and can also filter toxic gases in the air."

"What about you?" Seeing Ding Xiu give things to himself, Chen Jianing was very upset.

"I'm fine, I'm used to the smell." Ding Xiu waved his hand, and the person had already entered inside.

There is only one feeling where the lights sweep, and that is that it is very messy. On the other side of the room, a table also placed a lot of beakers and test tubes for experiments.

Ding Xiu passed by the table and picked up a portable lamp on the ground in front of him.

He flipped the switch on the top of the lamp, and the portable lamp turned on.

The range of the portable lamp was much farther than that of the flashlight, and Ding Xiu lifted the lamp, and the situation in the room became clear.

There was more than one table where the experimental equipment was stacked, and some of the tables had some metal bullets thrown on them, most of which fell on the table, and only a few were upright.

It's all old world bullets, even those bottled water.

"Someone has lived here." Chen Jianing came to the far corner, twisted a piece of clothing on the futon with her fingers, she shook the clothes, and the dust raised on it flew wantonly in the light.

The two stayed inside for a moment, then continued deeper into the depths.

Chen Jianing used the time just now to find a few things and install them on the portable lamp, and the light became a lot brighter.

"You're also going to modify things?" Ding Xiu was a little surprised, in his impression, Chen Jianing was just a soft and weak woman.

"I understand a little." Chen Jianing said modestly.

Ding Xiu didn't know that the girl had won the Gray Finger Junior Championship Trophy as early as the age of ten. This is the most famous inventor award in the country, and it is divided into juvenile, youth and adult categories according to the age group of the contestants. When Chen Jianing participated in the competition, the opponents in the junior group were all older than her, but the results of the competition were thrown away by her.

In the words of the organizers of the competition, the invention of the champion of the junior group was enough to win the top three in the adult group, but because of Chen Jianing's age, she could only "control the thunder and lightning" in the junior group.

At the age of 15, Chen Jianing, who had won all the junior championship trophies in previous years, was finally able to enter the youth group to compete, and she lived up to expectations and won the championship twice in a row.

The 17-year-old, if it weren't for the desert, would have been preparing for her third junior title.