Behind them, Chen Yehu stood outside the forbidden area, silently watching the monitor screen in the command vehicle. He said solemnly, "Does this mean we can't drive too fast in Forbidden Area 008? If we exceed 25 kilometers per hour, we'll be breaking the rules?"
More than ten operations staff officers were also constantly analyzing the video, but the refugees in the video did not do anything else out of line.
Chen Yehu asked, "Is there anything unusual about this refugee's name, age, or medical history?"
There is a forbidden place that people with the surname Wang are not allowed to enter, another that people over 45 years old cannot enter, and yet another that is restricted to those who are C-level or above.
The most outrageous place is number 124, a forbidden zone, which is off-limits to people who have had prostatitis.
Therefore, the analysis rules are a very comprehensive, complex, and specific matter. The consortium has a set of analysis procedures, and all the refugees, except for Qing Chen and a few others who joined temporarily, have a complete set of filing information.
The larger the number of researchers, the easier it is to comprehensively analyze the rules.
A staff officer replied, "Sir, facial recognition is complete. This refugee's name is Li Yuejin. Three characters in his name overlap with those of other refugees, so we can rule out name-related factors. His wife's name is also unrestricted, so we can rule out wife-related factors. He is 37 years old, and some refugees share the same birth year, month, and day as him, so we can rule out birth year-month-year factors. He has a medical history, but 129 refugees in the group have the same medical history as him. ...Sir, we have ruled out all factors. However, we cannot yet determine whether he has been cuckolded. This factor needs to be addressed by questioning his wife next."
There was once a very strange forbidden place where entering it would break the rules if your partner had cheated on you... There was precedent for this kind of judgment.
"Leaving that factor aside for now, there are over 1,300 refugees, and too many of them have had their partners cheat on them... So is it really because they're moving too fast?" Chen Yehu nodded calmly: "Let's record this as a guideline for our next steps."
Chapter 724, Forbidden Mystery!
"What about the cause of death? Has it been analyzed?" Chen Yehu asked the operations staff officer.
The staff analyzed: "The refugees' skin color did not change significantly, and there were no obvious external injuries. There are currently two possibilities. One is that they were bitten by an unknown poisonous insect, and the strong protein toxin caused organ failure and cardiac arrest. The other is that there may be tiny 'spores' or bacteria floating in the air in the forbidden area. Both of these could have caused the current cause of death, and an autopsy is needed to determine the specific cause."
Chen Yehu nodded: "Then there's no need to rush to analyze the cause of death. Just know the rules and then try to avoid them."
Five minutes later, in one of the 120 live video feeds, two more refugees collapsed to the ground.
The operations staff in the command vehicle were excited. Had they discovered another new rule?
They didn't care whether the refugees died or not; all they cared about was whether they could decipher all the rules of Forbidden Land 008 this time!
They extracted that video segment and replayed it repeatedly.
In the new video, a middle-aged man is walking in the woods when he suddenly slips and falls to the ground.
The most critical moment arrived: someone reached out to pull him up, but both of them fell to the ground and convulsed at the same time, and soon lay motionless on the ground.
In the video, Liu Pengsheng, the team leader of Class 1, walked to the two corpses, checked their carotid arteries with his fingers, and then confirmed, "They are dead."
More than a dozen operations staff analyzed: "Excluding factors such as age, name, and medical history, the new rule should be that people cannot shake hands. But what is still uncertain is: if people of the same sex cannot shake hands, can people of the opposite sex?"
Another operations staff officer said, "The fact that the death was personally confirmed by two combat squad leaders suggests it's not a lie, and the two squad leaders were quite responsible."
Chen Yehu nodded: "We don't need to analyze the rules in detail for now. When we enter the forbidden area later, we just need to be careful not to shake hands, and even minimize physical contact. Okay, record this new rule and let the troops continue to advance."
The refugee caravan continued its journey, and three hours later, a bizarre incident occurred: in the video, Chen's soldiers were seen distributing protein bars to the refugees.
As a result, after the more than one hundred refugees had only taken two bites, they all collapsed to the ground, convulsing uncontrollably.
The class monitors of classes one through four walked among the corpses, repeatedly shouting, "Confirmed dead!"
"Death confirmed!"
"Death confirmed!"
The four squad leaders had solemn expressions. More than a hundred refugees had died in just one incident, and their grave expressions vividly conveyed their emotions to the command vehicle.
The dozen or so operations staff in the command vehicle watched this scene with a sense of inexplicable shock. So, you can't eat after entering Forbidden Zone 008?!
One of the operations staff officers said, "It's still uncertain whether we can't eat protein bars or not at all. Sir, crossing the forbidden land of No. 008 will take at least four days. If the soldiers can only drink water and can't eat, it will be very difficult and may even affect 80% of their combat effectiveness."
This has a very serious impact.
The Chen family explored the forbidden land No. 008 in order to facilitate their future military campaigns in the southwest and to contain the Qing family.
As a result, I can't eat for 4 days after passing through here. Who can stand that?
During the march, the soldiers ate high-energy protein bars. Although they had much more energy than the refugees ate, they were still protein bars.
Chen Yehu pondered for a moment, then said in the communication channel, "Try feeding the refugees the instant beef you brought, and see if there are any problems."
“Received,” Squad Leader Liu Pengsheng said coldly as he opened a vacuum-packed beef jerky from his emergency kit and looked at a refugee in front of him. “Eat it.”
The refugee, Zard, cried out in terror, "You can't eat this, sir! You can't eat this! You'll die if you eat it!"
"Even if it means death, you have to eat it!" Liu Pengsheng said cruelly.
But then Liu Pengsheng called over soldiers to hold Zard down, and then forcibly stuffed the beef into his mouth. The next moment, Zard convulsed violently and died with his eyes wide open.
Inside the command vehicle, all the operations staff stared intently at Zard's lifeless face, a chill running through them.
Chen Yehou said solemnly, "It seems that they really can't eat, but they can drink water. I remember that some of them drank water during their journey and were fine."
"Hmm," the operations staff officer analyzed, "Sir, as we advance southwest, we can use dietary fiber and glucose in the water to survive for four days without any problem. But this requires us to establish a forward base opposite the forbidden land. Once the main force passes through, we must immediately complete the recuperation, otherwise our combat effectiveness will be reduced."
“Hmm,” Chen Yehu nodded, “It’s good that we’re discovering more and more rules. This time, we’re going to thoroughly explore Forbidden Land No. 008 and turn it into our Chen family’s ranch.”
Each conglomerate controls at least a dozen forbidden areas, which is how Chen Yu obtained his seven Purple Orchid Stars.
For them, forbidden lands are strategic resources, and may even become top-tier strategic resources like aerial fortresses.
Chen Yehu's eyes gleamed, and he became excited.
As for the loss of more than a thousand farmers at the production base, it's nothing; we can just blame it on the Wilderness Man.
“Keep moving forward,” Chen Yehu said. “These four team leaders are all dedicated and responsible individuals. I can feel their spirit from the video. You should promote more of these brave and responsible grassroots cadres.”
“Received,” the chief of staff said.
...
...
The refugee caravan continued its advance, with refugees dying sporadically along the way. The operations staff kept recording geographical features and rules.
With more than half of the refugees dead or injured, and as many as nine rules already collected.
However, the Chen family's advisors didn't think much of it. The rules of Forbidden Zone 008 were well-known; otherwise, it wouldn't have become the southwest barrier.
The refugees had been marching for six hours, and finally some of them collapsed to the ground, while others sat on rocks to rest.
Soon, those who were resting on the rocks also began to convulse and die suddenly...
The refugee group was suddenly reduced to just over two hundred people, mostly elderly people and children.
Chen Yehu thought for a moment and said, "Pass down the order to let them rest for a while and then retreat. As for the remaining refugees, I want to test some rules precisely."
"Received," the chief of staff relayed the order to the front lines.
However, at that moment, a dark shadow flashed by in a place out of the video.
Someone was holding a pair of scissors and was snipping away at the shadows of all the Chen soldiers.
Inside the command vehicle, they saw dozens of blurry black figures suddenly appear in the live video feed, relentlessly chasing and killing everyone.
The soldiers began screaming in terror, some calling for reinforcements, others shouting "Holy crap!" The video started to shake and become unclear, making it difficult even for people in the command vehicle to see what was happening.
"What happened? Why are those black figures so strange?" a operations staff officer asked in surprise.
It has no face, no features, and is extremely mysterious.
Moreover, through a few relatively stable video surveillance videos, they discovered that these shadows would not die even if they were shot, and would not even cry out in pain.
A soldier fired a burst of bullets at the shadow, but the shadow was unharmed. It was only slightly hindered in its movement before continuing to fight the soldier like a madman!
Until all the soldiers are killed!
In the video, they could hear the soldier's screams... and then the soldier became motionless.
The video angle was hollow, focused on the dense canopy of trees.
Chen's soldiers died one after another. In the end, the video angles were either pointing at the sky or covering the ground, so no specific details could be seen.
Finally, only the videos of the four team leaders were still shaking, indicating that they were still trying to escape.
The sound of their panting came from inside the command vehicle. The chief of staff immediately asked, "Report on the situation! What exactly happened?!"
Liu Pengsheng hurriedly said, "Sir, suddenly a bunch of black shadows emerged from the ground. We can't kill them, and a whole magazine of bullets hasn't helped. The bullets clearly hit them, but they just won't die! It's terrifying; they come and go without a trace!"
The squad leader of the second squad added, "I think I just saw a shadow vanish. It seems the soldier shot it in the navel, which is how he managed to kill it. But in a hasty battle, it's too difficult to hit the navel. They move very quickly and are fearless. I suspect this is some kind of evil magic newly developed by some conglomerate, or the ability of some awakened being."
As they were talking, the second squad leader suddenly let out a wail and collapsed to the ground.
The squad leader of the third squad said, "I just saw it too. Someone fired a shot that hit their belly button, obliterating those shadows. The belly button is their fatal weakness!"
After saying this, the team leader also died in the line of duty.
Next, the team leader of Class 4...
Only squad leader Liu Pengsheng was left trying to escape.
Everyone in the command vehicle was filled with doubt and suspicion; they had never heard of such a bizarre awakening ability or evil magic.
"Could it be the effect of a taboo object?" someone asked. "The silhouette?"
As one of the Federation's most famous taboos, silhouettes were naturally the first thing they thought of.
“But the problem is, you can only cut your own shadow in a silhouette,” one of the staff officers said.
"What if I can cut someone else's?"
Chen Yehou shook his head: "I know the specific information about the silhouette. Someone in our Chen family once possessed it. That silhouette cannot be used to cut other people's shadows. Once someone's shadow is cut off, all the shadows will attack the host together, not our soldiers like they are now. There must be something else going on!"
At this moment, squad leader Liu Pengsheng held on until the very end, and tried his best to retreat towards the army group.
Chen Yehou suddenly asked, "What about the refugees? Are they all dead?"
Liu Pengsheng said breathlessly, "Sir, I'm not entirely sure, but they definitely can't withstand the onslaught of these shadows."
In an instant, a flash of light appeared at the corner of his video.
Liu Pengsheng tumbled and fell, and the video even showed his lower body still in place, his head separated from his body!
The squad leader struggled to say, "Cheers..."
Before he could finish speaking, Liu Pengsheng died completely, and the video returned to silence.
An eerie silence fell over the command vehicle.
“Chishe…” a operations staff officer frowned and said, “Chishe’s expulsion? I find it a bit strange. The Divine Age has no right to send people here to interfere with our strategic plans. Even if they’ve allied with overseas forces, they shouldn’t be so foolish as to provoke us, unless they have the ability to drag us onto the battlefield and annihilate us together… But are overseas forces that powerful?”
“But the problem is, are Liu Pengsheng and his men going to risk their lives to lie? They’re all dead,” another operations staff officer said.