Chapter 775 Ruins

We shouldn't believe any promises made by Zaku, an uncle who seems to be completely unreliable, especially when he declares that this shabby airship is running well. Facts have proved that this thing that had been turned into a pile of scrap metal in the underground warehouse when Milia was four or five years old, after ten years of time erosion, no longer has any function other than cultivating mushrooms. , Lin's big mouth landing method is much more reliable than this.

But at least Uncle Zaku was right. The engine system of this Glory was indeed bursting with the enthusiasm of its heyday. This enthusiasm was so high that it killed the main engine in ten minutes. cooling system. When we climbed to an altitude of several thousand meters, this ancient aircraft began to scream tragically. The temperature of its engine room was rising, while the power output was gradually approaching that of a battery car. The color cast on the driver's seat The serious flat projection screen showed the scene inside the engine room, just like inside the electric oven.

The shrill siren had been sounding for two minutes, and it was the only thing about the airship that seemed to be working well.

"I told you that anything related to ruins is not a good business." Uncle Zaku let go of the steering column with a sad face. "The engine will stop in five minutes. If we are lucky, we will fall into Wanhu Lake. If we are not lucky, we will be finished - —The expressions on your faces are too calm, right?"

The uncle was surprised to find something. In the airship, even Biluna, who had always been the calmest and calmest, now showed a nervous look, while we, a group of twenty-something people, were each more calm than the other. He even had some free time to lie on the porthole and draw little figures, while on the other side Paopao was teaching Yakumo Lan (one of the performance artists in Uncle Zaku's eyes. He still doesn't believe how there are people with tails in this world. , and this planet obviously does not have the fox girl's statement) How to calculate the gravitational constant of this planet based on the current falling speed.

Even Milia, who should have screamed at this moment, was calmer than him: this girl was busy listening to the lecture with Yakumo Ai.

"Hey, it's going to be dangerous if you keep going like this, right?"

When Milia heard what her uncle said, she raised her head and glanced at me. Obviously, knowing our true identity, she was not afraid of the current situation. She just felt that her uncle was even more embarrassed - he couldn't even repair the airship!

I nodded, reached out and pinched the little dwarf who was crawling around next to me in my armpit, and walked towards the engine room amidst the latter's crying and howling protests. After a while, the airship's alarm sounded. , monitoring shows that conditions in all engines are quickly returning to normal.

I tied Cirno to the radiator grille.

There is no need to watch carefully for the rest of the journey. This strange airship worked pretty well. We first soared in the upper atmosphere until the auxiliary engine stopped pushing, and then sprinted in the opposite direction for half an hour under the instructions of the inverted rudder. When we passed through a thundercloud, I thought the airship was going to be doomed, but in fact, the thundercloud only took away two boosters. Later, we chased a military aircraft for fifteen minutes, and the latter repeatedly When the warning failed and he was about to fire, Uncle Zaku repaired the rudder. This originally short journey lasted for ten hours. There was no flight package prepared on the airship. The hungry Sandora ate all the seats in the airship. If it were not for the fact that Milia could not stand the thin atmosphere, , I think she will definitely take offense to the outer shell of the airship. Yakumo Blue's face was pale, and each tail was curled. In order to reduce the damage of the collision, she cleverly rolled herself into a fur ball with her big tail. As a result, she rolled in the cockpit until she was almost in shock. Ilson was tied to the ground by his sister, because after seeing the tragic situation of the nine-tailed fox, we all felt that once this hard iron can rolled in the cockpit, the consequences would be catastrophic. Everyone ignored whether a well-trained God of War would make such a second-rate mistake.

This hellish journey finally came to an end in a Gobi Desert, and we crashed safely into a patch of gravel: although Uncle Zaku repeatedly claimed that this was actually a safe landing.

"If we have really slowed down, I will believe you." Lilina stared at Uncle Zaku with a gloomy face. Behind us, Milia was vomiting.

"As you know, the near-earth deceleration device was broken from the beginning."

Uncle Zaku also looked pale, but he could still stand firm, which showed that the physique of an old adventurer could still withstand the test.

Lin then added in a weak voice: "I think I can fly better than this..."

Bingtis and I stared at the Dragon God girl who had finally found some confidence, while Lilina complained accurately: "This thing is at best a reprieve, but yours is to be executed immediately!"

After all the tossing, it is now nightfall, and three bright moons arranged in a straight line are hanging high in the sky. A small wave of Imperial troops are stationed on two of them, while the faintly shining star ring is just right. Sliding slowly across the eastern sky, it orbits the planet Mobrador, rising and setting in the sky four times a day. We looked at the desolate Gobi Desert, and then turned our searching eyes to Biruna.

"The information about the ruins is nearby, of course, underground."

As Biluna spoke, she rummaged through a large suitcase brought down from the airship to find various equipment of unknown purpose, "Exploring ancient ruins has always been a popular job, but the number of ruins is always limited. Nowadays, it is easy to find them. Basically all the ancient ruins have been discovered. Most of the remaining ruins are on the seabed and underground in places that are not easy to fully explore. Generally speaking, only large-scale geological changes can expose these ancient ruins to the world. . There was an earthquake here a while ago, and then someone discovered something here. Unfortunately, that person was a novice, and he probably confused the entrance to the ancient ruins with the entrance to the old mine. This gave us an advantage."

A pale golden light floated in Sandora's eyes. She was scanning the things under the earth's crust and found a large hole. Obviously the conjectured ruins were real, but I was still waiting patiently for Biluna to use her The pile of strange-shaped instruments were tested for some time, and finally, she pointed in one direction and said, "It's probably this way."

The direction is right. Although she didn't understand it clearly, the triangulation-like things she was playing with seemed to have the function of sensing specific energy. With the help of these devices, she found the nearest gap leading to the ground from the large underground cavity.

Just now Zhagu was sitting on the ground sighing, summing up how much money it would take to repair his precious Glow Glory. Only then did he lazily raise his head: "Oh? It seems that there are indeed ancient things nearby?"

"The signal strength is very low, but today's atmospheric environment is good, and there is almost no interference." Biluna responded seriously to her partner's dragging behavior, and smoothly pulled Zaku up from the ground. "We'd better set off now, the instrument shows three hours There may be strong winds later, and we need to find the entrance to the ruins before then, or set up a camp nearby."

"Actually, I'd rather go back to the airship and take a nap - you forgot, there are Scorpions in the Gobi Desert at night."

Uncle Zaku muttered and followed him honestly.

Because the airship was about to fall apart, and the two transport vehicles it carried also lost their wheels, everyone could only move forward on foot. Fortunately, the distance shown by the signal was not very far, which made me give up the idea of ​​summoning 700 billion. The experience of twenty or thirty people walking in the Gobi Desert in the middle of the night with lights on is something that few people have ever experienced. Absolutely no one does this on Earth, and in Mobrador, it seems that nothing can stop this place except hurricanes. The strange and evolved aboriginal people were engaged in outdoor activities. Uncle Zaku wore a small vest and walked on the frozen Gobi Desert while loudly complaining about the stupidity of this trip. Even Milia, who looked weak, was also impressed by this place. There is no sense of the environment - of course, we have no sense of it, but this illustrates one thing from the side, no creature that can thrive under the radiation of the empire's legacy is fuel-efficient.

On the way, we kept waiting for the horrible scorpions that Uncle Zaku mentioned casually to appear, because Sandora was very curious about their taste, but in the end the largest creature that appeared in front of us was just a mosquito that was almost frozen to death. I think Magni's loud singing along the way may be an important reason for everyone to be protected from beasts on the road.

Biluna stopped from time to time to adjust her detector along the way, and finally pinpointed the location where the energy was leaking from the large hole in the ground. After walking for more than an hour, we found the marker exposed on the surface:

It was a metal pipe that was almost weathered. The lower half was buried in the gravel, and the upper half faced the sky and whined low in the weak night wind. Only a few hundred meters away from this most obvious artifact, we found a possible point into the ground: a mine entrance half-buried in the gravel.

"I kind of believe that the ruins exist," Uncle Zaku judged in a low voice. "Normal abandoned mines in this kind of windy Gobi Desert will be buried under gravel and gravel in just a month or two. The gravel near the mine entrance is fresh, and the wind force in the vicinity has obviously been suppressed, preventing the mine entrance from being buried."

Biluna nodded: "Maybe some equipment in the ruins is still running, changing the energy field near the mine. What was its original design purpose?"

"It's just to save effort when cleaning the vents." Sandora said lightly, and then walked into the deep tunnel first, and we followed closely. Uncle Zaku shouted from the back: "Hey! Don’t rush into the tunnel! Let the detector go down first to check the oxygen and... forget it, wait for me!”

The scanning results show that this "mine" leads to a place nearly a thousand meters deep underground. There is an obvious fault there. The fault is not very stable and is greatly misaligned with the nearby geological structure. Preliminary judgment is that it should be larger than Luna mentioned that it was caused by the earthquake that happened here not long ago. After walking forward for a while, we confirmed our guess: a severely collapsed and tilted metal structure appeared in front of us at a 45-degree angle. The originally wide mine tunnel was suddenly so narrow that only two people could pass through.

"This place should have been completely sealed once," Uncle Zaku observed the twisted and broken complex bracket in front of him. It looked like a cross-section of a metal corridor. Broken pipes and lines could be seen behind the thick metal plate. "First it was sealed by long-term geological changes, and then a crack was opened in the recent earthquake. The energy seeping out of the crack affected the properties of energy-sensitive metals on the surface - many metal plates used in ancient ruins It’s not much different from the tunnel guard during the Hundred Years War. If you can’t find this energy residue, even an experienced person will be confused.”

This is the experience of adventurers. They can discover the special features of a piece of scrap iron from a few simple patterns, and judge whether it comes from a ruin or an ancient battlefield from the little energy radiation remaining on it. But when it comes from a When Uncle Gu said it, I always felt a little unrealistic: This lazy uncle who seemed unreliable at all actually had this experience? I thought he could do nothing but dawdle!

"Even a little girl like you has such a look?" Zaku suddenly patted Milia on the head, "Although I haven't been active in the past few years, I think I was a famous adventurer back then!"

"Is it just that I haven't had much activity in the past few years?" Milia muttered in a low voice.

"The instrument scan has produced results," Biluna said, interrupting the quarrel between the "father and daughter". She raised her head and looked at the dark collapsed corridor in front of her. The powerful spotlight on her shoulder swept through the darkness in an instant, showing a strange and bizarre scene for a moment. "There is a metal partition about five hundred meters ahead, and then there is a large cavity, but the stability of the ground here is no longer guaranteed. In such a place that has been in disrepair for so long, the corridor may collapse at any time."

"I can't go back here anyway." Uncle Zaku chuckled, and this time he took the initiative to go in, followed closely by a large group of us: "I'm not worried about the collapse of the underground tunnel. According to Sandora's scan, this The place is much stronger than expected. I don’t know that tens of thousands of years of geological activity have not completely torn this corridor into pieces. It will not collapse for a while.

As we walked forward, we also observed the surrounding environment. This twisted metal corridor embodies very high technology. Although it has gone through a long period of baptism, its main parts are still as bright as new, and under the light A silvery white cold light is reflected from below. Some broken pipes were exposed in the faults on the ceiling. The pipes were wrapped in a translucent crystal material, which was very similar to the energy pipes I had seen in the imperial battleships. Obviously, the disappeared ancient civilization was also inseparable from the imperial heritage. relation. Sandora kept frowning and walking beside her. The scene around her made her thoughtful. She might have remembered things about the old empire from the things here, so I didn't dare to disturb her.

In fact, I didn't have time to disturb her: I was too tired to deal with some stupid ice fairy on the way. Ciruno was tied to the heat dissipation grille of the airship for ten hours, making an outstanding contribution to everyone's safe journey, but this little dwarf obviously didn't want to be a liar. She was trying to fight me all the way. The record is forty losses, zero wins and zero draws. I didn't dare to tell her that she might have to take that airship when she went back later - Uncle Zaku vowed that as long as she rested for a while, the Glory of Light could still take off - Cirno would definitely run away by then. .

Until then, let the ice fairy go crazy for a while longer.

Finally, a heavy alloy door blocked everyone's way, and also interrupted Cirno's continued grinding of ice powder on the back of my head with her ice sword.

"I feel like there are psionic energy fluctuations behind this."

Sandora whispered, this was the first thing she said since entering the underground tunnel.

I don’t think this is a big surprise: “Civilizations in this world are all nurtured by the legacy of empires, and so are ancient civilizations.”

"But... it's different. I feel very concerned here." Sandora whispered, reaching out and pressing the alloy gate that was still shiny despite countless years, and gently touched it. There are neat patterns on the surface of the latter, which are things left by ancient civilization. Uncle Zaku carefully distinguished them for a while and interpreted a sentence: the door opens outward, be careful of collision.

Damn it! I've been pushing it for a long time!

The energy source of the ancient ruins has been cut off, and of course the gate cannot open automatically. Fortunately, we have a strong man accompanying us. Ibuki Suika suddenly felt herself being lifted up. It turned out that Lin was holding her waist, like a battering ram. Walking forward, I watched in shock as the Dragon God girl, who was probably having a seizure, ignored Suixiang's protest and pushed the latter towards the door, inserted a hard big horn of the opponent into the crack of the gate, and then pried it hard.

Pried open... opened... opened...

Ibuki Sumela and Cirno, who were also treated as strange tools, cried in each other's arms and announced a revenge plan that was impossible to succeed at all. Uncle Zaku has been stimulated by the amazingness of our group of strange people. Although After being stunned for a moment, he wisely chose to shut up and led everyone into this large underground cave that no one had visited for tens of thousands of years.

"Uh-oh...I think I'm getting rich this time."

Uncle Zaku changed his previous complaining attitude, looked at the wide hall in front of him and the nearby corridors leading to various places, and began to mutter excitedly to himself.

The ruins are not as gloomy and humid as expected, nor are there any poisonous gases from lack of oxygen or siltation (although that stuff has no effect on us). Just as we judged at the beginning, even though it has been out of operation for many years, the mysterious ancient technology in the ruins is still there. Using the waste heat, this cave thousands of meters deep underground is well ventilated, dry and clean. Some invisible air channels may extend from other places on the ground. We can still smell the dry air of the Gobi Desert here. The smell of sand indicates that the underground air has just been pumped from the surface. The lighting system has stopped operating, but there is still faint light in the underground space. These light sources come from the blue crystals inlaid on the ceiling and walls - they have been exhausted to the point that they cannot provide standard energy output for the equipment, but there is still a certain amount of phantom energy. crystal!

Nether energy crystals are actually used as decorations here? Are the amount of psionic crystals in the hands of ancient civilizations worth the price of cabbage?

"Blue light! We are rich!"

Uncle Zaku let out a low cry, then took out a bunch of tools and carefully lay down next to the largest psionic crystal, as if he was preparing to pry it off.

His movements were careful enough, but sometimes, things in ancient ruins cannot be dealt with by being careful: the moment the uncle's hand touched the crystal, a low roar came from the underground of the ruins.