Outside the alley, the sky was ablaze with red, but inside the alley, the crimson hue grew ever stronger.
“You’re lying,” Lin Ruo said, narrowing her eyes slightly as she manipulated spatial energy to crush the man’s thigh. A strong smell of blood filled the air, but it was blocked by an invisible film of water in the alley.
"Ah—" The young man breathed rapidly, and the violent trembling caused him to accidentally bite his own flesh, and blood slowly flowed down the corner of his mouth, adding a touch of brightness to his pale face.
Once the most intense pain subsided, the young man gasped for breath. He smelled the blood on his body, and he had no strength left. He was like a lump of rotten flesh, being lifted into the air by spatial energy.
He chuckled, revealing teeth stained with blood. "I won't talk. Go ahead and kill me if you dare! Kill me!"
Lin Ruo frowned slightly. She had originally wanted to save some effort by interrogating this man, but she hadn't expected him to be so stubborn and refuse to talk. She would still have to use the most troublesome method to find him.
Since she couldn't get anything out of him, Lin Ruo didn't plan to waste any more time with him. It was already getting light outside. With a thought, a line of blood appeared on the young man's neck. He glared at Lin Ruo with angry eyes, the light in his eyes quickly disappearing.
This person no longer has to suffer like this, which is a kind of relief.
There must be some truth and some falsehood in what that person just said. She turned to look at the sky, where the morning glow was already rising from the east. She had already spent the whole night at the A City base and needed to speed things up and get home as soon as possible.
She quickly dispelled the spatial domain and water membrane, and the man's mutilated corpse fell to the ground. His head rolled to the side with a "roll," and blood gushed out, slowly spreading from under the corpse.
Lin Ruo expanded his mental power to the maximum extent, reducing the range of the invisibility water membrane, and at the same time used his spatial domain, instantly disappearing from the spot.
She teleported several times in succession, and when she reappeared, she was already at the entrance of the underground exchange.
She concealed herself within the water film, unleashing her spiritual power to a great extent. The surrounding environment slowly materialized in Lin Ruo's mind, and she quickly located the middle-aged man in the underground exchange.
The man was packing up his stall, and he and his men were loading small buckets onto a vehicle. Lin Ruo then noticed that the man was selling fuel, each bucket containing about 10 liters. The price was marked on the sign: two crystal cores per bucket.
Lin Ruo's lips curled up in a smile. "I've found you."
She used teleportation again, appearing beside the middle-aged man, intending to follow them to their lair.
"Brother Liu, our business is pretty good today. It's a pity that we have to give 70% to the base. Otherwise, today's income would be enough for us to live on for a long time."
They pushed the cart out of the underground market. The man in the vest in front of them was pulling the cart with both hands, beads of sweat dripping onto the ground, but his face showed some joy. He turned to look at the middle-aged man walking beside him.
Lin Ruoyin walked silently beside them; it turned out this person's surname was Liu.
Brother Liu's lips curled up in a wide smile, and he was in a very good mood. "Our harvest today is not just these crystal cores. The biggest harvest today is that we saw the little girl who bought oil from us before the apocalypse again. This news alone is enough for us to make a fortune."
Lin Ruo walked beside the man and nodded in agreement; she was indeed their biggest "gain" today.
"How much can a little girl sell for? Even the most popular girl on South Street only gets one crystal core a night. Our stuff is much more valuable." The person supporting the cart behind him didn't understand the key point.
Brother Liu, who was walking in front, shook his head and turned around to scold them, "You don't know anything! The value of this girl lies in her physical appearance, not her body. You guys are always thinking about this kind of dirty stuff, you can't think of anything serious."
As Lin Ruo walked, she listened to their discussion about what made her valuable, and she thought that Brother Liu was right. She was indeed valuable because of her worth. Someone had offered 10,000 points for her head before.
No one in the group dared to speak again; only the crunching of wheels on the dirt road could be heard. They soon arrived at the entrance to the inner section.
The inner wall was 5 meters higher than the outer wall. Unlike the simple outer wall, the inner wall was made entirely of fine steel. Lin Ruo could feel the metal energy on it, so it seemed that the city wall was actually built entirely by metal-type ability users.
In an instant, she thought of the level 2 metal crystal core in the escort team. He was the one who made it.
Brother Liu took a wooden plaque out of his pocket and handed it to the two guards. After the two guards looked at it, they nodded to them and opened the gate.
Lin Ruo nodded, and the young man said that it was true that they lived on the inner floor.
After walking for a while, someone couldn't stand the atmosphere in the group and asked Brother Liu, "Brother Liu, can you tell us what makes that girl so valuable?"
By this time, Brother Liu's anger had subsided. He was in a good mood today and wanted to show off his keen eye. "You guys! You need to think about things from a different angle. Why did this young girl buy so much oil before the apocalypse? We didn't know the apocalypse was going to happen before, but now that we do, how can we not think about it more deeply? This young girl may have known in advance that the apocalypse was coming. How did she know this news? Where did that batch of oil she bought go? Have you thought about these things?"
After Brother Liu mentioned it, the group immediately understood. One of the bald men said anxiously, "Then how did we let her go? In this world, once she's gone, we might never find her again."
Someone next to him reminded him, "Didn't you see that Brother Qing hasn't been around? Brother Liu must have sent him to follow him."
“Brother Liu is really shrewd,” the bald man chuckled twice. “The fact that we brothers are still a dozen or so left, and that we can still live such good lives in the apocalypse, is all thanks to Brother Liu.”
Brother Liu turned around and glared at him, then said nothing more.
Lin Ruo, standing beside him, nodded. It was true that there were still a dozen or so people left, but they would have to ask about the exact number when they made their move.
She followed them all the way to the door of Building 6 in the third row of the inner floor. Seeing Brother Liu take out his key and open the door, one of their team members ran to the door of Building 7, took out his key, and opened the door as well.
Her gaze swept over buildings 4 and 5 next to her, and her mental energy swept over them. In building 5, a superhuman was absorbing a crystal core.
From this, it's clear that everyone living here must be a superhuman? No wonder that young man said they lived here; he was trying to lure her into a trap.
That young man was clever; he mixed true and false information together. If she had only inquired a little and then lowered her guard because of the truth in the information, and completely believed it, she might have actually come into contact with these superhumans.
She scanned the area with her mental energy and found that there were nine people in buildings six and seven, plus the seven who had just returned, and a young man who had already died, making a total of seventeen.
Now that she has found the hideout, it's time for her to make her move.
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