ACT240: Lonely City of Lights

"Here..."Hou Xiong swallowed his saliva with difficulty, turned his head to look at Ming Junwei, who was also dumbfounded, and muttered, "It's different from the last time you came?" ”

"The world has been turned upside down." Ming Junwei tugged at the corners of his stiff mouth, and his heart was full of emotion.

"What now?" Hou Xiong regained his grip on the steering wheel, and his eyes reflected the brilliant lights dancing in the distance.

"Go over and see." Ming Junwei took a deep breath and tried to calm himself down, the car window opened a gap, and the night breeze carried the breath of the city.

……

The undulating high point of the highway is like a watershed separating the world from the desolation, with neon flashes and red lights in the front, and devastation and lonely tombs in the back.

The Wrangler started again, so slow that he could overtake it by running, the scenery outside the window was extremely slow backwards, the lonely cement poles on both sides were full of wind and frost, and the endless Gobi Desert and the dazzling lights at the end were like flames and seawater, connecting but not blending, and it was impossible to see where the specific boundary was.

Ming Junwei still has a vague memory in his mind, when he left here, the launch base was the only owner of this wasteland, and now, a lonely city has risen from the ground, which catches people off guard.

The night was late and the wind was colder.

Ming Junwei looked out the car window at the wasteland, poplars and red willows were still entrenched in this land, the faint bushes and shrubs in the darkness were swaying in the wind, and clusters of familiar camel thorns came into view, telling passers-by in their language that the Gobi Desert was still the Gobi Desert.

The road is not far away, more than ten kilometers of road, it doesn't take long to drive, the slope of the highway tends to be gentle, and under the reflection of the headlights, Ming Junwei discovered the new continent again.

"The road is newly paved..."Ming Junwei held an unlit cigarette between his fingers, pointed to both sides of the road, and smacked his tongue: "No, it seems to have been widened." ”

"Cities can be built, paving roads is nothing." Hou Xiong's digestion ability is not bad, after the initial shock, he has accepted the reality in front of him, as he said, flat land can raise tall buildings, and how much effort can it take to lay some asphalt.

Ming Junwei was stunned, and then grinned: "That's what I said." ”

"What's next? Drive straight into town? Seeing that he was approaching the wasteland and lonely city, Hou Xiong was a little panicked, but it was okay to look at it from a distance, and when he walked closer, the strange emotions in his heart became more and more turbulent.

"It's not that easy." Ming Junwei didn't know the bottom in his heart, the Gobi Desert was no longer what he remembered, so his memories and experiences in the past were basically useless.

After driving through the last ramp, the Wrangler finally arrived at the foot of the lonely city, the speed of the car was lifted and slowed down, the snow bright high beams switched to dim low beams, and the car stereo was also turned off, Hou Xiong released the brakes, let the car slide down the gentle slope, his eyes stared directly at the towering boulder city wall a hundred meters away, his head seemed to be stuffed with a cannon battle, and he was crackling and shattering his cognition and common sense.

A thumb-thick black iron fence intercepted the Wrangler a hundred meters away from the city gate, behind which a circular moat surrounded the city wall, and a dryland drawbridge extended from the city gate, without fence guards on either side, and it was impossible to see how deep the trench was. The arched gate facing the drawbridge is five meters high, and the giant red lacquered gate is seamed with brass nails. There is no imaginary quaint city gatehouse, and there is no gate plaque, and the pheasant wall battlements are simple to the extreme, straight up and down, boxy, and at the same time so arrogant that all the eyes peeping into the city are blocked outside.

"I'm not dreaming, am I?" Hou Xiong vigorously rubbed his already hideous and terrifying face, his eyes were full of disbelief, and he exclaimed: "Those foreigners built a city here? It's a colony here? ”

"Not a dream, not a colony." Ming Junwei controlled the emotions stirring in his heart, lit the cigarette that had been in his mouth for a long time, and the spicy smoke drilled into his lungs and spun around, slowly spewing out from his nostrils.

"And what is this?" Hou Xiong didn't know how to describe what he saw.

Ming Junwei frowned and thought about it, and said: "It's a city, those foreigners you have seen, they are all running errands." ”

"Errands? For whom? ”

"For their boss."

……

The walls could stop the attack, but there was no cover over the city, and the bright lights and the sound of people could not be isolated.

The two sat in the car for more than ten minutes, there was no walking corpse attack, and there was no imaginary guard questioning, and the high beams flew out, hitting the solemn city wall, except for sand and dust, there was nothing. Ming Junwei picked up the binoculars and searched all the way along the top of the city wall, but the back of the pheasant moat was empty, there was no guard, no sentry, and no marking.

The night breeze swished into the carriage, and Ming Junwei felt a little chill in his back, this scene was a bit weird. It was as if two lost travelers, dying of hunger and thirst, saw a mirage in the distance, as if it was close at hand, but they could not enter, and they could clearly hear the voices of people behind the city wall, and could see the shining lights inside, but a high wall stopped the two of them outside, and there was nothing to be found under the high wall to refer to.

Hou Xiong was also in a trance, pinched his thigh, and screamed in pain.

"What are we going to do? Just waiting here? Hou Xiong grinned, not knowing what to do.

"Why don't you touch it and take a look?" Ming Junwei knew that this was a bad idea, but there seemed to be no other way at the moment.

The two stared at each other for a long time, they all came, and they couldn't just go home because no one took care of them.

The situation was beyond the expected range, but the two of them still kept an eye on it, and reversed the car back for a distance, but the surrounding terrain was flat, and there was no cover to hide the car. After thinking about it, he simply parked the car in the middle of the road, and the cat and dog family comforted them in the car, turned off the engine and pulled out the key, and walked back to the fence on foot with a Tibetan knife and a nail gun.

The black iron fence is not high, it is only about three meters if you count the spire, and the middle beam is easy to climb, and children can't stop it, not to mention that these two are by no means good men. The two of them fixed their weapons on their bodies, and probed left and right with their flashlights to the left and right for some distance to confirm that there were no sentry posts, and then they were ready to fly to the wall.

Hou Xiong took the lead, grabbed the fence with both hands, stepped on the beam and jumped over, and turned over in an extremely ugly posture. After landing on the ground, he didn't move, and waited cautiously for a while to confirm that there was no danger signal, and then waved his hand and motioned for Ming Junwei to follow.

There is not much movable space behind the fence, the annular trench is dug very deep, the flashlight hits, the light is almost swallowed, and there is no bottom, close to the edge, you can vaguely smell a smell of burning, very light. I don't know if it's a trench or an abyss. The wooden drawbridges of the two people stand side by side on the abyss, and the workmanship is rough compared to the city walls, moats, and fences.

Hou Xiong stepped on his feet and felt that there was no problem, so he stepped on it. The drawbridge trembled and creaked, and the edge of the wake-up trench that supported it below was sand peeling off and drifting down the abyss.

"This should be anti-walking dead." Ming Junwei walked up after him, not to mention, this set of fortifications didn't seem to have much technical content, but when he really stood on the suspension bridge and felt the invisible darkness and smell of the abyss on both sides, a disturbing thought still rose in his heart.

The suspension bridge is more than 100 meters long, and the annular trench is spiraled and scattered, and the soil layer separated between them is only about two meters, and the width of the ditch reaches about four meters.

Regarding the trench, both Ming Junwei and Song Jiu had ideas and put them into action. Behind the fence and brick wall of the roundabout were circular canals, and two trenches had been dug outside the camp on the riverbank, but their achievements were negligible compared to the magnitude of the work in front of them. Due to the terrain limitations, the roundabout canal basically has no defensive function, and can only be converted from a military structure to a domestic canal for drainage and water storage; The riverbank camp is even more disappointing, the front and rear trenches have not had time to dig and form, and the walking corpses have fallen into the city a lot, but those who fall into it can still climb out, and even if they can't climb out, they can fill the gaps, so that the walking corpses behind them can continue to move forward, and it is in vain to say that it is a waste of effort.

Looking at the annular abyss under his feet, Ming Junwei really wanted to measure how deep it was on the spot, at this scale, there seemed to be nothing terrible about the walking corpse besieging the city.

The purpose of this trip is not to engage in geological exploration, besides, it is not clear in the middle of the night, and there is time to observe during the day.

Hou Xiong took the lead in crossing the suspension bridge, and the moment he stepped on the ground, Hou Xiong suddenly realized that his legs and stomach had been trembling, and he looked back at the bottomless ditch, and he was afraid for a while.

"No wonder there is such a swagger in this city, but there are no walking corpses outside, will they all fall into the pit?" Hou Xiong's tongue was a little knotted, and his beating heart had not calmed down.

Ming Junwei nodded, remembering the smell of burning just now, and guessed: "It's possible, this kind of giant ditch can trap a large number of walking corpses, and there will be a smell if there is too much backlog of walking corpses, and when the weather is hot, it will be mixed with flies and insects, which will affect the normal life in the city, so after pit the walking corpses, there should be a fire." ”

"How did you dig this pit?" Hou Xiong was stunned.

"Those people have the resources, they have the power." Ming Junwei replied.

Hou Xiong was stunned for a while, shook his head and sighed: "What kind of person is their boss, it's crazy." ”

"Yes, but I finally understand why he called that name." A boring smile appeared on Ming Junwei's face, and he squeezed his eyes narrowly.

"What's the name?"

"Pit you."

……

The two stalkers rested for a moment, and then walked to the huge gate, which was not fortified and paved with neat red bricks, flat and solid, separated from the land of the Gobi Desert.

Ming Junwei pushed the door with his hand, the tentacles were cold, the red paint was smooth and smooth, without flaws, the copper nails were polished and rounded, and the knuckles were tapped, crisp and sound.

"Look at this." Hou Xiong patted Ming Junwei, the flashlight beam shining on the smooth wall on the left side of the doorway, a well-framed carved frame hung in the middle, and the flashlight swept over the cellophane, reflecting dazzlingly.

Ming Junwei was stunned, hurriedly moved the flashlight to the side, leaned over to carefully identify the handwriting inside, and saw four large characters written on his head - city gate curfew.

“**？” The two of them burst into a foul language full of doubts at the same time, looked downward, and said in unison: "From ten o'clock in the evening to eight o'clock in the morning, the city gate is closed, and it is forbidden to enter and exit." In just one sentence, there is an English translation below.

Ming Junwei felt a little confused, if he hadn't seen the familiar launch tower and vertical test plant before, he would have even thought that he was sleepwalking.

"Am I really not dreaming?" Hou Xiong muttered to himself, looking in a trance.

Ming Junwei didn't know what to say, the flashlight continued to probe upward, and when it approached the vaulted top, the circle of light swept over an out-of-place thing.

Ming Junwei's pupils dilated suddenly, he opened his mouth, and said in amazement: "It shouldn't be." ”

"Huh?"

"Moreover, we have been exposed." Ming Junwei smiled bitterly, and the aperture was fixed on the edge of the vault.

Hou Xiong looked up at the light, a spherical monitor was facing the two people in the doorway, and on the side of the probe, the imperceptible fluorescent signal light was flickering.