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Mark is a very kind person, and he always brings a few unique American humor when he speaks. But for some reason, Lin Xiang always feels that under his slightly melancholy lake blue eyes, something unknown seems to be hidden.

The cold wind slowly strodes over the city, bringing up a wave of dust that sways on the ground. The reinforced concrete building complex hidden in the fog shows a dead-like coldness. Various vehicles parked on the road are messy, and the collision between them completely blocks the entire road. Through the open doors, you can see that the soft seats are filled with dry and hard solidified plasma.

Rotten food can be seen everywhere in the shops on the street. On the undulating steamer, there are several moldy and hardened steamed buns hanging. On the edge of the broken glass bottles, there are dull drink stains. On the fruit stalls separated by wooden board walls, the piles of fruits and melons and fruits have rotted into rotten slurries. The black liquid slowly flows out from under the pile of fruits, condensed into a disgusting pool in the recesses of the road.

There was a faint smell of fishy smell in the air. No one could tell where its actual source was.

Except for the bugs and mice that occasionally flashed in the corners, there was no movement in the whole city.

No one.

To be precise, no large creature can be seen at all.

Lin Xiang looked around in confusion, straightened up and walked slowly towards the end of the street in front of him.

It's so quiet. This is just two different things from the Kunming City he remembers.

When the 75th Division entered the city, Kunming was completely occupied by mutants. There were black mutant creatures waving sharp bone blades everywhere, and pairs of people-eating eyes radiating blood-red lights, bloody corpses and sticky semi-condensed liquids could be seen everywhere, making it the only decoration in the city.

Now, except for the dry blood on the ground and walls, and the rotten limbs scattered around the streets, there is no more evidence that a large-scale spread of viruses has occurred here. As many as millions of mutants seem to have been evaporated or transparent, and no trace is found at all.

Maybe it is the side effects caused by being infected! Lin Xiang feels that his body has been very different from before. The strength produced by muscle expansion is stronger, the body moves more quickly, the brain reacts faster, and even the subconscious awareness of danger seems to be becoming more and more sensitive.

Intuition tells myself that there seems to be no creature in this empty city that can threaten its existence.

Where are they?

Thinking of this, he subconsciously turned around and looked at the three United Nations observers who followed him.

Mark's brows were also frowning, as if he was thinking about a question that had not been answered. The other two members were waiting beside him, vigilantly paying attention to the movements around him. Only when the officer who was a translator came forward would he occasionally talk briefly.

“Are we going to the wrong place?”

"Is this really Kunming?"

"Why didn't you see those terrible mutant creatures?"

Such questions were revealed one after another from several observers. Yang Guang, the officer who served as the translator, could only smile bitterly and shake his head.

In fact, he also wanted to know the answers to these questions.

Just as several people were arguing, Lin Xiang discovered that Mark seemed to have a strong interest in a pool of hardened blood on the roadside.

He squatted down and approached the cracked gap on the bloody surface for a long time to observe, and opened the strap of his backpack and took out a silver suitcase from it. He untied the lock on the surface and slowly opened it, and a set of precision instruments embedded in shock-proof foam was also revealed.

Take out the tweezers from the tool bag, slowly pry open the dry and hard part covering the surface of the blood clot, and dip some from the semi-coagulant that remains moist at the bottom. After putting it in the test tube, add a certain amount of culture liquid to dilute. Finally, the glass tube that has become bright red is carefully stuffed into the opening of the instrument.

"Why, why is this happening?"

Looking at the series of data listed on the instrument screen, Mark's face instantly changed to white, his lips covered with thick beards were opened, and his head was also shaking back and forth gently under the shocked expression.

"What happened?" Yang Guang, who felt abnormal, couldn't help but turn his head and ask.

"nothing."

Mark quickly changed the expression on his face, and his tight muscles quickly changed into a faint smile: "It's just an inactive sample, and it's normal for the data to be errored."

As he said that, he quickly closed the lid of the instrument and looked at the dead and lonely street in the distance with a serious expression and murmured: "It's best to catch a living mutant."

Lin Xiang noticed that when he said this, Mark would unconsciously rotate a ring on his left middle finger.

Not only him, but the other two armed observers also wore the same thing.

Judging from the gloss on the surface, its texture seems to be made of silver. As for the pattern, it is a black skeleton protruding from the ring surface...

Two hours later, the search area had entered the inner ring of the city.

The entrance to the expressway is surrounded by more than ten tightly squeezed cars. Their drivers all want to rush onto the road in the shortest time, but in panic, they inevitably collided and rubbed. In the end, the escape road was completely blocked, and the thousands of cars following it became useless decorations in the middle of the road.

The smell in the air became stronger and stronger. In an empty small square at the end of the road, searchers found the source of the smell.

Hundreds of black corpses lay on the ground in a row. Their bodies were bent, and their entire spine was bent at an exaggerated angle. The hands and feet were completely extended, and the muscle surfaces were raised with dry and hard veins. The slender fingertips were stretched out like needles and cones. They were either inserted tightly into the ground or tried hard to hold on to everything they could climb. It looked like a pile of unusual prawns that were thrown into a pot of boiling water and cooked to death.

Although it was already autumn, the weather could not feel any coolness at all. It was almost noon, and the red sun was hanging above my head. The hot arrows shot directly from the distant planets baked the empty square into a hot and burning place. The pieces of meat stuck to the rotten corpse also emitted an extremely nauseating odor of vomiting.

“verygood—”

Seeing this, Mark excitedly snapped his fingers and ran to the nearest corpse. He put down his backpack, took out the instrument, took out the scalpel in the tool bag, skillfully cut the hardened part of the body surface, cut a piece from the muscles that had not yet been completely decayed, stuffed it into the test tube with metal tweezers, added nutrient solution, and analyzed...

Holding the assault rifle in his hand, Lin Xiang patrolled back and forth in the square, carefully observing each corpse.

The more he looked, the more he felt the doubts and surprises.

There is no doubt that these dead are mutants who have been infected by the virus. The black skin and sharp bone blades alienated from the wrists have proved this.

There are no scars on their bodies, and there are no signs of bullet holes, blunt strikes, or splits. It feels like it is a sudden attack of some disease and death caused by internal reasons.

What surprised Lin Xiang the most was another remarkable change that no one expected of the corpse - aging.

Their skin is very crisp, and the dry and cracked surface is covered with fine wrinkles. Especially the black faces, with deep cheeks, protruding foreheads, and shrinking lips. They are all human old men with abnormal skin tone.

Could it be that they are old and dead?

Shaking his head, holding up a tilted wooden stool on the street, Lin Xiang sat on the assault rifle in his hand. His eyes were coldly looking at the busy Americans in the distance, and he never said a word from beginning to end...

Kunming under the night sky can no longer find the bustling and prosperity of the past. On the towering cement buildings, beautiful neon lights are still there, and the giant electronic screens on the street are intact, but they will no longer emit dazzling lights and pictures. Only empty buildings stand silently under the dark sky, as if they are ferocious beasts with their mouths open and patiently waiting for their prey.

A small building facing the street with the "Industrial and Commercial Bank of China" has become a campground for the team.

Maybe it's because the money comes too easily! The inside of this type of building is often extremely solid. Through the thick bulletproof glass on the trading table, you can clearly see all the movements outside. Three steel bolts as thick as arms are blocked across the door gate more than two inches thick, enough to block all foreign objects that want to enter. Only the two ends at the door are carved of stones and specially used to intimidate civilian depositors, still maintaining the false majesty of grinning.

The marching stove was ignited and cooked canned tomatoes and beef in the can. Dipped in delicious and warm soup, the dry and rough compressed food tasted much smoother. Just boiling water, rinse a cup of strong tea with a faint fragrance. The fatigue and fatigue caused by long-term activities will be slowly driven away.

"These Americans are doing very weird, they have problems."

Holding slightly hot black tea in a military porcelain jar, Yang Guang walked leisurely towards the captain Lin Xiang, who was standing at the whistle at the door, and whispered: "I have paid attention to the analysis data on Mark's instrument. He seems to be comparing samples and storage data. It seems that they know something."

Lin Xiang nodded quietly. Although he was half-sided, the corner of his eyes kept staring at the three observers in the distance.

According to the Americans, they discovered anomalies in Kunming from ground photos taken by the Big Bird V satellite. At the same time, they claimed that according to remote sensing data, the number of mutated organisms in the city has been greatly reduced, and sending a capable team to enter it can completely obtain the samples needed to analyze the virus. Based on the other party's promise to enjoy resources and intelligence and jointly develop agreement projects such as immune drugs, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs finally agreed to this small-scale search operation.

However, Lin Xiang didn't think so.

These observers are obviously not as interested in collecting samples as analyzed. Although they have always claimed to require live samples, they never miss any mutant remains that can be used as tests.

Perhaps they have obtained relevant data from pathogens that broke out in the Americas, and what they are doing now is just to compare the differences. The problem is that they do not seem to think there is any danger in this trip. Even the surprise of not finding traces of mutants when they first entered the city was deliberately artificial.

Lin Xiang cannot directly see through people's hearts with his naked eyes. However, he can detect abnormalities in the other party's psychological and brain through muscle movements, skin contractions, and slight changes in body temperature and mouth, eyes and other parts.

When lying, the body will also have unconscious reactions.

Even he himself didn't know why this happened. Since his body was cut by the mutant bone blade, his body's reaction speed has far exceeded that of ordinary people. Although he didn't know the specific reason, Lin Xiang was sure that he had been infected.

Epigenetic level: parasitic.

Benchmark: One Star

Is this my current state?

No one can tell him the answer.

A mosquito flying in the night sky slowly fell down. It stretched out its hard and sharp needle-shaped mouthpiece, trying to pierce into Lin Xiang's exposed skin and sucked the fresh sweet and sweet blood freely. But unexpectedly, it was discovered that no matter how it was done, it could not fall on the other party's skin. It was like a strange piece of magic phlegm, which would always expand and swell with the height of its own take-off and landing like a shadow. The tiny and essential distance in the middle could never be broken through.

This is a small game that Lin Xiang just discovered recently. He can adjust the strength of a certain muscle at will so that it can change arbitrarily according to the requirements. It just made the poor mosquito suffer. This humble creature can never understand why the prey in front of him can never be eaten into his mouth?

"Precaution about all their actions. Follow them to get the samples they need and figure out their true intentions. Perhaps, they know much more inside information than we thought."

Judging from the physiological structure of humans, although night is the best time for the body to relax and rest, it is far less than the sunny day, and it can bring a sense of sensory safety.

At 10 o'clock in the morning, the team had already crossed the central axis of the city. Standing in the bustling downtown of the past, the searchers were looking at it, a quiet and bleak and uninhabited area.

There are more and more mutant corpses who die on the roadside. As previously discovered, there are still no wounds on them, and the aging on their skin and faces appear to be the only cause of death.
Chapter completed!