The warning from the northern base was concise.

Polly said, "We have also discovered it."

Anzhe looked outside.

The Highland Research Institute is located on the highest mountain. Looking down, the abyss is in full view. The huge fault zone is like a nasty wound on the gray-white skin of the earth. The layers of dense forests and swamps are filled with blood and pus in this wound. In the distance - the distant east coast, the sea, or the huge lake, there is always no end in sight. When everything is silent, there are whispers in the wind and a faint sound of huge waves in the mist.

In short, it is like a monster quietly lurking on the ground.

This was not the abyss that Anzhe was familiar with, and he had experienced it before. The abyss used to be a place full of blood and looting, and there had never been such a peaceful moment.

A dark shadow appeared in the distant sky, getting bigger and closer, and finally stopped above the white building.

With a swish, Tang Lan folded his wings and landed directly on the corridor outside, pushing open the laboratory door.

"I'm back, first." After saying that, he turned to Rum and said, "Has there been any enemy attacks recently?"

Rum said, "No."

Polly Jones raised his head and looked him up and down, as if to confirm whether he was in a normal state. If the person who made this move was Lu Xun, Anzhe would feel that he was judging this person to decide whether to shoot or let him go, but Boli's gentle gray-blue eyes looked at Tang Lan, making sure that this kind elder was concerned about whether Tang Lan was injured outside.

Sure enough, Polly asked, "Did you encounter danger outside?"

"There was danger, but I was not injured." Tang Lan said, "I have more experience there."

Polly said, "You always reassure me."

Tang Lan smiled, his eyebrows were sharp and beautiful, with a hint of murderous coldness. An Zhe thought of Hubbard's most outstanding mercenary leader, and his deputy captain must be no idle person.

Polly Jones said, "How is it outside?"

"It's about the same as you expected." Tang Lan replied, "They are balanced."

As he said that, he pulled out a data cable from the drawer and connected the micro camera in his hand to the computer. Hundreds of pictures were loaded and projected onto the large screen next to him.

At first glance, the pictures are empty, with only the indescribable strange landscapes unique to the abyss, like landscape paintings taken by curious tourists. However, a closer look will make you hold your breath. The

most eye-catching chapter is a bird's-eye view of a huge lake, which is frozen. The frosty white ice surface freezes the brown algae, floating limbs and fallen leaves on the lake surface. However, under this empty and floating ice surface, there is a huge irregular black shadow - the back of a water creature. It just stays quietly under the water, and its shadow looks like an abstract painting.

On the shore of this lake, all the dead branches in the dense forest were entangled with large gray-red vines. The next photo was a close-up of the vines. Its surface was smooth like an earthworm, with radial star-shaped patterns under the skin, and dense black blood vessels seemed to be throbbing again and again. An Zhe immediately realized that this was not an ordinary plant. The vines in the entire jungle were like a tentacle-shaped monster.

"I took a photo here, and it found me." Tang Lan said.

Polly flipped through the photos one by one with the remote control.

"We have been through a three-month slaughter period, and now only large monsters are left, and we can't see any small creatures anymore." Tang Lan said, "I fought with them a few times. First of all, I am sure that I have enough strength in the entire research institute to escape from them. But I have no way to fight them head-on. Moreover, most of the monsters in the abyss are polymorphic, and I am not sure how scary they are now."

"I understand." Polly nodded slowly, a solemn look in his gray-blue eyes: "If genes are a resource, they have already completed the integration within the Abyss. Now, the monsters have reached a balance of power, and their IQs have been greatly improved in the integration process. They understand that fighting will result in a lose-lose situation. If this guess is correct, some monsters should have left the Abyss and hunt outside. Humans must also be one of our hunting targets. As long as they haven't noticed it for the time being, we have to defend against the collective attack of monsters at any time."

"That's true," Tang Lan said, "but there's one thing that's different from your guess."

Polly asked, "What did you find?"

Tang Lan controlled the computer and switched to a picture. It's hard to imagine how ugly this picture is - Anzhe doesn't have a systematic aesthetic, but he is sure that this picture can be described as "ugly" because it impacts people's senses to the greatest extent. The surfaces of the two densely packed molluscs are covered with all the organs that can and cannot be described in human language, and they extend their tentacles flowing with mucus to touch each other. In the next picture, their tentacles separate, and in the next picture, one of them goes far away in another direction.

"The same situation has been observed. The monsters did not occupy their own territories and start a stalemate as you initially predicted. They walked in the abyss, tested each other, and then separated." Tang Lan's voice also became solemn and low: "I suspect the worst case scenario has occurred. First, they seem to be communicating - I don't know the content of their communication. Whenever they come into contact with each other, I feel that the fluctuations in their bodies will become stronger."

He continued: "I suspect they are sensing each other and testing whether each other has the genes they need."

"Very likely." Polly said, "When it comes to 'fluctuations', you are the most sensitive one in the institute."

"Recently, I've become more and more sensitive to it," Tang Lan's face turned slightly pale. "It's everywhere in the air and on every monster. Sometimes I feel that even the heads on the ground are vibrating. It's becoming increasingly difficult for me to maintain my thinking. I shouldn't have come back so early. I feel that my own fluctuations are merging into them. First of all, I... I'm a little mentally abnormal."

Polly held your hand, and your voice was calm: "Don't be afraid."

"A hundred years ago, when the genetic sequence of species was the most stable, there were some species that were particularly sensitive to changes in magnetic fields. You happened to merge with this kind of species." You said.

"But that's not the magnetic field, I feel that the magnetic field has another kind of fluctuation." Tang Lan closed his eyes, half-knelt down, rested his forehead on the back of Polly's hand, and said in a hoarse voice: "First of all, don't you understand something? You didn't feel any surprise when I said this." "

But you won't tell us, because the truth is something we can't bear." He said: "But I really..."

His voice became more and more hoarse, and finally he couldn't continue.

"Don't be afraid, don't be afraid...child," Polly's right hand slowly grasped Tang Lan's shoulder, his voice was as gentle and vast as the ocean, "I will protect you until the last moment of my life."

Tang Lan raised his head, looked directly at Polly Jones, and made a solemn oath: "We will also protect you and the institute until the last moment."

"I have always made requests to you, but if the day comes when the institute ceases to exist," Polly said slowly, "I beg you not to throw yourself into the flood of aliens and monsters, but to go north to protect the human base."

Tang Lan: "But the Inquisitor will kill a lot of aliens, and the base will never accept us."

Polly looked at the dim twilight outside.

"But at the last moment, I am still willing to believe in the kindness and tolerance of human beings to the greatest extent."

Tang Lan raised the corner of his mouth and looked up at Polly Jones: "That's because you are noble and upright."

Polly smiled and shook his head.

*

After Tang Lan left, the power storage of the Simpson Cage also reached a critical value. A dazzling scarlet light lit up on the wide platform below the white building, and a heat wave rushed over. If An Zheji didn't know that this machine was used to capture the vibration frequency and interaction trajectory of elementary particles, he would have thought that there was a raging fire downstairs.

The large screen in the laboratory was the terminal and operating table of the Simpson Cage, but due to design defects, in order to adjust the parameters of the Simpson Cage, sometimes he had to go downstairs and manually adjust the pull rods of some precision devices.

On the big screen, the lines were still in disarray, but they were not static. Every time Polly adjusted the parameters, the tangled lines would change from one kind of chaos to another - and eventually it was still a mess.

But Polly still analyzed the lines, calculated functions, adjusted parameters, and changed the receiving frequency again and again. The changing lines just jumped on the screen.

The music interrupted Anzhe's thoughts. The old tape recorder in the corridor played the ups and downs of the "Symphony of Fate". Rum stood by the window with a five-line score in front of him. He played the harp to the score, imitating the melody of the symphony. After an unknown amount of time, he stopped.

"Do you understand music?" An Zhe asked. An Zhe

shook his head.

Rum pointed to the recorder: "After listening to a piece, do you know how to play it?"

An Zhe slightly increased the frequency of shaking his head. For such a complex symphony, it was already beyond his ability to appreciate the ups and downs of it, let alone reproduce it.

"There must be a score." Rum turned a page of the staff and whispered.

When he said "score", his eyes looked at the screen in the center of the laboratory.

It was as if a string was gently plucked in the void, and the complicated thoughts suddenly became clear. Suddenly, An Zhe slightly widened his eyes.

"The wave is a symphony." He said, "First, try to figure out its score. Then... then do a lot of things."

Rum looked at him deeply with his dark eyes and said, "You are smarter than me."

An Zhe also looked at the screen. Can he analyze the secret of the distortion disaster from these lines? His eyes were confused.

Or perhaps, this endless chaos has revealed another truth.

An unspeakable silence enveloped the laboratory. An Zhe lowered his head. The fate of mankind is as uncertain as that ball of lines. This may have nothing to do with mushrooms, but sometimes he also feels short of breath.

It is difficult to explain the reason. Facing the communication channel with the northern base, his fingers are on the keyboard.

The movements of my fingers were no longer flexible, just like my mycelium could no longer stretch. When I pressed the keys, my fingertips would tremble uncontrollably.

Without optical fiber and base stations, the cost of communication was very high. Like the long-distance telegraph communication of humans for more than a decade, I had to save words.

I sent out.

"What's the situation at the base?"

As if by a ridiculous coincidence, at the same time, the communication channel lit up, and a similar message was sent from the northern base.

"How is the research institute?"

The Northern Base has paid enough for the purity of human genes. They hate monsters, and the Tribunal is absolutely intolerant of aliens. It seems that only a kind scientist like Dr. Yuki would tolerate the existence of the Fusion School and care about the situation here.

Anzhe replied: "Everything is fine."

It seems that it is a unique skill of human beings to whitewash the situation. I have learned it.

A few seconds later, the other party replied: "The base is also fine."

Facing the communication interface, Anzhe pondered for a long time, and then slowly typed a sentence: "Is the judge safe?"

After thinking for a while, he pressed the backspace key and deleted and revised a few times.

Just when he was deleting and revising, the Northern Base sent a message.