Chapter 227
Chapter 227
“Whew.”
After taking off her protective suit, Qin Ying stood in the forest and let out a long breath.
The damp, muggy woods had left her drenched in sweat, with a strand of hair plastered to her cheek.
Before coming here, none of them had expected the water seepage beneath the collapsed ancient residence to be so severe. Even with the pumps running at full power, it would still take two or three days to drain all the accumulated water underground.
Unable to breathe in the stifling protective suit, Qin Ying had gone to the newly erected camp at the edge of the forest for some air.
The Thunderbird had been tucked inside her clothes and was just as overheated. The moment it regained its freedom, it ruffled its feathers, flew into a tree, and began preening.
Qin Ying noticed that while they had been inside the ancient residence, a considerable number of tents and other living supplies had already been brought into the forest.
It looked like they planned to establish a camp here and settle in for a long excavation.
“Hey, want some water?”
Seeing her covered in sweat, a man in a Black Trench Coat called out to her.
As soon as Qin Ying nodded, he brought over two bottles and handed them to her.
“New here?” One look at his Black Trench Coat was enough to identify him as a member of the Cultural Preservation Bureau’s Action Team.
With the Black Trench Coat concealing his body, there was no telling what kind of Monstrous Beast genes he had fused with.
His skin was deeply tanned, and a lone tuft of beard about as thick as a pinky grew from his chin.
His manner was mild enough, but he gave off an innate eccentric vibe.
“I am. Thanks!” Qin Ying accepted the water and thanked him.
“Xie Shao. Action Team.”
Xie Shao was not much of a talker. After that brief introduction, he turned around and went back to pitching tents.
Qin Ying was not particularly outgoing either. She leaned against a large tree, twisted open the bottle, and was about to gulp down the water when Deputy Director Chen, who had followed a few steps behind her, barked out a warning.
“You just sweated buckets. Why are you drinking cold water?”
Deputy Director Chen removed his protective suit. Despite being built like a double-door refrigerator, he had barely broken a sweat.
He casually folded the suit, wrapped it up, then placed it inside a yellow medical waste bag and sealed it.
He looked at Qin Ying with exasperation. “You’re so young. How can you be this frail?”
Once a star athlete but recently a frequent bedridden guest at the hospital, Qin Ying had nothing to say to that.
Deputy Director Chen looked her up and down. “You need to get back into training. Try rock climbing when you have time.”
With his body packed with solid muscle, the advice he offered after assessing Qin Ying’s condition was quite professional.
Qin Ying had never tried rock climbing, but she had heard that it trained every muscle group in the body and could improve both reflexes and decision-making.
She was always willing to accept good advice, so she nodded. “All right. I’ll start as soon as we get back.”
Deputy Director Chen was very pleased. “That’s the attitude young people should have.”
He lowered his voice. “Don’t worry about the strain training will put on your body. If there’s one thing our Bureau doesn’t need to worry about, it’s that.”
Just as he finished speaking, a buzzing sound came from overhead.
More than a dozen drones were transporting supplies up the mountain.
Jinbao had never seen such strange-looking flying contraptions before. The Thunderbird poked its head out from between the branches.
With a beat of its wings, violet-blue lightning flashed across the sky.
It flew over to the delivery drones and began circling them.
At the sight, Deputy Director Chen hurriedly called to Qin Ying, “Keep an eye on it! Don’t let it get hurt.”
A high-definition close-up of the Thunderbird had already been sent to the Cultural Preservation Bureau, sparking all kinds of speculation among its staff.
Some said it was a Min Bird, while others judged purely by its coloring and thought it might be one of the Three Green Birds.
However, its characteristics did not quite match either one.
Even more people believed the Thunderbird might, like those Human-Faced Flesh Mass specimens, be a creature spawned by the River God.
Opinions varied widely, and someone had suggested transporting the Thunderbird back to headquarters for study.
That proposal, however, had been dropped after Qin Ying raised an objection.
Deputy Director Chen did not care if a drone was destroyed. He was more worried about the Thunderbird getting hurt.
Hearing him, Qin Ying looked up and saw the Thunderbird darting back and forth through the air like a little shuttle.
She called out, “Jinbao, come back!”
The Thunderbird still wasn’t used to its new name, so it didn’t realize Qin Ying was calling it.
Only after she called twice more did it suddenly remember. Oh, right. It was Jinbao now.
It hurriedly tucked in its wings and zipped back to Qin Ying’s shoulder like a tiny bolt of lightning.
Deputy Director Chen and the others watched curiously. Seeing how obedient it was, he remarked in surprise, “That little bird is certainly well behaved.”
The moment he finished speaking, a burst of crackling came from overhead.
Everyone looked up to see two drones wobbling through the air before plunging into the distant forest.
Qin Ying froze for a moment, then turned to the Thunderbird.
Was that your electromagnetic interference?
The Thunderbird looked innocence itself, shaking its head as hard as it could.
It wasn’t responsible. Its master had told it to keep its lightning under control, and it had been good and listened.
Looking into its innocent little eyes, Qin Ying reached out and rubbed its head with one finger. “Then it’s fine.”
The two drones had been carrying supplies suspended beneath them when they crashed into the distant woods.
The loss of those supplies was negligible. The real concern was that the drones might spontaneously combust and start a wildfire.
Deputy Director Chen called out to the others, then led a group carrying small fire extinguishers toward the crash site.
With Qin Ying looking so drained, Deputy Director Chen didn’t let her come along and told her to remain at camp.
Qin Ying was more than happy to take it easy.
It should have been a minor incident, but while Qin Ying was eating an energy bar with the Thunderbird at camp, Xie Shao, the man who had handed her water earlier, emerged from the woods covered in grass seeds.
“Qin Ying, we found something. Director Chen wants you to take a look.”
Qin Ying stuffed the remaining half of her nut energy bar into her mouth.
She followed Xie Shao along the collapsed mountainside until they reached its shaded side.
Qin Ying first spotted the two crashed drones, then Deputy Director Chen and the others standing nearby.
Before they went over, Xie Shao noticed that she was still chewing and warned her, “You’d better swallow that first.”
Qin Ying immediately knew they must have found something unpleasant.
She chewed quickly and swallowed the food in her mouth.
When she drew closer, she saw Deputy Director Chen and the others wearing gloves and removing bodies from a dugout.
A middle-aged man explained from the side, “This is a type of defensive fortification commonly found on battlefields.
“They would dig a sloped pit into the ground, then cover it with branches, dirt, and sand for camouflage. These were often used as observation posts for sentries.”
Recognizing his voice, Qin Ying realized that he was the same middle-aged man who had worn a protective suit while explaining the old mansion earlier.
Qin Ying glanced at the dugout. To her, it looked like an ordinary hole in the ground.
But the middle-aged man was clearly an expert in the field. Even a battlefield fortification like this was well within his area of expertise.
“Hello. Can you tell when it dates from?” Qin Ying asked, adhering to the principle of asking whenever she didn’t know something.
The middle-aged man adjusted the glasses on the bridge of his nose and answered with certainty, “It was built before 1920.
“If I’m not mistaken, this should have been one of the old mansion’s hidden sentry posts.”
With a hidden sentry stationed here, they could immediately raise the alarm if hostile forces appeared.
“Something must have happened later that caused this hidden sentry post to be abandoned. They didn’t even remove the bodies inside and simply buried the whole thing.
“The drone crash punched through the roof just now, exposing the bodies.”
At the mention of the bodies, Qin Ying turned to look.
Three skeletons lay sprawled on the ground, tangled in weeds and the carcasses of black beetles.
Even though Qin Ying was no forensic pathologist, the spiderweb fractures across their skulls and their broken necks made it obvious at a glance that they had been murdered.
Deputy Director Chen crouched beside the bodies. Holding his terrifyingly thick arms out, he mimed a rear naked choke.
He declared with absolute certainty, “All three were killed by the same person, one right after another.”