NOVEL NEXT Chapter 140: Refugee Settlement
When Xu Xiaoyou awoke, it was already dusk outside the window. With a slight tremor, the feeling of jolting made her slowly open her eyes. A girl's fingertips gently touched her face, weaving through her hair.
She looked up and saw Tang Xin had also fallen asleep, leaning against the car window, her hair a scattered mess across her face. Xu Xiaoyou could hear the other girl's soft breathing.
It had been a long time since she'd had such a deep sleep. Upon waking, her mind was considerably clearer.
Outside the window, the sky was a blood-red, and beneath the layers of floating clouds, three Stars of Art fell over the distant mountains, their final rays scattering with an odd allure.
She sat up, and Tang Xin also awoke at her movements, lifting her head and smiling at her, holding her hand.
"Do you feel any better, Youzi?"
Xu Xiaoyou nodded and glanced around the carriage. The Shadow Brothers were also resting with their eyes closed. Lin Xing was sleeping more deeply, while the more robust Lin Sheng sat upright, arms crossed, eyelids slightly shut, sitting as still as an ancient clock.
The Shadows, through long-term training, mastered this kind of sleep, where their mind rested, but the body remained in a normal state. Judging from the faint movement of their nose, it wasn't hard to determine the pulse and blood flow speed in their body was not much different from normal activities.
If a crisis arose, they would awaken instantly and respond, with their reflexes unaffected in the least.
"You're awake," said Chen San, who was driving up front. Through the rearview mirror, one could see the man, his poker face taut from the long drive, now bore slight fatigue.
The all-terrain vehicle had already left the Fars Mountains and was currently traversing the plains.
Four hundred kilometers from the Star of Art, the snow on the plains finally began to melt slowly, revealing hints of green and yellow. Under the blood-red sky, the atmosphere around was inexplicably eerie.
They were drawing closer to their destination, with less than a hundred kilometers left.
"There's a refugee settlement nearby. Dawn Office established Outpost No. 3 there. The car's almost out of gas, so I plan to stop there for resupply, and then head to our final destination when dawn breaks tomorrow," said Chen San.
Xu Xiaoyou nodded slightly, then stopped talking and looked outside the window. The vast plains flew past her eyes, and the wind blowing in cleared her last trace of confusion, waking her completely.
...
Before it was completely dark, the all-terrain vehicle parked in front of the outpost. It looked like a post-apocalyptic base, a square iron box resembling a giant cage. The alloy walls were rust-stained, bearing marks of age past.
Chen San got out of the car, pushed open the metal louvre door, and led the group into the outpost courtyard. A gust of wind passed through, causing the crooked old trees planted in the courtyard to sway slightly with the wind. The fading light pierced through the gaps in the leaves, creating mottled patches on the ground. The large shadows of the old trees moved with the wind, the rustle of leaves adding a touch of desolation to the entire courtyard.
Chen San entered something into the metal door of the outpost, then stood still waiting. After receiving no response, he frowned and looked towards the camera at the edge of the corridor eaves, waving his hand:
"Li Yin?"
"Qing!"
After not getting a response twice, his expression turned a bit grim. Returning to the group, he said, "I don't know where they've gone, but it seems there's no one inside the outpost."
Xu Xiaoyou frowned, "As field agents, don't you have ID cards or something similar for these outposts?"
Chen San paused, "We used to have them, but a few years ago something terrible happened. Square Four defected during an outside mission, using his ID card to open the outpost door. He killed the stationed personnel inside, looted supplies, took several confidential documents, and disappeared without a trace."
"Since then, the Dawn Office no longer issues ID cards to agents. To access supplies within an outpost, communication and confirmation with stationed personnel is required beforehand."
"Seems like things inside your organization aren't as united as they appear," Xu Xiaoyou said casually.
She unobtrusively observed the square pattern on the other person's suit lapel, wondering if the Dawn Office's internal evaluation for agents was related to suit patterns?
In a standard deck of cards, excluding the Jokers, there are four suits—hearts, spades, diamonds, and clubs—each with thirteen cards, totaling fifty-two cards. This meant that among tens of thousands of registered Dawn Finishers, only fifty-two could obtain a suit.
She vaguely recalled that a young man named Jian Liu had a club six on his black trench coat, and he was the director of the Dawn Office. By this reasoning, the club suit should be the highest ranking, followed by diamonds, spades, and hearts in descending order.
Chen San was a Square Three, seemingly holding a not-so-low position in the office. Yet he was merely a routine First Tier Cleaner, having shown nothing particularly outstanding so far.
Was her judgment wrong?
Could the specific levels and suit types have nothing to do with numbers?
Even so, as one of the fifty-two suit holders, he shouldn't appear so ordinary.
Perhaps he had some unknown trump card hidden away, Xu Xiaoyou thought knowingly.
"What happens if we force the door open?" Lin Sheng pondered out loud.
Chen San shot him a look as if he were an idiot, speechless: "Do you see that spot on the ground?"
Following his direction, everyone looked over. Beneath the crooked old tree within the courtyard, amid the fallen leaves and shadows, seemed to be a square metal hatch, otherwise indistinguishable from elsewhere.
"Triggering the outpost alarm will raise two machine cannons. If you're confident in surviving a metal storm with 6,000 rounds of armor-piercing bullets per minute, and can give it a try with your proud moves," Chen San said sarcastically.
No doubt, merely having a Three Tier professional's body, even if known for frontal defense power, would hardly survive such firepower, let alone withstand it. In seconds, the body would be riddled with holes, 200 pounds out of 300 being bullets.
Chen San tried to activate his communication curtain. Finding it also non-operational, in a no-network state, he sighed deeply, glanced at the group, and said:
"Let's ask around the nearby settlement. Maybe they know what's going on."
Thus, after refueling the off-road vehicle at the outpost, the group headed to the settlement downhill.
The entire refugee settlement was built along the mountain, accommodating roughly three hundred people. The simple housing structures, calling them houses, were actually built from some discarded metal huts, crude logs, and rusty metal components. The connections were only rudimentary joint wedges bound with heavy rope, likely to collapse with slight force.
The shadow of the mountain cast a natural protective veil over them. If not looked at carefully, it was difficult to detect the settlement's existence, effectively reducing the possibility of discovery by marauders and other predators alike.
Standing in front of the settlement, a strong sense of crisis surged within Xu Xiaoyou. She slowly raised her head, as if the rusty iron gate at the settlement entrance had transformed into a monster's gaping maw, ready to swallow the group whole.
Her intuition told her that something was very wrong with this settlement.