The sky above his head is soaked in ink, and the soles of his feet are snow-white sand. Walking forward, the black wind hovered over the wilderness, and the continuous sand raised by the wind was more like clouds that drowned the atmosphere. So everything was in a state of silence, faint and silent.

The three of them walked alone in the end of the night, and they were three travelers in a lonely world.

The farther south you go, the more storms appear, the longer they last, and the more intense they become, until they become unbearable for the human body.

They were forced to wear the heavy, bulky hazmat suits made by the Cogwheel Man, with a transparent dome on their heads, and staggered forward against the wind behind them, or against the thrust of the wind behind them.

This spacesuit-like fat ball suit has a fuel pipe and storage area, which can be used as a food storage area and a feeding tube after being transformed. In addition, it has a device that atomizes water to partially wet the body of a gear man or other type of wearer.

The arm strength of the three of them is also beyond that of ordinary people, enough to carry the weight forward.

Hatsuyun is the easiest among them, no matter what kind of weight it bears, it is as light as flying. She walked behind the young man, looking at the young man. And the young man's movements were as clumsy as a snow-white bear.

As he staggered along, he said:

"You said that after you finished leading the way, you won't go back, but you will leave the city of answers forever?"

"Yes."

Jae-yi was inexplicably worried about whether the man would ask him why he had left. He didn't think his thoughts had anything to do with these strangers, and he didn't want to talk to them about his emotions.

Fortunately, Gu Chuan didn't ask. The young man did not bother to ask him this, but said curiously:

"And where are you going after that?"

That's to the point.

The lion-headed cogwheel man didn't know where he was going, he walked endlessly across the desert, leaving three or four centimeters thick in the sand with every footstep.

"If you haven't thought about where you're going, then ......," the young man's eyes lit up, "isn't it a worthwhile and perhaps very good thing to think about with us?" ”

He was above the desert and frankly issued his invitation.

The wind roared calmly in the wilderness. There is no end in sight to the dust and smoke.

Zai Yan pretended to walk calmly, he didn't think about it, but he had a lot of inexplicable troubles. The Gear People have always been the overlord of the Great Wilderness, which comes from their great strength. In all his life, he had never heard of a cogwheel being employed by another alien race. They only follow the orders of the gurus......

Now, however, the mentors have stopped.

And no cogwheel man ever envisioned the world after the guru disappeared. He thought. And he shuddered at the thought of this, he felt as if everything in his past had sunk into an abyss of invisible darkness.

And he is standing at a kind of turning point of the self, with the boundless space, the infinite night, the mysterious freedom, and the reflection of himself in it.

If he were to do it, he would probably be the first to do it before.

He walked intently and silently, his silence made Gu Chuan think that he had given up, and after a while, Zai Yi let out a small and small sound:

"Good ......"

Outlanders can't communicate with the special way of communication of the gear people. They can only listen to the sounds, and the wind everywhere outside is so strong that all the subtle sounds are in the noise without beginning and end.

Gu Chuan asked him loudly:

"What do you say? Louder, I didn't hear it! Excuse me! ”

Embarrassed, he had made up his mind to obey the decision of the two strangers. But now they didn't hear it, and they had to say it again to themselves, which made him feel an indescribable shame in his heart.

But—

He had already made up his mind to leave the Great Wilderness once and for all on the ship left behind by the world's problems.

He plucked up his courage and shouted again. This time it's a little louder:

"Good!"

"You said yes, you agreed to my previous invitation, didn't you?"

The young man laughed merrily. He walked at the forefront, swaggering like a snow bear.

The second response was swift.

The lion-headed gear man replied in a loud voice as if he had broken a jar:

"Yes!"

On the desert, Gu Chuan's laughter was even louder, and he also whined with childlike excitement. He took a few frantic steps, then turned his head again, walked backwards, and said:

"Let's go faster! It's almost time to go to the market! ”

The wind gathers in the sky and sand on the rocks or ancient bones to make a brass sound of bells. The three of them walked farther and farther, far beyond the range of the city of answers, and stepped into the edge of the depths and nothingness of the earth.

In the south of the Great Wilderness, the Gear People built a slave trading bazaar, which was also the most prosperous trading market in the Great Wilderness, with a large number of foreign races and abundant materials. The team decided to rest here for a while before heading to the border between the wilderness and the netherworld.

The bazaar is underground, and the entrance to the bazaar is buried in the sand, and there are many iconic rocks piled up to form a Stonehenge, leaving many faint notches on the stones, as if they were covered in bruises.

Thinking that he should show his many important values as a member of the city, he stepped forward, opened the door, entered through the hole, and led the two of them down the stairs.

"We've been here before." Gu Chuan said, "At that time, I was going to hire some people here to do things with us." ”

This confession made Zai Yan stiffen. He couldn't imagine that he was going to work with more of the aliens who had been in the slave market of the Cogwheel Man, didn't that kill him?

But if you think about it, it doesn't seem unacceptable.

What's more, he has already agreed to accept his peers, can he still turn his face and refute it now?

The lion-headed cogwheel man felt immense pain and shame for the foreseeable future, and was silent.

He walked in front, and Gu Chuan and Chu Yun walked behind.

The stairs went all the way down, and each step was unclean, with a mess of dusty marks. Chuyun paid attention to this:

"Chuan, this place is unusual.

When they followed Ziyuan to the market, they could hear the noise below when they stood on the stairs, but now they were quiet and quiet. And the deeper you go, the darker it becomes, as if there are no lights on at all. The traces are still there, but you can't see the cleaning gear man.

"It's weird......"

When the trio's team came to the bottom, they saw nothing. Gu Chuan took out a lighting device that looked like a crystal ball brought out from the solution city, barely brightening up the scene inside the bazaar. All they saw were messy dismantled boxes, broken walls, collapsed platforms, and the uncleaned corpses of the aliens of the Great Wilderness.

The liquid of different colors that flowed from the corpse solidified and stinked on the ground, leaving a mark on the ground.

All lighting fixtures are missing, and the gears or cables connecting the lighting fixtures are exposed. The partition wall that was used to distinguish the different interracial trade displays was knocked to the ground, and there were countless messy footprints on it.

Carefully avoiding the ruined walls and ruins, they came across a large area of collapse. Snow-like sand fills the empty room, like a mountain covered by the sky.

The pace of the shackle is fast. He knew the structure of the bazaar, and walked around the sand hill that had been leaked in, and walked around the sand hill in the direction of the storehouse. Then stood a doorway that was supposed to be locked, and Zai Yan was motionless.

Gu Chuan saw him stand there motionless after opening the door of the storeroom. Gu Chuan came behind him and saw that the warehouse was empty, leaving only a few boxes that had been torn open in a savage way.

"There was a loot here." "I've seen what the village looks like after these tribes raid each other...... Most of them have nothing left, and what they think is valuable and meaningful will be moved away, leaving no one behind. ”

Gu Chuan read the anger of this gear man, and he said:

"This group of people did a thorough job. Did they know what was going on in the city? ”

"I'm afraid so. The Mentors should have recalled all the Cogwheel people who were out there. After they were recalled, the aliens who had gathered here may have also realized what had happened in Answer City. ”

Zai Yan said.

In the past, this kind of disrespectful alien race would attract the whipping of the cogwheel man.

"Aren't these people afraid of your revenge?"

Gu Chuan asked unintentionally, but Zai Yan paused.

The lion-headed gearman bowed his head and his expression gloomy.

"They need not be afraid, because we cannot retaliate against them."

Because the gear people are still fighting internally. Even the city of Answer, where they have lived for thousands of years, is now deeply divided, and there are still several problem areas that have risen up to resist. As Jing Gao said, he originally thought that Jing Gao would take on the role of mentor, but he didn't, but let the chaos of the gear man go.

"When my compatriots have the strength to settle everything...... And how can you find the real murderer? ”

Zai Yan whispered.

"And after that, we will not be eager to retaliate...... This is not in line with the principle of 'retention'. ”

As a result, the order established by the Cogwheel people was lost, and the once thriving market was in ruins. Everything that was destroyed made Zai Yan extremely angry.

In front of the outsiders, he has a very strong desire to confide, and wants to thoroughly criticize the current situation of the city. But the stranger had already gone to the other side. The fat protective suit had also been taken off, and the upper body was wearing a vest, revealing the young man's sturdy physique.

He smiled and beckoned to Zaiyi, pointing to the tent cloth in his hand.

"I'm going to set up camp!"

This is the first task they need to work on.

Zai, who had just figured out the situation, replied sneeringly:

"Okay, what am I going to do?"

Creation or destruction has nothing to do with travelers, nor is it something they should care about, or can care about.

All they had to do was camp underground and rest for the day.

The cogwheel people don't need food, but some of the Great Wilderness alien races are of a similar race to Gu Chuan and need food, which is within the scope of trading. As a result, the bazaar has food warehouses.

Their grain and grassland were to be carried from here by the majesty of the city. But now that it has been broken, the grain also needs to be re-estimated. Carrying a scavenger and searching for supplies. Hatsukumo, on the other hand, saw something moving in a dark corner. It was a small, rat-like animal. She lowered her waist, grabbed one with her bare hands, and threw it back to Gu Chuan, startling the young man who was making a fire.

"To ...... What to do? ”

"Can't you eat it?"

"Oh......" the young man weighed, "it should be edible when it's cooked......

Neither of them had seen a round figure emerge from the sand pouring down from the top, and peeked into the pot on the fire, as if to gauge the size of the thing.

In the midst of that great chaos, many alien slaves were freed from their shackles, and many strange things that had been registered disappeared.

In front of the fire, Zai Yan began to speak angrily about the collapse and chaos of the city. The young man let out a happy laugh. The girl lay on her stomach on the makeshift haystack, feeling sleepiness welling up in her head.

They had moved away from the man-made light of the city of Answer, and now the light that illuminated them had returned to the flickering natural fire.

The light of the fire revealed in the gaps of the shadows of the three men, quietly turning the sawdust into ashes.

With the ashes of Mars flying in the air, blowing into distant dreams.

"It's time."

The amount of time and specifications that gear people need to rest is completely metaphysical. The first to wake up Gu Chuan and Chu Yun was Zai Yan, who opened his eyes accurately before half a standard hour in the answer city, then cleaned up, and waited for another half a standard hour, and then called out to the two people who were sleeping in an ugly position.

Gu Chuan thought that the alarm clock had gone off, pressed one hand on Zaiyi's head, and pressed it down several times in a row, and said in a daze in the last dream before going to bed:

"How fluffy is this iron sheet......

Chu Yun's cold hand touched his abdomen, causing him to suddenly feel cold, and he suddenly woke up. He looked around, saw everything in the ruins, touched his head, and with the hair on his hand that had been plucked from the top of his head, he said innocently:

"Ahh......h It's time to go. ”

After the three of them sorted out all their things and confirmed that nothing was missing, they packed a large bag and a small car, and hit the road again.

The wind was getting stronger and stronger, almost blowing the car away.

The sand in the sky is like smoke from a fire, filling the entire space.

Gradually, they ceased to see the mountains and the first quarter moon on them.

This natural thing does not disappear behind the horizon, but is always submerged by matter, and even the last thing that cannot be seen. Maybe the eternal celestial body is still climbing high into the sky, approaching the full moon, but this is not something to be seen.

"In this kind of weather, you can't see anything!"

The matter completely lost its shape, and only the earth beneath his feet could still perceive reality.

"Yes, then, according to the records, we are about to reach the Netherworld."

Zai Yan said.

Gradually, in the complete smoke that permeated the earth, strange golden colors were refracted, like sunlight reflected in water, forming large and strange circles.

Boundless rings of fog are scattered throughout the cloud-like fog.

Everything is moving, nothing is not changing, it's like ...... Ink flowing into the water. More than a dozen different colors of ink, and the ink that is not incompatible, faints and changes in the smoke, like a Wanhua mirror, showing more and more wonderful landscapes.

"It's a cloud that the Netherworld is attracted to by the moon and evaporates."

They walked through the clouds until the substance beneath their feet completely lost its fixed shape, like a liquid that could sink their feet deeply, and then began to flow in complete disorder in the unseen places farther away.

In the midst of countless cyclones, in eternal motion.