Chapter 1076: Smoke and Shadows

It was just after eight in the morning. Whether the people living in the cave ate two hot meals a day or three, this wasn’t the time for cooking. No one in their right mind would install surveillance equipment in a smoke vent either. Relieved, Xia Qing kept crawling deeper.

She squeezed herself forward another twenty meters through the winding tunnel until a faint light glimmered three meters ahead. The soot on the cave walls thickened with every inch; clearly, the occupants had been living here a long time.

Judging by the outline of an iron pot in the light, Xia Qing estimated that the exit ahead was a pot with a diameter of at least seventy centimeters—big enough to make porridge for fifteen people.

Of course, there might not be fifteen people living here. Using such a big pot was most likely for convenience with boiling water, just as Xia Qing did.

She crawled another two meters until she reached the end of the smoke vent. Focused entirely on listening for sounds inside the cave, she suddenly felt Elder Wolf give her calf a gentle nip. He was warning her—there was movement outside.

Xia Qing froze, watching the limited view outside the stove opening, eyes sharp for anything unusual.

Before long, faint footsteps approached. Xia Qing heard the heavy iron door sliding open and a rush of wind surge down the tunnel. Ash billowed up, dusting her protective mask.

Her protective mask was top-grade and dust-resistant; the fine ash drifted down slowly. In the corner of her vision, a pair of feet in military boots appeared.

Those boots were exactly the same style as the ones worn by the Scavengers that Xia Qing and the Wolf Pack captured near Hill Thirty-Seven in the Western Evolved Forest.

She stayed completely still, breathing slow and quiet, steadying her nerves and doing her best to diminish her presence. With her eyes closed, she locked onto the echo of footsteps, trying to gauge the size and shape of the cave by sound alone.

“How’s it looking?”

A woman with a raspy voice called out. Using her hearing, Xia Qing pinpointed her position—fifteen meters to the left and ahead of the stove.

The man in the boots growled impatiently, “The helicopter’s just circling overhead. It’s just to scare off anyone trying to sneak through to Hui Three. Xiao Jing’s holding the entrance. Relax.”

The woman sighed. “Magnetic Sense is handy, but Xiao Jing’s detection radius is only thirty meters. It’s still too small. My left eye’s been twitching since yesterday—feels like something bad’s about to happen. We have to stay alert. If this place gets exposed too, we’ll have nowhere left to hide.”

“You didn’t evolve any clairvoyance. Stop scaring yourself.” The man in boots cursed. “All this crap goes back to Hui Three’s Qinglong! If Yang Jin hadn’t grabbed our Evolved Wolf, Fu Tianfeng never would’ve discovered the wolf had surgery. He wouldn’t have gotten angry and caught Peng Yuancai, setting off Red One. If Peng Yuancai hadn’t gotten in trouble, Fire Phoenix wouldn’t have gone back to wrangle with the Safe Zone. Fire Mountain wouldn’t have been blown up by the Apocalypse. We wouldn’t be stuck miserable in this godforsaken cave with nothing!”

The woman sweeping the floor let out a mocking laugh. “Blame Qinglong? They could say the wolf we caught was too weak—it couldn’t outrun Yang Jin, even drugged up.”

A few seconds later, the man’s voice rose, “Exactly! Whatever happened to Fu Tianfeng is bound to get pinned on us by those bastards. Damn! If we’re pointing fingers, it’s the Fire Phoenix production team’s fault—they stuffed too little explosive in the collars. If there’d been more, Yang Jin and those wolves would’ve been blown to pieces, and we wouldn’t have any of this mess!”

His heavy footsteps stomped past the stove. Judging by the shadow sliding across the floor, he had a crossbow on his back but wasn’t packing any long guns or rocket launchers.

“Clang!”

He marched about ten meters forward before kicking an iron cage hard. Two weak but furious wolf howls echoed through the smoke tunnel, and Elder Wolf beside Xia Qing tensed up, muscles coiled and ready.

No wonder Number Four had rushed to find her—there were wolves trapped here by the scavengers. Their howls sounded so weak… Was it the surgery that left them like that or had they been dosed with Pesticide?

“Click—”

Suddenly, Xia Qing heard the crunch of gravel behind her in the smoke vent—probably Little Wolf’s little sister, still inexperienced and rattled by the howls, accidentally cracking a thin rock with her sharp claws.

“What was that?!” The woman dropped her broom and grabbed a weapon. Xia Qing heard the safety click off—a homemade firearm in her hands. She was probably an Auditory Evolutionary, though not a high-level one.

The man standing on the other side of the cave waited a few seconds, then finally grumbled, “What else could it be? Just the chopper. Quit jumping at shadows.”

“No, there’s noise in the smoke vent by the stove—maybe something crawled in. Go fetch Xiao Jing inside and block up the vent while you’re at it!”

“You always have to complicate things. Which smoke vent?” The man grumbled, but he turned to leave while checking which one she meant. Clearly, he trusted her instincts.

“All of them—block them now! If it’s the Wolf Pack and we make a scene, the chopper finds us and we’re screwed!” She hurried him on, gripping the homemade gun tighter.

There were only two people in the cave: one with a crossbow on his back and one holding a homemade gun. Outside, there was a Magnetic Sense Evolver.

If the Magnetic Sense Evolver came inside, they’d spot a person and four wolves crammed in the smoke vent right away.

Xia Qing shoved the big iron pot toward the woman’s direction. The moment the cave entrance was exposed, she fired. The first shot went at the man. Bursting from the vent and using the stove for cover, she squeezed off another shot, then spun to her left and fired a third time.

“Bang! Bang! Bang!”

“Boom!”

Three gunshots and the iron pot’s crash echoed through the cave. Xia Qing, covered head to toe in black, charged straight at the crossbowman as he raised his shield and tried to retreat. She slammed a fist down on his shield, knocking him flat and pinning him in place.

At the same time, Elder Wolf leapt from the vent and lunged at the woman on the left.

Alpha was the third out, instantly claiming the highest spot in the cave.

Little Wolf’s little sister stuck close to her mother’s left, taking up a defensive stance. Black Wolf, seeing Elder Wolf with his jaws locked on the woman’s throat, darted to Xia Qing’s side and bit down on the man’s right leg as she held him under the shield.

Dragging the shield to her right, Xia Qing quickly pulled a syringe from her medicine packet and jabbed the blood-spattered, unconscious man with a dose of sedative. She used string to tie him up tight, stuffed a cork in his mouth to silence him and rushed to help with the blue-skinned woman that Number Four had just mauled. “Number Four, let go—she’s dead already.”

Maybe they’d spent too long living in the Evolved Forest, or maybe they just felt too safe in here, but neither of these people had bothered with masks. Made it easy for Xia Qing to gag them and even easier for Elder Wolf to sink his teeth into their soft spots.

The woman had taken a shot to the back and was already dead.

Elder Wolf let out a low, furious growl, releasing the dead woman and lunging straight for the other human that Black Wolf had pinned.