Wasteland Border Inspector

Chapter 333: Stone Sunflower File, Veteran Scavenger!

Cheng Ye pinched the stone slab in his hand, feeling a bit troubled for a moment.The first thing he needed to figure out was exactly what connection existed between this stone slab and the Stone Sunflower People.

The spiral patterns on both were highly similar, and their method of absorbing sunlight was cut from the same cloth.

The hardened skin of the Stone Sunflower Person could withstand even bullets, yet under the attack of Blazing Eagle's Killing Fire fused with Earth Fire Power, it was as fragile as wax.

More importantly, the stones dug out of the Stone Sunflower Person barehanded would instantly turn into fine sand. There was simply no way to preserve them completely intact like this stone slab.

Right now, the most direct method of verification was to touch the stone slab with a hand infused with the power of fire and see if it showed any signs of melting.

But he did not dare take this risk. If he accidentally melted the entire slab, he would be in massive trouble.

A charging speed of 11 kilowatts was not considered fast compared to the Baishui Dam Power Station or the complete industrial foundation of Happiness City.

However, in the Wilderness, having such a compact, all-weather energy-supplying stone slab was simply an invincible existence.

If he had possessed such a thing when he first transmigrated over, he would have soared into the sky long ago. Why would he have needed to painstakingly search the ground for a place to charge? Even the speed of a slow-charging gun could not compare to this stone slab.

'I can't take the risk. At the very least, I have to wait until I have two... no, three stone slabs before conducting this test!'

Cheng Ye stroked his chin, instantly dismissing the thought.

The most direct way to acquire a new stone slab was to kill another Stone Sunflower Person and accumulate Traits. Once his Recharge Value recovered to 25%, he could attempt to manifest a new stone slab through the Trait.

Calculated at the current charging speed of 11 kilowatts, there were about 10.5 hours of full-power sunlight every day. Including the low-efficiency charging at sunrise and sunset, he could charge just about 15% in a single day. By tomorrow afternoon, he could attempt another manifestation.

Aside from that, there was a riskier method: waiting until dark and trying to venture deep into the mine to investigate.

If the stone slab was not an inanimate object, but rather a product of that underground Transcendent Creature—whether its fruit or some other secretion—as long as he could pick up a 'wild' stone slab, his current charging efficiency would rise to another level.

But the moment he thought of the blazing red light filling the mine tunnels and the Stone Sunflower People's unreasonable instant-kill methods, he couldn't help but suppress the urge.

'I still have to wait until I get a map of the mine. If I blindly charge in right now, it's hard to say whether I'll be able to walk back out.'

Cheng Ye calculated in his heart, feeling more and more that the shortage of Recharge Value was too fatal.

To smoothly use the Collector in the Wilderness, simply relying on the full charge he had before departure was completely insufficient; he desperately needed a continuous supply of energy.

And this stone slab was currently the best 'charger'. At worst, he just had to wait another day. He had plenty of time to spare.

After calming his mind, time flew by.

Seeing that the sun was about to set, the radiance on the heads of the Stone Sunflower People had begun to dim little by little.

Cheng Ye immediately closed the experiment log in front of him, grabbed his Dominator Hunting Rifle, hopped onto the Flying Wings, and waited quietly.

This time, he could see the scene at the mine entrance much more clearly than yesterday.

The red light covering the entire Gathering Place did not dissipate with a boom. Instead, just like when it appeared, it was slowly retracted by the Stone Sunflower People inch by inch, meter by meter, completely sucked back into their stone heads.

'So it really is like this...'

Cheng Ye felt a flash of realization in his heart. His daytime speculations had been verified.

And the very second the Stone Sunflower People retracted the red light, he stopped waiting. Steering his Flying Wings, he fiercely swept out of the mine.

The black bionic wings vibrated madly, bursting with powerful lift.

This device struggled when carrying five people, but with only one passenger, its mobility was terrifyingly high.

He reached a height of eight meters in an instant, and the Flying Wings hovered steadily beneath Mine No. 2.

Cheng Ye turned his head again to scan the Stone Sunflower People on the opposite cliff face. Only after confirming that all of them, just like yesterday, had turned around and were moving toward the depths of the mine, did he pilot the Flying Wings higher to level with the entrance of Mine No. 2.

What entered his vision at this moment was only the hopping, receding back of the Stone Sunflower Person whose Redstone he had dug out.

This Stone Sunflower Person seemed completely unharmed. Once it reached its 'off-work' time, it retreated without the slightest hesitation.

Without entering the Martial-Forbidden State, Cheng Ye simply raised his Dominator Hunting Rifle, aimed at the back of the Stone Sunflower Person's head, and pulled the trigger.

Bang.

The crisp gunshot echoed within the mine.

In the darkness, the exact moment the bullet struck, a faint golden light suddenly flared at the point of impact. It was cut from the same cloth as the radiance that burst from the Stone Sunflower Person's face when facing the sun, only this time, it was entirely concentrated on a single point.

As expected, the bullet was forcefully deflected, failing to cause even the slightest damage.

Cheng Ye raised an eyebrow and continued pulling the trigger. Bullets rained down on various parts of the Stone Sunflower Person's body.

Ankle, back, shoulder blade...

The result was entirely identical. The golden light acted like an automatic defense barrier. No matter where the bullet hit, it triggered instantly and deflected the attack.

And from beginning to end, that Stone Sunflower Person didn't turn its head. It seemed completely unaware that it was being attacked, maintaining its rhythmic hopping pace as it gradually vanished into the depths of the mine.

It could be said that the damage was negligible, but the insult was immense.

Watching helplessly as the Stone Sunflower Person completely disappeared from view, Cheng Ye paused, then piloted his Flying Wings back to Mine No. 1.

He opened his research notebook, meticulously recording this special attribute of 'automatic golden light defense', and then began to organize the progress and conclusions of his first day of research:

[Codename: Stone Sunflower Person (Special Infected Body)]

[Classification: Wilderness Genus, Humanoid, Territorial Type, Plant Type]

[Threat Level: B-]

[Derived Transcendent Creature: Unknown]

[Derived Infection Source: Suspected giant Transcendent plant within the mine]

[Core Abilities:

Sunlight Absorption: Can absorb sunlight through the Spiral Light Path on its face, converting it into energy required for survival. Its behavioral pattern highly aligns with the photosynthetic traits of plants, but the energy conversion efficiency far exceeds that of conventional plants. Biological Deconstruction Ray: Capable of releasing a special ray that annihilates biological matter. Based on actual testing, key data is as follows. Maximum effective propagation distance: 375 meters;

Beam Ground Coverage Area: Initial stage (within 100 meters of ray emission), a circular area with a 12-meter diameter. As the propagation distance increases, the coverage area gradually expands. At the maximum effective distance of 375 meters, the coverage area is a circular zone with a 45-meter diameter.

Radiance Defense: A fully automatic passive defensive ability. When subjected to external attacks, it can directly absorb or deflect incoming impact forces, providing significant protection against conventional physical attacks. [Core Mechanism 1: The essence of the Biological Deconstruction Ray is directly different from conventional rays. 1. Confirmed to be non-electromagnetic. The red light visible to the naked eye is highly suspected to be a product of the Energy-Gathering Redstone. It is hypothesized that a mutation occurred within the Redstone, giving birth to special subatomic particles capable of annihilating biological matter, temporarily named 'Deconstructors'. The Stone Sunflower People gain the right to use these particles through the Redstone embedded in their faces. 2. Traditional electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light, but the core of the Biological Deconstruction Ray is the directional movement of 'Deconstructors'. During propagation, Deconstructors interact weakly with hydrogen atoms in space, producing radiation in the visible light spectrum. This is why the ray presents a visual effect of 'slowly covering forward'. 3. Deconstructors can only advance gradually along an anchored spatial grid and cannot diffuse freely, thereby forming a coverage-style propagation characteristic akin to 'water filling a container'. 4. As subatomic particles, Deconstructors can directly penetrate the microscopic structure of matter. Combined with the quantum tunneling effect, there is no physical basis for reflection. Even against a smooth mirror, it will not produce any bouncing effect. 5. Unlike conventional rays, the release of Deconstructors does not require continuous energy output. It only requires pushing them to cover the target space and keeping them active within a fixed range. The Energy Consumption is far lower than expected. 6. It is highly suspected that the annihilation mechanism of the Deconstructors is a resonance effect, but due to a current lack of further monitoring methods, this cannot be verified for the time being.

[Core Mechanism 2: Redstone Association Logic. The Stone Sunflower People themselves do not possess the ability to produce Redstone. It is hypothesized that the Redstone embedded in their faces originates from the main body of the Infection Source inside the mine. The core role of the Stone Sunflower People is to act as 'carriers' and 'chargers' for the Redstone. By absorbing sunlight, they charge the Redstone. Once the Redstone's energy accumulates to a mature state, the Infection Source harvests them.]

[Core Mechanism 3: Activity Rhythm. The Stone Sunflower People possess an extremely stable biological clock with highly fixed activity times. They exit the mine punctually at eight in the morning, maintain a fixed posture at the mine entrance to absorb sunlight, and return to the mine punctually at six in the evening. However, a few individual Infected Bodies exhibit special activity behaviors.]

[Core Mechanism 4: Ray Trigger Conditions. The Biological Deconstruction Ray is not an active attack method. It is only triggered when the Stone Sunflower Person receives external stimuli (and the stimulus must breach the Radiance Defense). After a single Stone Sunflower Person releases the ray, it awakens nearby kin to release it synchronously, thereby triggering a large-scale tide of rays.]

After filling in the various research data on the Stone Sunflower People, Cheng Ye picked up his pen and sketched a diagram at the bottom of the logbook.

Before long, the image of a Stone Sunflower Person—sporting a sunflower-shaped stone head and facing the sun with a bizarre smile—leaped onto the paper.

Faced with completely unknown Infected Bodies and Infection Sources, humanity could only use this clumsy yet solid method to probe and piece together the truth bit by bit.

And the core metric for measuring an Inspector's professional competence was precisely the speed and accuracy of their information gathering.

"Not bad. Although strictly speaking, this is my first time truly analyzing a completely unknown Infection Source and studying the behavioral patterns of its Infected Bodies,"

"When it comes to professionalism, I, as an Inspector, certainly haven't neglected my duties."

Cheng Ye blew on the paper, waiting for the ink to dry completely before closing the experiment logbook with satisfaction.

Today's progress had essentially stripped away the veil of mystery surrounding the Stone Sunflower People.

His repeated probing of their attack methods also made him increasingly certain that the 'unknown' was the most terrifying enemy.

Were the methods of the Stone Sunflower People really stronger than those of the Seamless Shadow Puppet?

Probably not.

The Seamless Shadow Puppet—elusive, capable of traversing the Gaps in Space, possessing human-level intelligence, and mastering various life-saving and attacking mechanisms—clearly had a much higher ability ceiling than the Stone Sunflower People.

Granted, the Seamless Shadow Puppet lacked a direct instant-kill method and couldn't release deconstruction rays to melt living beings, but to ordinary people, the daytime movements of the Stone Sunflower People were extremely conspicuous.

Without special weapons, one could not breach their Radiance Defense, which naturally meant one wouldn't provoke them into releasing their deconstruction rays.

Unless one courted death by actively provoking them, or accidentally struck the Redstone when encountering a dying Stone Sunflower Person, even exploring the Red River Gathering Place in broad daylight would not draw their attacks.

But the Seamless Shadow Puppet was different. Once targeted by it, it was almost tantamount to a death sentence.

Those with weak Strength would be directly crushed by the shadow puppets under its command;

And those with strong Strength would have their Combat Power slowly drained by its mechanics, eventually being reduced to shadow Puppets.

Yet the reason he had fought it three times, won every single bout, and gained every advantage, relied precisely on intelligence.

Information stripped the Seamless Shadow Puppet of its mystery, allowing its various abilities to be analyzed one by one.

When the enemy was no longer 'unknown,' there was ample time to prepare countermeasures and launch targeted opposition.

And this was exactly why Cheng Ye classified the threat level of the Stone Sunflower People as 'B-'.

This was merely a Disaster-level Infected Body, far from reaching the Ruin-level magnitude of the Demonic Eye Sponge.

Even its B- ranking would only count as a natural disaster if it was paired with an Infection Tide. If they just remained secluded in their corner, their threat level would be a C-rank at best.

Suddenly.

His Defense Terminal vibrated as the radio module received a direct-connect signal broadcast from the Armored Vehicle.

Cheng Ye tapped the screen and pressed the receive button. After a burst of crackling static, Liu Bi's voice came through: "Cheng Ye, it's dark now. Is everything alright on your end?"

"Everything's fine, I was just getting ready to head back."

"You're not tired, are you?"

"Not at all. I stayed in the cave all day and didn't run out to clash head-on with the Stone Sunflower People."

"That's good. Don't rush back just yet. I put together two more handcarts this afternoon. Zhang Daping can't come because of his leg injury, so I'm bringing your Brother Niu and Yin Ruofeng over right now. Let's load up some more materials together to take back."

"Alright!"

After hanging up the Defense Terminal, the curtain of night deepened.

What used to be a time for rest had become the prime activity window in the Red River Gathering Place. Only by avoiding the daytime phase when the Stone Sunflower People roamed could one operate with peace of mind at night.

Cheng Ye waited until the final glimmer of the Spiral Light Path on the stone slab faded as night completely fell. Only then did he summon the Shadow Box and stuff the stone slab and all his sundries inside one by one.

He pressed the control stick of the Flying Wings; the battery display showed 64% remaining, enough to support its use for the next two days.

But the problem of charging it once the battery ran out was placed very tangibly before him.

'Hmm... I still don't know how to convert and extract the energy from the stone slab. This is quite a tricky technical hurdle.'

Cheng Ye pondered silently.

The Pendant was like a universal charger that could absorb any type of escaping energy. There was absolutely no need to worry about interface compatibility; he simply had to press it against the source to initiate charging.

But if he wanted to convert the stone slab's energy into a stable electrical output, he first needed to thoroughly understand the slab's working principles, then specifically manufacture an adapter device.

Analyzing the Traits of the Stone Sunflower People and deducing the rough principles of their mechanisms could still be accomplished using his comprehensive knowledge system.

However, producing an adapter device required not only deeper professional knowledge but also an industrial foundation to rely on.

Of course, it wasn't impossible to find a shortcut. The 'Flame Energy Conversion' Trait might be a breakthrough, though currently, it was uncertain whether Flame Energy was the exact energy dissipating from the stone slab, or if extracting this Trait could yield equipment capable of adapting to it.

Regardless, the next few days presented the perfect opportunity to investigate these questions.

The Flying Wings landed smoothly on the ground. Cheng Ye first went to the spot where the Stone Sunflower Person had died yesterday to conduct a search, but he found nothing.

Could the Redstone be the lifeline of the Stone Sunflower People, meaning that once it all exploded, their bodies would directly turn to sand and vanish?

Right now, there was no further evidence to corroborate this judgment. Calculating that Liu Bi and the others should be arriving soon, Cheng Ye turned and headed back to the Gathering Place entrance.

Soon, three swaying beams of light appeared in the distance, steadily approaching his position.

Liu Bi was pulling two handcarts by himself, while Yin Ruofeng and Niu Fu pulled one each.

After resting for the better part of the day, Liu Bi's spirits had improved significantly, and a smile had returned to his face.

Yin Ruofeng still had gauze wrapped around his head, but his mental state was decent enough.

Only Niu Fu, missing an arm, appeared to lack the strength for what he wished to do. His cart-pulling motions were somewhat unsteady.

"Brother Niu, did you not rest well during the day?" Cheng Ye hurried forward to greet them.

"How could he sit still?" Liu Bi stopped his handcarts, dusted off his shoulders, and laughed. "Even with a broken arm, he insists on busying himself alongside me. From now on, you're responsible for watching the handcarts; take a breather here."

Niu Fu smiled, not bothering to act tough. He took the opportunity to sit on the cart and let out a long breath. "I have to admit I'm getting old. Missing an arm isn't that much of a hindrance, but my Stamina clearly can't keep up anymore."

"What do you mean, old? You're only thirty-three and crying about being old. Doesn't that make me an ancient geezer?"

Liu Bi gave him a side-eye and chided him with a laugh, then stepped forward and patted Cheng Ye's shoulder. "Let's go! This is your first time out in the Wilderness, kid. Today, let us see how well you've learned the skills of being a Scavenger in an abandoned Gathering Place!"

In terms of combat, Cheng Ye's Strength had long been proven in clashes with Infected Bodies. He needed no further guidance there.

But scavenging in an abandoned Gathering Place, recovering scrap materials, and building shelters—these were absolutely not things a Wilderness rookie could master easily.

It didn't matter how one went about salvaging wooden boards and miscellaneous items from residential buildings, but truly valuable things were often hidden in specific areas.

"Last night, I carefully studied the topographical Map of the Red River Gathering Place again. By comparing the distribution of buildings with the previously preserved information, I've basically got a clear grasp of the situation here."

Liu Bi walked at the forefront, leading the two through the blocks with many twists and turns before finally stopping in front of a street-facing shop.

"Ever since the Redstone mines were exhausted, the value of those veins plummeted instantly. That Lord Liu of the Red River Gathering Place was quite bold. He directly contracted out the mines for private excavation and sale. The Gathering Place only collected a fixed mine-entry fee. No matter what was dug up, they just collected money per head."

The shelves in the shop were haphazardly toppled over. The floor was littered with shattered glass and rotting, weathered packaging. The easily portable small items had long been picked clean by passing Scavengers, leaving only the Metal shelf frames welded to the floor and a few man-sized stainless steel storage cabinets in the corner.

Metal, which might be considered precious elsewhere, was paradoxically cheaper than timber in the Red River Gathering Place. It was just that the processing costs were exorbitantly high, completely unaffordable for ordinary families. Thus, it was no surprise that a large amount of Metal remained in the shop.

"Huh? Isn't that like draining the pond to catch all the fish?" Cheng Ye swept his gaze over the shop's layout, unable to hold back his doubt.

Opening up private mining and having the Gathering Place merely collect fees seemed like a shortcut to recoup initial infrastructure costs. However, in the long run, this meant the Red River Gathering Place would be shackled entirely to the single path of vein resources.

No wonder the three surrounding Gathering Places hated them to the bone. This act of opening to the outside was simply digging up the Gathering Place's roots.

"You could say that. After all, so many people in the Gathering Place had to eat. In the past, the profits from monopolizing the Redstone mines could feed everyone. When the Redstone was gone, they had to find employment for these people. Opening up private mining was one way to digest the labor force."

Liu Bi didn't offer too much evaluation. He pointed at the shop and continued, "This was a shop belonging to a private mining team back in the day. Manager Yin, you guys probably didn't come here to purchase ore later on, right?"

"No." Yin Ruofeng shook his head honestly. "Ever since the Redstone ran out, we never visited this Gathering Place again. Even if they dug up rare ores here, they would have had to bring them to the shelter city to sell. It was impossible for us to come to their door to purchase them anymore."

"Exactly. We can also purchase other rare ores elsewhere, and always in large bulk shipments. Without Redstone, this Gathering Place lost its biggest pillar of support."

After speaking, Liu Bi stood at the door and raised an eyebrow, gesturing. "Come on. These shops should be the places in the Red River Gathering Place most likely to yield 'big hauls'. Now it's your turn to get your hands dirty. Let's see if you can still find any high-value items preserved inside."

"Alright!"

Cheng Ye shined his flashlight around the shop, then took the tool bag from Yin Ruofeng's back.

After pulling out the folding Small Knife from it, he raised his hand and slashed the crossbeams, shelf panels, and joints of the racks.

The scratch on the panel was exceptionally obvious, with debris flaking off the edges. It was clearly just ordinary carbon steel. After so many years of exposure to the elements, its strength was probably inferior to the wooden boards in residential homes.

On the other hand, the crossbeams exhibited a silvery-white color, and the Small Knife had a slight rebounding sensation when slashing across them. It could be confirmed that they were made of stainless steel or alloy steel. Even the connecting screws were stainless steel. Even now, they possessed total recovery value.

Cheng Ye immediately took out a screwdriver, removed the screws, and sorted them away. He then dismantled the fixed crossbeams one by one, carrying them to the front of the shop and arranging them separately according to length and thickness.

"Not bad, your movements are quite agile." Liu Bi watched with great satisfaction.

Able to fight when picking up weapons, able to scavenge when putting them down.

Inspector was inherently an all-rounder position. These seemingly inconspicuous skills might just be the means to save one's life in a specific environment.

Once the shelves were dismantled, Cheng Ye's gaze fell on the floor tiles of the shop.

He picked up a Crowbar and tapped them. The floor tiles were actually solid, and the tapping sound was slightly muffled.

"It seems the Master of this shop had some financial foundation. This kind of cement brick wouldn't be cheap even in Happiness City."

Cheng Ye smiled, gripping the Crowbar and casually tapping on various bricks. The sound was uniformly muffled, except for one floor tile under the shelves, which echoed with a slight hollowness.

"There's something there!" Yin Ruofeng shouted subconsciously.

As soon as he spoke, Cheng Ye wedged the tip of the Crowbar into the crack between the bricks and forcefully pried up the tile.

There was nothing wrong with the tile itself, but underneath, it was hollow.

An iron box sat quietly hidden beneath the brick. The existence of the hidden compartment naturally caused a difference in the tapping sound.

The satisfaction on Liu Bi's face grew even thicker. "I didn't expect you to be so good at scraping the ground, kid. You didn't slack off in the Trainee Inspector courses, did you?"

"Of course not, I'm a perfect-score student." Cheng Ye grinned. He didn't rashly use his hands to open the box; instead, he directly smashed it open with the other end of the Crowbar.

Inside was a... cashbox.

Two white plastic-sealed bags fell out, containing different styles of coins.

Cheng Ye recognized the left one at a glance: Happiness Coins. He picked it up and saw they were all in denominations of fifty.

This single small bag held a full 4,000 coins, equivalent to the income of an ordinary worker going without food or drink for over half a year.

The other bag contained the same amount of coins, and the style was similar to Happiness Coins. The front had '50' engraved on it, but the back didn't feature the high wall pattern. Instead, it bore a storm pattern spiraling inward toward the center.

They were Guanghong Coins.

Before setting out, Cheng Ye had leafed through quite a few documents regarding Guanghong, so he wasn't unfamiliar with this.

The basic currency styles of the shelter cities were kept as uniform as possible, only differentiated by the back. Guanghong Coins were not as valuable as Happiness Coins, not just because of the strength gap between the two sides in previous years, but even more so because Guanghong Coins underwent frequent redesigns.

This version of Storm Coins in his hands was an old edition from many years ago. They had been revised twice since then. The back of the current new edition currency featured a 'V'-shaped metal rod topped with a Super-Concentrating Photosynthesis Panel, symbolizing Guanghong's new type of energy.

"A gain of 8,000 coins. Even in our Happiness City, it's enough for a family to settle down completely. If this fell into the hands of an ordinary Scavenger, they'd probably remember it for a lifetime."

Cheng Ye waved the two sealed plastic bags in his hand and chuckled while shaking his head.

After the ruination of civilization, the most worthless things were perhaps these currencies of the shelter cities.

And out here in the desolate Wilderness, this money was even less useful than those recoverable stainless steel crossbeams.

"Storm Coins, truly a nostalgic item..."

Yin Ruofeng pinched a coin between his fingers, a look of reminiscence surfacing on his face. "This was the seasonal currency issued in the year 22 of the New Era. Imprinted on it is 'Deanna', the terrifying typhoon from that year that vastly exceeded Category 17. Later, someone said this storm pattern was inauspicious, so it was swapped out after only three years in circulation."

"Please help me pass these coins onto the family of the Pang Siblings," Cheng Ye said after a moment's thought.

A hint of surprise flashed through Yin Ruofeng's eyes before he nodded solemnly. "Alright, I'll definitely deliver it personally!"

The fact that such a massive sum wasn't taken away back then was enough to show how abrupt that Infection Tide had been.

Even the bosses of these private mining teams hadn't received the news in time.

However, exactly because of this, there might be other higher-value items hidden within this shop.

Cheng Ye continued tapping on other parts of the floor. He didn't discover any new hiding spots, but these solid cement bricks could all be pried up and taken away to be used as foundational materials for building a shelter.

Walking further inside, a row of metal storage cabinets was wedged into the corner. The cabinet doors had long been pried open, accumulating a layer of dust thick enough to be grabbed into clumps. There were also obvious Crowbar marks behind the cabinets.

Judging by these marks, it was likely the work of amateur Scavengers, who had to shift positions several times just to barely pry them open.

Cheng Ye grabbed the corner of the storage cabinet and hauled it outward. Sure enough, he saw a fist-sized hole in the wall behind the cabinet. The jagged cement edges clearly showed signs of having been pried.

In the past, something was most likely hidden here too.

However, these storage cabinets themselves were good items. Upon inspection, they were all built from standard stainless steel plates, a full five centimeters thick.

Joy glinted in Cheng Ye's eyes. Stainless steel of this thickness was perfectly suited, whether used to reinforce the walls of a shelter or cut and modified into tools.

He bent down, hooking his fingers into the groove at the bottom of the first cabinet. Using the strength of his waist and abdomen, he gave a fierce heave. With a loud clang, the heavy cabinet tipped over onto the floor. Then, dragging it by the edge, he hauled it toward the door.

The second cabinet was handled in the exact same manner.

But when he placed his palms on the bottom of the third cabinet and prepared to exert force, his movements suddenly paused, his brows furrowing slightly.

Logically speaking, storage cabinets of the same batch should have uniform dimensions and exterior shapes, and the welding process at the bottom should also remain consistent. Even if there were deviations, they definitely wouldn't be too large.

When dragging the first two cabinets, the corner welds his fingertips brushed against were evenly raised fish-scale patterns. The texture was rough but solid, characteristic of standard industrial welding techniques.

However, with this third cabinet, the moment his fingertips touched the corners, he sensed something was wrong. The welds were actually slightly indented, and the edges carried a deliberately polished smoothness, entirely different from the rough texture of the previous two.

"What is it?" Liu Bi heard the pause and looked over.

"Brother B, the spot you picked is a little too good." Cheng Ye chuckled softly, directly pushing the third cabinet over onto the floor.

Waiting for the kicked-up dust to disperse, he grabbed the cabinet's legs and righted it, aiming the flashlight's beam straight at the cabinet's bottom.

A single glance revealed the crux. The welds on the third cabinet had clearly been added later, completely different from the original factory craftsmanship.

"Oh? To think no one noticed such obvious marks?"

Liu Bi's interest was also piqued. He immediately pulled a hammer and Pliers out of the tool bag. He was just about to start dismantling it when he paused and handed the tools to Cheng Ye. "Your luck is better than mine, kid. Here, you crack it open and see what's hidden inside."

"Alright!"

Cheng Ye took the tools. He first used the hammer to fiercely smash the seams at the cabinet's corners. Once the metal edge curled up a bit, he directly clamped the Pliers onto the rolled edge and forcefully yanked it.

The refined steel Pliers creaked under his grip. Driven by brute force, this stainless steel hidden compartment was violently ripped more than halfway open.

"Nothing?"

Having ripped open such a large gap, he still didn't see anything fall out. Cheng Ye simply tore the entire hidden compartment off completely.

Only then did he discover an object tightly wrapped in oilcloth, firmly secured to the bottom of the cabinet. It was likely placed this way to prevent anyone from noticing an anomaly when shaking the cabinet.

He used his Small Knife to cut open a corner of the oilcloth wrapper, and a small packet of powder fell out first.

The flashlight's beam hit the powder. It was pitch black all over. Cheng Ye furrowed his brow, unable to identify what it was for a moment.

But Yin Ruofeng, who had leaned over to look, couldn't help crying out in alarm, "My God, isn't this Redstone powder?"