The Iron Heart floated above the clouds. A Viper transport plane drifted in from afar, gathering the plume of its plasma engine and stopping on the steel deck.
Four men in gray robes were escorted by four players wearing exoskeletons and walked out of the Viper's cabin.
One of them was shot in the left leg and was simply bandaged with a bandage. He walked with a limp. The other three were not shot, but their dusty faces showed that they had suffered a lot.
But no one would sympathize with them here.
They were all apostles of the Torch Church.
Or war criminals.
In just a few hours, at least tens of thousands of survivors died directly or indirectly from the interference of the 03 band of the mind interference device.
There were countless people who suffered mental breakdowns.
About twenty soldiers of the Guards Corps were waiting next to the apron early.
Seeing the group of soldiers with live ammunition, Yul, who was standing in the middle, turned pale.
He was the head of the Pinewood Farm Parish and the head of the 03 band research. If he was captured, the Inquisition would definitely not leave him alone.
However, seeing these guys and the airship under his feet, he doubted whether the Inquisition had the ability to rescue him.
"Anti-gravity device... You have recovered the anti-gravity technology!" He kept muttering, but no one paid attention to him.
In order to prevent him from hiding a locator or eavesdropping device, a soldier stepped forward and put a metal ring with a shielding device on his neck and the neck of the other three apostles.
An apostle tried to resist, but he was honest after being hit by a gun butt.
Looking at Ye Shi who came to him, Lu Bei raised his right fist and knocked it on the left side of the breastplate, and saluted neatly.
"Thank you for your hard work."
"You're welcome. Say hello to the manager for me. The rest is up to you." Ye Shi said with a smile after returning the military salute.
Lu Bei nodded and watched him return to the plane. Then he took the four dusty guys and walked towards the elevator.
There was no communication along the way.
Yuer finally lost his temper and asked.
"Where are you... going to take us?"
Lu Bei didn't say anything. He went straight to a door, knocked on it, and then pushed it open.
Looking at Zhao Tiangan lying on his back on the ground, Yuer's eyes shrank suddenly, his face became paler, and his Adam's apple moved unconsciously.
The man in the blue power armor looked at him, and then looked at the soldier standing next to him.
"Come one by one, and find a place to lock up the others first."
"Yes!"
The man nodded respectfully, then waved his hand, and took his three colleagues to other places with a group of soldiers.
Soon, Yule was the only one left at the door.
Standing alone at the door, he saw the man in blue power armor looking at him. He accidentally met his eyes, and suddenly shuddered in his heart.
The eyes were as deep as a black hole.
After just a moment of staring at each other, he felt as if his soul was pulled out of his body, exposed to the sun without reservation, and burned by the light.
No secrets can be hidden...
As a researcher, he does not believe in something as illusory as the soul, and he does not believe that there is really someone in this world who can read a person's soul through his eyes.
However, he still avoided his sight involuntarily.
At this time, the man spoke.
"What's your name?"
"Yuel." He didn't want to say a word, but he blurted it out subconsciously, which made him feel annoyed.
Chu Guang looked into his eyes and continued.
"Do you know what you did?"
Yuel raised his head and said stiffly.
"Clear..."
He thought the man would ask him why he did it, but he didn't ask anything, just nodded.
"That's good."
The tone of the matter being settled made Yuer feel a little surprised.
He didn't say anything, why did this guy look like he knew everything?
Could he really read minds?
Yuer's eyes were a little panicked, but he soon felt ashamed of this stupid idea, and the panic gradually turned into anger.
How could there be such a metaphysical thing!
This guy must be bluffing!
If you think he will be frightened by such a simple thing and confess everything at once, then you don't know him well enough.
If this is also a necessary sacrifice, then sacrifice yourself.
Yuer raised his head, pretending to be willing to die rather than surrender, and said with a stiff neck.
"Haha, I won't say a word--"
Before he finished speaking, a pair of glasses hung on his nose.
His vision was blurred by the black lenses, and Yuer was slightly stunned.
This is...
In an instant, he seemed to think of something, and his face suddenly changed.
Memory extractor? !
How come these guys even have such a thing!
"Wait a minute, I--"
Unfortunately, before the word "say" came out, a "buzz" sound of electricity penetrated the eardrum, and his consciousness was instantly disconnected like a computer that was forcibly shut down.
"Hey, Hugh."
Holding Yuer from behind, Han Shuang dragged him to the corner and sat him down with full energy.
Looking at the unconscious Yuer, Chu Guang's expression showed no mercy.
The memory extractor was seized from the Enlightenment Society. Its working principle is to use the most feared fragments of the user's subconscious to weave dreams and seal the user's memory, allowing it to flow out bit by bit, repeatedly unraveling it until there is nothing left.
The more you resist, the more painful it is.
Theoretically, this device can not only extract people's memories, but also help people remember things they don't even remember.
Because it will cause a certain amount of mental burden, he will hardly use this thing in interrogation.
If he is deceived, coerced or has unspeakable difficulties, he will give this guy a chance to confess and be lenient.
But this guy said it himself, and he knows it clearly.
In this case, if he is treated in the same way, he will probably not have any complaints. Compared to the survivors of the Pinewood Farm, this punishment was too light for him.
Looking at the puppet sitting on his shoulder, Chu Guang asked.
"Xiao Qi, how long will it take to retrieve the memory?"
With his index finger on his chin, Xiao Qi, who was already connected to the memory extractor, closed his eyes and thought for a while.
"Well, one or two hours should be enough?"
Speaking in an uncertain tone, its eyes suddenly opened, and it continued with a light exclamation, "...This guy actually has a bionics chip in his head?"
Chu Guang frowned slightly.
"Is there any problem?"
Xiao Qi looked at Eclipse standing beside him and whispered.
"Eclipse, can the security program on the chip be handled? I'll transfer it to you."
Eclipse nodded expressionlessly.
"Not a big problem."
As he said this, the pale blue data stream was reflected in the center of its child's hole.
After receiving a positive answer, Xiao Qi quickly looked at Chu Guang and proudly raised his thumb.
"It's not a big problem, Master! Just leave it to Xiao Qi!"
Chu Guang: "..."
Forget it.
Anyway, the result is good.
...
The memory retrieval was completed quickly.
In fact, it would take a lot of time according to the normal process, but Xiao Qi put the memory retrieval program on the server of the shelter.
The data processing capacity of the shelter server is completely different from the processor of the portable electronic device.
To make an unimaginative comparison, one is a rocket and the other is a bicycle.
It's like installing nitrogen to accelerate the bicycle.
One hour in the dream is only equivalent to half a minute in reality.
In fact, if there is no limit to the speed at which the brain can process information, the speed of reading memory can be even more exaggerated.
However, even if Xiao Qi has shown mercy, the brain of the apostle whose memory has been drained still bears a considerable load.
Although he is awake, he is no different from a vegetative person, and even more exaggerated than a vegetative person.
Looking at Yuer, who was walking towards the wall with a slurred voice, Chu Guang couldn't help but have a strange expression.
"So is he awake or not?"
Xiao Qi's expression was a little subtle.
"Well... probably awake, but not completely."
"What do you mean?"
"In short, the picture he sees is still the dream formed according to his memory, but the brain has actually regained control of the body... So in our eyes he is walking towards the wall, but in his own eyes, he may just be walking from the living room to the kitchen."
In short, it is a high-PING warrior?
Obviously, in the eyes of other players, he has been walking towards the wall, but in the eyes of the player himself, he has already walked from the B site to the middle door.
Chu Guang's heart moved.
"Like sleepwalking?"
"Well, although there is a little difference, it is almost the same meaning."
When he said this, Xiao Qi added in a low voice.
"I suggest that we tie him up... or he might eat something weird for breakfast."
"Like shoes or something."
Chu Guang nodded, looked at the soldier beside him and told him to take this guy to the confinement room and tie him to the bed for two days.
To prevent this guy from getting into trouble.
A few passing players happened to see the guy walking towards the wall, and they immediately started talking to each other excitedly.
"Is this NPC stuck in the wall?"
"BUG! It's a BUG!"
"Awesome, this game really has BUGs!"
Although every version has seen the dog planner fixing BUGs, no one has ever seen what a real BUG looks like.
This time I finally saw it!
Ignoring the captives, Chu Guang returned to the captain's room alone, sat on a chair, picked up the virtual reality device on the table and put it on his head.
He tapped his index finger lightly on the side and spoke.
"Xiao Qi, help me connect the extracted memory."
The energetic voice soon reached his ears.
"Okay, Master!"
As soon as the voice fell, pale blue light particles spread from the center of his field of vision to the surroundings, changing everything they touched into another appearance.
First the floor, then the table and chairs, and then the wall - the room under his feet changed from the captain's room to a pure white room.
Chu Guang had never seen this place.
But from the nurse who delivered the baby, the baby lying in the mother's arms, and the man who looked like a father standing next to the bed, he could probably judge that this should be the delivery room.
The people in the delivery room were busy, and the couple discussed sweetly what name to give the child in their arms.
No one noticed the stranger standing in the room.
After all, this is the memory of "Yul", and he does not belong here.
Chu Guang stretched out his hand and passed through the nurse next to him, then walked to the window and looked out of the window.
The green plants outside the window are lush and green, with birds singing and flowers blooming... I didn't expect that even such details were perfectly restored.
"Why did you send me here?" Chu Guang's voice was a little helpless.
He was not interested in knowing the life of a small person.
Even if this memory might be important to that person, it was irrelevant to him and this wasteland.
If he really read through these twenty or thirty years of memories from beginning to end, he wouldn't have to do anything else.
Light blue light particles flickered.
Following Chu Guang into this memory, Xiao Qi, who had transformed into a human doll, fell on his shoulder and sat down, swinging his calves and said shyly.
"Sorry, master... I'll drag the progress bar!"
Looking at Xiao Qi's shy smile, Chu Guang always felt that this guy was doing it on purpose.
Seeing that the master didn't speak, Xiao Qi asked in a guilty voice.
"Then... from when he joined the Torch Church?"
"Well... wait."
Chu Guang was about to nod, but suddenly he noticed a detail.
Beyond the lush greenery outside the window, you can see towering buildings and a sea of cars in the distance...even Ideal City is inferior to it.
This is obviously not a wasteland.
This guy was born before the war?
"...From his memory before he entered the hibernation capsule," Chu Guang paused and continued, "I want to know which shelter he entered."
However, Xiao Qi's answer was beyond his expectations.
"He is not a resident of the shelter."
Not a resident of the shelter?
Chu Guang frowned slightly.
"Then take me to before he entered the hibernation capsule...I want to know why he chose 'time travel' and how he went to the future."
Speaking, Chu Guang left the window, walked to the side of the bedside table, and looked at the holographic screen floating above the electronic clock.
It is now 2100.
The 75th year of the prosperous era.
At this moment, the prosperous times are at their peak. People have built a utopia on earth, and they have obtained unlimited satisfaction both materially and spiritually.
And just ten years later, in 2110, the industry and academia will once again liberate people's imagination of a better life in the future.
Graviton channels and FTL engines will officially open the door to the interstellar era. The ticket to the world beyond light years will no longer be a one-way ticket with no return, but an adventure that anyone can take.
Of course, not all good things come with the future. Taking a step forward can discover new treasures, but it also means more new problems.
For example, just 13 years later, the mind interference device developed to replace the "infrasonic fence" was originally used to drive away dangerous alien species that harassed the colony, but it broke out in the third ecological protection zone of Qingquan City, the mother planet, for suspected brainwashing and human experiments.
That incident was a big deal, and even the authorities were implicated, but it was obviously just a small episode for the people living in utopia.
Chu Guang felt that even if he could talk to the people in front of him across time and space, no one would believe that the baby lying in the cradle at this moment did something that would even make Satan dumbfounded two hundred years later.
And if he told the people here that it was just a small episode in the distant future and all the good things would end in 29 years, he would probably only be regarded as a strange lunatic.
It is now 2100.
There are only 29 years left before the first year of the Wasteland Era - 2129...
I vaguely heard that the mother named the child in her arms "Yul", and then Chu Guang saw the scenery around him flying along with the progress bar dragged by Xiao Qi.
Like many people of that era, Yul had a happy childhood, successfully went to school, and then got a job...
When everything was frozen, the clean and bright delivery room had become a simple and spacious office, and floating clouds and tall buildings like forests could be seen outside the wide floor-to-ceiling windows.
A well-dressed young man stood in front of the desk, talking excitedly to his boss who was sitting behind the desk.
Chu Guang did not listen carefully to their conversation, but first paid attention to the clues containing time information.
Soon he found what he was looking for on a holographic billboard outside the French window -
It is now July 13, 2121.
Three days later, a hot-selling home security robot will hold a press conference, with a pre-order price of only 100,000 credit points - but these are not the point.
In the history that Chu Guang knows, Shelter No. 79 and its "Yongshi" plan were launched last year of this year.
There seem to be signs of the end of the prosperous era.
People began to feel anxious about the future intentionally or unintentionally, and the consensus that tomorrow will be better was gradually replaced by doomsday theory.
And anxiety itself is a business opportunity.
Companies that sell home shelter programs and protective equipment have made a fortune from this, and the company under his feet is obviously no exception.
Chu Guang looked around the office and was surprised to see the documents on the desk. This was actually the headquarters of Champion Pharmaceuticals!
The researchers in Shelter 79 were all die-hard fans of this company, and even the coffee beans were of this company's brand!
But——
He had always wanted to complain.
Is it really okay for a pharmaceutical company to sell coffee?
The conversation between the two people in the office gradually became clearer.
"...Anti-radiation agent?"
The boss touched his chin after reading the report in his hand, and the expression on his face was unpredictable. The staff standing in front of him described it in an exaggerated tone.
"That's right! I bet that this new anti-radiation agent will definitely become the next growth point of the company's profits! And it will be explosive growth!"
The two were not Yule.
But this was Yule's memory, and that guy was obviously nearby.
Chu Guang looked around but didn't find him. But he quickly realized that the guy was only 21 years old and might be a newcomer in the workplace, so he immediately walked out of the office.
Sure enough, the guy was at the door.
He was holding a briefcase in his hand, his eyes were wandering around, and some very subtle expressions showed that he should have just left the campus.
Although he looked younger, this guy was undoubtedly the one he had just interrogated.
Seeing Yuer staring at the conversation in the office intently, Chu Guang also focused his attention on the two people in the office.
If Chu Guang guessed correctly, the new project they were discussing at the moment was the formula of "using 'blue umbrella' to synthesize anti-radiation agent".
In a sense, this formula did save a lot of people.
At least most of the mercenaries in Boulder City relied on this thing to prolong their lives, and his first pot of gold in the wasteland was also earned by selling that mushroom.
"...To put it more professionally, it's DNA self-repair technology! We found a special active substance in a blue fungus that can repair macromolecules damaged by neutron rays in organisms."
"This is a good idea... But if I may be frank, medical nanorobots can do better."
Putting the report on the table, the boss-like man interrupted the subordinate's endless chatter at the desk and said with his hands spread out.
"We are a technology company. If I may be frank, using mushrooms as medicine... This sounds like an idea from ancient people."
However, Yule's predecessor did not give up, but continued to argue.
"War, my friend, I'm talking about the wartime! I know that nanorobots can perfectly repair damaged macromolecular nucleic acids, proteins and enzymes, but where can you find such things in the wartime?"
"Compared to nanomedical robots that require a whole huge industrial chain to support, my plan will be much more practical! Even if the worst happens, suppliers are completely paralyzed, and raw materials around the world are skyrocketing, we can still provide our consumers with cheap and reliable anti-radiation drugs... Of course, it's okay to be a little more expensive, we have an unparalleled cost advantage!"
This time, the boss sitting behind the desk did not immediately say no, but touched his chin with an interested expression on his face.
"Sounds interesting."
Everyone felt that parting ways with the colony was a high probability event, and war seemed to have become the only way to resolve differences.
To this day, nuclear weapons are still the most efficient way to wipe out organisms from the surface of the earth. The only difference is the method and scale of delivery.
A good and cheap anti-radiation agent is undoubtedly much more practical than any nanorobot in the era of radioactive dust.
Finally, Yuer's senior successfully persuaded the two supervisors.
Even though the process was not easy, he wasted a lot of saliva.
Looking at the senior who walked out of the office, Yuer immediately stepped forward and asked.
"How is it?"
The senior's face showed a bright smile.
"It's done! The boss agreed to lend us the research institute in Jinhe City. As long as we can produce visible results, he will fight for more budget for us at the board meeting... Time waits for no one, you pack up the materials before leaving get off work, we will set off early tomorrow morning!"
Hearing this, Yuer's face was surprised, and he clenched his fists excitedly, but he was tongue-tied and could only say one sentence after a long time.
"Great!"
The senior smiled slightly and patted him on the shoulder.
"Keep doing your best."
Looking at the two people walking towards the elevator, Chu Guang showed a touch of surprise on his face.
If he remembered correctly, the "Champion" Group only had one research institute in Jinhe City - the one given to him by the college.
And at this moment, the research institute is controlled by mutants...