Love and passion, cutting up the wasteland.

"Don't you have one yourself?" Lu Meng took out his silver card.

"The entry and exit dispatch here are recorded. You have to let it know who you are. The system is not sentimental." Lin Ji said, taking the card and swiping it on the access control. As the pattern of a huge furnace lit up, the heavy iron door slowly opened to both sides, like pushing a mountain. "Besides, this card is not mine."

As she said this, she took out another silver card and punched it on the door to record it.

Qin’s Watcher number: NO.8.

As a hunter who found the intelligent core together with Alk, and showed his talent in martial arts, he was also rewarded with a silver card and finally became an inner circle.

However, due to their reckless exploration of the Land of Ashes, the rest of the members were wiped out, which in itself violated the prohibitions of the End of the World. Their merits and demerits offset each other, and their ranking is not high.

As for Alk, he did not reveal that they had carried out the alien procedure, and as the team leader he should have shared most of the responsibility... otherwise, with his later reputation and status, he would have been the number one in the inner circle long ago.

Qin died, and during the subsequent salvage and disposal of his body, his silver card was found and handed over to Lin Ji: The so-called Watcher was his own identity, and of course it was not inherited in this way. No one could take it away without the approval of the Inner Ring.

Now Lin Ji, in his capacity as Inspector, is the temporary agent of the Depression Lagoon. Many of the previous electronic identification systems were built around Qin, the Watcher. Giving the silver card to her for safekeeping also saves the process of having a mechanic crack it and having to listen to Wolfe's complaints and nagging... Everyone is tacitly aware of this.

"What about the future?" Lu Meng looked at the silver card in her hand and continued Lin Ji's words.

Lin Ji stood in front of the door and paused.

Zhou Jing and the Black Claws behind her looked serious and indifferent, but they actually pricked up their ears.

As the Black Claw took over the Depression Lagoon, the progress was far beyond the expectations of the Scratch Headquarters - sending these people out originally had the flavor of vanguard warriors.

Forget about taking over the Depression Lagoon Town. It would be good enough if we could nominally not give up this relay base and maintain the support of the Southern Technology Hunters.

I definitely haven't considered who could take over Qin's position.

The rational solution, of course, is to immediately dispatch an inner circle member from the headquarters, a noble and honorable Watcher who has also performed great deeds... But the time it takes to send the message back and forth, the time vacuum in between, and the administrative wear and tear required to take over and familiarize themselves with the situation again...

Greater possibility.

It is a direct letter of appointment to legalize the existing managers of this place.

Yes, anyone with eyes can see it.

Lin Ji is the most likely new candidate.

This can be considered a meteoric rise for the Black Claws.

However, their examiner seemed somewhat uninterested in this. She did her job well, cleared the remnants of the list, and quickly stabilized the order... but she didn't seem to have any intention of going any further.

How can one not be anxious?

However, everyone also vaguely knew that this matter involved not only the examiner herself, but also another person.

But unexpectedly, it was Lu Meng who asked the question on their behalf.

While the Black Claws were secretly grateful, they also had to sigh that this nameless man had some rough spirit in him, as he could ask such questions directly without being fussy about details.

But just as they were waiting to hear the answer and trying to figure out what their own examiner meant, Lin Ji waved and said, "Let's go in and talk."

Then he pulled Lu Meng into the side of the door.

Before Zhou Jing could react, the heavy door of the underground warehouse closed again.

Right in front of them.

Although according to the regulations and prior agreement, only people with silver cards can enter this warehouse...but what does that mean?
Are we outsiders now?

……

……

Lin Ji walked ahead silently.

Lu Meng looked around and found it was dark all around. He took the silver card that the other party had returned to him and swiped it on the wall.

The light ball buried in the dome then lit up.

A patch of daylight fell.

Lu Meng uttered a sigh of admiration softly.

The things stacked up in the warehouse were nothing but abandoned and non-functioning security spiders.

Each of these four-legged machines is as tall as a person just lying there before standing up.

The technology hunter spent a lot of time salvaging in the dark river of the drilling hole, of course not just for Lu Meng's weapons.

They spread a trawl net on the bottom of the lake, trying not to miss any parts, and then used cable cars and boatmen to transport them from the lower town to this warehouse.

Looking at the scene in front of him, Lu Meng was somewhat reminded of the underground parking lot in his memory.

However, the further back the Safety Spiders are, the more damaged they become, with the last row being so badly pieced together that it's impossible to reassemble them.

Looking at the parts scattered all over the floor and the muddy footprints on the wall, it's not hard to imagine the scene where the mechanic kicked it in frustration...

His temper is quite small.

"Tell me," Lin Ji took a deep breath and turned around, "How should we deal with it?"

She pointed at the security spiders behind her.

"To you now, this is just some scrap copper and iron, right?" Lu Meng tilted his head and said, "In our hub station, the recycling price for one pound is less than 10 Cat coins."

"You don't want to ask for too much, do you?"

"Don't try to trick me." Lin Ji sneered. "Except for a few that were too badly damaged, the rest have been basically repaired by the mechanics in Lake Town. Although sovereignty cannot be transferred without the controller, simple program movement can still be done. How can it be some junk?"

"Besides, I don't even know who you are?" She looked at Lu Meng, "If it's really unprofitable, why would you keep thinking about it?"

The technological hunters' salvage was extremely thorough, but from Qin's body, to the wreckage of the Reef, to the bottom of the lagoon... no controller of the Iron Spider Swarm was found.

This made them suspect that Qin did not get this thing at all. Just like the black scratch on the forbidden island, it was very dependent on luck.

However, for Lin Ji, who had personally experienced the battlefield, she still remembered the rampage and shutdown of the security spiders, as well as Lu Meng's departure... This matter was most likely related to the other party. "Really?" Facing the examiner's gaze, Lu Meng did not retreat at all, but smiled and said, "Do you still want to point a knife at me?"

"...Can you please not mention this again?" Lin Ji let out a breath that he had been holding tightly, and held his forehead: "I don't really want to remember it again."

It was obvious that what the other party was talking about was their first meeting in the secret room in the lower city.

Lin Ji suspected that whenever he wanted to laugh at others for being too stupid in the future, he would recall that scene: he actually wanted to draw his sword to subdue the Red King.

That’s right, it’s not a knife.

But the scabbard.

Seeing her familiar look, Lu Meng smiled, walked forward, looked at these security spiders, and sized them up.

These are security machines designed by the Second Empire. In order to drive them to operate smoothly, they require a large amount of energy supply and a specially designed controller.

He has both of these.

With the continuous production of fuel in the swamp, the price Lu Meng has to pay is even lower than Qin's, both in terms of transportation distance and channels.

The latter's controller had already fallen into his hands. Although it was damaged in the end, Xiaogu took action... and did not damage the core components in time.

As the whistleblower said, after Qin's death, without his flesh and blood cultivation and mechanical analysis functions, it stands to reason that the authority cannot be transferred.

All we can do is wait for time to pass and the countdown on the controller to expire, and it will naturally become ownerless.

But this process may take hundreds of years.

It is possible that Qin was able to collect the safety spiders in this garage... and a cabin through the technology hunters, but how to use the controller and recognize the master is definitely not up to him.

The source could only be his ally.

The sect of blood exchange.

According to the Whistleblower, their founder was a skeleton who lived during the Second Empire. Only this kind of immortal mechanical life has the opportunity to obtain the controller and wait for it to be reset.

Zhou Jing captured the captain of the Turtle alive. From the iron mask left behind, Lu Meng knew at a glance that the other party was a member of the Bone Replacement Team. Unfortunately, under the influence of hypnosis and drugs, the brains of these members had already been thoroughly washed by the Skeleton Man, and they could not spit out any valuable information.

The hiding place was well protected.

——For others.

However, at present, Lu Meng has no intention of causing trouble for them. He can easily understand that the reason these secret organizations lost since ancient times have been able to survive and continue to develop is that the area where they are located must be beyond the ruling scope of the three major countries and outside the civilized order.

A truly wild and chaotic wilderness.

"A very evil place."

Specifically, the interior can be divided into multiple areas, but except for the people who actually live in it, the outside world does not care about the details.

People only know that it is a shithole that no empire is willing to touch, that something you don’t want to face may pop up at any time, and that it is the source of real chaos... and that is enough.

Firstly, Lu Meng didn't want to get involved for the time being as he already had enough things going on; secondly, there was no need for him to go to the headquarters of Bone Flesh and Blood Exchange just for the permission of a controller.

Or rather, no need.

When the whistleblower used himself as a bargaining chip to threaten Lu Meng, although he stated two conditions, there was only one that could really check and balance people:
His ability to replicate and regenerate flesh and blood.

In his opinion, it was true.

If it is only transferred between skeletons, it will take time for those with poor skills, but those with strong skills or authority can even transfer it directly.

Only the identification of biological information is a little troublesome.

Unfortunately, what the whistleblower didn't know was that this technology had already been cracked by the swamp through the intelligent core, and the price was just some of Qin's flesh and blood.

This problem, which troubles the vast majority of people in the world, is actually the least constraining.

The rest of the mechanical decoding could be done even by Wolfe. Of course, Wolfe was considered the best among humans, so it was a bit unfair to say that.

From the outset, the whistleblower had no bargaining power.

Relying on herself alone, Lu Meng is able to make perfect use of these security spiders.

'Even if we don't fully control these machines, but just let them run according to simple programs and move along fixed tracks... that would be very useful.' He thought, 'It's equivalent to a transportation assembly line.'

Lu Meng had thought about it before.

With the development of Shandi, transportation capacity has almost become its biggest constraint.

To be rich, build roads first.

However, with the Safety Spider, a four-legged machine that does not need to consider the terrain at all and can even climb vertical drilling rock walls.

Climb over mountains and cross rivers, wade through water and cut through forests.

It doesn't matter.

Due to the limited number of camel caravans on the grassland, he had to make choices and carefully balance between transporting grain and oil... Unexpectedly, he now had the hope of entering the era of intelligent and fully automated transportation in one fell swoop.

Compared to pack animals that still need sleep and be fed with grass, grain, and fine grain, the mechanical brigade that works day and night, even if it is smaller in number, is much more efficient.

No trainer is needed yet.

Not to mention activating the security spider's defense mode at critical moments.

That is an iron army.

This was the trump card that Qin was confident could lay the foundation for his power and even be enough to prepare for a life-and-death fight with Lu Meng.

Only this time, the place they were going to guard was not Stober's drug farm.

But it is the Great Wall of Shan.

(End of this chapter)