Andy slowly put down the gun in his hand, and it was so cool to be able to use V mode at will again.

The slaves in front of them were lying on the ground and shivering, and the slave traders in white robes had all been killed, and there was no need to mend the knife, and no one could save the corpses that had disappeared with half of their bodies, and the white robes were stained red with blood.

When the gunfire died down, the slaves finally began to look up left and right, and then focused their eyes on Andy.

At this moment, he picked up the assault rifle of the white-robed man at the head.

It feels pretty good, but he's not good at using a spear at all, including the laser rifle he got at Fort Maxson and the spear he got before are all gray goods in the Pip-Boy, and there are only two kinds of weapons in his hand, one is a pistol and the other is a fist gauntlet, and at most the other ones are occasionally used or thrown away and sold.

"Are you all slaves captured by the Banu Ibn?"

Hearing Andy's question, the men looked at each other, and finally a young man stood up.

"Yes, those damned slave traders imprisoned us by despicable means, beat us at every turn, and some of us got sick after being locked up in filthy cells, and they didn't give us any medicine until they died, because they thought the man was an old man who was not worth a lot of caps..."

Andy knew as soon as he heard that the young man must be an immigrant from the NcR, because the accent was familiar.

"Are you from NcR too?"

The young man sighed.

"It's... I thought there would be a chance to make a lot of money here, but now it has become like this, if I stay in Hoover Dam City with the army, I will definitely become a beggar, so I can only continue to look for opportunities outside, hoping to come here to pick up some pre-war relics worth a lot of bottle caps and sell them, accumulate some principal and then go back, but I didn't expect to just sleep in the wilderness, and when I woke up, I found that I was caught by these slave traders. ”

He turned back to the crowd.

"There are a lot of people here who are tribesmen in this area, and they may have been handed over several times as slaves, and they don't understand what we're talking about, and I've been out there for a few years, so I can barely say a few words, you.... What do you want to do with us? ”

Andy took out his sword and slashed the rope from his hand, then motioned for him to go and touch the dead white-robed men with sharp weapons to help the other slaves get free.

"It's all from NcR, don't you know what we think about slavery? Let the others go, the slave traders' stuff and the supplies in the two-headed ox crate should help you get out of this desert, and I can't help you with any more, and I'm going to keep going. ”

The young man took out a dagger and went to cut the ropes of the others, some fell to their knees and kowtowed in thanks, others turned around and ran away without saying a word, and the slaves were freed no matter what.

The young man saw that Andy was about to leave and immediately called out to him.

"Wait, are you going southeast?"

Andy turned in response.

"yes, what's wrong?"

The young man with messy hair and dark skin licked his chapped lips and thought for a moment, then ran to the two-headed cow, opened the cargo box on his back and took out a strange yellow garment, made of some kind of plastic, the two-headed cow was a little wilted from the long desert trek, and did not flee in horror because of the death of those white-robed men, but just stood still.

He ran to Andy with the dress.

"Do you have this? If you don't have one, you must take it with you. ”

Andy took it and glanced at the message with a beep boy.

"Is there a lot of radiation over there?"

The young man grinned and waved his arms in either direction.

"Not very strong.... It's outrageous, I went a little deeper with the Geiger counter before I was stripped naked by the slave traders, and then I saw a large well-guarded settlement in the distance, and when I sneaked over, I heard the crazy gurgling of the Geiger counter, fortunately I ran fast, otherwise I might have died there in a few days due to the radiation there. Although it was blocked by some metal trash walls, I could see a green glow flickering inside, almost like the strongest radiation in Riyao, where it must have been hit by a nuclear bomb at one time. ”

Andy touched his chin and remembered the recording he had heard from the Crypto Tribe, where some of the pre-war soldiers had run all the way to Mesa Verde from the southeast, and the reason for this was because they had been hit by a nuclear bomb. Well, this place, the so-called Los Alamos, is also the destination of Andy's pursuit of the fugitives this time, and it is estimated that nine times out of ten it coincides with the big settlement that the young man has seen, after all, the direction and the situation are completely consistent... Thinking about it like this, I should have thought of this a long time ago, and I should have seen if I could buy radiation protective clothing in Hoover Dam City, although this kind of special-purpose hot goods in Hoover Dam City may not be available, especially when I have completely fallen out with the Crimson Caravan.

"Thank you for reminding me, do you know anything else?"

The young man brushed his hair, revealing a huge nose.

"There are a lot of strange people over there, I see a lot of heavily armed ghouls coming in and out and stationed in the watchtower, except for those ghouls who are a bunch of weirdos, I tried to talk to them, and the words that came out of the mouths of the gang.... I don't understand at all, they immediately raise their weapons against me as soon as they see that I don't understand, they don't understand why they do this, and if you encounter them, you'd better just turn a blind eye. ”

Andy made careful notes on these.

"Thank you... Where are you going to go next? ”

The young man rubbed his nose.

"I don't know, I'll probably be wandering around here for a while, although the environment here is terrible, but the degree of involvement by scavengers and treasure hunters is very low, many places still hide relics that have not been found since the Great War, at least this place is safer than Dog Town, next time I look for a place to sleep, I have to set up some alarms and traps to fall asleep."

..............................

After two more days, Andy saw something unusual.

Some hills have appeared, scattered plants have appeared, and the environment around this area has become less hostile than before.

At this time, a group of merchants appeared.

The gang were all dressed in radiation suits, and even the two-headed cows they were carrying were covered with strange cloths, a large number of boxes were strapped to the two-headed cows, and each of them was carrying heavy backpacks, which seemed to be leaving from the southeast from the direction of their travel.

The captain of the group stopped and glanced at the Geiger counter, then waved for the others to stop.

"Okay, there's no radiation here, take off your clothes, or you won't be able to walk after that."

When the merchants heard this, they began to take off their heavy protective clothing, which was covered with sweat, and some of the fatter people were even soaked because the clothes were too close to the difficult movement, as if they had just been fished out of the water.

Andy stopped the car and walked over, shouting at them with his hands raised from afar.

"Hey! Can you talk about it? ”

Several of the guards who were not in a hurry to undress and stood guard immediately raised their guns, but the caravan leader recognized them for a moment and signaled that they should not be nervous.

"What's the matter?"

Andy walked slowly towards them.

"You've just come from the southeast, haven't you? Is there a large settlement over there that is very radioactively polluted? ”

The gray-haired caravan leader nodded with a freshly lit cigarette in his mouth.

"Yes, we're going to take our goods to New Canaan for a stopover, there's a big settlement there, and as you can see, if there's no radiation there, we won't need to wear this hot stuff, what's the matter? Do you want to go over there to stock up or do you want to hang out over there? If it's the latter, I advise you not to go, and if it's the former, I also advise you not to go. ”

Andy choked on this.

"What do you mean by that?"

The caravan leader smiled, sat down on a rock, left his mouth with the cigarette butt between his fingers and spat out a puff of smoke.

"The intensity of the radiation over there is far beyond your imagination, if you don't wear a radiation suit, you can't live long, go a little further, if you wear a Geiger counter, you can feel it, and then the closer you go, the more intense it becomes. I don't know if you have brought a radiation protection suit, if you don't have it, it is better to give up now than to go over there and turn around and run away in embarrassment, or to be robbed by the fire while eating anti-radiation and buy radiation protection clothing at several times the price. ”

Andy was unimpressed by his intimidation, which he already knew.

"I brought radiation suits, and I know that there is a lot of radiation over there, but what do you mean by stocking? Does that settlement have any specialties? ”

The caravan captain had that look of surprise that you didn't even know about it.

"Specialty? Of course there is, it seems that you came from far away, isn't it strange? There is no place in this area where these wasteland necessities can be manufactured in large quantities, except for a small amount of weapons and armor produced by some tribes. The small number of well-preserved goods found in the pre-war ruins, as well as those brought by the NcR from the west, mainly in their own hands, if we only rely on these, the things we are wearing now are not much different from those natives, but this is not the case, is it? ”

When Andy heard this, he immediately understood.

"Are you saying that there is the ability to mass-produce weapon armor? God, how did they do it? ”

The merchant captain smoked a cigarette and stretched out his fingers unhurriedly to make a 'cap' motion.

Andy looked at the bottle caps that only had a few hundred left on his body, first gave five, and in the shocked expression of the other party, "Are you sending a beggar", he had to increase the number of bottle caps to 20.

The caravan leader casually tossed the bottle cap into his pocket before proceeding.

"It is a military facility in the old world, so there should still be a usable assembly line in it, in terms of raw materials, naturally there are caravans to send ore and coal from other places in exchange for their weapons and armor, and it is also an important customer of the slave traders, it is said that the slave trader groups in the Great West and the Great East have been selling a large number of slaves to them for thousands of miles, but their needs have never been satisfied..."

Andy had already guessed the reason why the big settlement had been buying slaves when he heard the caravan captain say this, since they had an assembly line for weapons and armor, they needed three things to produce, raw materials, energy and manpower, the first two could be satisfied by purchasing from the outside, and the solution of the last one could also be the same, as long as the profits from the sale of weapons and armor exceeded the cost of buying slaves.

As for the slaves, if they had lived longer, the slave traders' business would not have been so good.

"Slaves who are sold there don't live for a few years, do they?"

Hearing Andy ask, the caravan captain just chuckled.

"I'm just a merchant, and I'm just a bottle cap, and I don't care what happens to those slaves, but... If you do heavy physical work for a long time in a place with high radiation, you can think about it and know what the end will be. Also, the inhabitants are all ghouls, and these ghouls don't have a very good attitude towards humans, let alone slaves who they consider their private property, and if you get scolded by the ghouls over there, don't do anything with them, the soldiers there are well-equipped and trained, and generally only side with their own kind. ”

..........................

Bidding farewell to the merchants, Andy continued to drive the Atomic Hummer forward, but soon after, the Geiger counter inside the Pip-Boy began to gurgle and pop up, and Hull's voice could be heard from the back of his neck.

"Environmental radiation is detected, it is advisable to stay away as soon as possible or use protective equipment and take medication as soon as possible."

Blackie let out a cry with an uncomfortable expression.

Andy then remembered that his little pet would also suffer from radiation, and he didn't have a way to make radiation suits for it, and those two-headed cows as mutated creatures in the wasteland may have some resistance to radiation, but Xiao Hei is a pre-war creature made by Diana using the equipment of the nursery to be modified to a certain extent, and it is more sensitive to the poison of radiation.

Andy had no choice but to park the Atomic Humvee in a secluded place, leave some food and water for Blackie, and then change into the radiation protection suits he got from the slave traders, and walk the last part of the road.

Wearing a radiation suit that made people feel extremely stuffy, Andy slowly walked forward step by step along the guidance of the beep boy, and saw another group of slave traders passing by with some slaves in the distance, because the distance was too far and there was no driving, this time Andy had no way to stop it.

By the time he finally walked slowly to the point where he could see the large settlement, it was already evening, and the sun had set, but Andy still found that it was similar to what the young man had described.

Jagged rocky hills dotted the sides, and on the way into them, a scrap of metal waste, scrap, and building scraps, what could barely be called a city wall, stood there, and people in radiation suits occasionally entered and exited the gate, which the slavers had just handed over to the ghouls and left, and the ghouls had brought the slaves into the gate.

Speaking of gates, the gate of this settlement is indeed very peculiar, it is not a serious metal gate like Hoover Dam City, nor is it a pre-war relic full of science and technology in Fort Maxson, in terms of style, the design of this gate is more similar to that of the Blackfoot tribe, the gate of Blackfoot Village was originally supposed to be a tourist bus carrying tourists in the tourist village, and was later moved to the entrance of the village by the Blackfoot people as a gate, but the gate here is more ingenious than that of Blackfoot Village.

Taking out the binoculars and observing through the mask of the radiation protection suit, Andy was surprised to see that the garbage used as city wall materials actually contained rusty tanks, deformed helicopters and erected cars, which directly confirmed what the caravan captain said, it was indeed a military facility, otherwise where did these military vehicles come from?

Shift to the strangely designed gate, which is actually the front of a red heavy truck, facing the direction of the outsider.

The original cab was dismantled and put on a ladder, transformed into a surveillance sentry, the sentry was connected to the electricity with yellow lights, the two truck headlights seem to have been transformed, and can be used normally at present, which will become two searchlights with a large range of lighting at night to illuminate a large area in front of the gate, and the front of the car is disassembled into a rectangular entrance, and the bottom of the truck is raised by some metal poles, forming a passage about two meters high and about one and a half meters wide to accommodate people in and out, Visitors can smoothly enter the interior of the settlement through the overhead truck sentry.

A few meters high tower near the gate is manned by ghoul soldiers, who can see through the telescopes the mini-guns mounted on them and the automatic turrets deployed on the sides of the towers.

Such a tight military defense is in no way inferior to the Hoover Dam or the steel ring in front of it, not to mention the existence of a deadly natural defense, which is the high radiation that pervades the entire environment.

Andy hesitated for a moment and walked slowly towards the gate, the top of the fence made of metal trash was topped with barbed wire, perhaps with electricity, there was a metal ladder on the side of the front guard for the guards to go up and down, a metal fence enclosed the side of the ladder to prevent outsiders from approaching, and the guards who went down the ladder to the ground could go back to the settlement to rest through a hole in the metal garbage wall behind them.

When he was standing close and watching, two headlights crossed towards his position under the control of the guards, and he couldn't open his eyes due to the strong light, and subconsciously stretched out his arm to block his eyes.

"Hey! - What did you do with us for that slippery skin down there? Think clearly before you speak. ”

The hoarse voice unceremoniously questioned Andy's intentions with a ghoul that often used a discriminatory term for humans.

Andy barely managed to get used to the bright light in front of him, and this was undoubtedly the "reservation" that the merchant captain had called.