Visitors from Qimen City

After bringing the damaged satellite communication equipment back to the base, the entire research institute was in an uproar. All researchers specializing in mechanics and communications gathered, eager to repair the equipment as quickly as possible while also learning the methods behind its various functions.

After all, at this stage, the only equipment the base could produce independently were the most rudimentary walkie-talkies, which were useless at distances exceeding one kilometer.

However, during the repair process, the researchers discovered that the most core and critical component was damaged: the modulator used to tune the signal to the specific frequency band of the satellite. This meant that even if they repaired it, without knowing the corresponding frequency, they would have no idea which satellite's signal they were transmitting to or receiving from.

Yet, often when God closes a door for you, He opens a window.

Just as everyone was feeling disheartened by this, a piece of good news arrived only three weeks later.

A strange team of Martial Artists arrived at a village near the base and was discovered by one of the base's exploration teams. Naturally, the exploration team was also noticed by this group of Martial Artists.

At that moment, both sides were on guard and did not make any rash contact.

The Martial Artist team consisted of two Advanced Battle Generals, two Intermediate Battle Generals, three Primary Battle Generals, and one Advanced Warrior. Since they had not yet judged the strength of the exploration team, they kept their guard up while initiating a dialogue.

The strength of the exploration team was naturally inferior to this group of Martial Artists, as they only had one Intermediate Battle General. Therefore, the team leader, Xu Jiaqi, decided to send one member back to the base to report, while the remaining members continued to hide in a house, exchanging information with the Martial Artist team to stall for time until reinforcements from the base arrived.

During the exchange, Xu Jiaqi learned that this Martial Artist team had come from a neighboring city with the mission of finding a suitable retreat route to facilitate the evacuation of the people in their settlement.

However, they had been attacked while passing through a small town earlier, so they requested that Xu Jiaqi's side identify themselves.

Xu Jiaqi did not hide their intelligence too much and informed them that they had already entered the territory of Xingyan Base, hoping the other party could wait here for a while.

The other party agreed, quite readily.

After nearly an hour, the personnel from the base finally arrived. Leading the team was Ma Tianxing, who had by now reached the level of an Advanced Battle General. This was thanks to the training plan proposed by Lin Chenxing; after accepting challenges from many other Intermediate Battle Generals, Ma Tianxing had finally broken through the barrier that had been so difficult for him to overcome.

Aside from Ma Tianxing, the new team included Li Xu, another Advanced Battle General who had also recently broken through, and six Intermediate Battle Generals.

The appearance of this lineup was quite a shock to the Martial Artist team. A base capable of sending out such a team could not be a small one, and it likely even possessed a powerhouse at the War God level.

Consequently, the Martial Artist team restrained themselves, beginning to interact with Ma Tianxing with an attitude of equality, or perhaps even a hint of respect.

It turned out that several Lord-level Monsters had emerged around their settlement, and these Lord-level Monsters were restless, having sent out Beast Tides to attack the settlement multiple times.

Their settlement was only a small base of nearly 90,000 people and had not produced any War God-level powerhouses, although they did have nearly a hundred Advanced Battle Generals. The nearest official base with a War God-level powerhouse was over 300 kilometers away and was also under threat from several Lord-level Monsters, making it difficult for them to spare any help.

This team had been sent out to find a way out, hoping to find a route to another slightly more distant but still viable settlement; this location happened to be on their path.

This news made Ma Tianxing feel elated, as it meant that from this moment on, they could officially make contact with the outside world.

Thus, at Ma Tianxing's warm invitation, the Martial Artist team headed to Xingyan Base.

At this time in the entire base, only Lin Chenxing had reached the War God level. Gao Zheng, He Qishun, and Peng Tianwen remained at the level of Advanced Battle Generals, though they were among the strongest of that rank. There were over ten other Advanced Battle Generals and more than thirty Intermediate Battle Generals. At this stage, the rate of combat power improvement for everyone had slowed down significantly.

It was clear that the potential everyone had accumulated before the catastrophe had been mostly exhausted by now.

After the Martial Artist team arrived at the base, everyone with the right to attend the high-level base meetings came to the reception site. It was immediately obvious to everyone entering the hall that Lin Chenxing, Gao Zheng, and He Qishun, as the central figures of the base, were standing in the middle, waiting for the arrival of the Martial Artist team.

After introductions, it was revealed that the Martial Artist team was named "Sky Blade," and the team leader was Zhang Tiemin. They were Martial Artists from an official settlement in the neighboring Qimen City. After experiencing dozens of rounds of Beast Tides, their population had dropped from the initial 200,000-plus to over 90,000. The number of Martial Artists among them was now only nearly 10,000.

With the constant growth of the surrounding monster groups, their resistance had become increasingly difficult, until the most recent incident, where the appearance of another Lord Monster and seven or eight monsters that had reached the peak of Advanced Beast General completely shattered their confidence in continuing to hold their ground.

It was highly likely that these Advanced Beast General-level monsters would break through to become new Lords in the near future.

Thus, the migration plan was officially launched. They had sent out five teams in total, each with two Advanced Battle Generals, specifically to carve out a path of survival for the subsequent teams.

Upon learning that there was a War God-level powerhouse here at Xingyan, they decisively abandoned their original goal, deciding to make contact first before returning to the settlement to report.

However, during the conversation, they also mentioned the attack they had encountered earlier. The town was over 70 kilometers away from this location. When they decided to find a safe house in the town to rest, a group of people wearing masks appeared and attacked them directly without a word of explanation, forcing them to flee in a hurry.

This description gave everyone in the base a sense of déjà vu, and they quickly asked about the appearance of the masks worn by that group.

Upon receiving the answer that they were black and white masks, everyone realized that this team was very likely—no, definitely—the "Black and White Clown" team. The behavior of attacking without explanation led them to a hypothesis: whether the lair of the "Black and White Clown" was in the vicinity of that town.

For them, this news was actually quite good, as it meant they could take targeted precautions, or even join forces with the Qimen City settlement to clear out this organization.

At this moment, Lin Chenxing realized why this "Black and White Clown" organization had not appeared in the novels he had read in his past life. After attacking an official team, how could the authorities possibly leave such a cancerous existence behind?

Perhaps after this Martial Artist team found their way out, they would join forces with the War God from the settlement they found to directly destroy this organization.