During his meditation, Ke Meng once again heard cries for help.
Where were they coming from?
Ke Meng frowned. His intuition told him that whatever had been captured in the video was very close to the source of those cries.
After he ended his meditation, the second round of laser treatment began on the livestream.
More precise targeted cutting and faster suction rapidly reduced the number of black crystal fragments beneath the Investigator's fingernails.
A minute later, black material was barely visible in the gaps beneath the nails. Only a magnifying glass could reveal the tiny fragments that remained.
Those remnants were difficult to remove, and the Investigation Bureau personnel were currently looking for ways to continue treatment.
Ke Meng shifted his focus on Ore Disease from the material beneath the fingernails to the mysterious cries for help.
The drowning victims' cries had disappeared after the flood receded. Where had these new cries come from? Ke Meng sent out an order: "Focus your search on anyone calling for help inside the mine tunnels. Watch out for traps."
The Investigators who had already contracted Ore Disease accepted the assignment. They had nothing to fear; there was already ore beneath their nails anyway.
They might as well venture deeper, search the place from top to bottom, and complete the assignment from their superiors.
Yet after the Investigators spent an hour searching as quickly as possible, opening up every passage and scanning with special life-detection instruments as well as modern machinery, they found no living creatures in the mining area.
There were not even any tiny insects, which was very strange.
Before long, the air composition report came back. Bacterial levels met mining area standards, and there were small amounts of viruses, but all of them were known to humanity. None were unknown