186: The Duke's cufflinks!

The door opened.

A stale smell, a mixture of rust, dust, and engine oil, roared out like a beast imprisoned for over half a century, assailing them!

Stone raised his hand to block his face, and the other SAS Team Members immediately raised their guns, their tactical flashlights' beams, like sharp swords, instantly pierced the viscous darkness behind the door!

Lin Feng was the first to enter, his steps not faltering in the slightest.

"Nobody move! Check for booby traps!"

Stone roared, and the experienced SAS Team Members immediately fanned out, beginning a rapid sweep of the entrance area.

A few seconds later, the all-clear signal came.

Only then did everyone file in.

When the tactical flashlights completely illuminated the entire room, everyone was stunned.

It was big!

Too big!

This room, hidden behind the steel door, was even more spacious than the two hangars outside combined, easily over a hundred square meters, like a small indoor basketball court.

But... it was empty!

The imagined scene of it being filled with various Nazi black technologies simply did not appear.

In the center of the room, the ground was sunken, forming a huge circular pit. The bottom and sides of the pit were covered with dense fixing bolts, and countless severed thick cables, like the scattered bones left behind after a steel behemoth's death.

It was clear that a massive object, an absolute core device, had once been placed here.

But it had been removed, completely and cleanly.

Several large but tattered blueprints were pasted on the walls, rustling in the wind. They were covered with complex formulas and structural diagrams, like ghost talismans, with twisted lines and bizarre symbols. Not to mention Wang Dalong, even Stone, a top student, felt dizzy looking at them.

"Damn, is this it?"

Wang Dalong, carrying his camera, pouted in disappointment. His lens swept across the empty room, unable to find even a single close-up shot.

"After all that, it's just a warehouse ransacked by a moving company? Those planes outside were more exciting!"

Stone and his men also spread out, kicking aside discarded parts on the ground, searching carefully. The result was equally disheartening.

Other than dust, there was only waste paper; not even a bullet casing was left behind.

The clues, it seemed, had completely run out here.

After all that effort, risking their lives to open this door, the result was... just this?

A strong sense of disappointment spread through everyone's hearts.

"No, something was left behind."

A voice suddenly broke the silence, calm, yet like a Stone thrown into stagnant water.

Whoosh!

Everyone's movements instantly froze, and they all turned their heads in unison, looking towards the source of the voice.

Lin Feng!

He was squatting in the corner of the room, where a pile of disassembled control panel parts lay, rusty and jagged.

No one had noticed when he had gone over there.

He extended two fingers and, from the cracks between a pile of rusty iron pieces, picked up a small, dark object.

His movements were light and slow, as if afraid to disturb the slumbering time.

He stood up, walked to the front of the group, and opened his palm.

Under the light, an object smaller than a fingernail lay quietly in his palm.

It was a button.

More precisely, it was a cufflink.

Made of brass, its surface had turned a dull, almost black color due to oxidation.

"A button?"

Wang Dalong was the first to come closer, his camera lens pressed against Lin Feng's hand, his face full of confusion and disdain.

"I say, Boss Lin, what can this thing tell us? Maybe some German repairman accidentally dropped it while working back then."

"No."

Lin Feng gently shook his head.

He slowly wiped his fingertip across the cufflink's dust and rust-covered surface.

Once, twice.

As the dust was wiped away, an exquisite, intricate, and ancient crest miraculously revealed itself under the light!

It was a coiled giant snake, its body wrapped around a stag with majestic antlers!

"Hiss—"

Wang Dalong hadn't yet reacted to what it was, but Stone, behind him, gasped sharply!

His eyes suddenly widened!

"This is... the Cavendish Family crest!"

Stone's voice was trembling!

That's right!

The Duke of Devonshire, the Cavendish Family crest!

These words echoed through the empty room.

No one spoke again.

Everyone's breathing stopped!

Wang Dalong's mouth hung open, and his camera almost fell to the ground!

A Cavendish Family cufflink... appeared in the heart of Africa, in a top-secret Nazi base established after World War II!

What did this mean?!

Lady Elizabeth's letter clearly stated that her father, Howard Cavendish, was "invited" away from his own castle by a mysterious Schutzstaffel squad at the end of World War II!

Since then, he had vanished without a trace!

Everyone thought he had died, either in a Nazi concentration camp or a secret laboratory.

But now, this cufflink, like a ghost spanning more than half a century, silently spoke of an earth-shattering secret!

Howard Cavendish!

He wasn't dead!

At least, he didn't die immediately after the Schutzstaffel took him away!

He even lived for a long time after the war ended!

And he had been here all along!

Participating, or rather, being forced to participate in this top-secret project codenamed the eye of odin!

"In 1947, he was at least still here."

Lin Feng's gaze fell on several scattered German documents at his feet.

The papers were long yellowed and brittle, but the date stamps on them were clearly legible.

The latest date was November 1947.

After that, this base was completely abandoned. All equipment, all personnel, along with that massive core device, vanished without a trace overnight.

A huge mystery was solved, but it led to an even more terrifying and perplexing one!

Where did Howard Cavendish go after 1947?

And where was the eye of odin project moved to?

And those Nazi scientists and soldiers, where did they go?

The clues, here, were once again completely broken.

The entire team once again fell into a deathly stalemate.

"Damn it!"

Stone irritably kicked a piece of scrap metal, emitting a harsh clang.

"We went in a big circle and ended up back at square one!"

Wang Dalong also hung his head in dejection, turning off his camera: "Well, that was a false alarm."

Only Lin Feng, he didn't move, nor did he speak.

He just stood there quietly, looking down at the tattered German documents on the ground, as if reading an undecipherable book.

Time passed minute by minute.

Just when everyone was about to give up, Lin Feng suddenly squatted down again.

He picked up one of the most trampled blueprints, a partial structural diagram of the core device.

He lightly traced his finger over a corner of the back of the blueprint, where there was a small oil-stained mark.

"Stone."

He suddenly spoke.

"What?" Stone grumpily replied.

Lin Feng didn't turn his head, merely pointing at the oil stain.

"Shine the UV light here."