"Right here." The Vein Guardian pushed aside the brambles and crawled inside. Snow Empress and A Yao followed, the thorns scraping against their clothes with a hissing sound. After crawling for about ten steps, the brambles suddenly thinned out, revealing a flat cement floor. In the center of the floor was a round iron plate, smaller than the one at node 01. The edge of the plate was welded with an iron fence, and a new lock hung on the fence. The lock was shiny and rust-free, completely out of place with the surrounding environment.
"A new lock." Snow Empress squatted down to take a look. " Old Dao added it last year."
She took out a crowbar and tried inserting it into the gaps in the iron fence. The fence was welded quite sturdily, but there were only three weld points. After a couple of pryings with the crowbar, one of the weld points broke off. The Vein Guardian came over to help, and the two of them together lifted the entire fence to one side. The lock was still hanging on the fence, but the fence had already detached from the cover.
Snow Empress pushed open the cover. Below was a vertical shaft, straight up and down, with iron ladders embedded in the shaft walls, exactly the same as Node 01. Blue light also shone up from the bottom of the shaft.
"I'll go down." Snow Empress tucked the crowbar behind her waist and climbed down the iron ladder. The iron ladder was even more rusty than No. 01's, and two steps were broken. She had to switch steps while suspended in mid-air before she could step onto the next step. When she reached the bottom of the well, blue light illuminated a passageway that was almost identical to No. 01's, and the door was also open.
"Get down," she called out.
A Yao and the Vein Guardian of the Pulse came down one after the other. The three of them walked through the passage, and at the end was a circular room that was slightly smaller than No. 01. There was no one in the room, but there were several empty mineral water bottles and a broken crowbar head scattered on the floor. The panel on the side of the control console had been pried open, exposing the cables and circuit boards inside.
"Someone's been here." A Yao walked to the control panel and glanced at it. "The panel was pried open, but not completely removed. The screen is still lit."
The screen displays. "Master Node 02 is not enabled. Three Spirit Vein Key are required. Interface corruption detected; alternative interface is available."
"They pried the interface off." A Yao crouched down to look inside the panel. "The main interface slot was torn off, but the spare interface is underneath the panel; they didn't find it."
Snow Empress took out the iron box from her arms and opened it. The three Spirit Vein Key gleamed with a dark golden light in the blue light. A Yao followed the prompts on the screen to find the backup interface. In a hidden compartment at the bottom of the control panel, lifting a small metal plate revealed three slots side by side.
"The order should be the same as number 01." A Yao arranged the keys in order and pushed them in one by one. Click, click, click, after three crisp sounds, the control panel lit up with a buzz, and the screen displayed. "Master control node 02 is being activated. Spirit Vein Circuit self-check, self-check passed, node is online."
"Node 02 is functioning normally. Vein coverage: 34.1%. Nodes 01 and 02 are connected. Awaiting node 03 to connect."
"One-third left." A Yao straightened up. "There's one left."
The Vein Guardian leaned closer to the screen and glanced at the small print in the corner. "This time the time allotted is a bit longer, 150 minutes. But where is node 03?"
A Yao pulled the leather-bound notebook from her bosom and flipped to the last page. The first half of the notebook was filled with haphazard notes from Old Dao's men, but on the last page was a line of exceptionally neat handwriting, completely different from the crooked handwriting of the previous pages. "Node 03: Under the cliff on the east side of the Blind Zone, basement of the old hydrological station. Entrance is outside the east wall of the pump house."
"The hydrological station." The Vein Guardian slapped his thigh. "I know that place. There's an abandoned hydrological station east of the Blind Zone, built in the 1980s. Later, a flash flood washed away the road, and nobody went there anymore. Below the cliff, yes, there was a pump house, half of it collapsed."
"How far?"
The Vein Guardian thought for a moment, "Going east from here, diagonally through the Blind Zone, it takes an hour. The road is difficult to walk; there's a section of scree slope in the middle, and it's easy to twist your ankle at night."
Snow Empress glanced at the timer on the control panel: "150 minutes. One hour to go, 90 minutes left to find the entrance and activate it. It's a bit tight, but enough."
"There's another problem." A Yao closed her notebook. "Node 03 is Old Dao's final target. He buried the keys to the first two and left them unattended. Will he personally oversee the third one?"
Snow Empress drew her sword from its sheath, examined the blade, and then pushed it back. "If he were here, that would be perfect. It saves us the trouble of looking for him."
The path through the Blind Zone was even more difficult than the Vein Guardian had described. The rocks on the scree slope ranged in size from fists to washbasins; stepping on them was a slippery experience, A Yao slipped and fell twice, chipping her bamboo cane on a rock. Snow Empress walked in the middle, supporting A Yao with one hand and using a flashlight to light the way with the other. The Vein Guardian the way, carefully choosing to step on the large rocks wedged in the crevices.
After walking for more than an hour, the scree slope gradually leveled out, and a cliff appeared ahead. Though called a cliff, it was actually only about two zhang (approximately 6.6 meters) high, its walls a mixture of yellow mud and gravel, covered with clumps of withered grass. At the base of the cliff was a relatively flat clearing, where a lone brick house stood, its roof partially collapsed, and faded red paint still visible on the wall. "Hydrological Station."
"We've arrived." The Vein Guardian wiped the sweat from his face. "The pump house is behind the brick building, outside the east wall."
The three of them walked around the brick house. Sure enough, there was a cement shed that had collapsed halfway outside the east wall. Underneath the shed, a section of iron pipe was exposed. Next to the pipe, there was a cement slab on the ground, with several broken bricks pressed down on the slab.
Snow Empress squatted down and pried open the broken bricks, revealing a cement slab. The slab was smaller than the previous two nodes, but thicker, and there were no pry marks on the sides.
" Old Dao couldn't find this." Snow Empress tried inserting the crowbar into the gap in the cover plate, but the cover plate didn't budge. " Vein Guardian, come lend a hand."
The two of them pried it open a couple of times, and the cover finally came loose. A Yao, shining a flashlight nearby, suddenly said, "Wait a minute, there's something under the cover."
Snow Empress stopped and took a closer look. A thin, black thread was wedged in the gap along the edge of the cover plate, almost invisible unless you looked closely. The thread extended along the gap to both sides and disappeared beneath the concrete floor.
"A tripwire." The Vein Guardian's expression changed. " Old Dao left it. If this cover moves, the wire will break, and it will make a sound."
Snow Empress pulled out the crowbar and took a step back. "Do you have batteries? Or detonators?"
The Vein Guardian crawled on the ground, following the thin thread around until he reached the edge of the concrete floor. The thread had seeped under a loose brick. He carefully moved the brick, revealing a fist-sized black box underneath, with a small red light on it that was slowly flashing.
"A buzzer." The Vein Guardian took out the box and examined it. "It's not explosives. It'll go off when the wire breaks, and then they'll know someone's tampered with the cover."
Can it be disassembled?
"Yes. Cut the blue wire, not the red one," the Vein Guardian, pulling out half a pack of matches from his pouch, striking one and examining it closely. "Wait, there's no red or blue wire, just two black wires. Shorting them will do the trick; shorting them will stop the sound."