"Ling Lan, you've been away from home for so long, do you still have contact with your family, they should all be very worried about you, right?"

On the deck of the Enterprise, Weiss and Ling Lan stood against the railing, chatting while enjoying the scenery. The wind lifted the girl's dark hair, adding a touch of style to it, which made Weiss pay attention frequently.

"When you get to a place where there is a communication station, just send a letter home to say that you are safe, if you are worried...... But they were very supportive of my travels, and my mom said that I should hurry up when I see the right man, and I always felt that she might not be referring to martial arts. ”

“......”

For a moment, Weiss had the urge to poke his head and yell, "I'm the right man!!", but when he listened to the second half of the other party's sentence, reason made him swallow it back, because God knows if the other party will be excited to find him, and the king and the spearman will fight it alone, which is out-and-out death!

"Speaking of which, what are your plans for the future, and should the king's words be very popular wherever he goes, or are you going to travel around the world like me?"

"My word ......"

"Hey, two flirtatious imps over there, don't flare up to you. ”

The two were chatting when Kabbalah, who happened to pass by, interrupted their "act of death". Kabbalah already knew that Ling Lan's chess pieces were spearmen who were "favored" by the god of doom, so the first thing he did after Ling Lan got on the ship was to give the other party a full dozen lucky charms, and pasted two spirit talismans that were said to be from the hands of a certain exorcism master in Donglinzhou at the door of her cabin.

"Auspicious Imperial Exemption, Safe House" Prince Ma, did you even cross it!?

"Master, we should be almost Nadal, right?" Ignoring the "flirting and scolding" that ordinary girls can't help but blush and clarify, Ling Lan, who has relatively big nerves, first thought of asking about the progress of the journey when she saw Kabbalah.

"Soon, we will be able to enter Nadal's territory by noon tomorrow at the latest, and the airship will stop at a place called the town of Sitas for supplies, and then we will take the car to the engineering regiment's station to see the situation, and this is the current itinerary. ”

"It sounds simple. ”

"If we can get to the station and find out that the guys are just lazy and drinking, and the missing search and rescue team is also fooling around with them, then this matter will be very simple, the old man only needs to scold them, and we can call it a day. ”

As he listened to Kabbalah, Weiss inadvertently glanced at what seemed to be something near the hillside in the distance, but a boulder obscured part of his vision, making it impossible for him to see the full outline. However, as the airship advanced, the angle slowly adjusted, and the things behind it were finally fully revealed in front of Weiss's eyes.

"You two come over here and see, does that thing over there look like an airship?"

Hearing Weiss's greeting, Kabbalah and Ling Lan looked in the direction of his finger. At the foot of the mountain not far away, an airship similar to the Enterprise they were riding on was lying sideways on the ground, its hull was damaged to a certain extent, and there was a long friction mark on the ground. Kabbalah used a telescope to look at the gunwale, and determined that this was the "Astute" of the first search and rescue team.

Weiss's discovery caused the Enterprise to stop in a hurry and approach the wrecked airship, which no one expected to be found in such a place. Before the Enterprise could land, Kabbalah flew up first, using his magical sensing abilities to scout the Astute. Although this hand may seem inconspicuous, it is a great test of the caster's ability to grasp the magic element, and only an experienced expert like Kabbalah can use it.

After the airship landed, Wess and Ling Lan, as well as the mercenary team of "Hammerhead" Scardo, disembarked. Because the situation was still unknown, Scardo only let the fourth group change the rescue equipment, and the other three groups were still in combat configuration, and after disembarking from the ship, they approached the Astute in a combat formation, and then joined the landed Kabbalah in front of the wrecked airship.

"Old pit, what's going on inside?"

"Didn't perceive any decent living creatures, and the personnel may have abandoned the ship and evacuated, but ......"

"But what?" Seeing Kabbalah's hesitant expression, Scardo lifted his visor and asked anxiously, but it was Weiss who took over the conversation.

"But there's no departing footprints around here, that's what you're trying to say, right?"

Wess had just circled around the Whim, and had not found any footprints on the ground around the airship, and there was a faint rancid smell wafting through the air, which happened to be wafting from the Astute. Therefore, Weiss judged that the search and rescue team members on the ship may have all been killed, and Kabbalah was probably the same.

As a seasoned dwarven warrior, Scardo understood the meaning of Weiss's words on the spot, and a trace of regret flashed in the other party's eyes, and then he hoped to give them a little time to go in and collect the bones of his comrades.

When the dwarven mercenaries opened the hatch of the Astute, a disgusting stench suddenly gushed out, and even Weiss and the others who were standing upwind almost vomited, and some of the dwarven mercenaries even thought that the anti-gas filter in their visor was broken.

"Gross~!Master, how long have you said this search and rescue team has been missing?"

"It's been exactly 2 weeks since they set off, what's wrong?"

"It doesn't feel right, the smell is so exaggerated, it doesn't look like normal decay. Don't...... Are there any other weapons on board?"

"How is that possible!? Who would bring that kind of thing when they go out to search and rescue? Besides, our trading company just wants to open a mine in Nanfengzhou, and we have never thought of committing any massacre here, so don't talk nonsense!"

Hearing Weiss say this, Kabbalah was taken aback. You must know that the "weapon of mass destruction" such as poison gas bombs is not something that can be talked about casually, no country in the world dares to openly admit that it is researching this kind of thing, and once an individual or organization is discovered, it will be ruthlessly erased by the state, and he does not want Weiss to misunderstand something terrible.

The dwarves quickly retrieved 50 highly decomposed corpses from the cabin, of which 36 belonged to the dwarves, including 32 mercenaries and 4 pawn owners, and 12 goblins, all of whom were members of the Astute's crew. Two other bodies are human, one is supposed to be a guide, but the identity of the other is uncertain.

The corpses were all rotting and insincere, swollen like pieces of green jelly, and the mercenaries would break the remains if they were not careful, either tearing off their loose arms and legs, or breaking the skin to make sticky pus flow all over the ground. In the process of reascuing the corpses, Skadhu noticed that some of the corpses had unusual marks on them, so he hurriedly called Kabbalah over.

"Lao Keng, come and take a look at this!"

The three people who stayed upwind and watched all ran over when they heard the news, and Kabbalah released three "air filter cycles" to help himself and Weiss isolate the stench from the sky. The three of them came to Scardo, the other party was squatting in front of a human corpse to check, Weiss felt his stomach churn just by looking at it, and Ling Lan next to him also had a similar bad expression, both of them were the first time to see such a curious carrion corpse.

"Hammer, what do you want us to see?" Kabbalah asked.

"Look at this guy's back...... See, the whole thing is rotten, and the vertebrae are almost completely exposed. Scardo pointed to the corpse on the ground, the only unidentified human among the victims, and the most decomposed. The skin is translucent, and most of the flesh and blood inside have turned into yellow-green disgusting mucus, and only the bones are still intact, which looks very curious.

"There were six corpses in the same condition as him, all of them dwarven goblins, all of which had severely broken backs, large areas of vertebrae exposed, and strange drill marks near the skull. However, the high level of decomposition of the corpses is a bit outrageous, so I can't tell what caused these wounds, and I can't rule out the possibility that they are 'afterlife'. ”

In the absence of the necessary equipment and professionals, Scardo could only rely on his limited experience to judge the possibilities, and if it was really the wounds of the victims, it meant that the Astute had been "invaded", and at this point Weiss noticed that there were other suspicious spots on the corpse.

"By the way, do you think there's something wrong with these corpses?"

"Something is not right, what do you mean?" The eyes of several people present instantly converged on Weiss.

"It was so clean. ”

"Where are these slimy corpses clean?" Ling Lan couldn't help but look at Weiss with a strange gaze.

"I mean, don't you think it's strange that these corpses are so rotten that they are about to melt into soup, but they don't even have a single maggot?"

"Indeed! I said I always thought there was something missing from these corpses, it turned out that they didn't grow those things!"

Wes's words gave Scardo a look of abrupt realization. The others looked at the corpse, and sure enough, they didn't find a single maggot. These anomalous phenomena made everyone present feel a trace of indescribable weirdness, and Weiss couldn't help but have a sense of foreboding. And deep inside the Astute's cabin, a "living thing" that no one noticed was hiding in a dark corner, slowly wriggling......