"Number 16? I guess it was made up by the nomads themselves, but I hadn't heard of it. Jack stared at the map for a long time and nodded affirmatively, "Yes, this is it." ”

"Let's go, then." Qiu Yu packed the things left by the woman into his big bag, and then continued to hand the bag to Jack. After thinking about it, he simply put Coulomb's bag with Jack to hold. Anyway, with the low-friction universal wheels of future technology, these things will not be too heavy to pull together.

After such a while, the medicine given by Qiu Yu really worked, and coupled with the good physique of the mutant, just walking was not enough for Coulomb to be a problem. After retrieving the submachine gun, which seemed to be undamaged, the trio finally set out on a normal trajectory of fate again.

When the RV became a tiny black dot in sight, Jack relaxed and muttered to himself, "Is there ......something in the RV?"

"Yes." Qiu Yu never hesitated to share what he knew with others, and while flipping through the map, he said, "Do you see that curved iron rod in the hand of the beast mutant?" That's what makes a woman suddenly lose her mind. ”

Jack wondered, "That iron rod is special?" ”

"Quite special. There is a machine that can pump water up from the ground as long as it is twisted vigorously, and the iron rod is an important part of this machine. ”

Qiu Yu was completely talking about topics that had nothing to do with him, but to Culomb and Jack, it sounded as if he was saying that he had just picked up a box of bullets, but he threw the box of bullets away because he was too troublesome.

After making sure that Qiu Yu was not joking, Jack breathed heavily, "You mean, that RV is a cover for an underground water source?" ”

"yes, don't you think it's strange that the car would be parked in the wilderness away from the road? No one would put that effort into getting the car to be visible and exposed to the sun, right? Qiu Yu still looked at the map seriously.

"Then you say, is there still water there?"

Jack's voice had completely changed tone, and in this day and age, the value of a low-radiation water source was more lethal than the value of a national coffers before the Great War.

"The beast mutant has been occupying it all along, plus the woman doesn't look disappointed and is in a hurry to chase us away...... There must still be water there. ”

"Then we ......" Jack's hand was tightly clasped on the gun, and when he turned his head to look, Coulomb also had a strange expression.

"Forget it." Qiu Yu took his eyes off the map and squinted his eyes and looked back, "Even if you kill her, you won't be able to get that water source, but you will put your own life into it." ”

"What do you mean by that?" Jack's feverish brain immediately calmed down a bit.

"If everything she said about Belgondo is true, then where do you think all the people who found things with her and left?"

Jack was stunned for a moment, then suddenly looked around nervously.

Qiu Yu smiled, "Don't look at it, if you can really find them, they will have already been discovered by the nomads who are more accustomed to the wilderness than you." ”

Jack was unwilling, "Then how dare you be sure that the female nomad is being followed?" ”

Qiu Yu asked rhetorically, "Then how can you be sure that she is not being followed?" ”

Jack was stunned by the question, unable to speak.

Qiu Yu re-studied the map, "So don't gamble your life on things you don't know, stay with me, as long as I'm alive, I will definitely give you a satisfactory reward." ”

After Jack and Cullen looked at each other for a while, they clearly saw that the only remaining heat in each other's eyes was rapidly disappearing because of Qiu Yu's words.

"Huh?"

After Qiu Yu turned to a page of the map of the seaside, his face was instantly filled with all kinds of complicated expressions.

"Any questions?"

Coulomb and Jack leaned over to Autumn Feather at the same time and looked at the map.

On this page, a large black arrow pointing to the sea is drawn. The arrow should have been drawn with a very thin pen, but the person who drew it seemed to emphasize the importance of the arrow, so he painted the arrow densely to the thickness of his thumb. Next to the black arrow is a row of words that have been painted in the same boldness.

Knowing what the two wanted to ask, Qiu Yu read out the typesetting, "From here, you will reach the paradise of dreams, the City of Ashes." ”

Hearing the words Ash City, Coulomb was fine, but the expression on Jack's face immediately became richer than Qiu Yu just now, "Ash City!" It's actually the direction of the City of Ashes! ”

"What is the City of Ashes?" Coulomb asked.

"O City of Ashes, legend has it that it was built on a small island in the middle of the ocean, away from radiation and mutant animals, where everything is what it was before the Great War. Almost everyone who has heard of it dreams of going there. ”

Qiu Yu said slowly, "This legend should have been passed down for a long time, right?" ”

After the blow of the gray ball of light, it should be impossible for this city to develop peacefully. And from the previous game, it seems that the material conditions there are not too good, and it is difficult to complete the natural cycle in a small area. In addition, radiation cannot be completely blocked by the sea.

"It's been some time." Jack found that every time he got excited, he would always be recalled to reality by Qiu Yu's simple words or two, "Forget it, what am I excited about, just knowing a direction, I may not be able to get there." What's more, the mutated creatures in the sea are countless times more powerful than those on the ground, and even if they can know the exact location, no one should be willing to fight hard. I guess since the legend came out, no one has ever actually been there. ”

"You say it's much more dangerous in the sea than on the ground?" Qiu Yu suddenly closed the map manual.

"yes." Jack nodded blankly, "The creatures in the sea have mutated to the point where they don't talk at all, and I often heard about the mutated creatures in the sea when I was still in the settlement we were going to a few years ago. Some people say that there are big fish in the sea whose bodies are harder than steel, and even grenades can't hurt them. Some people say that they have seen schools of small fish come out to hunt in groups, and the entire sea surface can be dyed dark red in a matter of minutes. The most outrageous is a man who claims to have lived on an abandoned giant oil tanker, and the reason he was forced to leave there was because the tanker was bitten in two by a large snake several hundred meters long. ”

Qiu Yu frowned and reopened the map, and turned to the page where Belgondo was, "Have you ever heard of a powerful creature that came out of the sea and looked like a mutant?" ”

"I've heard of it." This time it was Coulomb who spoke, "There has been a kind of sea monkey in the past that can leave the water for a short time. Although it is only half the size of a normal human, it is quite ferocious, and two or three can kill a beast mutant. However, it looks and is more like a monkey in appearance and size, so it should be impossible for people to recognize it as a mutant. ”

"Speaking of mutants...... the question is more complicated, Qiu Yu paused before saying, "Not only mutants, but all kinds of creatures on the land, you should be able to recognize their prototypes before the Great War at a glance, right?" ”

"Listen to you, it is." Jack nodded repeatedly, "In the underground shelter, no one was idle to teach me to read and write, but there was survival teaching, and one of them was to let us see the animal atlas before the war. Although all animals have been mutated, anyone who compares them with these maps can recognize what they are at a glance. ”

"That's right. Mutation is not the rebirth of a new species, no matter how mutation is equivalent to adding flesh and blood and functions to the original skeleton, even if it is true that one animal can completely become another different species because of radiation mutation, it is definitely not possible to achieve it in decades. ”

"What's going on with the stuff in the sea? Even if those legends are exaggerated, they are not entirely unbelievable. So according to you, those fish ......."

"Because they don't mutate because of radiation...... At least not all. Qiu Yu turned his head to look to the west, but it was still too far from the sea, and he could only see a vast wilderness. While retracting his gaze, Qiu Yu unfolded the map in his hand again, "Judging from the introduction on the map, although the place where Belgondo is located is surrounded by the sea on both sides of the west and north, the west side is full of impassable cliffs, and the north side is a sandy beach jutting out to the sea. The nomad said that the mutants who attacked Belgondo had left from the north, and that it was natural for them to think that they were continuing north from the beach. But if those things start from the north when they attack and leave from the north when they end......"

"They came out of the sea and back to the sea!" Cullen exclaimed, "They are not mutants at all, they are probably sea monkeys or other sea creatures!" ”

This speculation left both Cullen and Jack in a state of great unease. Although too many incredible things have happened in this last days, human beings are still barely the masters of the whole world. If Belgondo had been destroyed by mutants, it would still be a war between humans. But if it was the work of a monster of unknown prototype that came up from the sea, it would be an all-out confrontation between a shattered human society and a new species that may have a high degree of intelligence. Even more tragic is that humanity seems to be at an all-round disadvantage in every way.

"Let's go to the beach." Qiu Yu said suddenly.

"No......" Jack called out before he realized his gaffe, and after a few seconds of desperate relaxation, "if it is true that you said, we may encounter those monsters at any time on the beach, and even Belgondo will be destroyed by them at once, and it is impossible for us to escape." And if you're mistaken, those are indeed mutants, and now they're heading north, and we're going to the sea and we're going to be able to run into them, which is also dangerous. ”

"I think Jack is right, we don't have to take any chances, and when we get to the settlement ahead, a few bullets will be enough for us to ask all we want to know." Cullen's nervous voice responded.