Deputy Commander Zhang, Your House Has Been Robbed

It was already late at night when Li Zhengyang returned to the fortress.

Instead of going back to the barracks, Li Zhengyang headed straight for the East District Medical Room.

The medical room was a two-story sheet-metal building. It was newer than the barracks, but not by much.

The first floor held the outpatient clinic and pharmacy, while the second floor was the inpatient ward.

The military doctor on night duty was surnamed Chen, a man in his thirties with heavy dark circles under his eyes. When he saw someone push open the door, he glanced up.

"Here for treatment?"

"No. I'm delivering something."

Li Zhengyang took out the pills from his Space Ring and poured them onto the table.

Doctor Chen sprang out of his chair.

He walked over, and his pupils widened in an instant.

"These... are these Battlefield Emergency Pills? Healing Pills? Blood-Replenishing Pills?"

"Mm."

"Where did you get them?"

"Don't worry about where I got them. Treat the wounded first."

Doctor Chen crouched down and picked up a bottle of First-Aid Pills, turning it over in his hands. When he saw the Quartermaster Department serial number on the bottle, his lips moved, but he swallowed the words that had reached his throat.

He had been a military doctor for five years. He knew all too well what those serial numbers meant.

But he knew even better what the wounded soldiers upstairs needed.

"They can be used." Doctor Chen stood up, his voice slightly hoarse. "There's enough here. Enough to last quite a while."

"Then hand them out."

Li Zhengyang turned to leave.

"Wait." Doctor Chen called after him. "What's your name?"

"It doesn't matter."

"I need to register it."

"Just write that they were found."

When Li Zhengyang walked out of the medical room, a window on the second floor lit up.

Doctor Chen was already charging upstairs with two boxes of pills in his arms, his footsteps thundering against the stairs.

On the way back to the barracks, Li Zhengyang started calculating the bigger picture.

There was still Spirit Ore and the rest of the supplies in his Space Ring.

The Spirit Ore was the main haul. He needed to sell it as soon as possible.

Su Jin's Myriad Treasures Pavilion was inland, so transportation was a problem. But there was the black-market pass she had given him...

Was there a black market near Fortress No. 13?

A frontline military stronghold might be tightly controlled on the surface, but wherever there were people, there would be underground trade.

With his thoughts sorted out, he decided to sleep first and find a way tomorrow.

Early the next morning, Li Zhengyang went to the Quartermaster Department to settle the reconnaissance mission and kill records from Blood-Colored Gorge.

The five hundred thousand mission reward was in hand.

After leaving the Quartermaster Department, he took a walk around the fortress.

After asking three people, he found the place in the fortress's northern district.

It was a sheet-metal shack with a sign reading "Veteran's Teahouse."

Once inside, it had nothing to do with a teahouse.

Several people were crouched in a corner gambling with dice, with a few Beast Cores laid on the table as stakes. An old woman with a headscarf sat against the wall, rows of small bottles arranged before her. She was selling homemade strong liquor.

The inner area was separated by cloth curtains, and he could vaguely see people trading things behind them.

Li Zhengyang took out the black card Su Jin had given him and flashed it before a guard at the entrance.

The guard looked at the card, then at him, and stepped aside.

Behind the curtain was a larger space.

There were three tables, with someone seated behind each one. All of them were buyers.

Li Zhengyang walked to the innermost table.

The man seated behind it was a gaunt fellow in his fifties. Prayer beads were wrapped around his fingers, and he had the look of a shrewd businessman.

"Do you buy Spirit Ore?"

The man's prayer beads stopped moving.

"How much?"

Li Zhengyang took out a fist-sized piece of Spirit Ore from his Space Ring and placed it on the table.

A dark violet sheen flowed beneath the light, and the spiritual fluctuations caused ripples to spread across the tea in the cup on the table.

The man picked it up, weighed it in his hand, squeezed it, then held it beneath his nose and sniffed it.

"The quality's not bad. How much are you selling?"

"Five crates."

The Spirit Ore in the man's hand nearly fell onto the table.

He raised his head and scrutinized Li Zhengyang several times.

"Five crates? Kid, don't tell me you emptied out a military ore warehouse?"

"Isn't this place supposed to not ask where things come from?"

The man fell silent for several seconds, then resumed rolling the prayer beads in his hand.

"My place is too small to take that much. But I can help you contact buyers and take a ten percent commission."

The man named a price. Spirit Ore would be bought at eighty percent of the black-market rate: three hundred thousand per crate, one and a half million for five crates.

Together with the other miscellaneous supplies, it came to an even two million.

After deducting the ten percent commission, Li Zhengyang would receive one million eight hundred thousand.

Li Zhengyang did not bargain. The goods were too hot, and the sooner he sold them, the better.

When the five crates of Spirit Ore were poured out from the Space Ring, even the people gambling with dice outside the curtain sensed the spiritual fluctuations and turned their heads in unison.

The guard came over and pulled the curtain tightly shut.

At the same time.

Blood-Colored Gorge, at the entrance to the Mine Cave.

A man in black training fatigues ran in from outside the gorge. He was covered in wounds and gasping for breath.

He was the fourth man stationed in the Mine Cave.

The scar-faced man had arranged for him to go to an outpost on the outskirts of the gorge that afternoon to receive a new shipment.

The shipment had not arrived. When he returned to look—

There were three more corpses.

The goods were gone.

More than half the warehouse had been emptied.

With trembling hands, the man pulled out a special communicator and dialed an encrypted channel.

"Deputy... Deputy Commander Zhang."

There was silence on the other end of the communicator for two seconds.

"Speak."

"The transfer station was wiped out. Old Liu and the other two are all dead. The Spirit Ore, pills, Beast Cores... more than half of it is gone."

A full ten seconds of silence followed.

Then came a heavy breath.

"Who did it?"

"Don't know. No one was left alive. But recently, only one person has come through this area."

"Who?"

"Li Zhengyang, the one you sent on that reconnaissance mission yesterday."

Something shattered on the other end of the communicator.

Zhang Jianbiao sat in an office at headquarters, where the teacup on his desk had shattered across the floor.

At that moment, the rage in his chest was nearly bursting from his throat.

But he could not lash out.

He could not say it openly.

Because trafficking military supplies was itself a capital crime.

If he went to Li Zhengyang and demanded answers, it would be the same as admitting to smuggling.

The fortress's highest commander, Zhao Tiehan, was a Ninth-Rank Martial Spirit. If he really investigated, Zhang Jianbiao would not have enough heads to lose.

Zhang Jianbiao took a deep breath, then another.

A minute later, he picked up the internal phone and called the combat command room.

"Has the latest Demonic Beast Tide warning report come out?"

"Reporting, the northern detection array shows signs of large-scale Demonic Beast migration in the direction of Blood-Colored Gorge. A Beast Tide shockwave may form within thirty-six hours."

"Thirty-six hours."

Zhang Jianbiao hung up and leaned back in his chair.

A Beast Tide.

When a large-scale Beast Tide arrived, the fortress would enter full combat readiness. Every combat unit would be assigned to defend a section of the wall.

Which section they were assigned to depended on headquarters' deployment.

And as deputy commander, he had the authority to participate in deployment decisions.

Zhang Jianbiao pulled open a drawer and took out a map of the fortress wall's defensive sectors.

His finger traced a circle across the map before stopping at the northwest corner.

The Northwest Section.

It was the weakest section of the wall. It had fallen into disrepair over the years and had the fewest firepower positions.

During the last Beast Tide, the Northwest Section had nearly been breached, and more than half of the platoon defending it had been killed or wounded.

Zhang Jianbiao picked up a pen and wrote three words over the Northwest Section.

Bladebreaker Battalion.