After twenty days of following the Overmars fleet, we left Niphelsen and crossed the two systems in the same way Group A had come. The occasional drift of wreckage outside www.biquge.info the porthole of the Pen, Fun and Pavilion reminds us that this was once a killing field. And now it's just a void that is so cold that there is no life.

It seems that the intelligence is not wrong, Feria's outer space reinforcements are not coming from this direction, and it should be a safe way to return home. At this point, I have to say a tearful goodbye to His Excellency Overmars. Because if he had followed his group of ships to the airspace where the retreat had been stationed, and then to the zenith gate step by step, it would have taken too much time: the last time they had killed, it had taken a lot of time to fight and reconnoitre, seven months before and after. After Guo Yingying asked for reinforcements, he almost rushed over in a professional manner, and it took more than four months. I had to hurry up to interfere with the "second ****" at the end of July and 3, so I couldn't wait that long.

As I was leaving, Overmars suddenly asked me, "When I talked about returning to the main planet that day, I said 'pity, pity', you know what it means, right?" ”

"I can get a general idea." I nodded: "However, this kind of aerial work is nothing to be proud of." ”

"In addition to this, I am also very emotional." Ovimas said bluntly: "After all, I watched young people like you and Kintaro soar from the middle colonel to the current position. Now the affairs of the rear will be handed over to you juniors, ashamed! ”

I laughed, took Overmars's hand tightly, shook it a few times, and said, "What do you say, we are family!" He turned around and motioned to the others who saw him off for a moment, then turned and went up the interchange and boarded the salmon-class cruiser Tianxiang.

Too much energy is required for a direct over-the-top jump. Half a year ago, Guo Yingying jumped back alone, and everyone squeezed it and barely took it out. Although I was light and simple this time, I brought a cruiser with me. Even the Tianxiang, which has been repaired and repaired after a hundred battles, has such a large mass and volume, so it has to adopt the "segmented jumping" method researched by Liu Chengxin. He had mysteriously called me before he set out, saying that he had "just discovered it last night", and of course I would never believe it again.

So, we used this frog jump to jump back in a journey of 100,000 light years. The journey took nearly another month, and by the time we reached the Vulture Fortress, it was the thirteenth day of the seventh month of the year 02. The cruiser stopped here. The pilots were busy with condition checks and routine repairs, and Hongxiang and I sat by the porthole, silently watching the Vulture Fortress: the last time we left here, Dai Jiangnan's guy who believed in "my kind of aesthetics" made the poor little fleet look good, and it didn't look shabby at all, but a little more powerful. Today's Vulture Fortress is just a dead planet in the dark universe. The lights were gone, the fleet that patrolled the fortress like a jade belt was gone, and only the black-lit ruins of the fortress remained. After the abolition of this place, the intelligence relay agency with the expeditionary fleet was moved to a place only a thousand kilometers from the Zenith Gate, where the first regular battle between humans and the Feria Air Force had taken place, and had become completely irrelevant.

"What are you thinking?" Hongxiang asked me.

"How about going down and seeing?"

Hongxiang stretched and smiled weirdly: "What's there to see there?" ”

I pondered for a moment and said slowly, "It feels strange, as if I have to make a trip." ”

"You're not kidding, are you? It's been a long time since you've had a nerve like this! Hongxiang shouted in surprise: "In the past, when you were a combat hero, you often did this, since you were successively promoted to the throne of lieutenant general and first-class general, the lower officials have not seen the world-famous god stick style for many years. Now that I am fortunate to see you again, I am really happy in my heart. Sit down, I'll find you an expedition team that is willing to accompany you right away, and if something happens, there's a cannon fodder at the bottom. ”

I sneered. This kind of laughter is really ugly, so that Hongxiang's body only turned halfway and then he couldn't move, so he couldn't help but smile bitterly: "Pull me again, why bother?" Why bother? ”

In fact, Hongxiang is moaning without disease, commonly known as fake fighting. A person who has been in a coffin in space for a long time will be more or less perverted from verbal to psychological, not to mention that he has already been perverted before he goes to space. He was so coy, he just wanted to scold me a few more times, but I just intimidated him with a look of great contempt, and did not meet his needs at all. He had to run to the kitchen and the mechanical squad to search for it, and captured ten strong men to form an expedition detachment, and set off without stopping: "It is too wasteful and completely meaningless to carry out an expedition to such a completely unstrategic place, and to use two generals to participate in it." Once an accident happens, what a tragic and irreparable loss it will cause to the human world! ”

This guy is like me, he opens his crow's mouth with no regard for other people's feelings at all. When he heard this, everyone but me glared at him.

After descending to low earth orbit, Tianxiang stayed in space, and a group of 12 of us landed on the surface of the Vulture Fortress planet in three pick-up planes. After adjusting to the almost weightless environment here for a while, and adjusting the balance adjustment device in my pressure-resistant spacesuit, a group of people, including Hongxiang, gathered in front of me to see what tricks I was going to play. I, of course, could not live up to their expectations, coughed and said: "Prepare to enter the base and look for war supplies." ”

"What?" Hongxiang's eyes were as big as a cow: "You say it again? ”

I replied lightly: "In order to make a dangerous segmented jump, the Tianxiang unloaded all its ammunition when it left the rear command of the expeditionary fleet. Now only gamma cannons can be used, you know this situation. ”

"I know, of course I do, but I'm afraid your explanation won't convince me!" Hongxiang said irritably: "Is it possible that we will be attacked? Not big at all! Even if there were, I'm sure no one would be able to do anything with me with this salmon-class ship with strong armor, lightning speed, and gamma cannons. In a sense, this ship is even better than the Hyundai class. Just rush through the zenith gate and enter the three-star ......"

"We're just one another." I laughed and said, "Either run the risk of running naked without a shot, as you say, though you might think it's a 'nice aesthetic for me,' or come here and find some hard currency to calm your mind." I have food in my hand, and I don't panic in my heart. ”

Hongxiang protested: "No, you still can't convince me!" ”

"Then that's all I have to say." I shrugged helplessly: "It's my feeling, as if something is calling me." I felt that a trip here was the right choice. ”

"Okay, okay, anyway, you're a big official." Hongxiang looked away stupidly and stopped arguing. He divided the ten expedition members into two groups led by the two of us, and then guessed the order with a coin, and the two of us went through the front entrance and the side door of the base.

Unlike the desolation of the exterior appearance, the interior of the base appears disheveled. Anyone who doesn't want to come back when they move will do this kind of thing: broken furniture, broken ordnance, scrapped documents, etc., are thrown everywhere, and in some places they even have to move their bodies carefully to get through, otherwise they will be covered with an inch of dust. The last time I passed through here, I jumped straight to Nebuchu and didn't see it myself. I had to take the electronic map and look at it as I walked. Probably due to poor luck, I found almost nothing along the way, and it was easy to find an armory in Section 2D, but it was empty. Hongxiang arrived at the main armory in Area 2A at this time, and reported that he had found a lot of good things: machine guns, flamethrowers, and cryo guns...... Wait, but none of them were needed by the Skyfly, only to make him and his men look a little more imposing, and at the same time carry a heavier burden. I laughed at him a little and asked, "Crazy Dai has been running this place for a long time, and there should be a lot of arms hoarding, where do you think he will put it?" ”

"He's hoarded a lot, and I don't think it's all going to be removed. I think it's most likely in the big arsenal in Area 20b, at the bottom of the base. But the road is too far, and there are not enough of us, so I said forget it. ”

"Nonsense, there must be a machine to carry it, could it be that Dai Jiangnan will carry the ammunition up twenty floors shoulder to shoulder? Don't be lazy, let's move on. ”

"I can't go! The base is now abandoned, with heavily armored isolation doors below the third floor, which cannot be opened without power supply and ID cards. ”

"Then go turn on the power." I flipped through the electronic map in my hand and said, "You're close, go ahead." ”

While waiting for the power to be restored, I led my expedition team to slowly search from the second floor to the third floor. Originally a base for Feria, it was later occupied by humans, so it has many strange sights. Many of the permanent defenses built by Feria could not be dismantled, and remained in ceilings, passage corners, and other hidden locations. When searching an engineering technician's office at the top of the staircase on the third floor, the expedition team found a manual. I flipped through them and found that they were geniuses, and they had modified Feria's defense control system in a rude way - of course, it was very strange how easy it would be for two completely different races of technology to merge together, but I just couldn't think of it at the moment. As soon as the switch of the main control system is turned on, these defensive fires of Feria will fire wildly at targets other than friendly forces stored in the main control system. I've seen Feria's defensive firepower on Alpha, and it's really powerful.

I was studying the manual when suddenly the computer in front of me made a sound of power, and the team members next to me reached out to turn on the switch, and the lights on the ceiling came on. The people on Hongxiang's side have successfully restored the power supply. I hurriedly skipped the irrelevant link, and entered myself and Hongxiang's military ID card numbers into the ID verification database of the iron gate according to the explanation of the manual. After completing these procedures, I didn't wait for Hongxiang, and directly led people through the iron gate and walked down. No

As soon as I walked through the iron gate, I began to feel a faint sense of something was wrong. Maybe it's a trance, maybe there's something else. I explored three more floors down, and I didn't find anything big, but I was always a little uncertain. At this time, Hongxiang came to communicate: "We are also down, do you feel that something is wrong?" ”

"I don't know, I don't know what it is, but it seems that something is wrong."

Hongxiang on the other side of the communicator suddenly changed his celestial language and spoke to me: "Haven't you noticed it yet?" ”

"Why do you use that language?" I suddenly became vigilant, looked back at the team members behind me and replied in Celestial Language, "What happened?" ”

"Divine power is almost useless, haven't you noticed?"

When he said this, I finally understood what this abnormal feeling was. In normal times, in order to make my life as peaceful as possible, I always have several layers of shackles attached to my spirit to prevent the random inflow of information from the outside world. Before I learned this trick, I had served as the central information exchange in the northern Sichuan district for several months, and all kinds of honest, absurd, noble, and obscene information kept pouring into my mind day and night, almost making my head explode. After learning this kind of self-protection measures, my world finally cleared up, and the way I learned about the outside world began to change from passive to active. Although I have never taken the initiative to probe into other people's privacy, I feel much more sensitive than ordinary people to many of the more exposed emotions and even some subtle changes flowing in the air. After entering the iron gate, this feeling disappeared, and I couldn't even understand what the eyes of the explorer five meters behind me meant, so I felt unaccustomed.

I took the initiative to try to use my divine or spiritual powers, but Hongxiang was not wrong at all, it seemed that there was something invisible in all directions that controlled this ability. I tried a few times, but I had to give up my efforts and say, "You're right." ”

What does this mean? Huang Er, you and I are no longer a fierce and fearless general, I have turned back to a flesh and blood body as fragile as these little soldiers behind, I have to use the small broken gun in my hand and the pressure-resistant spacesuit on my body to resist unknown dangers, and even the ability to predict dangers has been lost! This situation is unexpected, what do we do next? ”

"Your caution is good, but my feelings haven't gotten worse, so let's keep going." I replied, "It's a good thing to use the world's high-tech weapons once in a while." ”

Despite my hard words, I began to feel a sense of weakness after learning that my divine power had been lost. Human beings are humble creatures, and what they fear most is the unknowable outside world. In the underground, in deep water, and in space exploration, the disorder of the nervous system for no reason is always a stubborn problem that is difficult to solve. In the eyes of most people, Hongxiang and I are bold and outstanding: we dare to go alone to the darkest and most dangerous places, and dare to face the powerful and invincible alien enemies head-on. But what they see is only the appearance. The truth inside is that we have the perception and combat power to not be afraid of things that ordinary people smell and change. When all of this is lost, we are just human beings.

It's not even as good as the average person.

Pitch-black alleyways lead into the endless depths. Even with infrared night vision devices, the fear that seemed to hide countless terrible demons and ghosts in the darkness still hit me from all directions, forming layers of airtight and impermeable, and I was overwhelmed. But I must not show cowardice, and I must not let my men, who have been terrified and have pinned all their hopes on me, find that the leader is shaken. If that happens, it can be a great disaster in the absence of an enemy at all. I even had the idea of turning around and abandoning the mission. But having walked so long, descending to such a deep place, and suddenly going back without giving any reason, not only might they be regarded as cowards, but there was also a considerable possibility of a disheartened mutiny—a mutiny, though not a brutal revenge on the starving soldiers against the accumulation of unpaid iron roosters, but it would have been enough for them to turn around and run away and leave me here alone. It's easy to go crazy when you're alone in such a dark underground castle, and the same goes for night vision goggles.

couldn't make up his mind, so he had to continue to move forward with people without changing his face, and at the same time he was secretly worried in his heart. After an hour, we made our way to the mechanic warehouse on the tenth floor. There were actually some infantry weapons and ammunition here, although the equipment we carried with us was not bad, almost enough for a day's combat of ordinary infantry, but in this kind of place, it is always better to bring more things that can kill people - Hong Xiang was so desperate to scold his soldiers that they should take fewer weapons so that they would not be unable to walk. Fortunately, there are not many weapons here, and it seems that they can't be crushed.

I wandered around while they were scouring and found an iron-gray notebook on a shelf in the warehouse. The cover is neatly handwritten with "Wesker's Reportbook". I opened it casually, and I was going to just check it, but I saw Dai Jiangnan's handwriting on the inner page:

"Albert. Captain Wesker achieved excellent results in the fortress training competition and won the honorary title of first prize. A certificate of merit and this prize will be issued as an encouragement. ”

Dai Jiangnan is really poor and crazy, using this kind of broken notebook for three yuan a piece to fool people! But it also piqued my interest: it seems that this Wesker is still a great character at least in the Vulture Fortress? Looking back, those soldiers were still rummaging through boxes and cabinets looking for supplies, and they were all very energetic. I'm also a little tired of walking, so let's just sit down and have a look. So I walked to the guard's room at the door of the warehouse, turned on the lamp and looked down.

Wesker's report was initially recorded on October 20, 201. I did the math a little, and it was the summer of 3071 Earth time. It was a sensitive time, so it immediately caught my attention. Flipping through the previous pages of tedious work diaries, I quickly found important content:

October 26: Commander Dai is still considering the urging order from the main star, but someone has already begun to submit leave reports to go back to the democratic election. Still, I don't think that makes any sense. When I met Dai in the morning, he asked me about his views on this, and it seemed that his heart was full of contradictions.

October 31: Commander Dai decides to obey the arrangement of the main star and return to the main star to participate in the election. When he left, he took half of the convoy with him, and although it was only two squadrons of troops, he always liked the lively and grand scene. Before leaving, he left me a secret order to guard the base. As long as you don't receive a written order from him, you can't evacuate. Judging from this tone, he probably thought that it would be difficult for him to return to the main planet in the short term.

November 2: There is another strongly worded urging notice from the main planet, asking all of our remaining personnel here to return to run. Many people are starting to pack their bags, and things don't look good.

November 12: There are only five people left in the fortress, and the task of delivering information has become overwhelming. Another notice came from the main planet, asking us to abandon our base and retreat to the vicinity of the Zenith Gate, where a new information center was built. Hmph, it's time to come. I'm not leaving.

November 15: James sneaks away. But I don't think he had the need to do that. Perhaps something unexpected will arise, after all, we already have no convoy. I've told the other three to be ready to evacuate underground in the event of an unforeseen situation. The central station was well fortified and should be strong enough to withstand general danger.

26 November: Widespread noise on radar. We are understaffed to proactively defend or see the situation. I decided to retreat below the third basement level and react as appropriate.

The notebook has no content as long as it is written down here. Is there anyone else in the Vulture Fortress? A glimmer of joy rose in my heart, which was then extinguished by the cold water I poured on me: more than half a year has passed, and who knows what the situation will turn out of? But what is known is that the process of abandoning the Vulture Fortress is anything but simple. It seems that there may be something more valuable than ammunition underneath. I stood up and beckoned to my fellow explorers, "Almost, let's go deeper!" ”

In the long and dark passage of the base, my expedition team proceeded cautiously. Everyone was silent, as if they were afraid of alarming the demons lurking in the darkness. It's funny to say, how long has it been since I've felt this way? It seems like a long time.

The walkie-talkie suddenly made a connection noise, followed by Hongxiang's voice: "Huang Er, there is a discovery." There may be someone else down there. ”

"I found some evidence of this as well, what did you find?"

"A male corpse." Hongxiang's voice paused: "I have an ID card on my body, my name is Cryant, and I am thirty-six years old." Before he died, he seemed to have fought fiercely, and there were bullet casings everywhere, but there were no wounds on his body. ”

"It's weird, but it's not him." I was somewhat relieved and said, "There may be people down there, so let's move on." ”

After more than an hour of continuous progress, we came to the fifteenth basement floor. This is the living quarters of the officers and men of the base, and there are quite a few entertainment and auxiliary facilities. It's a pity that these supplies and ancillary facilities are much more precious than ammunition in space, and they are almost dismantled when they are moved. We only found a small canteen with a little more tables, chairs and benches, to sit and rest, drink some water, and eat some dry military rations. A team member looking around for food found a notebook with the signature on it being none other than Crane. I hurriedly flipped through it and looked:

Most people can't bear the pressure and leave. Not only that, but a demolition team came and demolished our supply center. After all, the commander has already left here, and there is no hope of returning, and there is no one to call the shots. Wesker tried to stop everyone from leaving, but was unsuccessful. He tried to be a leader in the absence of the commander, but it seems that he did not have the qualifications and courage to do so. At least I won't obediently obey his orders.

Today he led Gu Nan and Liu Qin (that is, everyone except me) down to the seventeenth floor, saying that the commotion on the ground might surprise there through the ventilation ducts. He commanded—and I repeatedly pointed out that he was not in a position to command me—and he asked me to go down with them. I refused. There wasn't even a place to sleep, and it was cold and dangerous. I'm going to stay here in my dormitories and enjoy the heating and wait for the commander's orders. Go or stay, I only listen to the commander's orders, Wesker is not qualified to ask me to do anything.

There was a power outage. It's dark and cold here.

The battery ran out, and strange noises kept coming from all directions. I started to feel fear.

No, I'll have to figure it out. If you stay here any longer, you're going to go crazy.

I closed my notebook, closed my eyes, and let the darkness envelop me. The mental power was invisibly suppressed and difficult to emanate, but the final fate of this pathetic creature still appeared in my mind: he was tired and frightened in the endless darkness and fear, and shot all the bullets at any light source and sound, and finally the nerves could no longer bear it, and automatically murdered his body. After seeing this scene, I suddenly woke up, turned to the team and said, "It seems that that guy was scared to death by loneliness and fear, from now on we all have to pay attention not to fall behind, and we want everyone to work closely together, understand?" ”

In the headset, Hongxiang also heard his words. With that, both of us immediately began to sprint forward. Hongxiang suddenly said: "According to the current situation, there are only three people left in Wesker and himself, do you think ......?"

"I don't know." I shook my head blankly and said, "All I know is that now that we're here, knowing this, we should find out the answer." If they are the victims of some conspiracy, we should find out the truth. ”

"Even if it costs you unnecessarily?" Hongxiang sneered: "Three people." We have a team of 12 people. ”

"Human lives are not counted like that, you know."

"Of course I do, but I'm just going to point it out to you."

And so we end the wireless conversation. After walking silently for more than an hour, our two teams met at the gate to the seventeenth floor. The combination lock of the door had been opened by Hongxiang, but he stared dryly. It turns out that the LCD above shows this line of prompt statement:

Please complete the 36 squares below and the door will open.

And the thirty-six squares below are simply a nightmare, and at a glance, you can tell that it is Dai Jiangnan's masterpiece. Not only should they be arranged and combined repeatedly, but more than 1,000 letters should be combined into sentences that match the original intention of the designer. I saw that Hongxiang's face was green, and asked, "What's the matter?" ”

Hongxiang replied angrily: "The elites of Beifei often do tricks. This pervert used a fairly strong specification to make this combination lock, and I don't know what is so important below! ”

I said with a bang, "So, as a backward element, you can't solve this, can you?" ”

"Phew, what's so difficult about this kind of thing, the routines are fixed. It's just that I haven't been to their decryption club where perverts are gathered, so it takes a little more time to demystify. ”

"Can you tell me how much time it took me?"

"The minute you know the answer, you often do this for about half an hour. Well, I'll be able to solve it in two or three days. Hongxiang went crazy as he spoke, patted me on the shoulder and said, "Huang Er, it's not me boasting. Playing this kind of thing still requires a certain amount of talent, not our people in the Beifei family, lack that kind of jumping creative way of thinking, it is very difficult to solve this kind of puzzle. Anyway, it will take a lot of time, so you guys set up camp first, boil me two pots of coffee, and see how ...... me."

I got impatient to hear this, and went up and drew the pistol from my waist, and smashed the rivet next to the combination lock with the butt. I studied the circuit board inside, found a few copper wires from my bag, and quickly connected more than a dozen flying wires on the circuit board. Then on the PINpad, I didn't lose anything and pressed the OK button directly, and in less than five minutes before and after, the door opened.

This hand immediately stopped the expedition members, and they exclaimed: "Your Excellency is really a god!" I glanced at Hongxiang on the side and saw that he was already in a semi-petrified state, and continued to hit him: "What a dumb riddle!" I would have made this level of board when I was in junior high school, and it was thanks to him that he could figure it out! There is a high-strength cryptographic logic, but the control circuit is a backward product of the fifties. No matter how poor you are, you can't engage in these showmanship. ”

It took Hongxiang more than a long time to regain his strength, and muttered: "Huang Er, you are doing this to insult our intelligence and seriously damage our aesthetic ......."

His protest complaints have continued ever since. Probably because I didn't have anything to say after holding back in the space battleship for a few months, I was just swept back in face and found an excuse for nonsense. For half an hour after we entered the seventeenth floor, he kept accusing me of being shameless in destroying the internal structure of the locks. I hadn't heard anyone speak for more than five minutes in a long time, so I didn't refute a word when I warmed up my ears. Walking all the way to the entrance of the giant air-conditioning factory, suddenly the pathfinder shouted: "Blood, there is blood here!" ”

The situation at the scene was truly hair-provoking. It's not that there are so many stumps of short arms—scattered in bits and pieces, but not much, and hardly more than the number of parts that a normal human body should have—but that there are no deserved wreckage there except for a few stumps! Still, the ubiquitous black, coagulated blood stains on the walls and in the cracks of the ground testify to the fierceness of the battle that took place there. After a while, the expedition team members found an identification tag on a stump in the corner of the wall, and the name on it was Gu Nan, male, seventeen years old, sergeant. For us, his existence is just a piece of scrap of meat and a small identity card.

"It's all right, Wesker only has two people left." Hongxiang broke the silence and asked me, "What are you going to do?" ”

"Have you ever seen such a strange scene? Nothing but his own corpse. I paced in place for a few circles and said, "Crane can be said to have been killed by fear, but there must have been an external cause for Gu Nan's death. No normal person can divide his body so thoroughly, even if he has such an idea, it is already a very unusual pervert. Except for Gu Nan, there were only two people left, and the blood in their whole bodies combined combined by a hundred could not achieve this effect - even the cracks inside the machine were soaked in blood. Why is that? ”

"Huang Er, this doesn't seem to be a place to be seriously curious." Hongxiang gasped and said, "I feel more and more that this operation was a mistake. ”

"Overcome your fears, and it's not time for you to really be afraid, after all, we haven't seen any enemies. By far the most feared thing is this mutilated corpse, though exaggerated. I frowned and said, "We have to find out what's going on, let's not rest, let's move on." (To be continued.) )