Chapter 70: Militia Organization

“Good.”

At that moment, Xiang Yi realized his expression had been slipping — apparently killing a bunch of people who’d just tried to end his life had done something to his face. He quickly reined it in.

He lowered the muzzle of his Laser Rifle slightly and asked, “Who are you?”

“Chen Dong. Thirteenth Squad, City Defense Garrison.”

“What are you doing here?”

“There’s some equipment in the hospital basement. We came to retrieve it.”

“What kind of equipment?”

Chen Dong glanced at the staircase Xiang Yi had just come up from, then said with some hesitation, “Some… medical equipment.”

Xiang Yi stepped right up into Chen Dong’s face and locked eyes with him. “You’d kill someone over a bit of medical equipment?”

Chen Dong held his gaze without flinching. “The equipment is genuinely expensive, and it’s not easy to move. Last time we came, we just sealed the wall and planned to haul it out on this trip.”

That cleared things up for Xiang Yi.

When this group had first arrived a couple of days ago, they’d already found the equipment in the basement.

They could tell it was something unusual, but no one knew exactly what it was, and without proper tools there was no easy way to move it.

So they’d gone back, arranged for someone to wall off the area, then taken photos around to consult an expert about what the equipment actually was.

The fact that they hadn’t dismantled anything when sealing the wall — probably out of fear of damaging it — was exactly what had given Xiang Yi the chance to find this place.

And just as Xiang Yi had been ready to grab the equipment and make his exit, this group had finally gotten their answers and come back to collect it.

Then they’d run straight into Xiang Yi.

“I’ve already been down there and seen the equipment. That’s not medical gear.”

The confident look on Chen Dong’s face froze solid.

“Don’t lie to me. Consider that your first warning. Next time, I put a round in you.”

Chen Dong said nothing and gave a slow nod.

“How were you planning to move the equipment?”

“We’ve got a vehicle parked two streets over. The road’s clearer out that way.”

“Anyone still in the vehicle?”

“No.”

Xiang Yi turned to Shi Tie, whose eyeball was slowly regenerating beside him, and said, “Go check. If the vehicle’s still there, no one’s in it. If it’s gone, someone drove it off.”

Shi Tie walked out without a word.

Of course, he couldn’t speak — even if he found something, there was no way for him to report back to Xiang Yi.

Chen Dong didn’t know that, though. Even so, his expression didn’t change this time.

He was probably telling the truth.

Xiang Yi pressed on. “How did you even know there was equipment in the hospital basement?”

“We didn’t know about any equipment specifically. We just heard there might be something down there. A Scavenger sold us intel — their crew got nearly wiped out on a run and said the hospital basement was the origin point of the Abnormality incident.”

Wang Wu…

If Wang Wu was the one who’d sold them the information, then these people almost certainly weren’t the ones who had originally installed the equipment down there and contained the Shuffling Monster and the Dead Spirit Dust.

Xiang Yi asked something he’d already theorized but couldn’t yet confirm. “When you first found this place, there were surveillance cameras in the basement, weren’t there?”

“There were. All rated for Spiritual Energy environments, but every single one was fried. Probably the Spiritual Fluctuation from the Abnormality incident exceeded what the equipment could handle. So we stripped them all out.”

“Then why didn’t you put new cameras in?”

“Because an Abnormality incident of that scale had just happened in this district — basically no one was going to come around. And we were only sealing it up for a day or two before coming right back.”

“Weren’t you worried about whoever left the equipment coming back for it?”

“We had someone stationed here to keep watch for the past couple of days. It just so happened that today, when we set out from the city to move the equipment, we had our watchman come guide the convoy instead.”

“…”

Xiang Yi wasn’t sure what to say. The timing really was absurdly coincidental.

The moment the watchman left, Xiang Yi had walked into the hospital with Shi Tie right on his heels.

“Why isn’t this a regular military operation? Why are you, a soldier, showing up with a handful of Scavengers?”

“…”

Chen Dong hesitated again.

Xiang Yi didn’t say a word this time — he just slowly curled his finger toward the trigger of the Laser Rifle.

That was enough to make Chen Dong blurt it out. “Because the intel wasn’t sold to the military. It was sold to other Scavengers.”

“I’ve got a relative who works as a Scavenger. He was afraid he couldn’t handle it on his own, so he pulled me in.”

Xiang Yi eased his finger off the trigger. “And military personnel can just go off on their own like that?”

“Regular army? No. But I’m not regular army. Garrison units numbered past ten are basically just militias.”

“A militia… so not actual soldiers… but even militia members can’t just waltz out of the city whenever they feel like it.”

Chen Dong answered Xiang Yi’s challenge directly. “Normally, no. But something’s been going wrong these past few days — several units have fallen apart, our officers got recalled, and there’s basically nobody left in charge.”

“Units falling apart?”

To Xiang Yi, that sounded like pure fantasy. The military was the most critical pillar of any government. If even the military was crumbling, the Anka Star Government was finished.

“It’s the militia units that are falling apart. The officers from my unit got recalled by the regular army, and if they don’t come back in a few days, my unit will definitely dissolve too.”

“What the hell is actually going on?”

“I don’t know. All I know is the entire military’s been locked down — used to be we could call family once a week, now that’s gone too.”

“Word is the higher-ups ran into some kind of trouble. Everyone’s basically been pulled together for non-stop meetings or something. That’s just what I’ve heard.”

“If you’re asking me, I really can’t tell you much more than that.”

Xiang Yi didn’t dwell on it and steered things back to the present. “So why did you open fire on me straight away?”

“The guy who identified the equipment for us said to protect it at all costs. Both units are extremely valuable — extremely important. He told us as long as we weren’t going up against another military faction, he’d handle any fallout.”

Chen Dong glanced at the other soldier who’d been knocked out cold by Shi Tie. “He figured you’d already seen the equipment, and since you were alone, he decided to just silence you.”

“I saw you too. I was planning to come up, talk it out, and send you on your way. But he didn’t care — he just came up shooting.”

“I’m begging you, spare my life. I swear I won’t breathe a word about any of this.”

Xiang Yi didn’t rush to agree. Instead, he asked, “This Guo Long you mentioned earlier — who is he?”

“Wait, you seriously don’t know?” Chen Dong looked at Xiang Yi’s frown and quickly answered, “He’s a gang boss. Has his fingers in both the legal and criminal worlds.”

“His people have been showing up all over the district these past few days. I just assumed someone like you would be working for him.”

That remark immediately made Xiang Yi think about the changes he’d noticed in the district lately. “So they’re the reason there are more and more patrol vehicles showing up?”

“Possibly. I’m not sure, honestly. If our commander hadn’t been recalled, I’d still be at the garrison outside the city — I have no idea what’s been going on in here.”

A brief silence followed.

Then Xiang Yi asked abruptly, “You fired at me too, didn’t you?”

Chen Dong had barely opened his mouth to beg when a red laser beam flashed across his vision.