Star Civilization: I loaded the MOD

Chapter 41 The Suffering Stone Statue

In the early morning of the fourth day, the sun shined slightly from behind the mountain.

Within three days, the archaeological team relied on a step-by-step strategy, constantly taking away equipment in batches and establishing strongholds along the advancing route.

There is a small stronghold every 100 meters, and a big stronghold every 1,000 meters.

The relay-type strongholds in the tunnel are densely packed into a line, providing basic support for subsequent activities, and extend little by little into the end of the tunnel with a vertical depth of six kilometers.

Even the shortest route is seventeen kilometers long horizontally.

It was also because of the long journey that the fifth team, which discovered the underground world for the first time three days ago, returned in a hurry because of the team's poor condition after confirming it from a distance.

Now, after three days of logistical work, the archaeological team at least has the ability to continue digging underground.

The time was right for in-depth exploration. After having breakfast early, Aisha led more than 40 people into the ground, hoping to complete the archaeological operation as soon as possible.

After all, the scientific research ship still has its basic job, which is to investigate the planetary profile of Magic Star.

A team of dozens of people rode in small transport vehicles and traveled through the intricate tunnel system.

Effortlessly pass through the end of the tunnel until you reach the underground world.

The two-meter-wide truck stopped at the entrance of the tunnel. Aisha turned around and flipped the transport truck down, took a few steps forward and poked out of the tunnel, staring at this barren land with a sense of novelty.

After all, the horizontal drawings on the photos are not as good as the immersive experience.

Wherever you look, the earth falls into the sky, and the civilized world becomes dark.

The molten sea surges and rises from the center of the earth, leaping high into the sky above the city, scattering sparks, and shining through the abandoned years.

As for why it is said to be a molten sea...

A belt of magma suddenly exploded in the city in the distance, just like the shape of a prominence raised by the sun.

Just like VV among battleships and Saratoga among aircraft carriers, they are gorgeous and eye-catching.

The archaeological team that had just gotten off the bus were all captivated by the fantastic splashing lava in the city.

"Haha, it's pretty, isn't it?" Aisha came back to her senses from the falling lava, the worry in her eyes disappeared in an instant, and her tone gradually became serious.

"But I don't think anyone would want to touch it, so brace yourself and be careful."

"Yes! Captain!"

Everyone shouted in unison, and a loud response came through the channel, indicating that they followed her instructions.

In addition to her role as temporary commander, Aisha is also Captain Pace's deputy. Most of the people on the scientific research ship have served under her, and her style of conduct is deeply trusted by everyone.

Coupled with his optimistic personality, his reputation is not only among the best, but also among the best.

"The logistics team, follow the road at the entrance of the tunnel, go down the mountain and establish a new temporary camp two kilometers ahead."

Aisha marked the location on the projected map, and the maps of other team members also displayed red dots simultaneously.

"Bana, Xinglai... Wood, Fang Yan... Yuzi, the twenty people whose names are called, follow me into the city to explore."

"Now, each team will carry out the scheduled tasks."

After naming the "dish names" on the list in one breath, Aisha motioned to each team to disband.

Soon there were only twenty thin figures left in the huge team, and compression boxes made of various high-temperature-resistant materials were taken away by the logistics team.

"Our goal is to find items of potential value in the city, with the following priorities."

"1. Information and craftsmanship related to rare crystals."

"Second, the humanistic history of unknown ancient civilizations, the textual and pictorial carriers of knowledge, and artworks."

"Three, anything else that might be beneficial to us."

After finishing speaking, Aisha turned her head and glanced at Xinglai and Bana, and gave a meaningful reminder. "Rules are dead, but people are alive. If there are other important discoveries, be smart."

"Set off!"

The leader Aisha gave an order, and in the dark underground world, the stars flashed with blue flames.

A group of tiny rays of light, with a flicker that could not be ignored, fell from the mountain in mid-air, slid, climbed up again, and flew straight to the core area of ​​the city.

The unknown area at the exit of the tunnel is probably the outskirts of an abandoned city, with bungalows sparsely scattered across the desolate stone plains.

The uninhabited land is lifeless.

The buildings that occasionally flash by leave visual afterimages in the eyes, which look blurry and blurry, leaving only the impression of simple geometric shapes such as squares, triangles, circles, etc.

As we approach the depths of the city, nearby buildings begin to slowly grow taller and their geometric shapes become more complex.

Wherever you look, the style of ancient civilization buildings is more geometric, and there are no high-altitude obstacles or "stone pillars reaching the sky" type of buildings.

There were few obstacles in the parallel layer they were flying on. After just over ten minutes of direct flight, they were officially close to the central area.

From an aerial perspective, you can already catch a glimpse of the lava chasm ahead.

The hot flames under the ravine plowed the earth, the city separated into yin and yang in the firelight, and the broken stone bridges clung to both sides of the cliff.

Stagnated a thousand meters away from the lava sea, after circling twice, Aisha successfully found a larger open space - a low, semi-open pyramid-shaped building.

"Team members, prepare to land."

The communication channel repeated the landing instructions twice, and Aisha took a deep breath, then dived diagonally with her legs, controlled the height of twenty meters, and adjusted her posture and jet angle.

The smooth operation ended at the end of the arc, and he landed smoothly under the force of the recoil, and then he was able to check the status of his teammates with ease.

Seeing her teammates landing one after another, Aisha smiled slightly.

"Huh~ It seems that the lighter gravity of the Magic Star does not interfere with my flight, and it is even easier."

Bana, who landed a little slower, slowed down and agreed with the captain's words.

"Well, although the difference in gravity is not much, objectively speaking, it does save a lot of effort."

"Hey, hey, do you think it's a little weird here?" Xinglai's voice suddenly sounded in the channel.

Just after landing, she felt a little cold on her back.

You must know that this is a high temperature environment of nearly 200 degrees, so there is no way it feels cool.

When she turned around, she saw a crystal sculpture staring blankly in her direction.

"Weird?" Aisha glanced at the nearby area, where there were twenty team members and more than thirty heads.

Well, nothing unusual.

"If it were a sculpture made of these rare crystals, it would be really scary."

The sculptures scattered nearby were of the same origin as the crystal palms found in the mine tunnels, and were made of the rare crystals she was familiar with.

Because the crystal palm is an orphan, the material analysis only conducted superficial analysis.

But seeing the number of crystal sculptures around her, the value of rare crystals plummeted in her heart.

It seems that some destructive research could be done.

Thinking of this, she made up her mind to ask a team to pack one and send it back.

"Yuzi, pick a crystal sculpture and drag it to the logistics team. Let them take it back to the camp for in-depth analysis. Maybe they can find something."

"A team of three will work together to deliver it as soon as possible."

"Yes! Make sure to complete the task." The members of the seven groups received the order, their voices filled with excitement, and they solemnly selected the sculptures, trying to pick the one with the most perfect carving.

The three of them transported the statue and broke away from the large team, and Aisha began to allocate personnel for this operation.

Based on the map scanned during the flight, this abandoned city was divided into areas with three of the most special buildings.

Aisha leads the first and second groups, one of which is her group, and the second group, headed by Fang Yan, is responsible for Area A of the landing point.

The third and fourth groups investigated Area B, and the fifth and sixth groups investigated Area C.

The other groups who received the task assignment left one after another, leaving only the six of them remaining in a group of crystal sculptures.

"Elsa, I'm afraid you will be promoted after this mission. Congratulations first."

Fang Yan, the sociology expert of the group, looked at his new friend and gave a sincere smile.

It was obvious that she had already heard the news that Aisha was definitely promoted.

"Did Lord Pace say that?"

Aisha was stunned for a moment. The issue of promotion seemed to her to be a possibility. After all, could the promotion of the captain's mate displace the captain? Mr. Pace was still young enough to retire, and he had no intention of leaving his job.

Now Fang Yan's straightforward blessing can be regarded as a certain degree of concreteness.

"Well, I have talked with the captain about this in the past two days. She said that the recruitment of crew members for the empire's latest scientific research ship is about to be completed across all civilizations, but there is still a shortage of one scientist."

"It just so happens that you are capable and experienced enough, Lord Gudu also agreed to the captain's suggestion."

To take up the position of captain on another ship...then I have to leave here.

After hearing the news from her colleagues, Aisha's original joy of getting promoted suddenly disappeared.

Bitter emotions arose, and she suppressed them in an instant, feeling tangled in her heart.

While doubting whether his active personality is suitable for being a leader, he also restrains his emotions in advance with the image of a leader.

After a long silence, Aisha raised her head and pretended to smile.

"Is that so? If you can be promoted to leader, what else can you be dissatisfied about?"

"Okay, let's continue the mission." Without giving others a chance to interrupt, Aisha walked directly towards the core building in Area A.

At a fast pace, Elsa kept bypassing the creepy crystal statues everywhere, and the team members followed in silence.

The low emotional aura blends perfectly into the extremely sad and distorted charm of the statues.

When you look closely at the statue's face, you can seem to experience howling, grief, astonishment, and ferociousness from its lifelike expression...

The emotions before death were frozen in time, frozen in the desolate and lonely underground world.

"It's hard to imagine how superb the craftsmanship of the stonemasons who created these crystal sculptures is. Nothing can be better than carving out souls."

Fang Yan observed the large number of statues along the way, with emotion and affirmation in his tone. "These statues are obviously of great significance in their society."

"I thought so too. Other groups sent messages saying that such crystal statues can be seen everywhere in the city."

Aisha put away the terminal's virtual projection screen and told other captains what they had seen during their low-altitude flight.

Then he pointed to the conical landmark building in front of him. A huge stone tablet was erected in the open space at the entrance of the building, full of words engraved on it.

"Fang Yan, the text found in the tunnel should have been analyzed two days ago. Can this be interpreted?"

"The general idea is fine, just look at mine." Mentioning his areas of expertise, Fang Yan proudly wanted to push down his glasses, but his fingers slipped over his visor.

A red cloud rose up in embarrassment on his face, and he pretended to be nonchalant and began to interpret the text.

Time passed by minute by second. Thanks to the preparation in advance, Fang Yan continued to guess and spent an hour completing the translation work.

Aisha's team took advantage of the break to walk around the conical building and found more stone carvings, guessing that this building was probably the city's library.

"Ahem, Aisha, I've finished interpreting it, can you come back?"

"No problem, just wait for me."

Knowing through the headset that Fang Yan's translation work was completed, Aisha replied and quickly returned to the huge stone monument, pretending to be listening to the story.

After sitting and watching the six people present, Fang Yan began to speak.

"Translations of the glyphs show that they all revolve around a race known as the Karanka, which is also the racial name of the statue, while the stoneworkers who crafted the statue themselves are not mentioned at all."

"This Karanka race has a strong mythological flavor in the narrative of the stone tablet. They breathed into the mountains to create life, and gave birth to new Karanka from the flames and rocks deep in the molten core of the planet."

"Other than those embarrassing words of excessive praise, the stone tablet only has so much effective information."

Fang Yan spread his hands and said that he had spent one minute talking about the results of an hour's work.

"It's over?"

"Yes, that's it."

"That's all?"

"only these……"

After confirming again and again, Aisha looked up at the tall stone tablet. The fonts were dense and numerous, and the words at high places had to fly up to read. There were thousands of words, but she didn't expect them to be all boastful nonsense.

"Real water." Elsa complained softly.

"Indeed, how do you think they became extinct?" Fang Yan found it hard to disagree with this point of view, and raised another question.

"Um...I guess this city was built by masons to commemorate the race named Karanka, so the time of extinction must have been a long time ago."

Aisha thought seriously about the reason for Karanka's extinction, paused for a moment and guessed.

"Perhaps it became extinct due to a great geographical discovery, so the masons built this kind of city underground, isolated from the world."

"I don't think so." Fang Yan stretched out his index finger and shook it left and right.

"Then what do you have to say, my alien expert friend?"

"I guess the underground water was drained by the masons, and then the Karanka people died from the heat."

"Haha." For some reason, Aisha felt that she was cold.

Because there are too many water stories, the creator watered other people to death, and the secret room murder incident belongs to it.

"Ding~"

Suddenly, a notification sound came from the headset, saving the increasingly cold atmosphere.

"It seems that other teams have discovered it."

Aisha laughed twice and hurriedly turned on the projection of her personal terminal. The large sharing screen was completely exposed and could be easily seen by others.

【Yuzu: Lady Elsa!!】

"It turns out to be Yuzi. She went back to deliver the statue before. According to the time, she should have come back looking for our location, right?"

The originator of the message was somewhat beyond Elsa's expectations. According to the time, Team Yuzu should have completed the escort mission long ago and returned to her.

Could it be that there was an accident?

The idea came to mind, and Aisha's fingers quickly tapped the projected keyboard.

[Elsa: Did something unexpected happen? 】

The message is sent, and the other party responds again after receiving it in just a few seconds.

[Yuzi: I'm at the shuttle camp now, and Holly and the others have just completed a deep material scan. 】

Shuttle camp? Aisha raised her head and looked at her teammates in surprise.

"How long did it take when we got down?"

"Forty or fifty minutes," Xing Lai, who responded the fastest, replied.

"In a little more than an hour, Yuzi and the others ran back to the ground from here and completed a material scan." Aisha was surprised by Yuzi's speed.

"Youzi is like this, she always gives her best when asked to do something." Xinglai was not surprised.

Even though she and Yuzi belong to different working time groups and are both grassroots crew members, of course they work together sometimes.

"I've heard about her character, but I didn't expect her to be so...responsible."

The jingle rang again, Aisha didn't say any more, this time Yuzi sent a long list of contents.

The first few sentences almost made her petrified.

[Yuzu: Lord Aisha! Those crystal statues, they are alive! The anatomical material scans of the statues show that they were actually living creatures, and they were also theoretical silicon-based life forms. 】

[Youzi: We have observed the silicon-based cells in the body of the statue, and the cells on the body surface are completely crystallized. 】

[Yuzu: Holly and the others speculate that this silicon-based life originally lived at a depth where oxygen does not naturally appear, and developed an anaerobic life form. After contacting oxygen in the surface air, its silicon-based molecules combined with oxygen.

Will form rare crystals and die extremely painfully.】

The bombardment of three consecutive pieces of bombshell news directly made Aisha stay in place.

The statue of Karanka is originally a kind of life?

Therefore, this city was not built by 'masonry' as they thought, but was the habitat of the Karanka people.

There has never been any stonework carving crystal statues, because every statue is a dead Karanka person, and those expressions like the last song before death are also real?

Elsa was a little uneasy and turned to look at the team members, but she only saw unnatural and forced looks.

Turning towards the nearest double statue in the open space, the half-height Karanka child was held tightly in the arms of the adult. The adult's expression was full of fear, staring in her direction, the facial features of the hell scene pieced together the soul, and the mouth was wide open in hysterics.

shouted, leaning down to protect the child firmly.

Karanka is filled with flames and rocks, tunnels dug into the ground, stone temples carved from the mountain, and giant multi-layered stone gates.

Many clues miraculously connected together, and the rise, decline and destruction of a race seemed to come alive in her mind.

The miracle of silicon-based life was born from the accident of lava, and they grew and grew in the comfortable environment of the lava sea.

From ignorance to the emergence of civilization, until you have a certain technical foundation.

The Karanka people became curious and wanted to know the world above the "earth", so the intricate tunnel system was born.

And during the mine explosion on Mojie Planet two hundred years ago, he tasted the 'poison' of oxygen and turned to sealing everything in the sky and the earth.

They endured the threat of oxidation, desperately collapsed the mine, wrapped the stone temple inside and outside in two layers, and happily returned to the underground paradise.

Until... Guduren arrived, and the sound of collisions on the rock formations was the whisper of death in the rocks.

This is a "great geographical discovery" by Gudu people, which proves the existence of silicon-based life systems.

But for the Karanka people, this was the 'discovery of geography'.

…

"Zi~zi~ku..."

Elsa settled on the scorching earth and stared coldly at the stone statues.

The headset's channel received a signal from nowhere and emitted noisy noise.

It's like telling the statue's babble...

(Whispers in the Stone, End)

Published at 23:59, there are no pigeons today!!

The actual word count of the final chapter of [Whispers in the Stone] is 5180 words!

The first time in my life is 5,000 words.

Please vote for me, please recommend me. I will give you one after the flowers are scattered on the first grave~

ヾ(≧∪≦*)ノ〃

…

Although the pace has suddenly accelerated and the shortened plot is a bit difficult to handle, fortunately it has been written and the plot should not be too abrupt.

(End of chapter)