"Bang-" Andy fell to the ground and slowly stood up, patting the mud off his hands.

Through the eyepiece of the gas mask, with the help of the faint light around him, the situation in front of him appeared in his eyes.

This is the legendary Slag Pit, located beneath the baseline area where the albino people settled, but his current location should be a relatively safe front corridor away from the core area of the slag pit, which is darker and damper than the baseline above, but there are no danger factors.

There were two more sounds of landing, one heavy and one light, and Mark and Beatrice jumped down.

"I thought I knew how complicated the inner workings of the Hoover Dam were, but I always found that I didn't know enough, and the inside of the dam was like a rat hole, layer upon layer, and each layer had strange corridors or tunnels that I didn't know where to use them and where they were connected." Andy turned his head to look at Mark and said this, he felt that Mark must know more than he did.

Mark subconsciously wanted to push his glasses, but then realized that he was not wearing glasses because he was wearing a gas mask.

"The Hoover Dam was so large that in order to build the dam, people had to divide it into about 2,500 concrete blocks that were poured separately, and then put them together one by one to form the behemoth that we are in at this moment." Mark looked at the wall to the side, where there was still a pre-war signage that said that the generator room could be found by walking forward.

"The concrete blocks were so hot at first that the engineers had to design a lot of pipes running through them, and these metal pipes would be injected with cold water to dissipate heat. After all, once the dam is put into use, it will be inevitable that there will be water seepage inside, and these seepage water must be collected and discharged in time, and real-time monitoring of the status of the Hoover Dam is also a must.... All of the above—" He wanted to say something, but in the end he only briefly brought it aside.

"Anyway, let's go to the generator room first, if that caveman doesn't talk nonsense, I'm afraid we'll encounter mutated creatures with strong aggressive tendencies and highly polluting substances in the near future." Andy shrugged and pulled out his N99 pistol and self-charging pistol to lead the way, but was stopped by Mark, who pointed at Beatrice, who did almost nothing to protect himself.

"The super mutant has enough physique to help her be immune to all kinds of toxins or sudden attacks by mutant creatures, and I suggest that Beatrice take the lead, which should be the best choice given that neither of us has any reliable protective equipment on us." Hearing Mark say this, Beatrice touched her head and walked in front, while Andy and Mark walked behind her vigilantly with weapons in hand.

The sound of the trio's footsteps spread farther and farther through the dimly lit hallway, and it wasn't long before they noticed a large amount of solidified blue-gray gum under their feet, which stuck to the filaments when stepped on.

Andy walked around suspiciously as he discerned what this thing was.

"What do you say this is? Some kind of contaminant? Or is it too damp to grow..... Some kind of mutant fungus? Beatrice smiled innocently.

"Like.... Bug nest .... Inside.... Excrement. Mark felt the texture of the unidentified substance under his feet with his shoe, looked around at the same substance that had been glued to the wall all the way around, and made his inference after hearing what Beatrice had said.

"The secretion of a creature, it doesn't seem entirely wrong that Beatrice said this time, I'm afraid it's indeed made by some kind of mutated insect, but it's not their excrement.... It's more commonly used to build and fortify their nests, or to wrap them around...", as the three of them came to a fork in a hallway, and the branch corridor to their left was now completely sealed with the same secretions that attached to their feet and walls, and that contained a lot of cocoon-like stuff in them.

The scene in the dim depths of the depths of the earth around the corner of the corridor was a little too grotesque for a few people to stand there and watch for a moment.

"Hell, are these the eggs of those bugs?" Andy directs the Pip-Boy's light towards the cocoons, which are translucent under the intense green light, and can be vaguely seen that something is indeed wrapped inside, but it varies in shape and size.

"Obviously not, the important eggs will inevitably be closely protected in the deepest part of their nests by a large number of mutated insects, and it would be too counterintuitive to be placed here at will... I think it's more likely to guess that this is their food storage room. It's like a refrigerator, where the bugs wrap up all the prey they catch and pick it up when they're hungry. As he spoke, Mark suddenly saw that Beatrice had shattered a cocoon with the super power hammer in his hand, and a foul-smelling pool of green slime flowed from it.

The pungent stench caused the super mutant Beatrice to sneeze a few times, and Andy and Mark had to back off to avoid the slime before they knew if it was intensely aggressive.

"This thing doesn't look like it used to be some kind of creature.... At least the bones should be left. Andy looked at the puddle of liquid, there was really no solid substance in it, and the inside of this cocoon was a packet of stinky water.

Mark also looked at the unknown liquid flowing from the cocoon that had been shattered by Beatrice.

"Maybe those mutant insects were injected with highly corrosive digestive juices before wrapping them? Or ..... Hey, stop, don't waste your time here, you don't know what's going to happen if you break a few more. Maybe those guys will be attracted to the smell and get angry at us for destroying their food. Beatrice put down the super power hammer in her hand, and she shattered another cocoon, this time a greasy, blood-red mass fell from it.

Andy moved the beep-boy closer to him, this time he could clearly see that there were bones in the bloody mass, and after changing the angle, he could see the skull with obvious features, although the skull seemed to have been crushed and cut off by a terrible force, but some key things could still be seen.

"It's... A mouse? Andy waved for Mark to come over and take a look, and he agreed with Andy after taking a look.

"Indeed, this is a mouse, and it should be a white-haired mouse, and there is still some hair.... But this thing is really not small, two or three times bigger than those mutated rats in the dam crest area. Several people raised their heads to look at the cocoon in front of them, which filled the entire corridor fork, and they didn't know how deep it was, and the creatures preyed on by the group of mutated insects seemed to be huge.

"Meat... It's broken..."Beatrice's face was full of disappointment, and it seemed that she wished there was her favorite meat in these cocoons.

Andy lifted the beep-boy up and approached the layers of cocoons again, and suddenly noticed a strange shadow in a cocoon, and there was a foreign protrusion on the surface of the cocoon.

"Beatrice, you turn this on." The super mutant scratched her head and couldn't figure out why she was told not to touch it and then told her to open the strange things, but she didn't think much of it, picked up the hammer and smashed the cocoon.

A slime-stained black m16 military rifle tumbled onto the slippery ground, followed by a mutilated corpse in a-yellow uniform and a cool helmet, the identity of which was, of course, a soldier belonging to the NcR military stationed at Hoover Dam.

Looking at the cloudy eyes on the corpse of the NcR soldier who slid to the corpse of the mutant rat not far away, Andy knew in his heart that this dead man was one of the NcR soldiers who had come down to the scum pit before the two teams, and they were attacked by mutant creatures in the scum pit and then all of them were killed, reduced to reserve food for the bugs.

"Although it was known for a long time that none of those soldiers had returned to the baseline zone, they would be wiped out here.... No matter how powerful those monsters were, they shouldn't have killed all the heavily armed soldiers not too far from the entrance. In the event of an unfavorable battle, in the style of the NcR soldiers, they will definitely turn around and run, and will never continue to charge forward en masse to the last man. Mark turned his head to look at where they had come down, and if the soldiers who had come down had been attacked in the area where they were now, and a large number of casualties followed, it would have taken less than ten minutes for the soldiers standing in the lower positions to flee backwards and then flee backwards.

Thinking of this, a guess popped up in Mark's mind.

"Could it be that the cavemen blocked the entrance to this place as soon as they entered, leaving them with nowhere to escape?" Andy shook his head, rejecting the cruel conjecture.

"Some albino people are more extreme, but at least they are under Billy's leadership, and from what I've said to him, I don't think the bearded man is going to do that... Killing the NcR soldiers who entered the scum pit twice in a row is bound to face extermination if this is exposed, and I'm sure Billy isn't crazy enough to take that risk to give the NcR a good look. If he really was so upset with NcR, it would have been more reasonable to deny the soldiers access outright. ”

Moreover, the second group of soldiers must have thought of this possibility, and they must have interrogated and had doubts in their hearts. But their fate is exactly the same as that of the first soldiers, which shows that they confirmed the innocence of the albinos before the accident, and believed that the disappearance of the first soldiers was not due to the assassination of the albinos.... But after that, they still got hit, that is, something made them misjudge the situation. ”

"The most important thing is that there are no traces left by the firing in this vicinity, and it is impossible for them not to fight back.." Mark felt the atmosphere around him start to grow weird.

"Lure the enemy deeper? Could the brainless and rampaging mutants understand this strategy? Most of them have the first choice of attacking when they encounter humans, until they are killed by a counterattack beyond their means, like the wild dogs of Denver who chase trains to pieces, crazy and stupid. The three of them lingered in front of these cocoons for a moment, and Andy sighed, knowing that there was no point in hesitating like this.

"Let's take one step at a time, are we going to stay here or turn around and go back? No matter what ambushed them, I believe that with the ability of the three of us, we will not follow in their footsteps. ”