17: Chapter 17 Stone Remains

Under the dark red sky, the wasteland's gale roared like a beast.

On the surface of the ruined village, a massive fire was blazing fiercely. Thick, black smoke billowed upward, mixed with a nauseating burnt stench, and was swept away into the distance by the wind.

Lin Li stood quietly in front of the fire.

His black trench coat flapped loudly in the wind.

His face, which usually habitually wore a touch of mockery and aloofness, was now as tense as a piece of raw iron.

Half an hour.

Together with the four players, he had suppressed the spasms in his stomach and carried the gruesome remains of the corpses from the sewer to the surface, one by one.

There were no coffins, no tombstones.

In this land, burning them to ashes to prevent the corpses from becoming rations for mutant beasts and Greenskins was the most decent funeral the wasteland could offer the dead.

"Crackle—"

The firelight shone on the faces of the four players, flickering on and off.

Flash was usually the most talkative, loving to spout nonsense, but at this moment, he was biting his lip hard, his hands tightly clasped together, unable to say a word.

He had vomited so much in the sewer earlier that he had nearly brought up bile, and his face was now whiter than paper.

Miracle Walker looked at the limbs gradually carbonizing in the raging fire and couldn't help but shiver.

"Brothers..."

Walker's voice in the team voice chat was somewhat hoarse,

"I've played so many survival games and horror masterpieces. But I don't know why, watching these NPCs get burned, I actually feel a bit choked up inside."

"Is this really just a game?"

Liver Emperor rubbed his rough cheeks, his eyes filled with deep confusion,

"The weight of these severed limbs, the viscosity of the blood, and the expression of despair on that female corpse earlier... How on earth did the production team make this? It's almost like a parallel world where a tragedy actually occurred."

Ming Shen pushed up his non-existent glasses and took a deep breath.

"This is the underlying tone of warhammer 40,000."

Ming Shen's voice was low,

"In this universe, human life is the cheapest consumable. There are no superheroes, no Deus Ex Machina. Every attack we encounter outside the newbie village is a catastrophe for these civilians who have no ability to protect themselves."

The players fell silent.

That arrogance of 'I am a player, I am the best in the world' was doused with a bucket of icy cold water after facing this one-sided bloody massacre.

For the first time, they truly felt that what they were facing was not lines of boring code, but a real universe that was cruel to the point of suffocation.

Lin Li thrust his halberd into the sand beside him and sighed inwardly.

"Damn Greenskins..."

Lin Li cursed fiercely in his heart.

He had originally only intended to come and trade for some primer, and incidentally repay the life-saving grace of that half a piece of moldy biscuit.

But now everyone was gone...

"Alright."

Lin Li turned around, burying the turbulence in his heart, and put back on the cold shell that belonged to an NPC commander.

"Seeds, put away your useless sympathy."

He looked at the four players coldly,

"Tears cannot kill Greenskins. Remember the scene you saw today; this will be the only reason for you to take up weapons in the wasteland."

"Prepare to evacuate. The smell of blood and the column of smoke will soon attract other predators."

The players nodded silently, gripped their cold weapons, and prepared to push the handcarts filled with sulfur and saltpeter to leave.

Just then.

"Ding—"

An extremely faint, crisp sound of metal colliding suddenly pierced through the sound of the wind and the crackling of burning wood, drilling into Lin Li's ears.

Lin Li's footsteps came to an abrupt halt.

His perception soared to its limit in an instant.

His ears twitched slightly, catching every strange sound in the wind like a radar.

"Wait." Lin Li raised his right hand and clenched it into a fist.

The players stopped immediately and nervously raised their weapons.

"Boss, what's wrong? Did monsters spawn again?"

Flash's palms were full of cold sweat as he gripped his greatsword.

"There's a sound."

Lin Li frowned, his sharp eyes scanning the surroundings.

"A very faint metallic tapping sound."

"The sewer?"

Ming Shen reacted immediately, raising his spear and pointing at the open manhole cover.

"Let's go down and check!"

Lin Li didn't hesitate, pulled up his halberd, rushed toward the manhole cover first, and jumped back into the blood-scented underground space.

The four players followed closely behind.

The five of them launched a carpet search in the dim sewer.

They flipped over every damaged tent, kicked open every water storage barrel, and even checked the broken limbs that hadn't been moved yet.

Ten minutes later.

"There's nothing here, Boss."

Liver Emperor held up a torch, illuminating the end of the sewer,

"There isn't even a living rat, let alone any metallic sound. Could it be the sound of the wind blowing against the metal sheets above?"

Lin Li didn't speak.

He closed his eyes and held his breath.

In the absolute silence, his hearing was magnified countless times.

"Ding—"

Another sound.

This time, the sound was clearer, even carrying a hint of an extremely faint rhythm.

Lin Li opened his eyes abruptly and looked up at the cracked concrete ceiling above.

"It's not below."

Lin Li's voice echoed in the empty sewer,

"The sound... is on the surface!"

Like an agile black panther, he scrambled up the rusty iron ladder and onto the surface ruins in a few steps.

The wind direction had changed.

Following the direction the sound came from, Lin Li walked quickly through the ruins and finally stopped in an open space behind the village ruins.

This was the settlement's cemetery.

Or rather, a mass grave. Everywhere were small mounds of earth piled up with rubble, and some mounds even had a few twisted steel bars stuck in front of them as tombstones.

"Ding—"

The sound was coming from a pile of rubble right under his feet.

"Dig!" Lin Li ordered decisively.

The players immediately dropped their weapons and began moving the heavy concrete blocks and rubble with their bare hands.

Liver Emperor leveraged his strength, flipping over a precast slab weighing at least a hundred pounds.

As the rubble was cleared away, an extremely hidden crevice, which only a child could barely squeeze into, appeared before everyone.

Lin Li lay at the edge of the crevice and poked a burning torch inside.

The firelight dispelled the darkness.

Below the crevice, there was actually an enclosed space similar to an ancient stone coffin!

The surroundings were all load-bearing walls cast from extremely sturdy alloy concrete; it looked like a remaining corner of some underground air-raid Shelter left over from the old era of this village.

"Hiss—"

Seeing the scene inside by the firelight, Lin Li gasped.

In the center of the stone coffin space lay a set of remains.

No, that couldn't even be called remains.

The bones there had long since weathered away completely over the long years, leaving not even a trace of residue, only a human-like outline.

But where the head of the remains originally was, two things lay quietly.

A transparent chip, as thin as a cicada's wing, with its surface covered in extremely complex and tiny golden logic circuits.

And a purely mechanical electronic prosthetic eye that was still flickering with an extremely faint red light!

"Brain-machine chip?"

Lin Li's heart jolted.

He had previously chatted about the history of the Golden Age with that sharp-tongued AI, STC-73, in the Shelter, and 73 had once shown him a 3D projection of this technology.

This kind of ultra-thin chip, which didn't require any neural interface and interacted directly with the cerebral cortex for data, was simply not something that could be created in this barbaric and backward 41st millennium.

"Boss, what's down there?" Ming Shen asked, poking his head in.

"Big loot. And... living people." Lin Li's voice was surprisingly steady.

Following the light of Lin Li's torch, the players finally saw two figures huddled tightly together in the corner of this enclosed space.

They were two girls.

The younger one looked to be only in her early teens, her golden hair messy like weeds, and she was huddled tightly in the other girl's arms.

The older one looked to be under eighteen, wearing an ill-fitting, dusty, worn-out, oversized jacket.

Her face was as pale as paper, her lips chapped and oozing blood, and she was already in a deep coma due to extreme weakness and dehydration.

And that metallic collision sound that had attracted Lin Li...

Was the sound made by the necklace the older girl wore around her neck, made of rusty nuts, which was gently tapping against a rusty square metal box beside her due to her unconscious, weak breathing.

Lin Li stared at the unconscious, short-haired girl.

That face, covered in grime with prominent cheekbones, instantly overlapped completely with the face in the depths of his memory that had handed him half a piece of moldy biscuit in despair!

"It's her."

"Liver! Widen the entrance! Be gentle, don't cause a collapse!"

Lin Li completely put away that cold NPC persona he had before. He rolled up his sleeves abruptly, his tone carrying an unquestionable anxiety.

"Thunder, bring the water bag over!"

This sudden outburst of emotion left the four players stunned for a moment.

But they immediately realized that Commander Lin Li was going to save someone!

Liver Emperor let out a roar, his arm muscles bulging high, and he forcibly pushed the two huge rocks stuck at the edge of the crevice to the sides, widening an opening large enough for an adult to enter.

Lin Li leaped into the stone coffin space.

He first checked the carotid arteries of the two girls.

"Heartbeats are very weak, severe dehydration. No obvious external injuries on their bodies."

Lin Li breathed a sigh of relief.

His reliable side was fully revealed at this critical moment.

He didn't rashly move them, but instead took the water bag handed down by Ming Shen and carefully unscrewed the cap.

He first moistened the lips of the little girl named Willow with a bit of water. Feeling the moisture, the little girl's chapped lips moved instinctively.

Next, Lin Li supported the back of the older girl, Rhine's, head, brought the water bag to her lips, and dripped clean water into her throat bit by bit.

The four players above lay at the opening, watching this scene, and the team channel exploded again.

"Holy crap, did you guys see that! The boss is actually feeding water by hand!"

Flash typed frantically,

"This is definitely an important plot NPC! Maybe the boss's illegitimate daughter or child bride or something!"

"Can you put something normal in your brain?"

Ming Shen rolled his eyes, but his gaze went past Lin Li and stared fixedly at the transparent chip and electronic prosthetic eye at the head of the remains.

"Boss, what are those things on the ground?" Ming Shen couldn't help but ask.

After initially settling the two girls and ensuring they wouldn't die of thirst immediately, Lin Li turned around and picked up the brain-machine chip, the electronic prosthetic eye, and the heavily rusted metal cube from the ground.

He held the chip, as thin as a cicada's wing, and shook it in the firelight.

"This is a relic of the Stone Men." Lin Li uttered the word in a deep tone.

"Stone Men? What the hell is that? Stones becoming spirits?" Flash looked bewildered.

Before Lin Li could explain, Ming Shen jumped up from the ground like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, his head slamming into a protruding steel bar with a bang, but he didn't even have time to cry out in pain.

"Holy crap! Stone Men?! Men of Stone?!"

Ming Shen was shaking with excitement; he grabbed Flash by the collar and shook him frantically:

"You don't look at the background story of warhammer 40,000 at all!"

"In the most glorious Golden Age of humanity, those who created countless incredible technologies were the flawless Golden Men.

And in order to explore those dangerous star regions filled with Warp demons and psychic storms, the Golden Men created a kind of half-human, half-mechanical, or rather, silicon-based and carbon-based fusion creation—this is the Stone Men!"

Ming Shen pointed at the chip in Lin Li's hand, his eyes almost popping out:

"Stone Men have no souls, their projection in the Warp is almost zero, so they are immune to the corruption of Chaos!

It was they who paved the interstellar routes for humanity in this cold universe, and even the Men of Iron who later triggered the rebellion were created by the Stone Men!"

"This is a primordial creation that is even older and more hardcore than the Emperor!!!"

Hearing this popular science from Ming Shen, which sounded like a fanatical believer, Flash, Liver Emperor, and Walker looked at each other; although they didn't fully understand it, they were greatly shocked.

"In other words... we dug up the ancestors' ancestral grave?"

Walker swallowed hard.

"You can understand it that way."

Lin Li carefully put the chip and the prosthetic eye into a dustproof bag.

His gaze finally fell on the square metal iron box.

The surface of this box was covered in rust, looking like a piece of scrap iron picked up casually from a trash heap.

There were no seams, no keyholes, just like a solid lump of iron.

But Lin Li, who had struggled and crawled in the wasteland, knew very well that something that could be taken into the grave by an ancient Stone Man and placed next to their own head could absolutely not be ordinary scrap iron.

Moreover, the sound made by Rhine's nut necklace tapping on it earlier was crisp and carried a strange internal echo, which meant the box was hollow inside!

There was something inside!

He stuffed the metal cube into his backpack, then turned around and looked at the two girls who were still unconscious.

"Come down and help."

Lin Li issued the order decisively: "Get them both up. Be gentle."

"Got it, Boss!" Liver Emperor jumped down immediately.

Half an hour later.

A group of people, pushing handcarts filled with sulfur and saltpeter, along with the two unconscious survivors, stepped onto the return journey to the Fire Seed Shelter, facing the wasteland's gale.

The first underground floor of the Shelter, Room 1.

Lin Li carefully placed Rhine and Willow on the soft bed.

The two girls were still in a deep coma, but their breathing was much steadier than in the sewer.

Lin Li pulled a blanket over them, then turned and walked toward the computer desk.

He dumped the contents of his bag onto the desk all at once:

The transparent brain-machine chip, the flickering electronic prosthetic eye, and the seamless metal cube covered in rust.

"73, time to work."

Lin Li tapped on the desk,

"Scan these three things. These should be relics of the Stone Men. See if there is any valuable data inside."