Epoch of Twilight

When Luo Yuan dived to a depth of nearly 1,500 meters, he could already feel that the induction was not far below the slope, maybe 20 or 30 meters, or just a step away. This kind of spiritual induction cannot be precise. Luo Yuan can only make a rough judgment on the location.

He hurriedly stopped to release the space bubble, and a hole with a diameter of three to four meters suddenly appeared in the ground.

Because of the deep isolation of the stratum and the influence of geothermal heat, the nuclear winter has not affected this place at all. The temperature here has reached more than 40 degrees, which is about the same as before the disaster. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why this group of clones stayed here for a long time.

Luo Yuan sensed the direction carefully, and immediately started digging.

The geology here is made up of sedimentary rocks. This kind of flake rock like a book page is quite brittle. Under Luo Yuan's great strength, it is almost effortless. Traces of shells and aquatic plants, it is obvious that the reconstruction area and the Taklamakan Desert where it is located were still a vast ocean hundreds of millions of years ago.

After only digging a few meters, Luo Yuan keenly discovered that the nearby rocks had been completely shattered by some kind of man-made force, and had become extremely dense. This phenomenon made him happy, which meant that these clones were not far away. up.

He immediately sped up his movements, and continued to dig for less than ten meters, when he heard a bang, and smoke and dust flew up.

In addition to the annoying dust, there is also a stench similar to that of a corpse. He seemed to think of something, and his heart sank, and he immediately followed his short body into it. This is a small and cramped cave, only one meter high m two.

He had to squat down to barely enter.

This did not come as a surprise to Luo Yuan. This is underground, and the surrounding area is sealed. The rocks cannot be transported outside, which makes it impossible to carry out ordinary excavation. If you want to open up a space, you can only compress the nearby rocks. Every inch of space opened, It is a huge project, time-consuming and labor-intensive.

The cave here is narrow and slightly tortuous, and only one person can accommodate it, with a total area of ​​only two or three square meters.

However, this is not what Luo Yuan pays attention to. What he sees in front of him makes him shocked and feels heavy in his heart.

He saw clones one by one, lying on the ground in disorder, there were as many as thirteen in total. The youngest of these children seemed to be only one or two years old, and the oldest were four or five years old.

Eight of them have completely lost contact with him, and without exception, they are all smaller clones.

Luo Yuan was a little ashamed of the darkness of human nature that he thought of before. Their bodies were still largely intact, but the skin had been slightly rotted, and there was a faint stench on the surface.

Obviously, these dead individuals did not have a fusion body, and they could not survive for a long time in the environment without air and food. They might have died after staying here for half a day.

What makes Luo Yuan a little strange is how these relatively weaker survivors escaped here together, but this issue is not in a hurry now.

He looked at the other clones that still had a breath of life. These surviving individuals are not going to get better. Each one is skinny and skinny, like skeletons. They lie on each other, and they seem to have entered a dormant state, completely stopped Breathing, even heartbeat, can no longer be felt. If Luo Yuan's spirit could not be sensed, he might have thought he was dead.

At this time, it had been three or four months since the disaster. Without water or food for such a long time, their bodies were obviously on the verge of collapse.

In fact, the lack of food is second, and the most important thing is the lack of water. Once there is no water, cold fusion cannot be synthesized, and this cave obviously has no water at all, and even due to excessive compression of the surrounding rock walls, a circle of water is formed nearby. The high-density water-absorbing layer makes the air here extremely dry.

Luo Yuan used his will to check the physical condition of one of the clones. The condition was quite bad. His cells were all shriveled, a large amount of water had been lost in the cell fluid, and the fusion reaction in the mitochondria had also become insignificant.

The blood in his body has almost coagulated, countless red blood cells are crowded together, most of them have died, and the remaining water and nutrients are scarce by other cells. In other words, his body has entered the stage of self-eating.

If it continues to delay, once even the internal organs start to be damaged in a large area, it will not be far from death.

"Fortunately, everything is still in time!"

Luo Yuan's heart was both heavy and grateful, without hesitation, he immediately started the curvature flight, and quickly sent the survivors out of the ground together.

As for those corpses, he left them in this undisturbed cave. There is no better grave than this one thousand and five hundred meters deep underground.

At this time, hailstorms were still falling outside. Luo Yuan considered that their bodies were already extremely weak, and they might not even be able to bear the cold outside, so he did not stop and returned directly to Hope City.

…………

Luo Yuan's villa.

A group of people surrounded the five mummy-like children, both curious and intrusive.

"Mayor Luo, these children have endured long-term hunger, their consciousness has been in shock, and various organs in their bodies have stopped working. They can only slowly recuperate their bodies by injecting nutrient solution, but I'm afraid... there is little hope." Ye Qiu Yu put down the stethoscope, checked it, and said to Luo Yuan with a pale face.

The condition of these children is really beyond her comprehension. They are not breathing at all, and they have no heartbeat at all. Even their bodies are cold and extremely stiff. If Luo Yuan insisted that they were still alive, she would have to scold them for being crazy. , using the dead body to entertain her.

"You don't have to worry about it so much, give him some water first." Luo Yuan said, frowning slightly.

Ye Qiuyu opened her mouth, intending to stop it. As a professional doctor, she knows very well that people in shock cannot be given water if they have no swallowing reaction. Because of Luo Yuan's majesty, covering his head to pour water, forget it, he has already reached this point, he can only be treated as a living doctor.

"Luo Yuan, where did you find this group of people?" Huang Jiahui couldn't help asking.

"It's not far from Xinjing!" Luo Yuan said.

"Now, is there anyone alive outside?" Zhao Yali asked out of curiosity.

"I don't know, maybe there are still people alive!" Luo Yuan shook his head and said, most of the people who can survive today are powerful evolutionaries who lived in the wild before, but these people either lived in the underground ice layer, It is rarely active on the ground, or it is far away from the reconstruction area, so it is almost difficult to find, and even if it can be found, Luo Yuan does not want to look for it. These people have already lost their basic humanity in the cruel existence, and they are no different from wild beasts. Bringing them back to Hope City will only be harmful and useless.

"This group of children is quite special. They are all clones of me and have some kind of connection with me, otherwise they would not be found."

Luo Yuan continued, there is no need to hide this kind of thing, and there is no way to hide it. If you don't explain it now, if they wake up and call him dad again, you will have to explain it for a long time.

Everyone looked at each other, and saw shock and curiosity in each other's eyes. Luo Yuanke never mentioned this matter.

Even Ye Qiuyu, who had just returned from serving water, almost dropped his glass when he heard the shocking news.

Human cloning is too far away from ordinary people, and it is not even heard of before a certain position.

"It's nothing surprising. Human cloning technology has already matured. With the current human fertility rate, if there is no cloning, human beings will perish in a short time. I have been staying in the laboratory for this period of time, just for this matter." See everyone With a look of disbelief, Luo Yuan explained.

After a while, Ye Qiuyu took out a tool and began to pry the mouth of one of the clones.

She is not a delicate girl, she used to be a doctor in the field, in that kind of environment, there is no room for hypocrisy, once in the war period, sometimes she has to fight hundreds of wounded in a day, plus she took the energy crystal core yesterday After that, her strength is even greater now, enough that ordinary adult men can't compare with her.

But this time, no matter how much force she used, even if her face turned red and she used all her strength to nurse, the child's teeth seemed to be fixed and remained motionless.

Ye Qiuyu's face turned red, and he said hesitantly, "Luo...Mayor Luo, I can't pry their mouths open!"

Seeing her timid expression, Luo Yuan smiled and walked over: "Let me come!"

He took the tool, walked up to one of the clones, opened the teeth of one of the clones lightly without using any force, and then said to Ye Qiuyu, "Give me the water, please?"

Ye Qiuyu quickly handed over the water, and before Luo Yuan fed the water, she mustered up the courage to remind: "Luo...Mayor Luo, as a doctor, I must remind you that patients cannot eat when they are unconscious. It's going down the windpipe."

Luo Yuan froze for a moment, then couldn't help but glanced at her and said, "Thank you for your reminder, but for them, it's not a big deal."

It's really not a big problem. These fusion body clones don't need to breathe. They are severely dehydrated. As long as water enters their bodies, it will be absorbed by the cells immediately. Even the skin is slowly absorbing the moisture in the air.

Luo Yuan had noticed this phenomenon that had never been discovered before.

Compared with when they first left the underground, after entering Hope City, the skin color of these clones has improved a lot, unlike the previous gray, wrinkled, and gradually gray-white trend.

Immediately afterwards, Luo Yuan took the cup and poured it into the mouth of one of the clones. The action was simple and rough, and the onlookers were shocked.

"Get some more glasses of water!" Luo Yuan turned his head and said.

Huang Jiahui and the others were stunned for a moment, and hurried over to pour water.

Next, Luo Yuan poured nearly 500 milliliters of water into each of the clones one by one. Seeing that their stomachs were swollen and could no longer hold them, he stopped. This amount of water should be enough.

As soon as Luo Yuan put down the cup, the body of the first clone to drink water underwent an astonishing change.

First, his gray-white skin, which seemed to have been soaked in lime, quickly faded away, and it began to turn white in a blink of an eye. Immediately, the temperature of his body began to rise continuously.

From the original body temperature close to zero degrees Celsius, it quickly reached the body temperature of ordinary people, but this is just the beginning.

Their skin started to turn red and hot, and they were covered with overwhelming heat. The mutant couldn't help touching it curiously, then quickly shrank back and hid behind Luo Yuan.

"Is he all right?" Zhao Yali worried.

Luo Yuan touched their body temperature, it is estimated to be around 70 or 80 degrees, which is already lethal to ordinary people, but it is too normal for a fusion body. Once he exercises vigorously, his body temperature can even make Wood kindling:

"Don't worry, it's okay. They have been missing for too long. The mitochondrial function is temporarily out of balance, and it will return to normal after a while."

Immediately after the second, the third...the fifth also underwent drastic changes.

Time passed slowly, and in just five minutes, the complexion of the clone that changed first had become shiny and rosy, and the heartbeat began to recover. It didn't take long before breathing became normal, even though these things were difficult for him. Not much use, just as a leftover instinct.

After a few more minutes, the eyelids of the clone suddenly trembled a few times. The next moment, a pair of bright eyes suddenly opened without warning. He sat up and looked at Luo Yuan at the first glance.

"You are... our father!"