Chapter 223 Smugglers

Today’s old Dunling looks dull again. A faint mist overflows from the ground. The chimney rises up with gray and black plumes of smoke, one by one, propping up the distance between the sky and the earth. The machine runs slowly, pushing the miraculous creation. , In between, the airship like a giant whale cruises during the period, like an illusion in another world.

For people like Lorenzo who have lived in Old Dunling for a long time, all this has indeed become accustomed. This is the forefront of steam technology, and new things are born every day, but for those from afar, everything is here. All are extremely novel.

The street lights are already covered with banners, adding a bit of colorfulness to this gray world. Many strange strangers can be seen on the streets. They are walking excitedly on the streets of Old Dunling, looking up at the sky in the clouds. Of the shadows.

  Because of the visits of the missions, tourists have also increased. Most of them visit factories. Such a large-scale mechanical assembly line is extremely rare in their country. In this case, it has become a scenic spot.

In order to maintain law and order, the mounted police have also increased. The roads seem a bit crowded and lively, but these have nothing to do with Lorenzo. Under his coat is the weapon that Joey brought. He is very busy and busy going. Solve the case and kill people.

The   cleaning agency was busy looking for the whereabouts of "Apocalypse." For this reason, the remaining knight commanders were transferred back to Old Dunling, so those smugglers could only rely on Lorenzo himself.

  Like the connection in the dark, Lorenzo always has a strange feeling, it seems that this humble case will lead him into a huge vortex.

  It can be clearly seen that the area bordering the Xiacheng District has a lot of police force. Bypassing the sight of the mounted police, Lorenzo sneaked into the Xiacheng District again. He needs to find the Rat King. That guy must know something.

Lorenzo searched for the traces of the bad rats. As usual, these homeless people are very common. They wander around, sometimes not only in the Xiacheng district. But I don’t know why Lorenzo walked here for a long time. A homeless man didn't see it, as if they had disappeared overnight.

His gaze was somewhat wary, he lowered the brim of his hat, completely concealed his face in the shadows, and put his hands in his pockets. Just like before, his pockets were torn, and his hands could be reached directly under the coat and held tightly. Gun handle.

  Something happened... In Xiacheng, the atmosphere here is not quite right.

  Although Xiacheng is chaotic and dirty, it has never been so lifeless. As Lorenzo went deeper, he couldn't see other people until a mouse flashed past his eyes.

   Rats are too common, but there are not many mice with chains tied to their tails, and they are still the yellow police chains that Lorenzo has seen.

  He looked around, as if he wanted to find the guy who was controlling everything secretly, but he found nothing, and the mouse almost disappeared from sight.

  Lorenzo followed him without even thinking about it. Judging from his previous pursuit in the Rat's Nest, the warning yellow was to indicate the location, and the mysterious Rat King wanted to let himself go somewhere.

   may be a trap or a clue. Lorenzo doesn't care about this anymore. His clothes are full of weapons. At this moment, the detective is fully armed.

The mouse finally led Lorenzo to a distorted building, just like other houses in the Lower City. This was a properly dilapidated house with the door open and the inside was completely dark. Lorenzo walked in and found that it was basically inside. A vacant room, nothing but the disgusting smell.

   "I am really more and more curious about who you are..."

Lorenzo looked at the vacant room, paused for a while and suddenly thought of something. He walked to the corner, threw the folding knife, and thrust it into the ground forcefully. The sharp blade easily penetrated the hidden wooden cover. .

   Just as Lorenzo did when he first went to the Rat’s Nest, the Rat King seemed to have expected all Lorenzo’s actions, and the prompts were just right.

   slashed open the hidden wooden cover, and a dark hole appeared in front of Lorenzo.

   "Isn't it..."

   Sniffing the stench, Lorenzo knew exactly where the hole led, but he had to leave for the truth of all this.

   jumped down, and there was a fragile sound in the darkness. The mouse was waiting for Lorenzo, and seeing Lorenzo coming down, it set off again, guiding Lorenzo to advance in this complicated tunnel.

  Lorenzo didn't know how long he had been going forward, when he lost the trace of the mouse, a light appeared at the end of the tunnel.

But before Lorenzo leaned out to observe the outside world, the turbulent steam poured in from the outside, and the moist high-temperature gas steamed Lorenzo for a while. Fortunately, the gas seems to have overflowed for a long time, and the temperature has dropped a lot, otherwise the transient High temperature can easily burn and steam people.

   Wiping off the water stains on his face, Lorenzo breathed heavily, and moved towards the entrance of the cave again. He seemed to know his position.

   poked out his head, the outside world was dim, only the faint light above his head, but also due to disrepair for a long time, the light was not strong, and it flashed out from time to time.

  The creation of steel breathed steadily, as if falling asleep, and from time to time there was a mechanical turning sound, like its dream.

It slept peacefully. In the dark, I don’t know how long it was silent like this. Lorenzo saw it breathe again in the dimness. Hot steam overflowed from the cracks in the machinery, surging out like a dam-breaking wave. Filled up the entire space.

Lorenzo directly hid in the cave, and ran a few steps vigorously, as far as possible from the entrance of the cave, but the rush of air still caught up with him, and he staggered and fell to the ground, followed by blazing heat. The steam wave passed over his body, and after the high temperature, it became cold.

  It was cold and hot, and Lorenzo couldn't help sneezing.

  The outside world is the pillar of the furnace. To be precise, it is a certain exhaust part of the pillar of the furnace. Presumably this is the place where the steam overflows every day. It is released from here, guided by the pipe, and returned to the ground.

  It’s just that Lorenzo didn’t expect it to be so huge and so deadly.

Just like its name, the main structure of the Pillar of the Furnace is cylindrical, like a stone pillar inserted deep below the surface, but no one knows how deep it is, even its creator. In this way, it is said that there are thousands of design drawings of the Pillars of the Furnace, and they weigh more than 20 tons.

Of course, this is only the initial scale of the Pillar of the Furnace. After so many years of technological updates and the whimsical ideas of those researchers, more and more new functions have been placed on it, and the Pillar of the Furnace follows The expansion of the old Dunling grew savagely together, until now it looks like this.

Lorenzo stood at the entrance of the cave. The dimness did not affect him. He could see the steel barrier spreading to the end of his line of sight. There were countless exhaust holes on the rusty surface. The whole air was humid and warm. There is a little stagnant water.

  It seemed that the exhaust was temporarily over. Lorenzo jumped down the hole vigilantly and stepped on the damp ground.

There are still a few corpses from where he came down. They look like they have been dead for a long time. The flesh is decayed and the clothes are entangled together. They have a disgusting look. The arms are raised with difficulty. This is the last posture of the deceased. NS.

  Lorenzo can easily guess their identity and cause of death. They should be bad rats. The winter days of the old Dunling can be extremely difficult. They tried to keep warm here, but they were suffocated and steamed by the hot steam in an instant.

   Looking away, Lorenzo knew very well that there must be something wrong with the Rat King guiding him here. He moved forward in the dark, looking a little anxiously.

  He didn't dare to get too far from the entrance of the cave. Although he was a demon hunter and had encountered any critical situations, Lorenzo had not been steamed yet, he was still a little panicked.

  I don’t know when the next exhaust will be. Lorenzo is worried that he is too far away from the hole, but there is no shelter.

After walking violently for a while, the sound of mechanical rotation sounded, and the hot gas was about to be released. At this time, Lorenzo also saw the way out. On the other side of the wall, there was a ladder extending to the faint light above. It is a maintenance channel for workers.

  Almost no time to think, Lorenzo ran directly towards the pit lane, where he was confident to get there before the steam swallowed himself up.

  The so-called virility is probably like this. He jumped up and stepped back and forth on the rusty iron ladder. At the same time, the hot gas began to be released, and there was a whistling wind in the darkness.

  Suddenly Lorenzo stepped empty. The iron ladder was eroded by damp day and night, and it was already fragile. Under Lorenzo's pedaling, he could no longer bear it, and it broke apart.

Lorenzo directly swung the folding knife, just as he did in the Rat's Nest, cut into the wall and moved forward again with force. The door lock was already rusted, but fortunately, Lorenzo's physique was very suitable for violent unlocking, and the handle was heavy. Hitting the door lock, Lorenzo opened the door and closed it forcefully when the hot gas hit.

  He was in a safe space, the air was muddy and sultry, like in a steamer.

Lorenzo became more and more curious about what would be waiting for him next. Of course, if he had time in the future, he also wanted to explore this mysterious underground world. No one knew what was in these shadows that could not be illuminated. Strange things.

  The passage is very long, and there are traces of someone coming inside, and Lorenzo has been moving deeper, and it took an unknown amount of time before he came back to the outside world, but this time it was different from what he thought.

It is a huge underground space. At the end of the passage is the machinery of the Pillar of the Furnace, but I don’t know who renovated it. You can see many buildings that were not originally built on these machinery. From a distance Go, Lorenzo can still see some figures walking in it.

The sound of crashing water came from it, and Lorenzo fell on his knees. He was in a higher position. The iron ladder leading to this place seemed to have been damaged long ago. Those people did not realize that there was such a hidden intersection here. .

  After Lorenzo hid in the pipe, because this space is located in the dark underground, only the top searchlights are maintaining the lighting, but also because of its limitations, it can not light up the whole situation, Lorenzo hid in the dark and was not found.

   "Are these people... looking for trash?"

Lorenzo looked at it intently. This seemed to be a certain water inlet of the Pillar of Furnace. Because the boiler needed water, the Thames River was diverted into the Pillar of Furnace. This should be one of several inlets, but this group of people are entering. A barrier was built on the channel of the water inlet to filter the debris in the water.

  No... it's not just filtering debris, they purposefully find what they want from the debris, one after another, boxes wrapped in tarps.

   "Smuggling?"

Lorenzo felt a little surprised. Although smuggling is very common in Xiacheng, for example, in order to smuggle small objects, some people will swallow the objects in their abdomen, or hide the objects in buckets, and then fix the buckets on the bottom of the ship. It's been so long, and Lorenzo hasn't seen anything like this.

  They threw their objects directly into a certain fixed section of the Thames, and then those objects would arrive here with the current.

  Although he is not a genius, it is also a peculiar idea.

  So what does the Rat King do to guide himself here?

   Lorenzo approached curiously. He hid in the shadows, approaching the underground dock a little bit, his hands were already clenched with the jackknife, and his eyes were cold.

   "Is this all the goods?"

  Someone asked.

   "Yes, the last box." Someone replied.

The man pryed open the box. Although the water was released, some water still got inside, but this didn't affect much. He looked down at the potion soaked in the water with a blurry color on it. .

   "Now that the investigation is getting more and more stringent, the channel for hallucinogens is basically blocked, and now only we have the stock, this is an opportunity to make a fortune." Someone said.

   "Wealth has nothing to do with us, but it is enough to drink some soup."

  The man said, reaching into the box and taking out one casually.

  "This shipment is complete, there is nothing damaged...but there is a damage standard on it."

He looked at the guys around him, everyone’s faces were smirked. After all, this kind of transportation would inevitably cause some damage to the goods. The goods are so complete, but they also need to be "damaged" artificially. Only them are here. No one will find out.

  The man distributed the hallucinogen. Someone couldn't wait to inject it directly here, and then fell down, causing everyone to laugh, but these people have not realized the danger lurking in the dark.

  Lorenzo hid in the shadows and slowly approached, with a cold face, he suddenly understood everything.

  Despite the distance and the darkness here, Lorenzo clearly noticed the disturbing breath when the man injected the hallucinogen.

  The breath of demons.

  The man who fell to the ground got up, suddenly something caught his eyes, and he looked into the darkness.

  The burning whiteness slowly rises in the darkness. It may be that dreamlike illusion is at work. He rubbed his eyes, and the whiteness disappeared. He smiled silly and relaxed.

  (End of this chapter)