Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 374 City Debris
If there really are strange things among those relics...

Given the range of activities of these scavengers, trying to track them down one by one is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

As he walked, Sun Hang suddenly felt that he might have missed some clues.

He had originally planned to study the diary carefully after returning to the research institute, but the impulse in his heart drove him to the door of a coffee shop and sat down at a table and chairs placed on the street.

Sun Hang once again opened the "diary" that was "full of love for the goddess".

As Sun Hang flipped the pages, the papers, which had become brittle due to the low temperature, made rustling sounds.

"Ok?"

Sun Hang frowned, and he suddenly realized that among these crazy words, some of the characters seemed different.

It may not be very obvious when viewed directly with the naked eye, but if you gently rub the back of the paper with your fingers, you can find that the owner of the diary deliberately increased the force when writing this word, so that a slightly raised mark appeared on the other side of the paper.

Sun Hang circled the words one by one and found that they formed a coherent sentence.

"I must find a way to escape from the goddess."

Sun Hang couldn't help but take a deep breath.

He suddenly realized that the scavenger's death did not seem that simple.

Perhaps, he knew from the beginning the existence of the strange creature in the underground machine room.

"He chose to betray the 'goddess', but failed, so he was punished?" Sun Hang muttered softly, "So... what is this 'goddess'?"

The weird thing in the underground engine room? Obviously not.

Then the only possible person could be the one who took the videotape.

Could it be Anna?

Sun Hang thought for a moment and ruled out this possibility.

If it was Anna who did it, given her personality, she would definitely appear in front of him to "show off" - just like those children who have done "great things" and are eager to get praise from their parents.

Sun Hang felt extremely troubled when he thought that there might be a mysterious creature with unpredictable power lurking in Tianfu City.

……

……

Northern Xiazhou, East Siberian Plain.

The ruins of the city of Baikal.

A well-equipped reconnaissance team was moving slowly through a forest of reinforced concrete that looked like building debris.

After the "Death Aurora" destroyed the city of Baikal, it left a charred pit in its place. With this pit as the center, the area of ​​more than 100 kilometers in radius has become an extremely dangerous contaminated area - any human or infected person who enters the contaminated area will be quickly transformed... It can take a few seconds or even dozens of minutes, and no one is spared.

Just when the federal government was planning to completely abandon the ruins of Baikal City and shrink the border line into Tatar territory, something strange happened again.

Countless reinforced concrete structures that resembled the remains of human buildings "grew" in the pit... These structures broke out of the ground overnight, growing as fast as bamboo shoots after a spring rain. They smashed the glassy ground, tore open the scorched soil, and rose from the ground, creating a "city of debris" out of thin air in just one hour.

At the same time, the pollution intensity in the contaminated area has also dropped rapidly. After real-life tests, the existing protective clothing can already fully resist the impact of the contaminated area - the remains of the city of Baikal are no longer a "forbidden zone" for humans.

The newly emerged city remains were determined to be a Type G monster, temporarily numbered 790 and codenamed "The Skeleton of Baikal".

Within 24 hours after the appearance of the "Baikal Skeleton", the Xiazhou Federation had already dispatched more than 50 reconnaissance teams with more than 300 personnel to it...

This time, nearly two-thirds of the reconnaissance troops sent out returned to the forward base alive.

According to those who came back alive, there are a large number of strange creatures wandering inside the "Wreck of Baikal" - but they cannot be sure whether these monsters are the advance troops swallowed by the contaminated area, or the victims of the city of Baikal.

Some people believed that these strange creatures were the dead residents of the city of Baikal, but this statement was quickly opposed by experts - the main body of the "Aurora of Death" was a ball of plasma with a temperature of 17 million degrees Celsius. Even the buildings in the city of Baikal could not withstand such high temperatures and turned into ashes. How could humans, who are much more fragile than buildings, have any corpses left behind?

"In my opinion, those experts are talking nonsense." A soldier in the reconnaissance team said, "Even these burned buildings can reappear, and those dead people can certainly reappear... Maybe what the other teams encountered were not monsters at all, but the ghosts of the victims."

"Ghosts are also a type of weird creature." The tall and stocky machine gunner beside him said in a muffled voice, "I would rather hope that it is a zombie or some other physical weird creature... Our bullets are useless against spirit-like weird creatures."

"Okay, shut up and keep quiet." The team leader walking in front turned around and said, "Don't you think these building wrecks look weird?"

"It's very weird." The soldier who spoke at the beginning shrugged. "No matter how normal something is, if you put it in a temperature of tens of millions of degrees for a while, it will be hard for it to become unweird, right?"

"Then just roast it, okay?" The only female soldier in the team rolled her eyes at him, "If you can only talk nonsense, then shut up."

The team leader walked to the wreckage of a building, looked at it carefully, then stepped back a few steps, looked at it from a distance for a while, and finally shook his head: "It's very strange... This feeling... is like..."

"It's like the weird human body image in the AI ​​drawing with seven or eight fingers and limbs that were originally normally proportioned but put together in an unreasonable way." The sniper who had been silent in the team suddenly said.

"Yes, that's the feeling!" The team leader nodded excitedly. "I just couldn't find a suitable description... It has to be Glazkov. You are worthy of being a top student who graduated from the Baikal Academy of Fine Arts. Your metaphor is really to the point!"

"The proportions and structures of these buildings are very strange." Sniper Glazkov continued, "Although they look like they have been through a fire and the structures have undergone significant deformation, some things will never change... Look at this building."

Glaz pointed to a four-story building not far away. "There are no doors or windows on the first floor, there is a horizontal door on the second floor, and on the third floor, two windows are close together, and another window is located at the junction of the second and third floors..." Glazkov said, "Although there are some maverick designers who design houses like this, I don't think all the houses on this street are designed by such designers."

"Look, there's this!" The female soldier quickly ran to a restaurant and lifted up a sign that was taller than her.

The sign was smoked black, but the words on it could still be vaguely seen.

"Do you recognize the words on this sign?"

This reconnaissance team consists of six people, five of whom are Siberians. The most commonly used language in Baikal City is not Chinese, the official language of the Xiazhou Federation, but Russian, the Russian language of the Siberian Federation. As their mother tongue, it is impossible for them not to recognize the words on this sign.

But several soldiers stared at the sign for a long time, and no one could recognize what was written on it.

The structure of these characters is very similar to Russian, but they are not Russian.

They are more like a "new writing system" created based on the original Russian character structure.

"Is this... encrypted Russian?" the machine gunner muttered.

"No, it's not Russian." Glazkov shook his head. "I tried to use Russian grammar and similar glyphs to compare... the result is a mess. It's impossible to read it."

"In other words, this is a completely self-created language?" the team leader asked doubtfully.

"No... these words are actually the same as the buildings." Glazkov said, "I don't know if you have ever come into contact with AI drawing. When you import a normal picture into AI software for secondary processing, the original text in the picture will be turned into a strange code between text and symbols by AI... Combined with the shape of these buildings, I now even suspect that we are in a city generated by AI."

Graz swallowed and continued, "To be more precise, it was in an image of...city wreckage drawn by AI."

"You mean... we are in a painting?" The soldier who spoke first was stunned. "No, Glaz, this is impossible! The ruins of this city really exist on the site of the city of Baikal. We have all climbed the sentry tower of the forward base and have been staring at the ruins of this city on the way here... It... How could it be a painting?"

"I was just making an analogy. I didn't say we were in a painting." Glazkov squatted down, picked up a handful of sand from the ground, and rubbed it between his fingers.

"I do have an idea." The team leader pondered, "The original Baikal City has been destroyed, not even the wreckage is left... and the wreckage of the city we are in now is a G-type weirdo... This weirdo tried to imitate a human city, but it didn't imitate it well, so it became like this. Do you think it makes sense?"

"A city that imitates humans? Why would the monster do this?" asked the machine gunner.

"Are you stupid? Instead of asking why the monster did what it did, you might as well ask why your girlfriend got angry." The soldier who spoke first said, he weighed the submachine gun in his hand, "I never think about the motives of the monster. I only know that if a monster appears in front of me, I will sweep it into a sieve without hesitation!"

Just as he finished speaking, a dark shadow flashed behind the window in the wreckage of the building closest to him.

"Who?" The soldier immediately raised the submachine gun in his hand and aimed at the window.

"What's wrong?" The captain frowned, "Maxim, what did you see?"

"Something flashed past the window!" Maxim said, "I swear on my head! It must not be my illusion!!"

"Everyone! Be alert!" the captain shouted immediately, and the other four people quickly gathered together and formed a defensive formation with cross-fire using some obstacles on the street.

"Captain, should we... go in and search?" Maxim asked after hesitating for a moment.

The building had no door and only one window on the side facing the street.

If there was something in there, it would still be there now.

"Don't worry." The captain took out the drone controller from his backpack and pulled open the foldable joystick.

The drone, which was originally hovering above everyone's heads in "follow mode", immediately descended in altitude and slowly approached the window.

Sniper Glazkov also pointed his sniper rifle at the window.

Just as the drone passed through the window, a violent vibration came without warning, accompanied by a sound of collapse. A large pile of bricks and rubble falling from a high place instantly hit the drone and buried it in the rubble.

The captain immediately reached out and pushed Maxim to the ground. After the shaking ended, he shook off the sand on his head and asked loudly, "Is anyone injured?"

"no!"

"Still alive!"

"I'm fine, Captain!"

"I'm fine, I just have a little scratch on my face."

"What happened just now?"

"I don't know either." The captain dusted himself off, "But there is bad news. We lost the drone."

"So, the vibration just now was to destroy our drone?" Maxim looked a little strange. "But... if the other party wanted to stop our exploration, they could just collapse these buildings, which would be enough to bury our entire team alive. It doesn't make sense to just target the drone..."

"Shut up!" the female soldier said immediately, "If it really happens as you said, will you be satisfied?"

"Everyone, please retreat to the intersection... If a secondary collapse occurs, be careful to avoid high-rise buildings." The captain said as he turned on the radio communicator. "The 3th Reconnaissance Squadron calls the base. The th Reconnaissance Squadron calls the base. We encountered an unknown vibration in the L area. Some buildings collapsed on a small scale. The drone was damaged, but there were no casualties. Someone witnessed something that looked like a strange object, but it has not been confirmed yet... We need drone support, and we also need... Hello? Hello?"

"What's wrong Captain?"

"Sokabulie!" The captain slapped the communicator hanging on his shoulder in annoyance. "The signal interference is too serious! There is no way to communicate normally!"

(End of this chapter)