In the Southern Dense Forest, even an S-Rank Investigation Team had been wiped out. There was clearly no need to keep searching this cave. It would only be a waste of time.
The White-Skinned Strongman withdrew with his men, unaware that twenty meters below the spot where they had dug up that box lay the Dragonkin's hiding place.
Alexei and the others' scent had clearly vanished here. Under normal circumstances, if they had no other clues, they would have kept searching. How could living people simply disappear? They would not stop without an explanation.
However, Huang Ji had laid down three layers of psychological suggestion in succession and provided them with a complete set of answers, allowing them to "make sense of this matter."
First, he created a so-called trap to cover up why the ground here had been disturbed. This also "explained" why Alexei and the others' scent was here: their scent had been mixed in because they had set the trap.
At the same time, this trap was not the main objective, but merely a surface-level trap. Further below, experimental equipment had been concealed.
If that experimental equipment had been useless, then Kogas's actions truly would have been nothing more than a game that violated regulations.
But the equipment was useful. When all the pieces were connected, Kogas's actions became increasingly suspicious the more they considered them. He had provided people and supplies—was that a coincidence? Then there had been the sighting eighty kilometers away, and even the destruction of the Illuminati's S-Rank Investigation Team. These clues left them no choice but to believe that the Dragonkin had already escaped.
As for how they had escaped, that was easy to explain with a traitor involved. No defense was absolutely without flaws; breaking through from within was always the