Resurrection Empire

2 AM, at the foot of the west peak of Rat Cliff Mountain.

Ren Zhong, wearing exoskeleton armor equipped with radiation protection outer armor, a radiation detector, and various exploration-specific equipment, carried Wen Lei's giant shield augmented with an earth-breaking spiral drill head to this location.

The entire set of second-hand equipment cost him a full twenty thousand points.

It was a coincidence—these were actually "scrap items" obtained by Wang Zhaofu from Yu Junren at the Chenhui Mine.

Activate the positioning device and start digging downwards.

After half an hour, Ren Zhong had dug five hundred meters underground and discovered something unusual.

The drill head struck a large piece of synthetic high-strength alloy.

If not for his quick reaction, the drill head would have been damaged.

He activated the metal detection scanner, and thirty seconds later, Ren Zhong saw a spherical 3D model with a radius of 35 meters.

A simple analysis revealed a destroyed circular metal pipeline that was originally 10 meters in diameter when intact.

Following the remnants of the pipeline upwards at an angle for about fifty meters, he discovered a large cavity partially collapsed due to lack of maintenance.

Inside the cavity, there were two mechanical platforms, each hosting a shield tunneling machine fraught with holes gnawed by the Ruined Beast.

The appearance of these shield tunneling machines was about seventy to eighty percent similar to a Screw Rock Excavator, but larger, with a top diameter of approximately ten meters.

They could carry more people and materials yet were made of inferior materials compared to Screw Rock Excavators.

They were the poor imitation by Source Star's humans of Screw Rock Excavators.

Evidently, the main function of these machines was transportation, not for opening new mines, and they served this purpose well here.

Despite some damage, the overall structure of the shield tunneling machine was still intact.

Ren Zhong cut open a larger entrance from the hole bitten by the Ruined Beast and jumped inside.

Its interior space was cramped, divided into three sections.

The front section was the cockpit, the middle section the cargo hold.

The rear section's structure was quite strange.

Along both sides of a passage that could accommodate a person walking upright was a tightly knit rectangular metal frame, each slot about 2 meters long, 0.4 meters wide, and 0.3 meters high.

Though also gnawn significantly, it hadn't collapsed and looked like a rack.

Ren Zhong gauged it for a moment.

He realized the function of this "rack."

This was not a rack; it was a "human rack."

It allowed people to lie flat side by side and cram the maximum number of people into a narrow space.

The transported individuals would be securely locked onto the rack, unable to turn over.

Ren Zhong temporarily shut off the internal air circulation system and sniffed the outside air, which was filled with a putrid smell, yet there wasn't a trace of corpses.

He returned to the cockpit.

Under the cockpit seat were three shredded but still recognizable human-shaped work uniforms.

The uniforms were stained with blood yet had no trace of flesh and bones.

Ren Zhong continued his search around the cavity and found a small door.

Beyond the small door lay a collapsed passage with doors to rooms on either side, impassable.

Ren Zhong speculated it was a dormitory area similar in structure to centralized sleeping pods. Unfortunately, it was too damaged to access.

Subsequently, Ren Zhong left the middle section cavity and continued exploring downwards along the damaged pipeline for another five hundred meters.

He finally discovered a complete pipeline structure.

Clearly, after completing the extraction of alien ore, Yang Bingzhong did not use high-yield explosives to obliterate the underground factory entirely.

Instead, he silently disposed of everyone and employed a low-profile method of violent dismantling to destroy just the topmost passage.

One would think that Yang Bingzhong feared too much noise from direct explosions could cause unnecessary trouble, so it was better only to destroy the underground entrance.

After all, the real entrance was nearly five hundred meters deep underground, and the risk of accidental exposure was minimal if no one deliberately searched here.

Additionally, there were quite a number of Ruined Beasts here, and as the alien ore was exhausted, the radiation declined, prompting the subterranean Ruined Beast activity area to expand downward naturally.

A few years later, "Nature" would help him destroy all evidence, leaving at most two or three inconspicuous minor earthquakes.

By that time, he would have sold all his goods, and his Citizen Level would have surpassed the Fifth Level.

Even if someone found traces, there would only remain some residual artificial metal.

No one could find conclusive evidence to accuse him of illegal alien ore mining; no one could do anything to him.

Ren Zhong had now ventured nearly a kilometer underground, where traces of Ruined Beast activity dwindled.

The radiation detector started reading, albeit very faintly.

Fifteen minutes later, Ren Zhong cut an accessible hole in the thick alloy pipeline wall.