26: The Returning Dead

"Boss, what... what is this?"

Ma Liu stammered as he looked at the winding, earthworm-like line on the geological scanner screen.

"This is our way out." Chen Feng didn't even look up, his fingertips quickly gliding across the dust-covered screen. "An abandoned sewage pipe that isn't marked on any official maps. It can bypass all the collapse zones and lead directly to the edge of the C-13 Mining Area."

This was the only way out he had found after spending an entire night combining the handwritten log with scanner data.

"We... we can go back?" Wild joy instantly erupted in Ma Liu's eyes.

"Go back?" Chen Feng glanced at him coldly. "Back to deliver your own death?"

"Huh?"

"Listen, in Bachm's records, we are currently 'missing persons' and are most likely dead." Chen Feng stood up and commanded in an unquestionable tone, "If we want to go back alive and live well, we can't 'walk' back; we must 'crawl' back. Understand?"

Ma Liu nodded, half-understanding.

"Now, clean up all traces here. Restore everything we've used to its original state." Chen Feng's voice lacked any warmth. "Then, come to me."

Half an hour later, a deathly silence returned to the shelter, as if no one had ever been there.

"Boss, it's... it's all done." Ma Liu walked up to Chen Feng nervously.

Chen Feng nodded. Then, he picked up a sharp stone and, without hesitation, sliced a long gash in the sleeve of his own clothes. The fabric tore, revealing the skin beneath.

"You..." Ma Liu was startled.

"You do the same." Chen Feng tossed the stone to him. "Clothes, pants, everywhere—the more tattered, the better. Smear dust on your face and hands. Remember, we need to look like we've been fighting wild dogs for food out there for several days."

Seeing Chen Feng calmly use the stone to grind several bloody gashes into his own arm without even flinching, Ma Liu felt a chill rush from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. He didn't dare disobey and tremblingly picked up the stone to begin 'creating' on himself.

The sewage pipe was filled with a rotting stench and slippery moss, so narrow that one could only advance by crawling on their belly.

"Hurry up!" Chen Feng urged from the front.

"Boss... I... I'm not going to make it..." Ma Liu wailed from behind. Every step he crawled felt like it was challenging the limits of his willpower.

"If you want to live, shut up and follow." Chen Feng's voice came through the darkness, giving Ma Liu a jolt and leaving him no choice but to grit his teeth and continue forward.

When they scrambled out of a sewage outlet disguised as a rock and saw the gray sky of the C-13 Mining Area again, Ma Liu was almost moved to tears of joy.

"Don't make a sound." Chen Feng made a silencing gesture and pulled him behind a giant boulder.

The first thing he did was find that landmark pile of debris from the collapse he had personally engineered. Amidst the ruins, the wreckage of the pioneer-3 modified was particularly eye-catching.

"Good, the physical evidence is still here." Chen Feng nodded with satisfaction.

He pulled a small sealed bag from his bosom and handed it to Ma Liu.

"What's this?" Ma Liu asked curiously.

"This is the 'treasure' we brought back after a narrow escape from death." Chen Feng's tone carried a hint of mockery.

Inside the bag were several Colored Crystals that could be found anywhere in Area B. Aside from being pretty, they were worthless.

"Take it." Chen Feng stared at Ma Liu. "If someone finds us later, use the most exaggerated, surprised, and disbelieving expression of your life to hold this thing up, understand? Just like the first time you saw your wife."

"Huh? I... I don't have a wife..." Ma Liu said with a look of difficulty.

"Then imagine you've seen a mountain of gold." Chen Feng said impatiently. "If you mess up the acting, we die together."

Ma Liu immediately began to grimace and contort his face at the air. The clumsy and forced expression made Chen Feng want to laugh, yet it somehow possessed an indescribable sense of realism.

"That'll do. Keep that expression, remember it."

Chen Feng pulled Ma Liu to the junction of Mining Area No. 7 and the C-13 Mining Area, hiding in the shadows of a fork in the road.

"Boss, what are we waiting for here?"

"Waiting for a 'chance encounter'."

Before long, a rhythmic sound of footsteps approached from the distance. A Guard Team was conducting a routine patrol.

The one leading the team was none other than Reno.

"Now!" Chen Feng barked in a low voice.

He gave Ma Liu a hard shove while he himself tumbled outward, rolling out of the fork in a posture of extreme weakness, falling right at Reno's feet.

"Who?!" The Guard Team immediately raised their guns.

Reno's footsteps stopped. He looked down at the person on the ground—tattered, covered in wounds, appearing as if he could stop breathing at any moment—and his pupils suddenly constricted.

It's Number 734... Chen Feng!

He's actually still alive?

"Boss! Boss, are you okay!" As rehearsed, Ma Liu scrambled over on all fours. Then, he saw Reno. First came terror, then as if remembering something, he tremblingly held up the bag in his hand and screamed in a voice that broke:

"Ore! It's ore! We found it! We're rich!"

Reno looked at the few glittering stones in his hand, then at the 'unconscious' Chen Feng on the ground. A trace of extreme shock and complexity flashed through his eyes.

In Bachm's office, the atmosphere was terrifyingly oppressive.

"Speak." Bachm sat in a wide chair, fingers interlaced. No joy or anger could be seen on his fat face, but his eyes were frantically switching between anger, suspicion, and uncontrollable greed. "You're still alive, good. Now, tell me, where are the rest of my people?"

"All... all dead..." Chen Feng was propped up by two Guards, his voice so weak it seemed he might expire at any second, his face wearing the terror of a survivor. "Supervisor, Area B... Area B is a hell!"

"I'm asking you, where are they?" Bachm's voice rose a few notches.

"Collapse... we encountered a collapse, and the robots were scrapped too..." Chen Feng began to cough violently at the right moment. "I... I only had time to bring this out..."

He used his last ounce of strength to point at the bag containing the Colored Crystals on the nearby table.

Bachm's gaze was instantly drawn to it.

"Later, we heard terrifying screams, like ghosts crying..." Chen Feng began to tell his carefully woven story. Every detail meshed perfectly with the information Bachm had heard from those intermittent distress signals. "Ma Liu and I were lucky. We hid in a cave and... and survived... We saw with our own eyes... those monsters..."

His description perfectly explained everything.

As Bachm listened, the last trace of suspicion in his eyes was finally completely demolished by that bag of glittering 'samples.'

He stood up, walked to the table, and picked up the bag of crystals with obsession.

Deep in Area B, there really was treasure!

And this Mine Slave before him, who had narrowly escaped death and was scared out of his wits, was the only 'lucky one' who could go in and come back out alive.

"Very good, very good!" Bachm's voice was full of ill-concealed ecstasy. "Chen Feng, you've done well! You will be my, Bachm's, greatest contributor!"

He looked at Chen Feng. His gaze was no longer looking at a dog, but at a rare treasure.

Chen Feng kept his head down, the corners of his mouth curling into a cold smile at an angle no one could see.

He had succeeded.

He was no longer a suspect, but the indispensable core of Bachm's treasure-hunting plan.