Chapter Forty-Nine: Striking It Rich

In the pitch-black crevice, Ji Cheng braced himself with his elbow, his face pressed against something soft, making it hard for him to breathe.

What on earth is this?

Perplexed, Ji Cheng rubbed his face against it a few times. The feeling was rhythmic and warm against his cheek before he realized what it was.

Quite comfortable, actually.

A faint fragrance drifted to his nose as he fumbled for his headset, tapping it to emit a cone of light.

Though the gale wasn’t blowing directly in through the gap, dust and sand still swirled within the narrow fissure, the flickering light casting shifting shadows on the jagged walls.

From the corner of his eye, Ji Cheng observed their surroundings—a terribly cramped, fold-like rock fissure carved out by river water. Its depth was indeterminate, but it was barely wide enough for a single person to pass through.

He lifted his head slightly to look at Su Yi.

She was so breathless her face had gone pale. She couldn't even speak. When she saw Ji Cheng glance up at her, she hurriedly moved her lips.

Ji Cheng understood: she was telling him to back out a bit.

He patted his waist lightly. “With you clamped around me like that, I can't move.”

It was only then that Su Yi, as if waking from a dream, loosened her grip on him.

Ji Cheng pushed against the rock with a burst of strength, and the two disentangled from each other. Su Yi ended up deeper inside the crevice, while Ji Cheng was closer to the outside.

“I almost suffocated because of you,” Su Yi complained quietly.

Her hair was disheveled, her lips parted as she took several quick breaths before the color slowly returned to her cheeks.

Ji Cheng glanced outside the fissure—the wind was dying down. Without turning his head, he said, “You only have yourself to blame. If we were both Alphas, we wouldn't have gotten stuck like that.”

Su Yi, hearing this, felt a strange sense of satisfaction, her annoyance instantly dissipating. She blinked at Ji Cheng’s back. “When did you get so good at talking?”

Ji Cheng paused, then shrugged. “First of all, that wasn't a compliment, it was criticism. And besides, I'm an Ability User now. Show some respect.”

“I wouldn't mind more of that kind of criticism, Chief Ji.”

“Women are impossible to reason with.”

Suddenly she screamed.

“What is it?” Ji Cheng spun around at once.

Su Yi slowly lifted her head. The beam illuminated her delicate features, but her eyes shimmered with tears as she stammered, “There’s a dead body on the ground!”

What?

How could there be a dead body here?

Ji Cheng was instantly on high alert. He directed the headset’s light downward, and sure enough, there was a human corpse.

Only the upper half—from the torso upward—was visible, the rest buried beneath the ground. The body was dressed in the standard combat uniform of New Southport City, clearly a surveyor from some previous expedition. The exposed bones were deathly pale—a frightening sight at first glance.

“That’s enough to scare you? How did you ever pass the simulations?”

“It’s terrifying to stumble upon a corpse in a pitch-black place like this. Anyone would be scared,” Su Yi retorted coyly, taking two steps toward Ji Cheng before turning her back to him, pressing herself close. “I’m not afraid anymore. Can you tell how long he’s been dead?”

If you’re not afraid, why are you sticking so close to me?

“With the extreme climate of the Crimson Mist Wastelands, there’s no way to tell,” Ji Cheng replied, shining his light carefully. “But judging by the decayed bones, it’s been at least a year or two.”

“His clothes are intact—not like someone killed by the Wailing Gale. Why would he die here?” Su Yi seemed to steady herself, turning her face to him.

They were so close that her warm breath brushed over Ji Cheng’s cheek.

“It is strange,” Ji Cheng admitted.

People driven mad to death by the Wailing Gale usually tore their own clothes to shreds. This man’s uniform was intact—there must have been another cause.

At that moment, the Wailing Gale finally ceased.

“Let’s get out and regroup first,” he said.

The two emerged from the crevice, one after the other. Ji Cheng pressed his headset: “The gale has stopped. Everyone, regroup.”

Soon, the rest of the team emerged from other fissures along the riverbed.

No casualties. They were lucky, Ji Cheng noted, confirming the headcount.

He pointed behind him and said gravely, “We just found a corpse inside—judging by the uniform, a New Southport City surveyor. Cause of death unknown. From now on, stay alert. I suspect there’s some unknown danger nearby.”

“A corpse?” Millie echoed immediately. “Chief, I was just about to report—something’s not right about the shape of this ravine.”

“What do you mean?” Hou Shang asked, visibly uneasy.

“Look—after the Wailing Gale blew away the sand, doesn’t this section look like a giant mouth?”

The riverbed, scoured by the howling wind, had been stripped of its sandy surface, exposing bare rock beneath. The shape of the ravine was strange and unnatural.

“If the Salt River’s channel is a winding line, then this part of the ravine is like a swelling on that line. With no elevation difference, normal water erosion couldn’t possibly create this terrain.”

Millie finished her explanation, glancing at Ji Cheng as if seeking approval.

Ji Cheng caught on immediately and issued an order: “Mu Zhi, deploy the scout drones. Start at ten meters and sweep upward every five meters to fifty meters. Synchronize the data with the monitoring station.”

“Got it, chief.” Mu Zhi, realizing something, grew visibly excited.

He opened his pack, took out a box, and carefully lifted the lid. Inside were five thumb-sized micro-drones, neatly arranged.

He tapped a few commands into his wrist computer, and the five scout drones shot into the air with impressive speed.

Ji Cheng pressed his headset again. “Team 1257 to Control.”

Within half a second, Chen Qian’s voice came through his earpiece, “Control here. Go ahead.”

“I’m at the midsection of the Salt River channel, roughly twenty-seven li west of Linfeng Station Three. Begin 3D modeling and comparison based on the incoming images.”

With that, he adjusted the pinhole camera on his headset to face forward, circling in place to capture the ground for Chen Qian.

“Received.”

Moments later, his wrist computer chimed with a message alert.

Chen Qian’s voice came through again: “The 3D model has been sent to your wrist computer. Compared with pre-disaster riverbed records, the main channel here has undergone significant abnormal changes.”

Ji Cheng opened the model, projecting it as a hologram above his wrist. He zoomed in with a gesture.

A translucent virtual model hovered before them, with the six team members gathering around. Red lines marked the section where they stood. With the sand and silt removed, only the bare rock remained. Compared to fifty years ago, several new slabs of hard rock had mysteriously appeared, protruding outward. These new formations were higher than the riverbed but lower than the surrounding ground—viewed from above, they looked like a pair of lips, with the ravine forming the mouth.

Even for a seasonal river, rock layers couldn’t just appear out of thin air.

“A mineral zone,” Su Yi said to Ji Cheng with certainty.

Such abnormal changes were almost certainly caused by a “natural entropy anomaly”—commonly known as a mineral zone.

“My god, it really does look like a mouth. What’s this mineral zone called?” Qiao Tongtong exclaimed.

“It probably doesn’t have a name yet,” Millie replied with a grin, pointing in a direction.

They followed her finger—it was the very fissure where Ji Cheng and Su Yi had found the corpse.

“That crevice is right at the throat of the mouth. If I’m not mistaken, the entrance to the mineral zone is there.”

Mu Zhi’s eyes widened in excitement, his breath coming fast. “So we’ve really discovered an entirely new mineral zone?”

“Yes, it’s very likely,” Ji Cheng replied, unable to suppress a smile.

They were going to strike it rich!