Hao Ren rubbed the corners of his forehead, trying to grasp the little residual feeling in his heart, but the voice that sounded in his head in the fog before had faded like a dream. He checked the previous psychic communication records, and found that it was indeed blank, and the number of terminals did not speak at all.

"I seem to have heard someone talking just now," Hao Ren exhaled, turned his head to look at the monitor on the carriage, it seemed that the convoy had almost crossed the river, and the river bank on the other side was shining not far away, "It seems to mention that the world is almost unsupportable......

"Your dreams are always special, don't take them lightly," said Shu Jù, who was rarely serious, "You seem to have an ability to communicate with your dreams and other consciousnesses." ”

"I know, I know, but this 'connection' is too short for me to catch a clue. But I have a feeling that I made the right way to come to the Northland Ruins this time, and this place must be the key to this planet...... Aura is always in the center of events, isn't it? ”

Three armored vehicles crossed the solidified Grey River unharmed, and the mercenaries were greeted by a world of death that was even more desolate than the wasteland outside, and everything here was even more eerie. The camera transmitted the scene in front of and on both sides of the armored car, and Hao Ren saw that the earth outside was glowing with a silver-gray light, and all the qiē were covered with the same luster, as if the whole world had been transformed into a piece of metal. There were no plants, no buildings, not even a stone of normal shape, only oddly shaped bulges and round towers that melted into the ground like melted cheese, their smooth surfaces reflecting the lights of armored vehicles, and the hazy light refracted between the mass of these metal structures. It takes on a bizarre appearance.

Hao Ren tried to think about what the scene in front of him looked like, and finally he thought of one thing: the melting city.

It's like casting a world of equal proportions out of metal. Then let them melt halfway and then cool down suddenly, and that's what you get.

"Great Plains of Steel...... "A young soldier holding a gun looked nervously at this qiē. Everything has been converted to metal? ”

"It's not metal, the nano-swarms don't have the ability to change the properties of matter, they just make these things appear similar to their own materials," Ulanov said, touching the armor plate behind him with his gun, "Welcome to Old Sin Continent, where you're driving on the wreckage of six million five hundred thousand citizens and two hundred thousand buildings - including one of my legs, one arm, all my liver, and three-quarters of my lungs. Now I really can't find them. ”

The young soldier turned his head with a strange expression: "Your jokes are never funny. ”

Ulanov laughed twice in a hoarse voice, apparently he was still quite satisfied with his "visceral joke". Hao Ren couldn't help but feel strange when he looked at the scene outside the car: the silver-covered land outside was the product of the rampant nanomachine swarm, and they looked strange and beautiful. But it was the bones of countless people and the ruins of the city. The tall bulges and round towers that looked like melting ice cream should have been once large structures - if you blew them up, would you still be able to find a single trace of man-made inside? If you dig deep into this land, will you still find the remains of the city's subway and the remaining pipes?

Or maybe they won't find anything, and the nano-machine swarm may have already infiltrated the land, transforming the entire Northland ruins from the depths of the ground into their own domain. In short, everything can only be guessed, everything that happens here is unknown, and deep in the silver-gray earth is buried a realm that humans cannot touch, and since sixty-five years ago, no one can understand what these nano swarms are doing on this land.

Similar thoughts permeated the other mercenaries. Even these rough men who live by fighting can't help but feel a lot of emotion when they face the ruins of the Northland: fear and awe make them sensitive. Nolan, on the other hand, only yawned boredly when he saw the reactions of the people around him, as if he was not interested.

Night gradually fell, and the sky shrouded in dust and mist was starless and moonless. Darkness: In fact, humans on this planet haven't seen a starry sky in decades. But instead of halting the convoy, Nolan ordered it to speed up, saying that night was the time when the nanomachine population was at its lowest. The scary little devils still rely on solar energy for some of their energy, even though they can be active at night. But the reaction is much slower than during the day.

According to Nolan's calculations, if all the way is smooth. You should be able to arrive at the Northland Ring Tower before the sun rises, just in time for the staggered time when the nanomachines are back alive.

The armoured vehicle was passing between two towering silver-gray "hills", and the bright lights shone on the metal "hillsides" on either side, reflecting circles of phantom light. Ulanov looked at the two symmetrical "hills" and said in a low voice: "This must be Locke?" The Linton Twin Towers, they used to be the tallest buildings in the world, I visited a few times, while the city was still around. ”

"Yes, the tallest building in the world, when the fleet went out of control, it set the world record for the largest number of deaths in the same building in an instant, but the fourth year was broken by the explosion of the Far East III Vault," Nolan said, pressing the communicator next to him, "All vehicles, turn off the lights and use ultrasound to find the way, there is a danger zone in front of this, and the bright light may activate some of the lighter nanomachines that are dormant." ”

All three armoured vehicles had their lights turned off, and after losing the only light, the small convoy was more like a few geysers wandering in the silent hell. In this cold, dead, desolate world, it seems that every one of them is small and fragile, and the heavy armor plates do not bring much security, and there is no situation like here that makes people realize how far away they are from the world of the living—and the direction of the convoy is going deeper into the depths of death.

On the boring and drowsy journey, Hao Ren was in a daze many times between half-dreaming and half-awake, but he never heard any strange sounds again. Finally, he noticed that the sky outside was hazy and there was a bright light, and the armored vehicle was passing through a huge silver-white barrier. The material of this barrier is significantly different from the silver-gray material formed by the nano swarms, and its regular appearance makes it seem that it was made by humans. It was tens of meters tall and looked indestructible, but it had a huge hole in the lower half, and the hole looked as if it had been melted through by the heat.

The armored vehicles lined up through the hole under the rampart, and Ulanov patted Hao Ren on the shoulder: "This is the first hole that dissolves when the fleet goes out of control, and they originally flowed out of the container opposite this rampart. Of course, now that the container had been swallowed up, and there were no nano swarms on the other side of the ramparts, they had all moved to the Grey River in the outlying areas for unknown reasons. ”

After passing through the hole, Hao Ren finally saw the natural rocky soil for the first time in a long time, and the plants that had grown with difficulty in the crevices of the rocks, which had been severely twisted and twisted. He knew he had arrived in the central hinterland of the Northland Ruins, a final island that had been fed by nanomachines but had not been dissolved.

Nolan raised his hand and pointed to the center of the monitor's frame, "That's the Northland Ring Tower." ”

In the heart of the Northland Ruins, the outer walls of the former Nano form a crater-like barrier, dividing the dissolved wasteland outside into two distinct areas from the normal land around the Ring Tower. Situated on a towering hill, it rises to a height of more than 400 meters and consists of three symmetrical zigzag conical minarets, with a huge ring installed at the top and half of the three-tower building, which is the origin of the name "ring tower".

Those two giant ring-shaped facilities were antennas, and in the days when the dominant computers were not down, they were the ones that released signals to control the nano clusters around them.

After seeing the ring tower, the mercenaries were visibly relieved, they knew that the most dangerous area had been safely passed, at least until they returned, they didn't have to worry about being swallowed up by the nanomachine swarm. The armored car drove all the way to the halfway up the hill, and the road beyond it had completely collapsed and was impassable for vehicles, but the entrance to the ring tower was already in sight. Nolan ordered everyone to get out of the car and walk to the building.

Ulanov and Hao Ren got out of the car together, and he looked up at the building that had been separated for sixty-five years, and took a deep breath.

Then he strode forward. (To be continued......)