The ice rose shattered into pieces at Shen Yao's fingertips, and the alarm signal climbed up to Mou Xuan's retina along the mycelium network.
When he turned around, his military boots rolled over the fragments of the petri dish. Qin was still explaining the principle of the resonator with saliva flying, and he didn't notice that the lens oozing out of the wound on the back of his neck was being quietly picked up by Researcher Jiang with tweezers.
"See you in the war room in ten minutes." Mou Xuan tore off his tactical gloves covered in ice, and the mycelium network formed a three-dimensional map of the Steel Skeleton City in his palm.
When Chen Yao wanted to touch the graphite ring on his wrist, the man suddenly clamped her wrist - the hyphae wrapped around the ring were secreting fluorescent green mucus.
The spare warehouse on the seventh floor underground was filled with the rusty smell of expired canned food. Negotiation Representative Tao wiped his gold-rimmed glasses and complained, "The other party only wants painkillers and culture fluid for bacterial strains. This is not in line with Steel Bone City's usual style." The list in his hand was wrapped into a cocoon by the mycelium. Intelligence Officer Wei was squatting in the shadow of the cargo box, debugging the signal receiver, when black smoke suddenly gushed out of the antenna tube.
"They robbed three truckloads of morphine from the pharmaceutical factory last month." Agent Wei kicked the scrapped equipment, and the hyphae crawled up his bleeding knees along his trouser legs. "But this morning's satellite image showed..." He suddenly coughed violently, spitting out phlegm with a metallic sheen, "showing that the sewage pipe in Steel City is emitting hot air."
Mou Xuan used a military knife to pick open the rusty can, and a translucent slug was wriggling in the yellow peach flesh.
There was a sudden stabbing pain in the mycelium network, and the memories of the past life were like steel needles piercing into the temple - the sewage outlet that should have been full of frozen corpses was now gushing out boiling industrial wastewater.
He turned around and stuffed the can into Representative Tao's arms: "Put all the spoiled food in Warehouse No. 3 in the trading area and mark them as premium products with red paint."
"But what the other party wants is..." The second half of Representative Tao's sentence was blocked in Junsi's throat.
Mou Xuan had already walked under the ventilation duct. Mycelium was seeping out from the seams of the iron sheets, weaving out a structural diagram of the chassis of the transport vehicle.
Half of a soldier ant's antenna was embedded in the groove of a gear, and the reflection of the compound eye fragments formed an eagle pattern.
Chen Yao stopped him in front of the bacterial culture chamber.
The girl took off her protective mask, and the tip of her nose was stained with fluorescent blue spores: "The temperature of the sewage pipe is abnormal, it may be..." She suddenly fell silent, and the mycelium network transmitted an alarm that the Steel Bone City negotiation team had arrived early.
The moment Mou Xuan pulled aside the radiation-proof curtain, he saw the transport vehicle rolling over the vortex of ash outside the defense wall—the resonators welded on the roof were absorbing graphite dust in the air.
"The welcome banquet has been moved to the sewage pipe inspection port." Mou Xuan pushed Chen Yao into the disinfection channel entangled with mycelium and put on a breathing mask himself.
The mycelium secreted detoxifying mucus on the inside of the mask, and he smelled the smell of nitroglycerin that was not in his memory of his previous life.
When Zheng Moushi of Steel Bone City got off the car, he was playing with the remains of a worker ant, and his metal prosthetic eyes flashed with the frequency of the mycelium network.
When Representative Tao handed over the list of supplies, he suddenly pierced through the expired cans with his ant claws, and the slugs in the yellow peach juice instantly swelled to the size of a fist. "Is this your sincerity?" The pus from the slug's explosion corroded the emblem of Steelbone City on the snow.
Mou Xuan stepped on the twitching remains of the engineer ant, and the mycelium climbed up the negotiation table along his military boots.
When Zheng Moushi's metal prosthetic eye began to analyze the mycelium structure, the man suddenly lifted the waterproof cloth - twenty resonators were collecting nuclear leakage residues at the sewage outlet. "Instead of using radioactive waste from seven years ago as a bargaining chip," he crushed the tiny camera that fell out of his prosthetic eye, "why not try our special slug sashimi?"
Chen Yao clutched the rose made of ice crystals in the monitoring room and saw that the topology of the transport vehicle chassis suddenly emerged from the mycelium network.
A dark red liquid was oozing from a welding point, gradually outlining the outline of the corpse she had seen in her previous life.
The girl pressed the ice rose against the alarm, but the mycelium got there first and wrapped around her wrist.
Chen Yao's ice rose shattered into stardust on the monitoring table, and the mycelium network wrapped around her wrist to form a thorny ring. "The fact that they dared to arrive at the sewage outlet four hours in advance means..." Before the girl finished her words, Mou Xuan had already grabbed three sealed cans of bacterial culture fluid and walked behind the radiation protection curtain.
The hyphae formed a spider-web-like crack detection film on the surface of the glass jar, and needle-sized metal particles floated in the nutrient solution that should have been emerald green.
"Satellite imagery just captured five minutes ago." Intelligence agent Wei rushed into the disinfection room, covering his bleeding ear. The thermal imaging image on the tactical tablet was melting. "The transport convoy of Steel City bypassed the main sewage pipe. They are..." The tablet screen suddenly went black, and hyphae emerged from his nostrils and formed blood scabs.
Mou Xuan poured the culture medium into the centrifuge. When he turned around, the tactical dagger brushed against the earlobe of agent Wei and was nailed to the wall.
The mycelium-wrapped handle oozed fluorescent green mucus, gradually revealing the chassis structure of the transport vehicle - a certain welding point was flashing red at a frequency of three times per minute. "This is not a satellite image." He pulled out a dagger and threw it on the operating table. "This is the mycelium memory from three hours ago."
Chen Yao suddenly pressed her palm on the centrifuge casing, and frost crawled along the metal lines and covered the observation window.
Under a magnifying glass, the frozen metal particles reveal the structure of the engineer ant's compound eyes, with each hexagonal lens engraved with a miniature eagle totem. "The receiving frequency of the resonator..." She turned her head to look at the sewage pipe monitoring screen, and the mycelium network suddenly emitted a high-frequency buzzing sound.
Mou Xuan tore open the Velcro on his bulletproof vest, and the mycelium weaved a reverse projection of the Steel Bone City emblem on his chest.
When Representative Tao broke open the airtight door holding the list of supplies, the man was stuffing moldy compressed biscuits into the painkiller box that the other party had requested. "Set the temperature of the refrigerated truck to minus 20 degrees Celsius," he tore open a bag of expired military glucose, "and have Researcher Jiang add some nitroglycerin crystals to the culture medium."
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