241: Chapter 236 Completely Puzzled

As soon as they landed, Duan Hong engaged the safety, and without waiting for Cao Xiao to touch the ground, he used his gun to lift the tent flap. Seeing the scene inside, he was momentarily stunned. Instincts honed from years of life-and-death missions quickly snapped him back to reality. He crouched down to examine the bodies, feeling one, then moved suspiciously toward another, his eyes filled with doubt. He looked up and scanned the area; the tent was incredibly tidy, and some instruments even had indicator lights still blinking. Suddenly, his expression changed to one of horror. He reflexively signaled for those outside to stop, shouting back without turning his head.

"Boss, don't come in yet! It's full of corpses in here! There are no living people!"

"Time of death is within 24 hours. No external injuries, but there's internal hemorrhaging. The specific cause of death... is unknown!"

"Something's wrong... this is an unnatural death! And it seems everyone died at the exact same time... Looking at their complexion, I know it's not poisoning. No drug could achieve an effect that defies medical common sense like this. There isn't a single recorded case of mass death like this in medical history! Not even anything similar! We've seen plenty of dead bodies, but a death this bizarre is unheard of. I can't even imagine how they died..."

"This wasn't done by human hands..."

A steel-willed warrior, tempered by life and death, couldn't help but tremble, his voice shaking without him even realizing it. In his agitated state, his words were disjointed. The danger instincts he had developed over a long time failed him now, and he was completely unaware that Cao Xiao had arrived behind him.

"Brother Duan, don't get worked up! Let's head out first; we're leaving immediately!"

Cao Xiao's expression remained calm. He had been vigilant upon landing, fearing that their arrival might trigger some danger, but since nothing happened even after entering the tent, he had some faint suspicions and felt temporarily relieved.

Seeing the scene with his own eyes, he was certain that these deaths were not caused by any living creature. If it were a creature, it would always leave traces; even a scent, he would be able to detect. Yet, after investigation, he found no clues related to any creature. That meant it was caused by a natural phenomenon. Since those people died last night, and natural phenomena usually have temporal patterns or are triggered by human-induced conditions, it was clearly afternoon now, the weather was normal, and it should be a safe period, or perhaps they simply didn't meet the conditions for it to be triggered. Thinking this, he realized there was no point in staying here. Once he collected the mineral vein, they could leave.

"Ah~ alright! Boss, I know you have some special abilities, but this is a human forbidden zone. Facing natural or supernatural forces, no matter how strong human power is, it's irresistible! These foreigners went to great lengths and snuck in here, so they must have been plotting something big. Their miserable death here is just their own doing. Let them weather away into fertilizer here! This has nothing to do with us; we must leave immediately!"

Duan Hong was startled when he suddenly heard a voice behind him. In his panic, he nearly raised his gun to aim backward, but Cao Xiao reached out and clamped his hand onto his shoulder, instantly rendering his arm powerless. When he looked up and saw it was Cao Xiao, then looked at the arm on his shoulder that wouldn't budge despite his best efforts to struggle, his expression became complex. Hearing that Cao Xiao intended to leave, his brows relaxed, and he breathed a sigh of relief. He was truly afraid that Cao Xiao would be too curious and act recklessly due to his own extraordinary abilities. Otherwise, in this eerie place, even if they tried their absolute best, he had no confidence in being able to keep Cao Xiao safe.

"Hmm, don't worry, I won't do anything reckless. However, we need to pack up these people's research data and take it with us. We'll hand it over to the higher-ups when we get back and let them have the headache!"

Because they were within the borders of Huaxia, especially at such a sensitive location, any abnormal satellite or electronic signal would attract attention and lead to exposure. Therefore, the communication devices these people carried were kept switched off. The research data was stored in independent solid-state drives, and the core materials were manually encrypted with logic. Without the basic raw data, and since it wasn't encrypted via software, there was absolutely no possibility of reverse decryption. Even if the industrial mother machine's AI were incredibly powerful, it couldn't accurately decrypt it. A single character's difference could lead to a thousand-mile discrepancy. Furthermore, without knowing the encryption logic, the dozens of plausible-sounding answers obtained by standard decryption methods would be enough to drive someone crazy; one couldn't even draw a conclusion from a single keyword among those answers.

Other materials were simply observation records regarding the local geology, microbiology, electromagnetism, astronomy, and meteorology; nothing of value could be analyzed from them. Cao Xiao had no intention of staying behind to study them, as these things were useless to him. However, this matter involved foreign forces and might concern national security. Even though he held no official position, as a citizen of the country, he couldn't just ignore it. He believed he wasn't the type to rely on his wits to make a living; brute force was the hard truth. He was duty-bound to charge into battle, but he would leave these brain-cell-killing tasks to the professionals. He would hand it over through the Supervision Department's channels once he returned to Huanghe City. As for how things would develop later, it wasn't something that would be clear in the short term.

They only moved all storage devices, including the computers, onto the helicopter. Even though the valuables the people carried and the cutting-edge instruments that couldn't be bought domestically were worth a fortune, Duan Hong wasn't tempted in the slightest. All his attention was currently focused on his surroundings. His muscles were tense, maintaining a combat stance, and the gun in his hand remained aimed at the perimeter, never lowered. His only thought was to leave this place as quickly as possible.

The helicopter flew at maximum speed. Ten minutes later, that region disappeared from view. Just as Cao Xiao and the others were truly beginning to relax, a heaven-shaking, earth-shattering boom came from the distance, accompanied by a few tearing sounds that felt like they could rip one's soul apart. Then, it felt as if the entire earth trembled violently, kicking up clouds of dust. At the same time, the helicopter was affected by the sound waves; the engine stuttered, nearly stalling completely. The electronic instruments, even under the magnetic field protection layer that Cao Xiao had activated, instantly failed. The seemingly super-high-strength magnetic protection layer vanished like bubbles.

Not only that, but Cao Xiao and the other two began to bleed from their ears and noses, their expressions dazed as if their souls had been shaken out of their bodies.

"Grah~ Yan~"

While they were in a daze, a faint, peculiar roar drifted over from the direction of the forbidden zone. The sound seemed to come from deep underground—muffled, heavy, yet appearing somewhat immature. If Cao Xiao could have heard it at that moment, he would have felt that the sound was like the groggy, lazy babbling of a naive young beast woken from its sleep, vivid enough to paint a picture in one's mind.

Cao Xiao only felt his head was as heavy as if filled with lead, his mind a complete blank. His only thought was that he just wanted to fall asleep right then and there and never wake up...