Chapter 1076: Whose Fault

It was a little past eight in the morning. Whether the people inside the cave ate two or three hot meals a day, this was not the time for cooking a meal, and no one would install surveillance equipment in the flue. Xia Qing breathed a sigh of relief and continued crawling inward.

After crawling another twenty-plus meters along the winding cave, a light appeared three meters ahead. The soot on the stone walls of the passage was getting thicker and thicker, suggesting the people inside had been living here for quite some time.

Based on the shape of the iron pot revealed by the light, Xia Qing judged that the exit ahead was an iron pot with a diameter no smaller than seventy centimeters. An iron pot of this size could cook enough porridge for fifteen people.

Of course, fewer than fifteen people might live here; using such a large pot was for the convenience of boiling water, just like Xia Qing did.

Xia Qing crawled another two-plus meters forward, reaching the flue exit. Just as she was focusing all her attention on using her hearing to probe the situation inside the cave, the old wolf behind her gently bit her calf. The old wolf was using the action to remind her that there was movement outside.

Xia Qing stayed perfectly still, observing the situation outside through the limited field of view from the stove opening.

Soon, light footsteps approached from afar. Xia Qing heard the sound of a heavy iron door sliding, and a gust of wind rushed into the cave, drilled through the stove, and blew fine ash onto Xia Qing's protective mask.

Her protective mask was made of high-grade dust-resistant material, so the fine ash slowly fell down. A pair of feet wearing military boots appeared in Xia Qing's field of vision.

These military boots were the same style as those of the vagrants she and the wolf pack had captured at Mountain Thirty-Seven in the Western Evolution Forest.

Xia Qing stayed perfectly still, her breathing slow and deep, her mood calm, trying to minimize her presence. She closed her eyes and used her hearing to lock onto the echoes of the footsteps, judging the size and shape of the cave from the echoes.

"How is it?"

A woman with a hoarse voice asked about the situation. Xia Qing used her hearing to lock onto her position—fifteen meters to the front-left of the stove.

The man in military boots sounded a bit impatient. "The helicopter is just circling up above, trying to scare off anyone who wants to pass through this mountain area to enter Hui Three. Xiao Jing is guarding the cave entrance, don't worry."

The woman sighed. "Magnetic sense is useful, but Xiao Jing's detection radius is only thirty meters, the range is still too small. My left eye has been twitching since yesterday, I keep feeling something bad is going to happen. We have to be careful. If this place is exposed too, we really have nowhere left to hide."

"You haven't even evolved precognitive abilities, so stop freaking yourself out, damn it." The man in military boots cursed. "When you get right down to it, it's all Hui Three's Azure Dragon's fault! If Yang Jin hadn't captured our evolved wolves, Professor Fu Tianfeng wouldn't have discovered the wolves had been operated on, and he wouldn't have gotten angry and caught Peng Yuancai, alerting Red One. If Peng Yuancai hadn't gotten into trouble, the Fire Phoenix wouldn't have led people back to the safe zone to deal with Zhou Xuan, Liehuo Mountain wouldn't have been bombed to bits by the Doomsday taking advantage of the opening, and we wouldn't be stuck miserable in this crappy cave that has nothing!"

The woman sweeping the floor with a broom laughed coldly and mocked herself. "You're blaming Azure Dragon? They're blaming us too for capturing evolved wolves that were too low-level, drugged them and they still couldn't outrun Yang Jin."

A few seconds later, the man's voice rose. "Right! The attack on Professor Fu Tianfeng will definitely be pinned on us by those animals in the end. Damn it! If you want to blame someone, blame Liehuo's Production Department for putting too little explosive in the collars! If they'd packed in more explosives, the wolves and Yang Jin would have all been blown to bits together, and right now there'd be no shit going on!!!"

The heavy footsteps of this man walked past the stove. From the shadow sliding past the stove, it could be seen he was carrying a crossbow, without any long spears or rocket launchers or other heavy weapons.

"Bang!"

After walking about ten meters forward, this man viciously kicked an iron cage. Two weak but angry wolf howls traveled into the flue, and the old wolf pressed against Xia Qing's leg instantly tensed every muscle.

No wonder Lao Si had rushed to find her in such a panic—turns out there were also wolves captured by the vagrants in this cave. These two wolves' howls were so weak; was it because they hadn't recovered from surgery, or because they had taken some kind of drug?

"Crack—"

Inside the flue, the sound of a stone fragment breaking came from behind Xia Qing. It was probably the inexperienced and impetuous little wolf sister, who lost control of her force upon hearing the wolf howls and used her sharp claws to shatter a thin stone chip.

"What was that?!" The woman put down the broom, picked up her weapon. From the sound of the safety being released, she was holding a shotgun. She should be a hearing-evolver, though not a high-level one.

The man standing on the other side of the cave spoke only after a few seconds. "What else could it be? The helicopter. Stop being so paranoid."

"No, there's movement in the stove's flue. Some animal might have gotten in. Go call Xiao Jing in, and block the flue exit while you're at it!"

"You're such a hassle. Which flue exit?" Though the man complained, he still confirmed the target while walking outward, clearly trusting the woman's abilities a great deal.

"Block all of them, hurry! If a wolf pack has come looking and makes noise that alerts the helicopter, we're done for!" The woman urged, gripping her shotgun.

There were only two people in the cave—one carrying a crossbow, one holding a shotgun—and a magnetic-sense evolver outside the cave.

Once the magnetic-sense evolver entered the cave, she would immediately detect the one person and four wolves hiding in the flue.

Xia Qing used her left hand to flip the large iron pot toward the direction where the woman was. The instant the cave entrance lit up, the first bullet was fired at the man. After drilling out of the flue and using the stove for cover, Xia Qing pulled the trigger again, then turned to face the left and pulled the trigger a third time.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

"Thud!"

As the three gunshots and the tremendous crash of the iron pot hitting the ground echoed through the cave, Xia Qing, her entire body pitch-black, charged toward the crossbow-carrying man who had raised his shield to dodge the bullets and was rapidly retreating toward the cave entrance. She punched the shield viciously, knocking him down and pinning him.

At the same time, the old wolf behind Xia Qing burst out of the flue and charged toward the woman crouching on the left.

The lead wolf was the third to emerge, taking the highest point inside the cave.

The little wolf sister, following right behind her mother, immediately took up the guard position on her mother's left. The black wolf saw that the old wolf had already bitten the woman's neck, so it rushed to Xia Qing's side and bit the right leg of the man pinned under the shield by her.

Xia Qing pulled the shield to the right, reached into her medicine pack, took out a syringe, and injected the man—who had vomited blood and passed out—with a dose of anesthetic. Then she skillfully tied him up tight with rope, stuffed his mouth with a soft wooden plug, before rushing toward the blue-skinned woman held by Lao Si. "Lao Si, let go, she's already dead."

Perhaps because they had lived in the Evolution Forest for too long, or perhaps because they felt very safe here, neither of these two people was wearing a protective mask. This made it convenient both for Xia Qing to stuff the soft wooden plug and for the old wolf to sink its teeth into the human's vital spot.

This woman had been shot through the back of the heart by her and was already dead.

The angry old wolf let out a low growl from its throat, released the already-dead human, and charged toward the other human pinned down by the black wolf.