Special weather
"Attention, tourists! We are now interrupting with an emergency notice! According to the emergency forecast from the Observatory, dense fog will appear in five minutes, with low visibility and a relative humidity of 50%. For the safety of you and others, please rush to the building and wait for the fog to clear. We apologize for the inconvenience."
The pleasant sound, which was indistinguishable between male and female, spread throughout the botanical garden through broadcasting equipment everywhere.
The sky was gloomy and the trees looked like they were painted with a layer of heavy ink by an invisible naughty child. There were many ghosts in the depths of the fork in the road, as if a beast was about to be released from its cage.
The street lamps on both sides of the main road lit up with pale lights at the same time.
Lu Miao and the others did not dare to delay and ran to the orchid house diagonally opposite.
At the same time, another group of people rushed into the orchid house.
The atmosphere in the museum froze in an instant.
The two teams looked at each other warily. When the other team saw Lu Miao holding a bottle of purified water, their expressions changed drastically and they hurriedly took a few steps back.
There were three men and one woman. The woman had a ponytail, wore a smart black sports suit, and carried a large backpack.
One of the young men was wearing a black police uniform, with sharp eyebrows and a righteous demeanor.
Lu Miao knew the other two men and had trained with them in physical training. They had square faces, were tall and strong, had sharp eyes like eagles, and were full of vigor and energy that was incomparable to the police officers.
"Sergeant Feng? Sergeant Zhang?" she was surprised.
"Captain Lu..." Zhang Lian, with a bronze complexion, stared at her purified water. "Did you buy the water?"
"Yes."
The ponytailed woman looked stern. "Have you ever drunk?"
"No, I just bought it and haven't opened it yet."
She breathed a sigh of relief. "The water is dangerous, throw it out quickly!"
"Is it really dangerous..." Lu Miao picked up the water bottle curiously and examined the colorless and transparent pure water.
"You bought it even though you knew about it?"
“You can only verify it after you buy it.”
The ponytailed woman stood in awe and held out her hand to Lu Miao. "Science emphasizes practical evidence. Hello, my name is Song Zhen, and I have a doctorate in biological sciences."
"Lu Miao, captain of the investigation team." She also stretched out her hand and shook hands with Song Zhen.
"We can't get out anytime soon, let's go to the graphic exhibition area and talk."
Lu Miao looked at Zhang Lian's experienced look. "It seems like this isn't the first time you've encountered this kind of weather."
"Hey. Let's talk over there."
The colorful orchids are arranged according to color, each one is graceful and looks like a fairy, watching the eight tourists pass by.
The staff in red closed the door of the exhibition hall and looked out of the floor-to-ceiling windows with worry.
The buildings and trees in the distance began to be covered with a hazy veil.
The fog is approaching.
"What's with the thick fog?"
The three men looked at Song Zhen at the same time.
Song Zhen did not answer Lu Miao immediately, but pointed at the bottle of purified water she was carrying. "How are you going to use this bottle of water to verify?"
Lu Miao put the purified water on the ground without saying a word.
Song Zhen lent her a pair of thin rubber gloves.
She put it on and unscrewed the cap.
The four people on the opposite side retreated again as if they were facing a formidable enemy.
But I saw her open the cap of the insecticide, spray it into the bottle, and then she screwed on the cap of the purified water bottle.
The pesticide is colorless and no changes can be seen in the pure water.
They all squatted on the ground, carefully studying the water in the bottle.
"Huh?" Wang Keke pointed at the bottle in shock. "Something is moving!"
Lu Miao lifted the bottle under the light.
In the colorless water, tiny insects no more than three millimeters long and as small as silk began to emerge one after another. They curled up their bodies and struggled for a few times before floating to the surface motionlessly, forming several layers.
The number was so great that it made their scalps tingle.
"There are bugs in the water." He Ping'an was incredulous. "There was nothing in the water before the pesticide was sprayed."
"They are parasites." Song Zhen was very serious. "Through my microscope observation, they are segmented multicellular parasites, the larvae of filarial worms, which like to parasitize in the lymph and body cavity. Patients have symptoms of skin rash, fever, and tenderness in the area."
“The symptoms are exactly the same as described in the rules.” Wang Keke’s face turned pale as she recalled the symptoms of the tall man who left the team first.
Zhang Lian frowned. "Right, so the rules imply that we stay away from 'water'. Any water, including beverages."
Lu Miao suddenly asked: "Did you write the small handwritten rules outside the souvenir shop?"
"I wrote it." The young police officer raised his hand weakly. "I wanted to warn the people behind me to be careful of the 'water', but it was blackened by an unknown force."
He Pingan immediately asked: "The latter sentence is also to avoid the word 'water'?"
"No, it's to avoid the 'rain', the rain of rain."
"Has it rained here? No wonder the plants and soil on the fork are wet."
The police officer had a gloomy face. "Our police team entered the botanical garden at 6 o'clock in the morning. At about 7 o'clock, the broadcast suddenly notified us that it would rain in five minutes and asked tourists to hide in the building. After we hid in the pavilion in the rose garden, it was drizzling."
Lu Miao was surprised.
The rose garden is in the temperate plant exhibition area, opposite to the tropical and subtropical plant exhibition areas.
"Did you guess that the east gate was the exit?"
"Yeah, how did you know?"
Lu Miao shook his head. "Go on."
"Because it was just a drizzle, the captain and other team members felt that it would not affect their efforts to find an exit, so they walked out one after another..."
They roughly guessed what happened to those people.
The police officer, with a livid face, clutched the hem of his shirt and trembled. "The captain and Lao Huang went out to get wet in the rain first, and then they shouted that they were itchy... I... I saw a lot of small things crawling under their skin... It was so scary!"
"And then they turned into giant bugs?"
He stared at Lu Miao as if he had seen a ghost. "How... did you know?"
"The clerk at the souvenir shop across the street drank the coffee drink and turned into an insect."
The four police officers were stunned and remained silent for a few seconds.
"Employees will also mutate into insects..." Zhang Lian muttered to himself in a deep voice.
The police officer came back to his senses and continued, "Only Xiaolin, Xiaozhang, Xiaoliu, and I stayed inside and escaped. Later, we finally found the east gate, and Xiaolin and Xiaoliu ran in."
Lu Miao lowered his eyes.
"They disappeared. Maybe they left, but the ghost story field didn't disappear. I didn't dare to follow them, so I wandered around in each exhibition hall. I met Dr. Song, and then met Sergeant Zhang and others."
"Dr. Song is one of the first people to come in?" Lu Miao raised his eyes.
"Yes." Song Zhen put down the big backpack and rested. "I came in with the military, and I am the only one left."
Wang Keke was puzzled. "Aren't Sergeant Zhang and Squad Leader Feng also from the military?"
Feng Yan quickly explained: "Sergeant Zhang and I were the second group of troops to come in for support. We came in at 3:24 in the morning. The first group came in at 12:00. We also encountered the drizzle at 7 o'clock in the morning."
Lu Miao frowned. "Dr. Song got separated from the team before the rain. What happened to the first batch of troops?"
Song Zhen curled her lips and smiled bitterly. "You are very perceptive. When we first came in, we guessed that the west gate was the exit because it was in the opposite direction of the bird exhibition hall. It might be a hint of the rules. But we will split into two teams, A and B, to explore the east and west exits respectively."
Everyone suddenly fell silent.
"I belong to Team A. We were heading towards the west gate as planned. We encountered a bird attack on the way, but no one was injured. Then we came across an aquatic plant pavilion on the side of the road, but of course we didn't go in."
She changed the subject: "Actually, we came here with a mission. The military asked me to test the water and soil in the ghost story area, so we brought soil and water from the lotus pond and conducted experimental observations in a certain exhibition hall. The result is what I just said, the water contains parasitic filarial worms, and you can't touch the water directly with your skin."
"Have you encountered anything that affects your cognition?"
"trunk."
The deer seedling understood.
"After getting the experimental results, we went directly to the west gate. The two teams communicated through the radio and decided to meet up and go out from the west gate. It was pitch black inside the west gate, and I disagreed with going in. We had a disagreement."
"Did you turn back to the signpost?"
Song Zhen nodded helplessly. "The rules of the botanical garden are staged. Let's go back to the entrance to take pictures."
really.
“The location of attractions will change.”
"Yes, because I found that the west gate we found was not located on the paper map, and it was offset to the vicinity of the pavilion, so I did not agree to go in."
Zhang Lian was stunned. "The east gate that our second team found had shifted to the vicinity of the orchard. The rules required us to strictly follow the route on the paper map. We actually found the location of the east gate marked on the map, but there was only a wall there, so we had to go to the shifted east gate."
Feng Yan nodded. "We also had different opinions. The others insisted on going through the east gate. Seeing that we were unwilling to go in, they suggested exploring the way, and in the end, Sergeant Zhang and I were the only ones left. By the way, when we entered the botanical garden, there were several groups organized by the public coming in together. I suspect that the scenic spots in the botanical garden have been moved several times."
"Yes. This was originally Taohuawu, but the souvenir shop was not moved." The police officer added.
Lu Miao glanced at the four people's melancholy faces and told them the cruel truth. "We received news from our superiors that none of the military and police forces that entered the botanical garden have left, and the pollution in the botanical garden is spreading outward. We are required to crack it within 36 hours, otherwise it will be marked as a dead zone. We entered the botanical garden at around nine in the morning."
The four people opposite looked pale. Although they had expected it, they still didn't want to accept the bad news.
The police officer squatted down and cried with his head in his hands - crying for his sacrificed teammates.
The two tough guys, Zhang Lian and Feng Yan, clenched their fists and looked away.
Wang Keke and He Pingan remained silent.
Perhaps they worry that one day they will cry like the police officers.
"Where did they go after they entered the door?" Song Zhen crossed his arms.
Lu Miao stared at the thick fog outside the floor-to-ceiling glass.
The orchid house seemed to be installed with frosted glass, so she could only see the street lights blurred into a ball.
"Dr. Song, before you separated from the army, did you hear any voices from people other than those you were traveling with?"
"No."
"Have you ever seen the cell phone numbers of on-duty personnel posted on the roadside?"
“Neither do I.”
"I have seen it," the police officer suddenly interrupted. "We didn't call it."
Zhang Lian and Feng Yan frowned. "We met this morning."
Lu Miao then asked Zhang Lian, Feng Yan and the police officer, "Have you seen the emergency notice about the road closure?"
"No."
"No." The police officer wiped away his tears. "But I did see a flock of white birds flying away... talking flowers."
"In other words, the period when Dr. Song came in was relatively calm, and the situation was most complicated when we came in."
Zhang Lian's face changed. He vaguely caught an incredible guess, but it was difficult to describe the specific situation because he lacked the most intuitive verification.
Lu Miao smiled coldly. "Thanks to the appearance of the Emergency Notice, I was able to confirm that the west gate was the correct exit."
Song Zhen was still terrified. "Are you sure?"
"Sure. It only targets us newcomers."
Lu Miao's eyes were like a blazing flame in a dark forest.
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