Three days later.
Early morning.
A black military transport plane cut through the clouds, heading toward the most desolate region in the north.
Inside the cabin, Qi Wu leaned against the window, gazing listlessly at the sea of clouds outside.
After three days without stirring up trouble, he felt as though he was about to rust.
Across from him, Su Li held a Huazi between her lips, her ash-gray eyes fixed on him with a complicated look.
Wolf Team sat between them, resting with his eyes closed.
"How much longer?" Qi Wu asked.
"Almost there." Wolf Team kept his eyes closed.
"Oh," Qi Wu said, turning back to the window.
Another twenty minutes or so passed.
The plane began its descent.
The clouds gradually parted, and the landscape below came into focus.
Qi Wu's gaze settled on the view outside.
Then a faint glint flickered in his eyes.
It was a... dead land.
The earth was an eerie gray-black, without a blade of grass or any sign of life.
Deep ravines snaked into the distance like scars across the land.
Dim, dark-red light flowed through the ravines, resembling underground magma-or some ominous energy.
The temperature seemed to have plunged more than ten degrees. Even through the plane's cabin walls, Qi Wu could feel the bone-piercing chill.
In the distance, an enormous black mountain range stretched across the skyline.
No, it wasn't a mountain range.
It was... a building.
A building embedded in the mountainside, vast beyond belief.
Black stone fused with metal to form walls that towered into the clouds.
There were no windows in the walls, only densely packed ventilation ports and surveillance devices arranged like a honeycomb.
Every hundred meters, a massive turret jutted from the wall, its pitch-black muzzle trained outward in every direction.
At the mountain's