Searching for someone in northern Myanmar, and you call that earning tuition fees?

Marching under the cover of night was so quiet it was unsettling.

After the storm, the desert was flat, its previous landscape completely gone. If Su Ming hadn't marked the spots with ropes and bamboo strips at intervals, the group would likely have been lost in this hellish landscape under the starry sky.

"Mr. Su." Zhao Gang lowered his voice and followed closely behind Su Ming.

"Do we really...not need a rest?"

His voice carried a hint of awe that he himself was unaware of. The former special forces soldier stared at Su Ming's retreating figure with astonishment and suspicion, as if he were looking at a monster in human skin.

"You can rest," Su Ming said without turning his head, his steps not faltering at all. "But the longer you rest, the less likely Gu Weiguang and the others are to survive."

Gu Changfeng stumbled and almost fell to his knees, but was caught by the bodyguard beside him. He opened his mouth, but couldn't bring himself to say "take a rest."

After walking for about an hour, Su Ming suddenly stopped.

He crouched down, picked up a pinch of sand, and sniffed it.

"It smells like diesel fuel."

Zhao Gang immediately became alert, drew his tactical flashlight from his waist, and a blinding beam of light shot forward. At the end of the beam, a black silhouette was faintly visible in the sand.

"It's a car!" a bodyguard exclaimed.

Everyone perked up and rushed over. It was a military off-road vehicle half-buried in the sand, a "Warrior" model commonly used by the Chinese border patrol team.

"It's one of the previous search and rescue teams!" Zhao Gang's face lit up with joy, and he immediately stepped forward to check.

However, when he opened the car door and the flashlight beam shone into the driver's seat, the joy on his face froze.

Inside and outside the carriage, five more corpses lay scattered, twisted and contorted. In the scorching desert sun and dry winds, they had long since dried out, becoming waxy yellow mummies tightly wrapped in bones.

"They...they've all sacrificed themselves..." Gu Changfeng's voice trembled, his stomach churned, and his face turned deathly pale.

"It's a black storm." Zhao Gang inspected the area and said sadly, "They were trapped here by the storm, their vehicles were damaged, and they ultimately couldn't get out."

He pointed to the numerous dents and broken windows on the vehicle: "Look, these were all caused by pebbles in the sandstorm. It's the same situation as our Unimog."

The bodyguards also looked somber, silently paying tribute to the rescue team members who had sacrificed their lives.

"wrong."

It was Su Ming who spoke.

Su Ming had already walked around the vehicle without anyone noticing. He was squatting next to a skeleton, gently poking at a broken rib with a bamboo stick.

"Captain Zhao, you were in the army, you should know the difference between gunshot wounds and blunt force injuries." Su Ming stood up and looked at Zhao Gang.

Zhao Gang was taken aback, then quickly squatted down to take a closer look, his face immediately darkening.

The clean edges of the bone fracture clearly indicated that it was caused by a sharp weapon, not by a flying rock during a storm.

"And here too." Su Ming walked to the front of the car and pointed to the shattered hood. "Look at these bullet holes."

As everyone crowded around, they saw three fist-sized holes on the hood, with the edges curled inwards.

"This is... a large-caliber armor-piercing projectile!" Zhao Gang was shocked.

"And look at the positions of these three bullet holes; they correspond to the engine, transmission, and fuel system respectively: one shot disables the engine, one locks the transmission, and one destroys the fuel system. This is the most professional vehicle sabotage method; the attackers have an intimate understanding of the 'Warrior's' structure!"

This was definitely not left behind by indiscriminate firing during a skirmish!

"This is not an accident caused by a natural disaster," Su Ming coldly asserted.

"This is a unilateral execution."

He walked to another dried-out corpse, which was kneeling eerily, with a huge hole in the back of its head, the entire skull missing. Su Ming gently kicked away the sand below the corpse's knees with his toe, revealing a deformed bullet.

"The execution-style shooting, with the bullet entering through the back of the head and the powerful kinetic energy blowing the entire skull off," Su Ming stated calmly, his tone indifferent.

"They didn't even bother to bury the bodies, because they knew a black storm would take care of all the traces for them."

Gu Changfeng and his bodyguards were horrified, feeling a chill creep up their spines.

They thought their greatest enemy was this sea of ​​death, but now they realize that something even more terrifying than nature is hidden in this desert.

"Who...would do something so ruthless?" a bodyguard asked in a trembling voice.

Zhao Gang stared intently at the bullet, then rummaged through another corpse for a moment, tearing a piece of cloth soaked in blood and worn white by the wind and sand from a severed arm's combat uniform.

On the piece of cloth, one can vaguely see a pattern embroidered in black thread—a snarling fox head.

"Black Fox..." Zhao Gang's eyes narrowed, and he practically spat out the two words through clenched teeth.

"What black fox?" Gu Changfeng asked urgently.

"The Black Fox Mercenary Group," Zhao Gang said through gritted teeth.

"A bunch of scum who act as watchdogs for the West! They take money to do their jobs, and their hands are stained with the blood of their own compatriots!"

He looked up, and for the first time, an undisguised fear appeared in his eyes.

"Mr. Su, what we are facing now may not be one or two bandits, but a well-equipped and well-trained army," Zhao Gang said with difficulty, taking a deep breath.

"I suggest...we retreat immediately, take the intelligence back, and let the military handle it."

retreat?

Gu Changfeng's heart sank. He knew Zhao Gang had made the most rational choice, but the thought of his daughter still being held by those devils tormented him.

Everyone looked at Su Ming, who remained unusually calm throughout.

Su Ming did not answer Zhao Gang. He simply walked to the wrecked "Warrior" and ran his finger slowly across the dusty car window.

"They consumed three times the amount of fuel before they lost contact."

Su Ming looked at the dust on his fingertips and muttered to himself.

"This means they encountered something that needed to be dispelled with high temperatures."

"The fact that Black Fox executed the search and rescue team here suggests that they wanted to cover up a secret."

"A secret that needs to be protected with cryogenic traps, and that must be covered up even at the cost of antagonizing a major power..."

He turned around and scoffed.

"I can't wait any longer."

"What kind of good stuff are they hiding down there?"