Dare to shirk responsibility? This adorable little one will tear down your military district!

Ya Ya squatted behind the pile of camphor wood boxes at the very back.

The stone chamber was dimly lit, with a few nearly burnt torches crackling. The veterans leaned against the pillars, snoring with their eyes closed, none of them glancing in their direction.

Lin Wanrou was feeding Niu Dan water with a kettle, telling him not to wander off. Gu Changfeng, carrying a gun, was pacing around the steps, checking to see if any bandits were pretending to be dead.

A great opportunity.

Ya Ya stretched out her chubby little hand and placed it on a thick camphor wood box sealed with cinnabar strips. The box contained fifty pounds of gold bars, plus moisture-proof lead blocks and solid wood; it was quite heavy. But as soon as her palm touched it, she mentally shouted "Collect," and the huge wooden box vanished on the spot, silently entering her two-hundred-square-meter personal space, landing steadily next to the patch of mutated purple grass.

it works!

Ya Ya's lips curled up in delight, and she took a few quick steps, gliding along the pile of boxes.

"receive!"

"I'll take this one too!"

"Let's fill up our pockets and buy a big pork knuckle!"

The little girl moved around like she was on duty, her little hands touching whatever boxes were in sight, and those boxes would vanish without a trace. She was particularly careful, leaving the outermost box out of sight untouched, focusing instead on emptying the innermost boxes. After all that work, she magically removed more than seventy of the one hundred large wooden boxes that had been piled up like a small mountain.

Inside the portable space, more than seventy large camphor wood chests were neatly stacked. The pool of water in the space emitted wisps of cold air, and the herbs in the medicinal field, stimulated by the earthy aura from the gold, grew even more vigorously.

Ya Ya clapped her hands and looked at the remaining twenty or thirty boxes. She counted on her short fingers: thirty uncles, plus the dozen or so big camels outside, would be just the right amount to carry this amount of gold. It wouldn't be tiring, and it would be enough to get the job done.

After doing all that, she turned around and climbed onto a wooden box that hadn't been taken away, sitting down casually with her short legs dangling in the air again.

Twenty minutes later.

Gu Changfeng walked back from the passageway, his military boots making a dull thud on the paving stones. "Time's up! Everyone get up and stretch your arms and legs, then continue bagging!"

Platoon Leader Li scrambled to his feet, patting his face to clear his head. Old Zhao, wiping his hands together with his entrenching tool, walked to the outer ring of crates. "Brothers, give it your all! Let's empty this mountain of gold today!"

As Old Zhao spoke, he used his entrenching tool to pry open the lid of a box. Just as he was about to take the gold bars out of the box, he leaned forward, lost his footing, and fell directly onto the box.

By the light of the torch, Old Zhao peeked through the cracks in the wooden box and nearly dropped his eyeballs.

What should have been a mountain of boxes piled up to the top is now completely empty, not even a single piece of wood is left!

"What the hell?!" Old Zhao's hand trembled, and the entrenching tool fell to the ground with a clatter.

Platoon Leader Li walked over, frowning, and asked, "Old Zhao, what's all the commotion about? Are the bandits here again?"

Old Zhao swallowed hard, pointed behind the box, and said in a trembling voice, "Platoon leader, you...look for yourself. The box...the box grew legs and ran away!"

Platoon Leader Li shoved Old Zhao aside, peeked inside, and gasped in shock. Of the original hundred large crates, only the outermost layer remained, barely twenty or so. The floor tiles inside were exposed, without even a drag mark.

This is a dead object weighing several thousand pounds! Even if it had wings, it couldn't fly out of this underground stone chamber!

"All hands on alert!" Platoon Leader Li yanked back his rifle, and the thirty veterans raised their guns in unison, their nerves immediately on edge.

Hearing the commotion, Gu Changfeng strode over. "What happened?"

"Chief of staff, most of the gold has vanished into thin air! Is there a hidden door in this underground palace?" Platoon Leader Li reported, pointing to the open space.

Gu Changfeng's gaze passed over the box and fixed on the open space. The floor tiles were smooth, without even a mouse hole. His eyelids twitched violently, and his gaze shifted, landing on Ya Ya sitting on the wooden box.

Ya Ya blinked her big eyes, covered her round belly with her little hands, and let out a loud burp. She didn't say anything, just looked at her dad with a grin, looking smug like she was saying, "I did a good deed, praise me!"

Gu Changfeng felt a throbbing sensation in his temples.

He knew his daughter all too well. Born with superhuman strength, possessing immense power, and now she could even make something weighing several thousand pounds disappear? The secrets hidden within this girl were enough to rip the heavens apart.

But she was his own flesh and blood. Even if she was a little monster who could eat iron and devour gold, she was still the most precious thing in Gu Changfeng's heart!

Gu Changfeng moved two steps without making a sound, his broad back shielding Ya Ya behind him. He put on a stern face and coldly swept his eyes over the thirty sharp-edged soldiers.

"What do you mean it vanished into thin air! This intelligence is decades old. How much could a warlord have left here when he fled?" Gu Changfeng's voice boomed, carrying an undeniable authority. "I just counted; there were only twenty-eight chests of gold in this underground palace to begin with!"

Old Zhao scratched his head: "But Chief of Staff, when we first came in, it clearly looked like a hundred boxes..."

"You're mistaken!" Gu Changfeng interrupted him rudely, his tiger-like eyes wide. "The underground is filled with miasma and the light is dim. Plus, we just fought a battle with the bandits. Everyone's eyes are blurry. What's so strange about seeing double images!"

Old Zhao shrank back when he was glared at and quickly shut his mouth.

Platoon Leader Li is a smart man. To be able to serve as a sharp platoon leader under Gu Changfeng, his ability to read people and situations is absolutely first-rate.

He had just caught a glimpse of Ya Ya sitting on the box, and seeing the Chief of Staff's blatantly protective and unreasonable attitude, he immediately understood the situation.

You can't ask too many questions about this; asking too many questions is against the rules.

"The chief of staff is right!" Platoon Leader Li immediately turned around and shouted to everyone, "That was just a shadow cast by the torches. There were only twenty-eight boxes to begin with! Everyone hurry up and unpack and pack these twenty-eight boxes! Use camels to pull the rest! Don't waste time!"

These thirty veterans had all been through countless battles; discipline was more important than their lives. Since their superior had given the order, even if they had seen the box change from square to round with their own eyes, they had to swallow their pride.

Everyone put away their guns and got back to work without saying a word.

This made the work much easier. Twenty-eight boxes yielded over a thousand pounds of gold bars. Thirty strong men, each stuffing thirty or forty pounds into their packs, easily slung them over their shoulders. The remaining gold bars were transported down the steps by Platoon Leader Li and securely tied to the saddlebags of the captured Bactrian camels.

In less than an hour, all the gold in the underground palace had been looted.

"Retreat!" Gu Changfeng scooped up Ya Ya and placed her steadily on his broad shoulders. Lin Wanrou, holding Niu Dan's hand, led the large group out of the demon's mouth through the blue brick passage without looking back.

The sky outside was already beginning to lighten. The desert morning air was bitingly cold. The yellow sand, blown by the wind, stung my face.

Those bandits, bound tightly, were thrown into the sand pit like maggots. Platoon Leader Li went up and gave each of them a final blow with the butt of his rifle, knocking them unconscious to prevent them from causing trouble on the way.

The team redistributed the water bags and rations. Gu Changfeng helped Lin Wanrou onto a tall camel, then mounted his own horse, holding Ya Ya in his arms. Niu Dan, being small, shared a horse with Platoon Leader Li.

"Chief of Staff, we've struck it rich this time! Not only did we get the gold, but we also got this huge herd of livestock for free!" Old Zhao patted the horse's neck, grinning from ear to ear.

Gu Changfeng pulled on the reins, preparing to order them to identify the direction and head back.

Niu Dan, who had been sitting silently on horseback, suddenly straightened up. He sniffed hard in the cold wind, his thick, dark eyebrows furrowed tightly together.

His alert eyes were fixed on a huge, continuous sand dune to the east.

"Dad," Niu Dan lowered his voice and pointed over there, "There are people behind there. Lots of people."

Gu Changfeng pulled the reins, and the horse snorted. Platoon Leader Li immediately gave hand signals, and all the soldiers in the platoon quickly pulled back their rifle bolts, entering a state of combat readiness.

"Who is it?" Gu Changfeng asked.

Niu Dan sniffed, his voice icy cold: "I didn't smell that muttony odor of the bandits. Instead, it smells like tin canned food mixed with ham, and a strong odor of gun oil. This smell is exactly the same as the smell on that blond foreigner we caught in the abandoned Shougang factory last time!"

Foreigners hire mercenaries!

Gu Changfeng was filled with murderous intent. These foreign devils had a keen sense of smell; they were carrying metal detectors and had gotten close to the demon's mouth so quickly. If they had followed the original plan and carried the hundred boxes of gold bars by hand, they would have been caught red-handed by now, and a bloody battle would have been inevitable.

Gu Changfeng glanced at Ya Ya, who was peeling milk candy in his arms, and then at the camel caravan carrying gold. The gold was already in their hands; there was no need to fight the foreigners in this desert.

"Change course!" Gu Changfeng yanked on the reins, turning his horse around. "Let's follow the weathered rocks to the west! Take a shortcut out of the desert! We'll go straight back to the capital to report!"

Under the cover of the sandstorm, the large group silently bypassed the eastern sand dunes and headed straight for the edge of the desert. Those foreigners were destined to find nothing but empty stone slabs and the corpses of sand bandits in the underground palace.

This batch of gold, crucial to the development of the nation's heavy industry, is about to cause a huge stir in the capital.