What the hell is the "kill line" when you're in America?

Chapter 229 Things in the Mountains

At 1:40 a.m., Richie slowed down to 60 miles per hour, his headlights illuminating the darkness ahead. The Douglas fir trees on both sides of the road formed two impenetrable walls, their canopies blocking out most of the starlight.

Li Ang's spiritual power continued to extend outwards, and there were no other vehicles on the road.

Each pulsation was accompanied by a faint pull from the east, like an invisible thread tethering the edge of the flame, slowly tightening.

"Victor?" Li Ang pressed the button on his headset.

"What's wrong, boss?" Victor asked.

Is anyone on duty at the forest ranger station at the entrance of Forest Highway 62?

6

"The signal is normal. Since the photo of the Suboban was taken at 9:52, no vehicles have passed by so far."

"Keep an eye on it." Li Ang hung up the call and turned to Richie: "How far is the junction on Highway 57?"

As the car rounded the bend, an unpaved gravel road appeared on the left. At the intersection stood a faded green sign, the number "57" more than half peeled off. Richie stopped the car at the intersection without turning off the engine. Tahoe behind him also stopped, and Carl flashed his headlights twice in response.

Li Ang pushed open the car door and got out.

The mountain air brushed against my face, the temperature at least ten degrees lower than in the city. The scent of fir resin and humus filled my nostrils, mixed with...

With a faint mineral scent emanating from him, he stood at the beginning of the gravel road, gathering all his released spiritual energy back into his dantian.

But on that blurry boundary, he caught a signal that was not a living thing, not an animal, not anything he had ever sensed in the city.

The signal was heavy, extremely dense, and had a rough texture. The pulsation it emitted was of the same origin as the dantian fire seed, yet completely different. The fire seed's vibration suddenly intensified the moment it came into contact with the signal, with the frequency soaring from twenty to twenty-five times. Even tiny arcs of light shot out from the black flames at the edge.

Richie's expression remained unchanged, but his hand had already moved from the steering wheel to the holster under the passenger seat. "What's that?"

"Not sure yet." Li Ang bent down and took out a flashlight and a dagger from his tactical bag. "But its signal characteristics match the stone photo on the doctor's hard drive."

Richie got out of the car, walked over to Tahoe, and knocked on the window. Carl and Hammer got out at the same time and checked their weapons.

"There might be an ambush in the woods," Richie told the three. "Standard search formation, two people per group, fifteen meters apart. The boss and I will go first, Carl and Hammer will follow behind, and Tommy and Fernando will stay behind to watch the car. If anything happens, honk the horn three times."

The beam of the flashlight swept across the tree trunks, illuminating the intertwined branches overhead. The tire tracks on the road were clearly visible in the light, two parallel grooves running through the fallen leaves and stretching into the darkness in the distance.

Richie crouched down, picked up a clod of dirt embedded in the rut with his finger, and brought it to his nose to smell it.

"It's fresh." He crushed the mud. "No more than six hours. The tire width matches the Suburban."

Li Ang's spiritual energy was released again. The signal was still 400 meters away, its pulse frequency stable and unchanged.

"go ahead."

The four men continued along the tire tracks. The gravel road began to descend after two hundred meters, the slope gentle, and the surface became exposed granite. The tire tracks disappeared on the rock, replaced by black marks left by tires rolling over moss.

At a distance of 300 meters, the woods suddenly became sparse.

Twenty meters ahead, the trees parted, revealing a clearing about thirty meters wide. A black Chevrolet Suburban was parked on the right side of the clearing; the doors were closed, the engine was long since cooled, and the body was covered with a thin layer of pine needles. Li Ang scanned the vehicle with his mental energy; there was no sign of life.

He gestured for Richie to lead Carl around to the left side of the vehicle, while he and Hammer approached from the right.

Hammer was the biggest of the four, yet he moved with unusual lightness. He carried the M4, moving close to the tree trunk, the muzzle always aimed at the window of Saboban's car.

Li Ang walked to the passenger side and shone his flashlight into the car.

The car was empty. There were two black waterproof bags in the back seat, one open and empty; the other half-zipped, revealing a few data cables and the corner of a laptop.

Richie leaned closer from the other side and whispered, "Where is he?"

Li Ang's flashlight beam swept across the end of the open space, illuminating a concrete wall.

The wall jutted out from the mountain on the north side of the open space, about three meters high and six meters wide, its gray surface covered with water stains and moss.

In the center of the wall, a heavy steel door was blown open.

The signs of the explosion were obvious. The hinge on the left side of the steel door had come off, the door panel was tilted inward, and the concrete around the door frame was cracked, exposing the internal steel reinforcement. Blackened burn marks radiated outward from the door frame, and several pieces of debris thrown out by the shockwave were scattered on the ground.

Richie walked to the steel door and shone his flashlight on the explosive residue on the door frame. "Directional blasting, industrial-grade ammonium nitrate explosive, equipped with an electronic detonator." His finger moved along the blast marks. "The technique was clean and efficient, a single detonation that only damaged the hinges and lock, without harming the load-bearing structure. The person who did this must have at least ten years of blasting experience."

Behind the steel door was a downward-sloping concrete passageway, wide enough for two people to walk side by side. Every five meters along the inner wall was a moisture-proof lamp, but only the first two were lit, emitting a dim, yellowish glow. Further in, it was pitch black.

The moment he stood at the doorway, the tremor of the flame reached a new peak.

The signal source was deep within the passage. Its location and distance were much clearer than before. It wasn't four hundred meters, but much farther. What he had sensed on the gravel path was merely the residual echo of the signal after it had penetrated the rock and concrete. The true source was underground.

"Victor." Li Ang pressed the button on his headset.

"exist."

"At the end of Forest Road 57, there is an underground facility. The entrance is a concrete bunker, and the steel door has been blown open. The Suburban was parked outside, and there was no one inside the car."

Victor's keyboard clicks paused for a moment.

"...This facility is not listed in the Forestry Bureau's records."

"I know."

"Should I contact Gray?"

"No." Li Ang stared into the darkness deep within the passage. "If Eagle Snake's intelligence system could cover this area, their former gardener wouldn't have disappeared."

He turned off his headset and turned to Richie: "I'm going in. You take Carl and Hammer and guard the entrance. Anyone coming out of this door, if it's not me, shoot them."

Richie opened his mouth, then closed it again. He looked into Li Ang's eyes, and nodded after three seconds.

"We'll contact you every twenty minutes. If there's no response after that time, we'll come in."

"Thirty minutes." Li Ang checked the safety pin on the M4. "Twenty minutes isn't enough."

He stepped over the deformed threshold and into the passage.

The soles of my boots slammed into the concrete, the echoes reverberating in both directions, one end swallowed by the night wind behind me, the other absorbed by the darkness ahead.

Two moisture-proof lamps illuminated the first ten meters of the passage. There were conduit channels on the walls, containing cables and ventilation ducts. After walking five meters, Li Ang noticed shoe prints on the ground. Deeply patterned tactical boots, around size eleven, with even stride length.

Those are Price's footprints.

Ten meters later, the lights went out. Li Ang turned on his flashlight, the beam shining on an inner door at the end of the passage. The door was unlocked, and there were fresh scratches on the doorknob.

He pushed open the door.

Behind the door was a square room, about fifteen square meters. The four walls were covered with empty equipment racks, and bolt holes remained on the floor, traces of large equipment that had once been fixed there. All the equipment had been removed, leaving only a few cut cables and a floor-standing distribution cabinet. The cabinet's panel was open, and all the circuit breakers inside were in the off position.

Price's shoe prints crossed the room, leading to a narrow door in the opposite corner.

Li Ang walked to the narrow doorway.