Chapter 302: Yesterday Once More
“Blood?”
Nan Guo de Xue leaned closer to the scanner screen.
“Hmm—it seems so. There are splattered bloodstains on all four walls of the room.”
“Splattered? Does that mean anything?”
Ye Xing asked humbly.
“It means the weapon was most likely not a firearm or a blade, but a blunt object. And from the force of the splatter, the impact was quite strong, probably far exceeding the upper limit of human arm strength.”
Nan Guo de Xue explained.
During university, reading forensic textbooks was another hobby of hers, besides gaming, especially those with gruesome illustrations.
“The height of the bloodstains matches human head height. Hmm—I think there was a passionate brawl here. The scene must have been very chaotic, not like the work of humanoid security robots.”
“Then it must have been done by an augmented human.”
Jubian believed the facts were already clear enough.
“The residents here are mainly miners, with augmented limbs, so great strength leading to miracles is normal—does this mean there was a riot here? The original leadership was killed? And so the remaining residents don't want outsiders to visit, expose the truth, and spread it?”
“That doesn't seem to fully explain the eerie atmosphere here, but if there really was a riot, perhaps we shouldn't dig too deep,” Nan Guo de Xue said.
“After all, we still have the expedition mission on our hands.”
Jubian nodded.
“I agree with Nan Guo de Xue. We won’t tell the people here our true purpose for coming, and they can keep their little secrets. If we both give each other some privacy, it can reduce conflict.”
In his opinion, worker riots often have sufficiently sympathetic reasons.
“To be honest, if the people here knew that Cangyuan had a feud with the Empire, they probably wouldn’t have agreed to let us land. We’ve already concealed things first—”
“Hoo—”
Ye Xing put down the scanner and played with it in his hand for a while.
“I’ll report my findings to the Executive Officer and let him decide!”
Unexpectedly, Lu Yuan’s reply was concise.
“Investigate thoroughly. Covert operation.”
“”—Alright, it seems the Executive Officer takes this very seriously!” With a goal and no moral burden, Ye Xing regained his drive.
“Although this base is very large, I suggest we don't split up. Let's stick together.”
“Wait!”
A female Sailor player named Crispy Shark raised her hand. She was the fourth member of the team.
“Teachers, are we just going to investigate so openly?”
Ye Xing thought about it, and indeed.
The behavior of the NPCs in this game is exactly like real people. No matter how strange the residents here are, they should still have a basic sense of vigilance.
Judging by Captain Pu’s attitude just now, he was already quite annoyed.
In this situation, if four people in power armor went poking around, they would probably be asked to leave by security very quickly.
There were no blind spots in the corridor surveillance!
“Let’s take off our power armor,” Ye Xing suggested. “That should greatly reduce the villagers’ vigilance. You guys cover for me, and I’ll observe more, listen more, and smell more!”
His suggestion was unanimously approved.
Who cares, let's go, we can always revive if we die!
“But then we can’t carry the scanner with us. This thing looks like a pistol, but it’s even bigger than a pistol. It would be super conspicuous hanging from our waists!”
The four took off their power armor, hands in their pockets, pretending to go for a stroll, and perhaps chat up a local to gather information.
After walking for a short while, Ye Xing pulled Jubian aside. Facing the camera that had been following them, he grabbed Jubian’s hand.
“What are you doing!? Please stop this gay behavior immediately!”
Ye Xing said nothing, his finger moving across the other's palm, writing Chinese characters that few people recognized nowadays:
【This floor is empty, don't know where they went.】
Jubian mouthed:
【How do you know?】
Ye Xing wrote furiously:
【Don't underestimate a Chief Investigator's 60+ Perception. I smelled it! That rubber-like smell of the spacesuits is gone!】
【Damn! You're really good! So what now?】
【Let's find the elevator, they should be on other floors!】
The team then arrived at the elevator, and as expected, it was out of service.
The four looked at each other, understanding without words.
What kind of unspeakable secret is hidden here? To the point where they'd rather restrict their own people's freedom of movement than let us get close?
The Executive Officer's intuition was right; this couldn't be explained by a riot. It was necessary to gather more intelligence!
Nan Guo de Xue made a gesture, signaling everyone to return to their room first.
In the room, she pointed her finger upwards.
“The people here, after all, don't have a military background, so their vigilance is still insufficient.”
She was pointing at the dark, dirty, old ventilation duct opening, a mandatory feature in all sci-fi horror games!
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, are you sure about this—?” Jubian expressed his skepticism. “Star Alliance is definitely not like other games, players aren't invincible in ventilation ducts!”
“So we need to move as gently as possible and not make any noise,” Nan Guo de Xue said. “Besides, moving through the ventilation ducts has an added benefit: we can bring weapons and scanners.”
This reason convinced everyone.
“Alright!”
Ye Xing put his hands on his hips and looked up at the ventilation duct opening.
Unlike ordinary civilian buildings, ventilation ducts in alien colonial structures, considering maintenance needs, are inherently widened enough for workers to enter.
Crawling inside would certainly be fine, but for noise control, power armor definitely couldn't be worn, and shoes would also have to be taken off.
“Everyone take a scanner and some self-defense weapons. Let’s go!”
The four dragged the bunk beds in the room over to use as a stepping stone, then climbed into the ventilation ducts one by one, moving slowly forward.
This severely tested their patience and their tolerance for confined spaces.
An hour later, the first “challenge” appeared.
Unlike most horror games that require crawling through ventilation shafts, in reality, ventilation shafts have a fan every so often.
“Damn it!”
Ye Xing, at the front, scanned the area around the fan.
“This is troublesome. I can use a plasma dagger to cut the fan's power cable, but that would definitely trigger a fault alert, and even an idiot would know we're crawling through the ventilation ducts.”
“You could try cutting the fan along with its mounting frame,” Jubian suggested. “Then leave it aside and let it spin slowly on its own. If you’re afraid of hitting your hand, you could even cut off the blades first.”
“That actually might work, you’re a real genius!”
“Alright, hurry up. By the way—who didn't wash their feet today?”
In front of Jubian, there was only Ye Xing.
“Be serious during the mission, don’t focus on these irrelevant issues!”
Plasma weapons cut through metal like butter, and Ye Xing himself was both bold and meticulous.
After successfully removing the fan obstacle, the four players, whose physiques far exceeded ordinary people, turned a corner, then braced themselves against the side walls with their hands and feet, using friction to climb a vertical ventilation shaft.
After descending at least 100 meters vertically, the duct finally turned to a straight horizontal path.
Nan Guo de Xue, with the lowest physical attribute, gasped a few times, rested for a moment, then continued forward with the others.
Soon after, the four looked down from a downward ventilation grille and saw a corridor that was much better maintained than the one above ground, wider, and more technologically advanced.
“As expected, there’s another world down here—”
Ye Xing carefully observed the nameplates of the rooms on both sides of the corridor and chose a path.
“Follow me!”
He led everyone to the ceiling above one of the rooms and scanned downwards first.
“Good, no cameras. Let’s go!”
He deftly removed the ventilation grille and was the first to jump down.
It turned out to be a room used for temporarily storing hard spacesuits.
The four each found a colonial spacesuit to put on, first solving the disguise problem.
Then, Ye Xing aimed his scanner at the adjacent room.
This time, the scanner screen displayed something even more horrifying than bloodstains!
There were five people in the adjacent room, with augmentation levels over 80%. Their abdominal cavities no longer contained digestive organs, no wonder they didn't need to eat anymore!
And unlike Star Alliance augmented humans, their body modifications greatly exceeded the original human body contours.
Many strangely shaped augmented devices were abruptly and stiffly attached to their backs and the back of their heads, like tumors or parasites.
So this was why they had always worn those bulky spacesuits in front of guests—to conceal their distorted bodies!
And once they no longer needed to hide from outsiders, the five in the next room, perhaps because they could no longer find ordinary clothes suitable for their figures, were naked from the waist up, or even completely naked, regardless of gender.
This behavior was very unusual!
Everyone loves beauty.
Even for the few augmented humans with more avant-garde aesthetics who were willing to change their body shape, body modifications were premised on looking cool.
For example, Anya’s assistant, the mech girl.
Her level of augmentation was so high that most people couldn't accept it, but as Ye Xing knew, many players were utterly infatuated with her, willing to be trampled under her sharp carbon fiber augmented feet…
At least her appearance was attractive.
But the augmented humans next door completely defied human aesthetics!
Not to mention losing the basic moral concept of covering oneself with clothing, which humanity had acquired since prehistoric times—their brain's thought patterns had probably been severely alienated!
“F—!”
Ye Xing instinctively tried to pinch his brow, but his hand was blocked by the mask.
“This is ninety percent similar to the augmented zombies on Ruins Star!”
Jubian: “Are you sure?!”
“Buddy, I’ve fought those things up close, I wouldn’t be mistaken! The only difference is that the people here still have intelligence, and still have free will!”
“Only for now,” Nan Guo de Xue said faintly.
Ye Xing aimed the scanner at the room on the other side, and the screen showed a wall full of cubic containers.
Inside each one was a human face, suspended in viscous culture fluid.
Chief Engineer Varuyev, and Security Supervisor Pu Mandi, were prominently among them!
“Well, it seems the management is truly wiped out. Everyone we met before was impersonating the colonial residents.”
Ye Xing connected his remote wireless radio and sent all the recent visual data, along with his current location, to the flagship Taibai.
“Executive Officer, did you see all that? Something big has happened!”
“I saw it,” Lu Yuan’s voice came through.
“The signal you just sent might be detected. It’s too late to go back the way you came. I need you to explore as much as possible. I’m already on my way with my team. This matter might be related to the return of a great enemy, it’s very important.”
“Understood!”
The four-person team opened the door and went out into the corridor, with Ye Xing leading the way.
“This way! I hear people talking.”
They jogged, keeping their heads down as much as possible, passing many augmented humans. This posture could interfere with the cameras’ facial and gait recognition functions.
“Look, it says ‘Research Area’ ahead! I knew it, this isn’t just a mining colony!”
Jubian shouted, no longer caring about being discreet!
“Let’s go! Let’s check it out!”
A group of children, none older than 10, came around the corner of the corridor. Each was wiping their nose, seemingly having just been reprimanded.
They also brushed past the Cangyuan team, not noticing anything unusual.
“There are indeed children here, and it looks like none of them have received augmentation. Strange—”
“Never mind that for now!” Ye Xing grabbed Jubian. “Look over there!!”
Through a window at the end of the corridor, Jubian looked down and saw an unforgettable scene.
On the other side of the wall was a huge, artificially excavated cave, with metal flooring and large amounts of equipment of unknown purpose all around,
as well as material cabinets and gas/liquid storage tanks.
In the center were hundreds of automated production lines, with many colonial residents lying on them, undergoing augmented upgrades.
This scene reminded Jubian of the first time he defeated a true BOSS-level monster and entered the Mechanical Desert Spider’s lair.
It was too similar. This overall layout was too much like Cangyuan 22nd’s robot automated production line.
A terrifying thought popped into his head.
All this time, we thought the “calamity” on Ruins Star was the Intelligent Order Consensus poisoning humanity.
But what if this body modification technology for humans came from humanity itself, or even… from the golden age of Cangyuan?
At the end of the cave, there was another large, heavy metal door, over 100 meters tall and wide, filled with an air of mystery.
【Alert! Intruder! Alert!】
Suddenly, red lights flashed in the corridor, and alarm bells blared.
The facial recognition or gait recognition system had finally detected that the four were not colonial residents.
A naked augmented human walked out of the “Research Sub-Director” room next to the corridor’s glass window.
“It’s you?”
Although his face had changed, from his posture and overall demeanor, Ye Xing recognized him as Chief Engineer Varuyev.
“I treated you well as guests, and you actually—why?!”
Apparently, anger and disgust were among the human emotions he had managed to retain.
“Guards! Arrest them!”
Boom!
Before Chief Engineer Varuyev could finish speaking, the elevator door not far away was violently blown open.
From the smoke and dust, a team of fully armed, well-trained power-armored soldiers appeared, aiming their guns.
“Because this matter is more important than the rules of hospitality!”
The Executive Officer’s voice came from behind.