Trickster Hunter.

Chapter 534 Abandoned Oil Field
Upon hearing the ascetic's words, Sun Hang's eyes lit up: "Are there still enough spots for the curse? Is it that only one person can bear the curse at a time, or can many people 'share' the curse together?"

Looking at the excited Sun Hang, the ascetic shook his head with a look of pity: "If you want to use the power of the curse to gain immortality, you will be disappointed. This is not true immortality, but a process in which your personality is gradually devoured by that thing... First memories, then emotions, and finally self-awareness... When these things are completely devoured, I will only be a walking corpse."

“No, you misunderstand. I’ve never thought immortality was a good thing. On the contrary, I think there’s probably nothing worse than immortality for humanity,” Sun Hang said. “I originally just wanted to use this method to deal with those guys who aren’t even afraid of death. For them, death is just a matter of closing their eyes and gritting their teeth and it’s over… But what if you imprison their consciousness within a body that will never decay, and keep them conscious forever…”

The ascetic monk's gaze towards Sun Hang changed instantly.

For a fleeting moment, he felt somewhat relieved that the curse he was suffering from wasn't the kind of "immortality" Sun Hang had mentioned... At most, in a few decades, his consciousness would return to dust...

Zhulong's expression also changed slightly. He whispered, "Just thinking about this kind of punishment is enough to send chills down one's spine..."

"Unfortunately, it's still quite difficult to achieve this from a technical standpoint," Sun Hang said.

"Now that things have come to this, do you still refuse to turn back, benefactor?" the ascetic monk asked.

“Since we’re already here,” Sun Hang turned to Zhulong, “why don’t you go back?”

Zhulong glanced at Sun Hang, but said nothing and did not turn to leave.

"Greed is a negative human emotion, isn't it?" Sun Hang asked again.

“Theoretically speaking, yes.” Zhulong nodded.

"Then it'll be fine."

With Xue Yue around, the emotional impact could be minimized—which is why Sun Hang didn't leave her in the car.

"Alas..." the ascetic sighed.

……

Nanhua Town is not large. Even at its peak, the town had a population of less than 5,000. The town has only one road running through the middle, which is the road that Sun Hang and his group are currently on.

Nanhua Town is located in the central part of the Gobi Desert, in a place far from any other villages or shops. The main reason why a settlement was formed here is that an oil field, which is neither large nor small, was discovered less than five kilometers away from the town.

The earliest residents of Nanhua Town were the drilling team members. Later, as the oil field entered the exploitation stage, more and more workers and technicians settled here with their families.

Trucks brought all kinds of daily necessities here, and transported the extracted oil to the oil refinery in Yumen. Vegetable markets, grocery stores, restaurants, supermarkets, bathhouses, and even dance halls... all kinds of supporting commercial facilities sprang up here like mushrooms after rain. In just over a year, this settlement, which originally had less than a hundred people, gradually developed into a small town with a population of a thousand.

The federal government began building roads and communication base stations here. A dozen sheriffs assigned to the area established the Nanhua Town Police Station. As the Hexi Corridor region had long been plagued by strange creatures, hunters and mercenaries began to frequently enter and leave the town. Under their influence, Nanhua Town's commercial activities also began to flourish.

However, the good times didn't last long. The oil wells in Nanhua Town dried up after only three years of operation for some unknown reason.

According to the original exploration results, the oil field in Nanhua Town could be exploited for at least forty years. However, it has now stopped producing oil before reaching even one-tenth of the estimated maximum capacity. This has caused immediate panic among the institutions and companies that invested in the oil field. If the Nanhua oil field is abandoned, not only will their previous investments be lost, but they may also face the risk of bankruptcy.

Under pressure from investors, the construction teams had no choice but to drill deeper into the rock strata... but this led to a series of construction accidents. In those days, drilling technology was not as advanced as it is now, and the equipment could not be fully automated. There were many places where workers had to operate manually... which meant that every construction accident was accompanied by casualties among the construction workers.

When the death toll reached seventeen, the federal government shut down the South China Oilfield, bringing the town's development to an abrupt halt.

The cost of living in Nanhua Town is very high. There is no groundwater or arable soil. The food and water that are most important for human survival must be transported by truck from a great distance. With the oil field sealed off, Nanhua Town has lost all its value...

The population rapidly declined, and a large number of houses were abandoned... Less than three months after the oil field was shut down, Nanhua Town had less than a third of its population left. Among those who remained, most were former employees of the Nanhua Oilfield and their families.

With the company bankrupt, investors absconding, and executives committing suicide, the employees who couldn't get their wages could only stay in the sealed oil field, making futile efforts—like moths trapped in an upside-down glass, constantly crashing against the transparent glass wall, bleeding profusely, yet unable to find a way out.

Later, these people gradually left Nanhua Town—the fresh water and food reserves in the company warehouse were all consumed, and every abandoned house in the town was ransacked countless times. These people could not afford the high transportation fees, so naturally no more trucks were transporting food and water to the town... Between dying of thirst and starvation and going to other places to make a living, the vast majority of people chose the latter.

In fact, Nanhua Town was one of the first towns in the Hexi Corridor region to become a no-man's land. At that time, the activities of strange creatures in the Hexi Corridor were not as frequent as they are now, and the deadly sandstorms and terrain changes had not yet occurred. The biggest reason for the decline of Nanhua Town was the depletion of the oil field.

It's not surprising that a town that was born because of oil also declined because of oil... The only thing that seems a bit strange is the huge gap between the estimated reserves and the actual extraction volume of the Nanhua Oilfield.

It's now very difficult to figure out why the data from the original survey had such a large error. The great-great-grandchildren of those people from the survey team are now grown up and can't find anything based on the yellowed paper documents that have been preserved.

The road that ran through Nanhua Town was only 600 meters long, and the four of them quickly reached its end. But the ascetic monk did not stop; instead, he led them out of the town and continued onward.

"That thing isn't in Nanhua Town?" Zhulong glanced back at the increasingly distant ruins and pondered, "Could it be... in the abandoned oil field?"

“Yes.” The ascetic nodded.

"Could that thing be related to the depletion of the Nanhua Oilfield back then?" Zhulong quickly connected the two things—although the two things seemed to be unrelated, Zhulong's intuition told him that the depletion of the Nanhua Oilfield was definitely not as simple as recorded in the archives.

Even if the survey data has a large error, it can't be that outrageous.

"Do you know how the Nanhua Oilfield was discovered in the first place?" the ascetic monk suddenly asked.

Zhulong paused slightly, then shook his head: "I don't know... There's no record of this in any of the archives I can find." "Actually, what was discovered in Nanhua Town at first wasn't an oil field, but a coal mine," the ascetic monk said. "But the coal reserves in Nanhua Town are very small, and the ore layers are extremely thin, so they are not worth mining."

"Then how was the oil field discovered?" Zhulong followed up with another question.

"Although the federal government did not intend to mine the coal here, more than a decade later, a private entrepreneur, for reasons unknown, took a liking to the place. He bought the mining rights from the federal government at an extremely low price, and then assembled a group of workers and some cheap mining equipment..."

"Isn't this a completely unprofitable business?" Sun Hang wondered. "Given the remote location of Nanhua Town, even if coal is mined, the money earned from selling it would barely cover the transportation costs, right? Unless his workers are all robots that don't need to eat, drink, or be paid... But wait, robots need electricity, and there's no power grid here. Power generation relies on oil-fired generators, plus daily maintenance... Forget it, it seems like using human workers would actually be cheaper."

“It was indeed a losing business, but that entrepreneur has another identity,” the ascetic said.

"What identity?"

"He was a member of the exploration team that discovered the coal mine."

"Could it be that this guy discovered there was oil beneath the coal mine, and then deliberately kept it a secret, waiting until he had earned enough start-up capital over a decade later before buying the mining rights from the federal government... If that's the case, then this guy is quite a talent," Sun Hang muttered.

“No… you are unaware, benefactor.” The ascetic shook his head. “He wasn’t after oil, but after that thing.”

"That thing?" Zhulong's eyelids twitched suddenly. "Was that strange object already in the mine back then? How do you know these things?"

“We found his remains in the mine, along with a diary,” the ascetic said. “In the diary, he described that thing as something he would give up everything for… When he first went on the survey, it was still buried deep underground, but he felt a strong attraction to it, so much so that after returning to the mainland, he resigned from his job in the geological survey department and chose to go into business…”

"This guy is quite inspiring," Sun Hang commented. "To be able to start from scratch and earn such a sum of start-up capital in more than ten years, with that kind of capital, you can succeed at anything, right?"

“No… based on my analysis, that person has probably become a ‘Chang Gui’ (a type of evil spirit),” the ascetic monk sighed. “Different ‘Chang Gui’ have different tasks. His task is to do everything he can to release that thing, while my task is…”

"He led us to him," Sun Hang continued, "How many people did you bring in in total?"

“I don’t remember,” the ascetic said.

“In the last ten years, eighty-five people have gone missing near Nanhua Town, but this is only the number that has been recorded; the actual number may be much higher.” Zhulong’s voice reached Sun Hang’s ears. “Among them are many top-notch free hunters.”

"What happened to those hunters you brought in?"

“I don’t know,” the ascetic said. “I will only lead them to the entrance and then I will return.”

"After they went in, did anyone come out?"

"No."

……

The abandoned Nanhua Oilfield was surrounded by a wall made of plastic steel panels, but now two-thirds of the wall has collapsed, revealing the dilapidated houses and the dismantled drilling equipment inside.

In the center of the work area, there is a large pit formed by ground subsidence. Many cavities can be seen on the inner wall of the pit. Some cavities have been reinforced with steel bars and concrete, while others are in their original state, giving the impression that they may collapse again at any time.

A steel-plated beam bridge surrounds the pit, and at the end of the beam bridge is an elevator that leads directly into the depths of the pit.

The ascetic led the three onto the beam bridge and all the way to the elevator.

“I will only take you this far. If you want to turn back now, it’s not too late,” the ascetic monk said to Sun Hang and the others.

"How do we get down?" Sun Hang asked.

"The elevator is still working." The ascetic pulled down the lever, and with a sickening metallic scraping sound, the iron gate of the elevator car slowly rose.

"This oil field has been abandoned for so many years, how come this elevator is still working? Where does it get its energy?" Sun Hang carefully examined the elevator's structure. Like an ascetic, he couldn't sense any strange meme aura on this elevator, meaning that at least this thing wasn't a strange object. "Could it be that you've been maintaining it all along?"

The ascetic did not answer the question, but repeated: "It's not too late to turn back now."

Sun Hang answered directly with his actions, walking straight into the sedan chair, followed by Zhulong, and then Xue Yue.

The ascetic sighed and then pressed down on the lever.

The iron gates closed, and with a sound of steel cables rubbing against chains, the car began to descend slowly.

"This crater was probably formed during a secondary mining operation due to an accident," Zhulong said, turning on his tactical flashlight and looking around.

"These rock layers look very brittle. It feels like you don't even need any engineering equipment; you could just grab a hammer and smash them open..." Sun Hang muttered.

(End of this chapter)