Chapter 57: Blade of Light Flashes

After two hours of searching, T13 had given up; they hadn't been very invested in this mission to begin with. Having them, elite former mercenaries, mobilized just to kill a woman—wasn't this a joke?

Who would have known that the ordinary woman Jiang Xue spoke of would not only finish off their boss and several teammates but also hack off one of the target's hands.

If they went back like this, they would surely face punishment; if things went poorly, they might even lose half a year's worth of bonuses.

But now that the person had run off, there was nothing they could do. The volcanic eruption had burned away the vegetation in the mountains, making the field of vision a bit wider, but only a bit. It couldn't overcome the fact that this was hilly terrain, with mountain stacked upon mountain, high peaks and narrow gullies; hiding a person or two was no different from hiding a rabbit.

They gave up, not knowing that a tail had followed them.

Liu Mu trailed them at a distance that was neither too close nor too far. Her initial plan was to see if Jiang Xue had left, and if she could kill her, it would save her from leaving behind future trouble. But after crossing two mountains, she changed her mind.

A Humvee H1, a US military vehicle—even though the armor and weapons had been removed, it still made Liu Mu's eyes go wide. For no other reason than that the squad she had been killing off so casually actually had two of them, plus the helicopter from before...

Liu Mu smiled; hadn't the delivery of energy resources just arrived?

The fuel consumption of a Humvee was famous in the military section of short-video apps, which meant their energy reserves must be very sufficient, and the distance shouldn't be too far. One had to know that although this vehicle was top-tier, it was still a bit picky about terrain, especially nowadays when road conditions were severely damaged.

There was one more point: on the hood of this car was a logo of a black triangle paired with three circles. With the rain this time, visibility was higher than at night, and she saw clearly that the three circles were actually three simple snake heads. That's right, it was exactly the logo of the Heavenly Viper.

She didn't understand how a woman like Jiang Xue could be in cahoots with the Heavenly Viper, but was that important? It wasn't important at all!

At this moment, Jiang Xue's life seemed inconsequential to Liu Mu, and there was even a hint of wealth attached to it.

It was the same old saying: the system space wouldn't double for no reason. Wasn't this telling her that she had to make a move and grab a haul of supplies?

The sky was growing late, and Liu Mu was afraid the other side might have infrared or thermal imaging equipment, so she didn't dare get too close.

Lying in the volcanic ash—no, the volcanic mud—on the mountain, Liu Mu watched them quietly like a dormant beast.

Jiang Xue's hand had already been treated, and she was leaning inside the helicopter, venting her anger at the searchers; having such an enviable physical constitution while outputting while injured was something else. After a round of cursing, the aircraft finally took off again, but it was clear the squad of men in black below was also unhappy, flipping the bird at the aircraft in the sky before climbing into the Humvee in a huff.

Because of the Black Rain, the Humvee's canopy was black; after starting up, it drove off toward the north.

Liu Mu naturally couldn't track them on foot; even if her body was different from ordinary people, she... her stamina wasn't up to it!

After the vehicles left, she took her own jeep out of the space and followed from a distance without turning on the lights.

Tracking at this time was actually very easy: for one, there was no vegetation to block the view, and for another, the road conditions were poor, so the cars in front were driving slowly. Especially after dark, they were very arrogant and turned on their high beams, so she didn't even need to be too deliberate.

Four hours later, she saw from afar the two vehicles stop in front of a valley, where there was a faint light. Liu Mu also stopped the car, and after getting out, she stored it in her space and circled around to a nearby hilltop.

Generally speaking, bases like this had hidden sentries, and she abandoned the car precisely because she was afraid of being hit by another rocket.

When she climbed to a high point, she saw that there were indeed many modular cabins in the valley. There weren't many lights, but she could easily distinguish which were for living and which were warehouses.

The two returning vehicles drove for a long time in the valley before finally disappearing among a cluster of buildings; as for Jiang Xue's trail, it was naturally impossible to find.

Relying on the system's thermal imaging, Liu Mu successfully avoided three hidden sentries and entered the valley under the cover of darkness.

It was called a valley, but after manual excavation, the flat land in the middle was quite large. The whole area ran east-to-west, long and narrow, wrapped by high mountains on two sides, and with a few large mountains a bit further away, it was very conducive to hiding.

Liu Mu could even imagine that even if someone saw this place from the mountains or the air, they would mostly just think it was some kind of factory and wouldn't suspect much. Because of the terrain limitations, many valleys in hilly areas were distributed with brick factories, farms, planting bases, small factories, and the like. Without going in to look closely, it was hard to distinguish what those white and blue simple large houses were actually for.

Moreover, there were many legends about military factories being built in the mountains around here; not wanting to stir up trouble, few would go close to take a look.

Liu Mu approached slowly from the wet and slippery rocky slope. She had picked out a warehouse. There were a few lights at the entrances on both ends, with armed men standing underneath—four at each end—watching the surroundings vigilantly.

The strictness late at night, plus the large "No Open Flames" sign on the wall, made Liu Mu have to suspect that what was inside was exactly what she wanted.

When it came to getting supplies, Liu Mu had always been very patient, so she lay in the rain and waited. Unlike Song Yulin's base, the discipline here was clearly very strict.

After several hours, the guards all had clear divisions of labor, patrolling around the warehouse without the slightest slack, which made Liu Mu's head ache more the longer she watched.

If she couldn't get in, wouldn't her efforts tonight be in vain? But while lurking, she actually saw a blade of grass growing out of a crack in the mountain rock. A few curved leaves were spread out, and the whole plant was already a foot tall.

Liu Mu, who hadn't seen a trace of green since the disaster, immediately pulled the grass out by the roots and stuffed it into her pants pocket, intending to take it back to see if it had undergone Mutation. She had just stuffed it in casually at the time, not thinking at all that things put in her pocket were different from things put in her space—they could fall out.

They changed shifts every two hours, and what was infuriating was that they only changed half the people each time. At these moments, the other two people were bound to be extremely vigilant; she didn't know what they were guarding against—surely not their own people, right?

Looking at it this way, even a feint wouldn't be of much use. Liu Mu even suspected that there were nuclear weapons inside; otherwise, why be so nervous?

Unfortunately, there was no large energy reaction in the warehouse, and the system couldn't detect anything at all.

Just like that, by the second half of the night, the rain suddenly grew heavier, pounding so hard that one could barely hear anything else.

Liu Mu felt the opportunity had come, because the guards near the hillside seemed to have received some news and gathered together anxiously to discuss. A few minutes later, two people rushed into the rain and ran toward the other side of the mountain. At the same time, many lights turned on in the valley, and people kept coming out, all heading in that direction.

Liu Mu vaguely heard words like "landslide," and then she heard a huge sound. She saw a hillside illuminated by floodlights over there slide down, and several houses were instantly buried in mud and stone.

It was at this moment that she found her chance. She sprinted at full speed from the curtain of rain to the warehouse entrance, rushed behind the guard who was distracted by looking over there like a ghost, and a blade of light flashed. She stuffed the corpse into the system's isolation zone—this was a storage area she could use without being restricted by the waste recycling agreement after she changed the system settings; after all, it was something she had "bought."

She didn't go in immediately; there was another person patrolling who would return to the entrance in ten minutes to swap with this person.

Ten minutes later, the guard returned to his position. Not seeing his companion, he saw a pair of feet in front of the half-open warehouse door and immediately said angrily, "Donny, you brat, you ran inside to hide from the rain again. Be careful, if the Captain sees you, you won't escape a whipping!"

Normally, after shouting this, the other person should have come out, but those feet didn't move. The guard gripped his gun vigilantly, stood five steps away, and shouted again, "What's wrong with you? Still not coming out?"

He seemed to have realized something was wrong and was just about to pull the walkie-talkie from his Raincoat when he heard the sound of light footsteps behind him. He turned with his gun, felt a sharp pain in his neck, and the last thing in his pupils was a black figure flashing past.