At the end of the Yangtze River's upper reaches, huge circular depressions dot the banks of the mighty river. From a distance, the city looks like it's been erased with an eraser.
Li Wenjia was sitting on an exposed black rock, operating a reconnaissance drone.
This is a large quadcopter drone, about half the size of a car. Only a drone this large can survive in this harsh environment.
Their temporary base was at the foot of the mountain, in a place called Diaolong Village on the map. After a week-long arduous journey westward, the expedition team unanimously decided to cross the Yangtze River here.
Li Wenjia's job is to conduct short-range, low-altitude reconnaissance of a fan-shaped area with an angle of 15 degrees and a radius of 15 kilometers in the direction of the south bank. This is his third round trip.
There was an abandoned airfield on the distant hillside, which he had glanced at during his first round trip. There were relatively fresh signs of human activity there, but that wasn't his area of ​​responsibility. He simply reported his findings to the tactical channel, leaving it to other comrades to handle.
The latitude here is further south than Jinling, so the average temperature is lower, perhaps a degree or two lower. The biological resources here recover more slowly, and only a few reddish-purple vines grow among the mountains, sparse and scattered, like the heads of programmers in their fifties.
It's already late September, and there's still a meter of snow on the ground.
Li Wenjia has gotten used to it.
According to the researchers accompanying the expedition, they were like a vanguard team heading to an alien colony. Except for the terrain of the planet, almost everything had changed.
This "Earth-like planet" was quite dangerous, and the expedition had suffered heavy losses. They had set out with a full 5,000 men, but now only a little over a tenth remained. In the past, they would have been completely wiped out.
The enemy is almost everywhere, and the expedition can only adapt to them through constant trial and error.
Li Wenjia set the drone's route. The drone, with its limited intelligence, would complete the remaining reconnaissance mission on its own. He picked up a pulse rifle from his side and ejected a steel-core armor-piercing bullet from its chamber. The 82mm-long, arrow-shaped metal bullet already had several scratches on it. He planned to carve another one with his dagger.
The survivors of the expedition always had to find ways to kill time, and some would carve "So-and-so was here" on the artifacts left over from the war.
The political commissar didn't say much about the vandalism. In a sense, the scratches they made were a new kind of artifact.
They would use scratch marks to record the intervals between their use of firepower, leaving one mark every six hours, and four marks a day. If they did not fire a shot during an operation, they would keep the bullet with scratches as a souvenir. Li Wenjia had three such bullets under the front windshield of his car.
Of course, this collecting habit is not unique to him. He learned it from other places. They can no longer remember who was the first person to do this.
A bullet in the expedition bore eighteen scratches, a record no one alive has yet surpassed. The martyr's name has been lost, and the hard drive recording his achievements sank to the bottom of the Yangtze River along with a supply truck during an operation. Only the bullet survived.
The weather was quite good today, the clouds much thinner than they had been recently. Some sunlight filtered through the gaps in the clouds, creating a wonderful Tyndall effect in the lower space filled with tiny particles. Pierces of light reaching directly through the clouds appeared and disappeared, bringing a touch of life to the pale earth.
"...Reporting to headquarters, I am...Team. The forward reconnaissance is complete. We found some edible canned fruit...Xiaolong and Zhou Yang have died."
Li Wenjia's tactical headset emitted a series of voices mixed with a live microphone. The voice was magnetic and hoarse, with a strong military atmosphere. He must be the team heading to the Wuqiao Airport for reconnaissance. The interference was still too strong. The ambient radiation in the red zone was over forty times higher than normal, and the communication equipment here was easily damaged.
As for why he, someone unconnected to the action team, received its reports, it was actually the optimal solution arrived at through long periods of trial and error. In reality, everyone on the expedition received information about the advance reconnaissance. Circumstances forced the expedition to pool everyone's ingenuity to support the reconnaissance team. Even so, the casualty rate among those carrying out reconnaissance missions remained high.
Of course, the greatest losses were suffered by the unprofessionals in the expedition. The expedition was often attacked by mutants, and their drones couldn't reach everything, so some would slip through the fire net and cause casualties in the camp. They were just volunteers, not an army in the traditional sense.
Only three people had been lost so far today, suggesting a recent improvement in survival rates. This was already Shuchuan territory, and the nearby mutants seemed to have been cleared out. The further west they went, the more obvious it became, especially now that they were crossing the Daba Mountains.
"Xiao Li! Your drone should be done running by now? Go help them!"
"Hey~ Got it!"
Li Wenjia quickly put the half-carved bullet aside and sent a few replies to the headquarters. The newly supplied bullets were of better quality, and his dagger could hardly scratch them.
He looked up at the sky and saw the drone hovering above him. He waved his hand towards the sky and the drone slowly descended and finally landed in front of him.
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