27: Chapter 27 Deputy Commander Zhang, your house was robbed!

It was already late at night when he returned to Fortress No. 13.

Li Zhengyang did not return to his barracks and went straight to the East District medical room.

The medical room was a two-story sheet metal building; it was newer than the barracks, but not by much.

The first floor was the clinic and pharmacy, and the second floor was the inpatient ward.

The military doctor on night duty was surnamed Chen. He was in his thirties with dark circles under his eyes. When he saw someone push the door open, he looked up.

"Are you here for treatment?"

"Not for treatment, I'm dropping something off."

Li Zhengyang took out the pills from his space ring and dumped them onto the table.

Military Doctor Chen sprang up from his chair.

He walked over, his pupils dilating in that instant.

"Th-these are battlefield first-aid pills? Healing pills? Blood-recovery pills?"

"Yes."

"Where did you get these?"

"Don't worry about where I got them; save the wounded first."

Military Doctor Chen crouched down, picked up a bottle of first-aid pills, and examined it. Seeing the Quartermasters Office serial number on the bottle, his lips moved, but he swallowed the words that had reached his throat.

He had been a military doctor for five years and knew all too well what these serial numbers meant.

But he knew even better what the wounded soldiers lying upstairs needed.

"They can be used," Military Doctor Chen stood up, his voice a bit hoarse. "That's enough, enough to last a good while."

"Then distribute them."

Li Zhengyang turned to leave.

"Wait a moment," Military Doctor Chen called out to him. "What's your name?"

"It's not important."

"I have to register this."

"Just write 'found'."

As Li Zhengyang walked out of the medical room, a light came on in a window on the second floor.

Military Doctor Chen had already rushed upstairs carrying two boxes of pills, his footsteps thudding loudly.

On the way back to the barracks, Li Zhengyang began to calculate his big haul.

There were still spirit ores and other supplies in his space ring.

The spirit ores were the main bulk and needed to be sold off as soon as possible.

Su Jin's Wanbao Pavilion was in the interior, so transportation was an issue. But that black market pass she gave him...

Was there a black market near Fortress No. 13?

Such frontline military strongholds were strictly managed on the surface, but wherever there were people, there were underground transactions.

His plan was clear; he would sleep first and find a way tomorrow.

Early the next morning, Li Zhengyang went to the Quartermasters Office to settle the reconnaissance mission and kill records for Bloody Canyon.

The 500,000 mission bonus was in his hands.

After coming out of the Quartermasters Office, he wandered around the fortress.

After asking three people, he found the place in the North District of the fortress.

It was a sheet metal shack with a sign that read "Veteran's Teahouse".

Once inside, it had nothing to do with a teahouse.

In the corner, a few people were squatting and gambling with dice, using a few beast cores on the table as chips. In the corner sat an old woman wearing a headscarf, with a row of small bottles in front of her, selling privately brewed strong liquor.

The inner area was separated by a cloth curtain, and one could vaguely see people trading something.

Li Zhengyang took out the black card Su Jin had given him and flashed it in front of a doorman at the entrance.

The doorman looked at the card, then at him, and stepped aside.

Behind the cloth curtain was a larger space.

There were three tables, with a person sitting behind each one, all of them buying goods.

Li Zhengyang walked to the table furthest inside.

Sitting behind the table was a lean, wizened man in his fifties, with prayer beads wrapped around his fingers and a shrewd look on his face.

"Do you buy spirit ores?"

The man's prayer beads stopped moving.

"How much?"

Li Zhengyang took a fist-sized piece of spirit ore from his space ring and placed it on the table.

A dark purple luster flowed under the light, and the spiritual energy fluctuation caused ripples in the cup of tea on the table.

The man picked it up, weighed it in his hand, squeezed it, and held it under his nose to smell it.

"The quality is decent. How much are you selling?"

"Five boxes."

The spirit ore in the man's hand almost fell onto the table.

He looked up and scrutinized Li Zhengyang carefully several times.

"Five boxes? Little brother, you didn't happen to empty out the military's ore warehouse, did you?"

"Isn't it your policy not to ask where the goods come from?"

The man was silent for a few seconds before he started turning the prayer beads again.

"My temple is too small to handle that much. But I can help you contact a buyer for a ten percent commission."

The man quoted a price: the spirit ores would be bought at eighty percent of the black market rate, at 300,000 per box, for a total of 1.5 million for five boxes.

Including the other miscellaneous supplies, he rounded it up to 2 million.

After deducting the ten percent commission, he would get 1.8 million.

Li Zhengyang didn't haggle; this stuff was hot, and the sooner he sold it, the better.

When the five boxes of spirit ores were dumped out of the space ring, the people gambling with dice outside the curtain all felt the fluctuation of spiritual energy and turned their heads in unison toward this direction.

The doorman walked over and pulled the cloth curtain shut tight.

Meanwhile.

Bloody Canyon, mine entrance.

A man wearing a black training uniform ran in from outside the canyon, covered in wounds and panting like an ox.

He was the fourth person in the mine.

The scarred man had arranged for him to go to the secret sentry post on the outskirts of the canyon this afternoon to receive a new batch of goods.

He didn't wait for the goods, and when he returned to check...

There were three extra corpses.

The goods were gone.

The warehouse had been more than half emptied.

The man's hands trembled as he took out a special communicator and dialed an encrypted channel.

"Vice... Vice Commander Zhang."

There was silence on the other end of the communicator for two seconds.

"Speak."

"The transit station was taken out. Old Liu and the other two are all dead. The spirit ores, pills, and beast cores are mostly gone."

A ten-second silence followed.

Then came a heavy breath.

"Who did it."

"I don't know, they didn't leave any survivors. But recently, only one person has been in this area."

"Who?"

"The one you sent to execute the reconnaissance mission yesterday, Li Zhengyang."

On the other end of the communicator, something was smashed.

Vice Commander Zhang Jianbiao was sitting in the command headquarters office, the teacup on his desk shattered all over the floor.

At this moment, the rage in his chest was almost bursting out of his throat.

But he could not vent it.

He could not say it openly.

Because trafficking military supplies was a capital offense in itself.

If he ran to question Li Zhengyang, it would be the same as admitting to the smuggling himself.

Fortress Commander Zhao Tiehan was a 9th-Rank Martial Spirit; if he really investigated, Vice Commander Zhang Jianbiao wouldn't have enough heads to be chopped off.

Vice Commander Zhang Jianbiao took a deep breath, then another.

A minute later, he picked up the internal phone and dialed the combat command room.

"Is the latest beast tide warning report out?"

"Reporting, the North District detection array shows signs of large-scale monster migration in the direction of Bloody Canyon. It is estimated that a beast tide shockwave may form within 36 hours."

"Thirty-six hours."

Vice Commander Zhang Jianbiao hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair.

A beast tide.

When a large-scale beast tide arrived, the fortress would enter a state of full combat readiness, and all combat units would be assigned to various sections of the wall for defense.

Which section they were assigned to depended on the command headquarters' scheduling.

And the Vice Commander had the authority to participate in this scheduling.

Vice Commander Zhang Jianbiao opened his drawer and pulled out a map of the fortress wall's defense zones.

His finger traced a circle on the map and stopped at the northwest corner.

The Northwest Section.

It was the thinnest section of the wall, long in disrepair, with the fewest firepower points configured.

During the last beast tide, the Northwest Section was almost breached, and a platoon guarding that section suffered over fifty percent casualties.

Vice Commander Zhang Jianbiao picked up a pen and wrote three words on the location of the Northwest Section.

Po Feng Battalion.