273 Shelter

◎Is that a temple?◎

"We're a little late."

A five-member team appeared in Blackbird City, wearing helmets and fully armed, and drove two cars into the city. They exuded a high-tech atmosphere, which was out of place in the dilapidated Blackbird City.

They had explored the area once before and knew that it was a strange contaminated area, so they were prepared to look for clues. However, by the time they arrived, it had already been cleaned up.

"Pollution concentration 0," a woman said, looking at the test sheet. "I can't believe there's actually data like this."

After she said this, she took off her helmet, revealing a very cold face. She was Qi Xueliu, the captain of the second district who was responsible for sniping Zhu Ning. It was a pity that her last mission failed. Zhu Ning ran away after blowing up the Kingdom of God.

After Qi Xueliu took off her helmet, she felt the breeze on her face. It turned out that this was a pollution-free world.

The other teammates also took off their helmets. The entire team was still led by Qi Xueliu, three men, two women, and a hunting dog.

The hound is actually a new species developed by the Federation. It has the overall appearance of a German Shepherd, but its face has a human face, which at first glance looks more like a pollutant.

Qi Xueliu loosened the rope, "Levi, go find it."

At her command, the strange canine called Levi lowered its head and sniffed as it walked.

"Da Song and Zhong Kai, go retrieve it," Qi Xueliu ordered. "The rest of you, stay with me and guard the car."

After all, it is outside the wall, and no one will relax even if the pollution concentration drops to 0.

The two team members received the order and dragged a box into the teaching building of Blackbird City No. 1 Middle School. Because they had intelligence in advance, they were very purposeful and targeted. This time they needed to recover some of Prometheus' mycelium.

The professional team completed their division of labor as soon as they landed. Qi Xueliu and several other teammates stood guard with weapons in hand. They could not leave the flying car more than three meters away.

The flying car landed on the ground. It was a circle larger than an ordinary flying car, and its body was covered with a layer of armor like a mechanical creature, like some kind of pangolin-like creature.

"Captain," team member Du Yiqi asked, "I didn't expect you to participate in this kind of operation. You're not a mycelium person."

Mycelium man refers to a professional puppet who has been wearing a human-machine joint device since childhood. The mycelium of Prometheus has penetrated deep into the nerves and cannot be removed at all.

The other four of them were trained in this way, and they knew they were born puppets, so they had to take on such a crappy mission as hunting down Zhu Ning. If they didn't come, Prometheus would order them to die and they would be doomed.

But Qi Xueliu is not a mycelium person, and she doesn't know why she has to participate in the mission.

Qi Xueliu looked into the distance with a heavy gaze before answering, "I can't help it. I failed in my last mission, and I want to redeem myself by making meritorious contributions."

"No way," Du Yiqi sighed, "Can you be blamed for this? It's normal to fail when sniping a demon, isn't it?"

Qi Xueliu sighed, "My promotion is on hold, otherwise I won't be able to write my year-end performance report."

She was originally counting on a promotion this year, but after Zhu Ning blew up the Kingdom of God, her hope of promotion was gone.

Qi Xueliu’s idol used to be Su He, and she wanted to be like Su He, but unfortunately her idol betrayed the Federation.

Du Yiqi also sighed. They were all workers. If the devil bombed the kingdom of God, the workers' jobs would be almost destroyed.

Du Yiqi: "To be honest, I think Prometheus is mentally ill."

Qi Xueliu glanced at her sideways and asked, "You know he can hear your voice, right?"

"What's wrong with hearing it?" Du Yiqi said nonchalantly, "He used my body, so I can't complain about it?"

Prometheus is not satisfied? That's perfect, just kill her.

When are workers most united? When they badmouth their leaders.

Teammate Huang Changxin couldn't help but chime in, "Yeah, Prometheus must be crazy. He sent us over the wall to die, why didn't he just go up himself?"

Du Yiqi found a soulmate, "He knows nothing about fighting."

"Right!" Huang Changxin said, "I think our mission is almost certain to fail. How do you think we'd fight Zhu Ning if we ran into him?"

"I agree, this..."

Du Yiqi had just said a word when he was suddenly interrupted by a bang. They immediately stopped talking, their faces suddenly became extremely serious, and they all raised their guns and aimed at the speeding car.

Bang, bang, bang—

It sounded like some wild beast was banging against a cage, each sound getting louder and louder. The sound came from inside the car, and the entire armored vehicle was shaking.

Du Yiqi didn't dare to joke anymore. She knew there was an upright black box inside, which looked more like a coffin. There was a circle of strong bandage wrapped around the outside of the box, as if to prevent the things inside from crawling out.

Du Yiqi swallowed his saliva. Their mission this time was very strange. In addition to tracking Zhu Ning's whereabouts, they also needed to escort a monster.

Before they set off, there were two instructions in total.

"Open at the right time and follow Prometheus's command."

"Be careful not to get swallowed."

The second one is aimed at the team members. They are simply escorting the bomb on the road, and no one knows when their own people will be blown up.

This thing is a "weapon" specifically designed for Zhu Ning.

Qi Xueliu loaded the gun. The crappy mission was becoming more and more bizarre. At least they had to coexist peacefully with this "weapon" before they met Zhu Ning.

After a while, the bang-bang-bang sounds disappeared and the armored vehicle returned to calm.

Du Yiqi breathed a sigh of relief. Qi Xueliu was still in a position ready to snipe at any time, when suddenly—

Chila——

Du Yiqi was startled and raised his gun again, but the sound was not coming from the speeding car, but from behind him.

Levi looked at her inexplicably, “What are you doing?”

Du Yiqi's face turned pale, and he frowned when he saw Levi. Levi looked too impactful, with a handsome face on the body of a German Shepherd. Du Yiqi, a dog lover, felt weird every time he saw him.

Qi Xueliu stared at the armored vehicle for a while, until the monster calmed down. She put down her gun and asked, "Did you find it?"

Levy: "They had professionals covering their tracks."

Qi Xueliu knew that Zhu Ning had Pei Shu by his side, and Pei Shu was very good at doing this kind of thing.

"But it can't escape my nose," Levi wagged his tail and raised a paw, "that direction."

Following the dog's paw, they looked through the ruined city and saw a forest in the distance. The lush trees blocked their view.

…

The trees are tall and everything is green as far as the eye can see.

Zhu Ning had never seen such a tall tree. It was almost as tall as a skyscraper and he couldn't see the sky.

In the past, when they described the size of a tree, they would say how many people would have to hug it. Now, this quantifier is obviously inappropriate. If we have to say it, it would take more than two or three hundred people to hug a tree here.

It really looked like a building. The thinnest seedling was twenty meters in diameter. When they walked in, it was like they had accidentally entered a kingdom of giants.

Once you enter the forest, most places are dark, with occasional patches of light. Later, Zhu Ning realized that they were spots of light leaking through the gaps between the leaves.

It was the first time that Zhu Ning understood what the ant’s perspective was. It was probably the same as an ant walking in a light spot, sometimes dark and sometimes bright.

When I first saw it, I thought it was very novel, but after looking at it for a long time, I got used to it. There were only trees, as if the forest was endless.

Lin Xiaofeng drove very steadily, looking intently ahead. Bai Cheng was still staring at Lin Xiaofeng. Lin Xiaofeng was now numb to Bai Cheng's gaze. He learned from Zhu Ning's mentality that if he wanted to look at her, it wouldn't hurt him, because she was transparent anyway.

Zhu Ning was a little curious and couldn't help asking, "Why do you keep looking at her?"

Bai Cheng: "She is the same kind as me."

Same kind? Zhu Ning's mind was confused. Wasn't Bai Cheng dead? Bai Cheng had no body temperature to the touch, no heartbeat in his chest, but Lin Xiaofeng possessed all these human characteristics.

Zhu Ning asked, "Why?"

Lin Xiaofeng was a little curious when he heard this, but Bai Cheng insisted, "They are the same kind, it's a hunch."

Zhu Ning: “…”

What kind of weird intuition is this? But Pei Shu once said that people shouldn't classify species into different levels. Could it be that, in some way, Bai Cheng and Lin Xiaofeng are really the same kind of people?

Pei Shu was knitting in the back seat. He had a handsome face with deep features and a wisp of hair hanging down. He looked not delicate at all, much like the rough guys in western movies, with a look of decadence as if he had lost all hope in life. According to Zhu Ning's understanding, it would take the death of several relatives and friends to have such a temperament.

Pei Shu must be ill, Zhu Ning has seen it before.

Zhu Ning asked, "Teacher Pei, I think you weren't normal when you were young either."

The younger Pei Shu gets, the worse his spirit becomes, and he is on the verge of becoming a pollutant at any time.

Pei Shu lowered his head to knit: "You are lucky to meet me when I am at my most normal."

Zhu Ning: “…”

Pei Shu: "Master Demon, you were a bit weak when you were young."

Blackbird City causes people to lose their memory, but they suddenly learn about each other's past, and Zhu Ning unexpectedly loses his ability very quickly.

Zhu Ning: "No way. Theoretically, I've only been able to do it for less than a year."

Zhu Ning experienced a crisis two or three months after she "traveled through time" and recuperated for six months after the apocalypse. In total, from the perspective of Zhu Ning's second generation, she had only been in the wasteland world for ten months.

Pei Shu stopped knitting. It only took a year to cultivate a demon?

Bai Cheng was also curious about Zhu Ning, "I heard that you have a system in your head?"

Zhu Ning was always straightforward and didn't hide things from his teammates. A deeper understanding helped strengthen team trust. He replied, "Yes, it's a shame it's broken. It used to have all sorts of stats, like spirit, luck, and purification. It was like a precise game interface."

Pei Shu was also curious, and Lin Xiaofeng was hearing it for the first time. The three of them gathered together as if they were telling a story.

Zhu Ning really put on a storytelling attitude and continued: "Now it's almost gone. The basic abilities can still be used, but the pollutants I swallowed didn't convert into new abilities twice."

After Zhu Ning devoured the evil child, she gained an extra heart and ate the pollutants in Blackbird City, but the system panel did not change. She guessed that the memory might be really full.

Zhu Ning: "I once entered a polluted area, and it gave me some kind of clue, naming the polluted area. It was a kind of foresight, I guess."

For example, when the gods descended, the system told Zhu Ning very early on that this was a game.

Zhu Ning: "The foresight it gives me now is very strange. There is no mission prompt, but I had a precognitive dream. I dreamed that Pei Shu strangled me, and then this happened."

Pei Shu felt a little guilty and asked, "Is it the nightmare you had before you set out?"

That was too early. After Zhu Ning woke up from his dream, it was at least three hours later that they entered the teaching building of Blackbird City.

Zhu Ning hummed, "The dream was also very confusing, and the hint was not the key information."

The system's prediction was almost useless because Zhu Ning quickly lost her memory and could not remember anything. If it was a key hint, it should have told her that she had lost her memory. Zhu Ning suspected that the system was disordered.

But this is also good. After the system breaks down, Zhu Ning will feel more like a human.

Zhu Ning: "I've been looking for a qualified researcher to do some maintenance for me, but unfortunately I haven't found one."

Pei Shu was still pondering when Bai Cheng asked, "How many years can you expect to live?"

Pei Shu actually wanted to ask, but Bai Cheng was more direct. How could you ask someone like that? But the service life made Zhu Ning look like a washing machine.

Zhu Ning didn't take it seriously. "Before I left, I had a professional evaluation done. They had never seen someone like me before, so they said the data they gave me was just a reference value, and I had about three months left."

After Zhu Ning finished speaking, the whole car fell silent for a while. Lin Xiaofeng asked softly, "What about three months later?"

Zhu Ning yawned and answered casually, "I don't know. Maybe it's broken? In hibernation?"

However, after passing through Blackbird City, Zhu Ning had a guess. She had always thought that she was a defective product with a short lifespan. Now she thought that her lifespan should be this total, making it convenient for her to be scrapped in the end.

The length of her life must have been designed by Zhu Yao a long time ago.

Lin Xiaofeng didn't know what to say. She didn't want to lose Zhu Ning after losing Song Zhizhang.

Zhu Ning: "Don't worry, he won't die, it's no big deal."

She had a backpack on her knees, and inside the backpack was the black square. Since Zhu Ning didn't know what it was exactly, she didn't think of putting it into her mind.

But if she's getting close to death, she might take a chance and try access.

Bai Cheng looked at Zhu Ning admiringly: "Good attitude."

Zhu Ning: "Sister, isn't it a bit too much for you, an undead, to praise me?"

What's the difference between this and a top student who scored 100 points comforting a poor student who scored 3 points by saying that he has a good attitude?

Bai Cheng laughed when she heard this. She was not good at socializing and wherever she went, the atmosphere was dead. But the atmosphere was very relaxed when she was with Zhu Ning.

Zhu Ning often makes people laugh, but when Bai Cheng smiles, he reveals a row of white teeth, and he is wearing a black raincoat, looking like the smile a female ghost shows before eating.

Zhu Ning: "Sister, stop laughing, it's creepy."

The curve of Bai Cheng's mouth corners became wider. He thought Zhu Ning was telling a new joke and found Zhu Ning very funny.

Very good, Bai Cheng is even more scary.

They chatted along the way and didn't encounter any danger on the road. After four hours, a building appeared in front of them besides the trees. It was a very ancient temple.

The temple is very large and is built halfway up the mountain. If it is a building built before the end of the world, it must be a famous temple in the local area.

It was the first time that Zhu Ning saw such a religious building in this world. The roof looked dark, as if some creature was lying on it. The temple deep in the huge woods revealed a hint of coldness in its ancient simplicity.

Zhu Ning asked, "Is that a temple?"

Bai Cheng: "Shelter."

The author has something to say:

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