Dozens of kilometers away from the Grecius Parking Garage ruins, Yongnian Town.
In a silver-white building of over ten stories, surrounded by a palm grove.
A tall man, draped in gray-white gauze, with only his brown eyes visible, was briskly approaching the building.
Indifferent to those around him, he strode through the lobby, ignoring the slight bows of respect from the passing security guards and staff, and went to the elevator, entered, and pressed for the ninth floor.
Outside the elevator, two employees who were about to enter took a few steps forward, nearly crossing the threshold, but upon seeing the man in the white gauze, they resentfully retracted their steps, letting the elevator doors close.
The man in white gauze seemed accustomed to this, silent, watching the floor indicator.
Soon, the ninth floor was reached.
The doors opened.
The entire ninth floor was a spacious lounge.
On the right wall, against a backdrop of gray-black marbled wallpaper, a neat logo was drawn in blue-black metal lines—"Ash Real Estate."
The lounge featured a bar cabinet, pool table, audio-visual game machine; all kinds of entertainment were available.
In front of a curved row of floor-to-ceiling windows stood a hunchbacked old man with snow-white hair.
The old man gazed out at the sea through the window as though in deep thought.
Apart from him, the entire lounge was empty, creating an atmosphere that, despite being filled with a multitude of items, still lacked a hint of vitality.
The man in white gauze stepped out of the elevator, quickly treading on the grey carpet, and came up behind the old man.
"Someone is investigating Grecius Garage," he said, his voice somewhat strange—not unpleasant to hear, but eerily standard, devoid of any personal characteristics.
"Genan has already informed me," the old man turned around, revealing a face full of wrinkles.
His chin had few whiskers, almost imperceptible, and his skin resembled the flesh-colored shell of a turtle, with many wrinkles resembling a sort of crack.
His eyes were small, somewhat round, yet the vitality emanating from them was unusually intense and full.
"It's a new company that hasn't been established for long. The registrant is from the People of White Star, and their background is untraceable," the man in white gauze replied.
"I originally wanted them to know when to back off and understand the rules," the old man sighed, "but sadly, they don't care."
"They need to feel pain before they learn to retract their hands. Genan is ineffective; his methods are too soft. I'll go," the man in white gauze offered.
"His approach works well against commoners, but this time it's different," the old man nodded, "You go, but make it clean. It took great effort to suppress the events of the past, and they must not be unearthed again."
"Don't worry, in this border area, don't dozens of people disappear every year? With so many smugglers coming and going, one stroke of bad luck, and everything vanishes," the man in white gauze said as he removed his face covering, revealing an ugly face covered with burn scars. What was most horrifying was that his entire lower jaw was made of silver-white metal.
*
*
*
A stretch of yellow sand, encircled by clusters of palm trees.
In the center of the sandy area, two yellow vehicles resembling excavators were already at work.
Workers in little yellow hats, each holding long tubes resembling pipes, stood around.
"Hongjin" was simply displayed on the back of everyone's top.
The humming sound gradually approached from afar, and soon two vehicles, one large and one small, drove in and slowed down, stopping on one side of the sandy area.
Two men descended from the leading black car.
One was tall and burly, the other well-proportioned and quite young—they were Song Ran and Li Chengyi, who had just arrived.
From the yellow cargo truck behind, three little yellow hats, who had been in contact with them earlier, also got down.
Li Chengyi got out of the car, and his gaze immediately fell upon the center of the sandy area, on the black pit approximately five meters in length and width.
The edge of the hole had been reinforced with special metallic materials, and the center was pitch-black, its depth unknown.
Two black long tubes extended from the edge of the pit, continuously sucking out something.
"Our people have been working here for two days, and the machines have reached the outer walls of the garage. Without an expert's advice, we dare not dig recklessly," said the company's person in charge, a middle-aged man with a small mustache, looking very world-weary with dark skin.
"I am Huang Zhisheng, responsible for all the excavation work here," he said as he lightly shook hands with Song Ran and Li Chengyi.
"Is Expert Ding Chongyi here? Has she provided any suggestions?" Song Ran asked, succinctly.
"She..." Huang Zhisheng pointed towards the center of the pit, "is still down there, saying she needs to personally inspect the soil material at the bottom."
"Then let's wait," Song Ran nodded.
Li Chengyi had no objections. When it came to matters of expertise, it was best left to the professionals. His presence here was simply to wait until everything was ready.
Since the site wasn't prepared yet, to save time, he had another task to attend to.
That was to investigate the mysterious young man and test the Evil Thought Absorption method.
Taking out his phone, he checked his messages, reading each one in turn, finding none sent from Xindela.
He had previously profiled the young man's photo, and now the company's experts were helping to search for the young man's identity and name.
But as it seemed, the search was proving difficult, with no leads thus far.
Pocketing his phone, he exhaled and took out AR glasses, gently approaching the central pit.
"Grecius Parking Garage, it was completely buried over eighty years ago in the Reiz earthquake that hit this area,"
One of the little yellow hats moved closer, providing a basic explanation.
"The entire parking garage has five levels, all located underground, with capacity for over six hundred small cars. The constructor was an old company called Ash Engineering. However, what's strange is that soon after the parking garage was completed, it was restricted from opening due to various non-compliant facilities," said the girl in the little yellow hat in a low voice.
"Non-compliant? Not opened?" Li Chengyi raised an eyebrow. "How could there be casualties inside then?"
"For that, we need to talk about the peculiarities of that era." The girl in the little yellow hat lifted her head, revealing the face of a pretty young woman. Although her skin was somewhat dark, her eyes were bright blue, and her shoulder-length hair paired with a smile, she had an amiable appearance.
"Over eighty years ago, right at the time when the border conflict erupted, our country was in internal chaos and under pressure from White Star. Grecius at the border was thinking of taking the opportunity to seize a few small cities here and establish a port nearby," said the woman softly.
"Once there was a riot. Tiamog was ablaze everywhere, and thugs with guns were burning, killing, and looting in the city, so many people looked for places to hide.
Grecius was secluded, with communication channels running in all directions. By simply setting up a few guns at the entrance, it could easily be defended. Many people hid inside there."
"And then an earthquake occurred?" Li Chengyi understood.
"Yes. Many people died. Some managed to escape, but more were buried. It's estimated even more people suffocated inside," the girl in the little yellow hat nodded.
Li Chengyi sighed lightly, looked at the hole in front of him, fell silent for a moment, put on his AR glasses, and walked closer, looking down into the depths of the hole.
The mouth of the hole was deep and obscure. Looking carefully inside, he could only see about ten meters deep before it became too dark to see anything.
Li Chengyi's brows furrowed slightly as he turned on the AR's engineering mode.
Thump.
A ghastly pale hand suddenly grabbed onto the edge of the hole.
Li Chengyi was startled and took a step back, hastily removing the glasses.
But there was nothing by the edge of the hole in front of him, no ghastly pale hand.
He frowned, glancing at the girl in the little yellow hat, who for some reason looked inexplicable.
Turning his gaze back, he fixed his eyes on the hole again.
'A hallucination?'
Picking up the AR again, he thought for a moment before putting the glasses back on.
This time there was nothing in the hole, no ghastly pale hand.
In engineering mode, he activated the magnification and night vision functions.
The blackness within the hole quickly receded, turning into a faint ash color.
His gaze extended farther inside.
Rough black soil, fixed silver metal frames, inner walls covered with some kind of transparent adhesive used for solidification.
All these together formed a deep hole that led straight down over two hundred meters.
After watching for a while, with the depth too great and the light too dim, Li Chengyi shook his head and left.
He didn't linger but began walking around with Song Ran instead, examining the terrain.
The urban area of Tiamog was nearly thirty kilometers away from here, not convenient for shopping, with no hotels nearby, just a fishing village two kilometers away.
The two waited above ground for over an hour, and finally.
Out of the hole slowly crawled a dirt-covered old woman in camouflage, wearing AR glasses.
As soon as the small contingent of little yellow hats saw her, two of them quickly went over to support the old woman.
"Old Song, we meet again, so happy to see you."
This woman looked to be at least in her sixties, with a face full of wrinkles and partly graying black ponytail hair. Despite her plain and simple attire, she still exuded a scholarly aura.
"I would be happy to see anyone else, but not you," replied Song Ran coldly as she approached.
The two moved closer, gently touching elbows, a greeting custom from White Star akin to a handshake.
"I am here to accompany Mr. Li Chengyi for an inspection. Anything you've found, you can tell him," Song Ran nodded towards Li Chengyi, who was approaching from behind.
"Hello." Li Chengyi extended his hand warmly.
"Hello, a fine young man, full of vitality," Ding Chongyi smiled, shaking his hand.
"I would trouble Expert Ding to introduce the situation below," said Li Chengyi, getting straight to the point.
At this moment, Li Chengyi saw no signs of what could be irritating Song Ran. This just seemed like a normal elderly expert.
"The situation below is relatively stable. A small part has collapsed, but most of it should be intact. I've checked with a vibration detector; the vertical load-bearing walls are all complete," Ding Chongyi explained.
"So, it's accessible to people?"
"It's possible, but it needs structural reinforcement and time," Ding Chongyi nodded. "Also, before you arrived, we found some documents based on the photos you profiled, you might want to take a look."
As she spoke, Ding Chongyi took a silver-white storage device out of her jacket pocket and handed it to Li Chengyi.
Li Chengyi took it, pressed the button on the side of the storage device, and tapped it against his AR.
Suddenly, a plethora of images and text appeared in his field of vision.
All were about the Grecius Parking Garage and that young man in white.
Li Chengyi quickly scanned through everything, his expression turning solemn.
The document recorded in detail various investigative results and the company think tank's speculation and analysis.
"We couldn't find information on this young man due to the time period, but according to our investigation, we discovered some very interesting things," said Ding Chongyi with a smile.
"An epidemic?" Li Chengyi said quietly. That was the speculation in the document.