18: Devil's Dance

"It's good that it's started." Chen Feng's voice was as flat as if he were stating a fact that had nothing to do with him, but to Ma Liu's ears, it was more bone-chilling than the cold winds in the depths of the C-13 Mining Area.

"B-Boss... we..." Ma Liu looked at Chen Feng's suddenly cold face; fear made it almost impossible for him to speak a complete sentence. He felt as if he weren't sitting in the cockpit of a mining robot, but rather beside a devil's throne.

"Every move we make from here on is under Bachm's surveillance," Chen Feng explained calmly while piloting the robot deeper into the tunnel, like a teacher explaining the most basic laws of physics to a student. "So, we need a little 'privacy.'"

He pulled up the official map Bachm had provided, which was marked with red dots indicating several key monitoring nodes.

"Listen, we're about to reach the first three-way junction." Chen Feng pointed to an intersection on the map. "That's one of the areas Bachm is focusing his surveillance on; he's waiting to see which path we take."

"Then... then what do we do?" Ma Liu's voice carried a hint of a sob.

"That 'Spare Jammer' I had you set up can create a three-minute full-band signal storm in this area," Chen Feng's tone remained perfectly steady. "Bachm's monitors will see nothing but static. Three minutes—that's our only window of opportunity."

"U-Understood..."

The heavy footsteps of the "pioneer-3 modified" echoed through the deathly silent tunnel. Soon, three pitch-black openings appeared ahead, like three diverging paths to hell.

"This is the place." Chen Feng stopped the robot, a sharp glint flashing in his eyes. "Ma Liu, get ready; it might be a bit of a bumpy ride."

"What?"

Before Ma Liu could react, Chen Feng had already sent a simple activation command to the D-4 Vent far outside the mining area via an encrypted short-range channel.

"Activate."

The moment the words left his mouth, several green dots representing external monitoring signals on the main cockpit screen suddenly burst, turning into a chaotic flurry of digital static!

A bright red countdown appeared in the corner of the screen.

03:00.

02:59.

"Now!" Without the slightest hesitation, Chen Feng immediately activated his true lethal weapon disguised as a "G-2 Type Sonar Detection Module"—the Audio Spectrum Analysis Plugin!

Amidst the static on the screen, a brand-new data stream was forcibly isolated. The "harmonic noise" echoing in the silence, imperceptible to humans, was quickly captured, analyzed, and converted by the plugin.

Soon, a faint, flickering directional ripple appeared on the screen's analysis interface.

It... pointed toward the leftmost tunnel.

"Found it," Chen Feng murmured to himself, immediately recording the ripple's frequency and directional coordinates.

But the expression on his face did not relax; instead, it grew even more solemn.

"No... it's too weak..."

The signal strength was far weaker than his theoretical calculations suggested, and it was extremely unstable, as if it could cut out at any moment.

Chen Feng's pupils constricted sharply.

There were only two possibilities.

Either the associated ore for the "tranquility grass" was unimaginably far away from here...

Or, there was some kind of powerful, unknown force field on this path that could shield even these special harmonics.

Whichever it was, it meant the danger level of this trip was ten times higher than his highest estimated risk!

"Boss!!" Ma Liu's scream suddenly rang out.

Chen Feng snapped back to reality and saw that the countdown on the screen had jumped to "00:10."

"00:09."

"00:08."

At the same time, the robot's wide-area pickup captured a rhythmic, metallic sound of footsteps approaching from a distance—a Supervisor patrol squad was rapidly nearing this three-way junction from one of the paths on the right!

"Shut up!" Chen Feng barked sharply.

In the final second before the countdown hit zero, he decisively closed all special plugins, restored the normal system interface, and slammed the control lever forward!

Boom!

The robot's massive frame turned, and without hesitation, it drove into the middle path, which was marked as the "safe" official recommended route on the map.

The countdown hit zero.

The signal static on the screen vanished instantly, and the normal monitoring dots returned.

Everything looked as if nothing had happened.

A few seconds later, a five-man Supervisor patrol squad emerged from the right-hand tunnel. They held High-Energy Pulse Rifles, warily scanning their surroundings.

When they saw Chen Feng's "pioneer-3 modified" proceeding along the "correct" route, the lead Supervisor merely glanced suspiciously toward the cockpit before waving his hand and leading the squad away to continue their patrol down another tunnel.

A brush with death.

It wasn't until the patrol squad's signal dots completely disappeared from the radar that Ma Liu, slumped in the co-pilot's seat, dared to take a deep breath, cold sweat having already soaked through his prison uniform.

"They... they... just now..."

"They didn't see anything." Chen Feng didn't look back, his voice as cold as a block of ice. "Sit tight; our 'treasure hunt' has only just begun."

Ma Liu looked at Chen Feng's profile—unmoved under the dim glow of the dashboard—and deep within him, any trace of resistance or thought of escape vanished completely, like a cigarette butt being snuffed out.

He finally understood.

He was following a devil who danced on the edge of a blade and enjoyed the dance.

And his only way to survive was to be the most obedient tool in the devil's hands and pray that he wouldn't be smashed to pieces before the next dance ended.