She pressed herself against the cold surface of the iron gate, her fingertips tracing the patterns of the spirit rune array. There were five core nodes in the array, located at the four corners and the center. If the flow of Spiritual Power to these five nodes was blocked simultaneously, the entire array would temporarily fail. But she only had two hands, and four Puppet Armor were watching her menacingly from the iron gate.
Snow Empress gritted her teeth, pulled two silver hairpins from her hair, and bit them in her mouth. She pressed the upper left node with her left hand and the lower right node with her right hand, then suddenly turned her head and stabbed the silver hairpins in her mouth into the upper right and lower left nodes. Finally, she freed her right hand and, just as the crystal core in the Puppet Armor's eye socket was about to turn towards her, precisely pressed it onto the core node in the center.
The instant all five nodes were blocked, the light from the spirit pattern array on the iron gate's surface abruptly went out, and the entire detection array fell silent as if its throat had been choked. The crystal cores in the eye sockets of the four Puppet Armor flickered, as if recalibrating their sensing range, but Snow Empress had already seized the opportunity to shoot three fine needles formed from Spiritual Power into the gaps in the crystal cores at their joints. The three needles precisely severed the Spiritual Power transmission between the Puppet Armor's core and its limbs, and the four Puppet Armor froze in place, unable to move, like four cast-iron statues.
"Quickly!" Snow Empress beckoned to Mu Canglan, who was hiding behind a boulder.
Mu Canglan swiftly reached the iron gate, took out a slender iron key from his pocket, and inserted it into the lock in the crack. It was an old key he had kept on him ten years ago—the universal key for all the iron gates of the mines during the Spirit Vein Bureau's mining era. Ten years had passed, and Liu Yanzhao's men had clearly not changed the lock cylinder, because after the key was inserted and turned three times, a dull creaking sound came from inside the iron gate, and the two heavy iron doors slowly slid open to the sides.
Behind the door was a narrow corridor with spiritual stones embedded in the walls for illumination. In the dim light, several small rooms could be seen distributed on both sides of the corridor. Mu Canglan peeked around for a moment, and only after confirming that there was no ambush did he slip into the corridor.
"The workshop is divided into three levels." His voice sounded particularly deep in the narrow space. "The upper level is the raw material warehouse and foundry, the middle level is the assembly area, and the main warehouse is on the lowest level. Zhou Jing mostly oversees things on the middle level, so if we want to get to the main warehouse, we have to go through the assembly area on the middle level."
Snow Empress nodded silently, and the two of them pressed themselves against the wall as they ventured deeper inside. The small rooms on both sides of the corridor were filled with various Xuantie blanks, spirit pattern carving knives, and semi-finished crystal cores, and the air was filled with the smell of iron filings mixed with machine oil. The deeper they went, the stronger this smell became, with a faint, almost imperceptible, pungent smell of blood mixed in.
Snow Empress suddenly stopped. She turned her head and her gaze fell on a small room with a half-open door—inside, against the wall, was a row of iron cages, with seven or eight figures huddled inside. They were emaciated, their clothes were tattered, and their exposed panels were covered with whip marks and burns. Some were unconscious, while others trembled in the corner of the iron cages.
"Miners." Mu Canglan's voice was as cold as ice. "Back when the Spirit Vein Bureau was mining spirit ore in the Falling Rosy Clouds Mountain Range, they used hired miners. After Liu Yanzhao took over, they changed it to slave labor. These are probably laborers forcibly taken from various parts of the Southern Frontier, doing the hardest and most tiring work for the Xuan Abyss Workshop here."
Snow Empress's gaze lingered on the iron cages for a moment before she looked away and continued walking forward. She didn't speak, but Mu Canglan noticed that her knuckles, gripping the sword hilt, were slightly white.
Passing through the archway at the end of the corridor, the view suddenly opened up. The middle assembly area was a huge circular space, several tens of feet in diameter, with a dome three feet high. Dozens of spirit stone chandeliers hung from the ceiling, illuminating the entire space as if it were daytime. In the center of the space, there were three rows of long tables, which were filled with the parts of the Puppet Armor being assembled—arms, legs, torsos, and heads. After being disassembled, they were scattered everywhere like pieces of meat on a butcher's stall. Along the walls, there were rows of iron racks, on which were neatly stacked the torsos of the assembled Puppet Armor, at least thirty or forty of them.
But the entire assembly area was deserted.
Mu Canglan frowned and scanned his surroundings, lowering his voice. "That's not right. Zhou Jing should be on duty here. Even if he went to inspect other areas, there should be at least one craftsman in the workshop."
Snow Empress activated her full spiritual senses, scanning every inch of the assembly area. There was no sign of any living person in the area she could perceive; only the Spiritual Power fluctuations flowing within the Puppet Armor bodies pulsated like faint heartbeats.
"Someone's been here." She suddenly crouched down, wiping her fingertips across the smooth stone floor, picking up a thin layer of dust. "The dust here was just swept away recently; there are still lingering oil stains on the table—the craftsman left in a hurry, not even having time to wipe the oil off his hands."
Mu Canglan's heart sank. "Could it be that Zhou Jing received some information and evacuated everyone in advance?"
"Even if we evacuate, we can't just leave all the semi-finished parts here." Snow Empress stood up, her gaze fixed on the steel door at the end of the assembly area leading to Warehouse A. " Zhou Jing is likely inside Warehouse A. You stay here to provide backup; I'll go down to Warehouse A."
"You're all alone?" Mu Canglan stopped her. " Zhou Jing has an activation token. If you alert him, he'll activate a hundred Puppet Armor, and you won't have time to escape."
The Snow Empress paused for a moment, then took out the black iron token she had obtained from the secret chamber of the Meng family from her sleeve. "We also have a token. The spirit code of the three tokens is interconnected. When Zhou Jing's token senses the approach of another token, it will issue a warning. But at the same time, I can also use this token to temporarily freeze the Spiritual Power circuit of the armory—as long as I use the token to cut into the control core before Zhou Jing activates it."
Mu Canglan stared at the token in her palm for a long time before finally slowly releasing his grip. He took out one last thing from his pocket and placed it in Snow Empress's palm—a dark red copper bell with densely packed Southern Frontier runes engraved on the inside.
"The protective bell of the Seventy-Two Caves," he said. "If the Puppet Armor in the armory is triggered, you ring this bell. The sound will briefly disrupt the sensory array at the core of the Puppet Armor, making them hesitate for three to five breaths. Three to five breaths is enough time for you to run out the way I came in."
Snow Empress tied the copper bell to her wrist, nodded to him, and turned to walk towards the steel door. The steel door was not locked, and she opened it with a gentle push. Behind the door was a spiraling stone staircase leading downwards, with spirit stones embedded in the staircase walls for illumination. The dim yellow light condensed into a blurry halo at the end of the deep staircase.
As she stepped down the first stone step, the copper bell on her wrist emitted a very soft and delicate tinkling sound, as if it were being blown by the wind. Snow Empress glanced down at the copper bell; the Southern Frontier runes on the inside of the bell glowed slightly under the light of the spirit stone, like a firefly that had been dormant for a long time suddenly awakening.