As their convoy slowly approached the base entrance, two similarly well-equipped soldiers, but with gas masks covering their faces, revealing only a pair of grim eyes, immediately stepped forward, blocking them with their rifles.
"Who are you? Which squad? Got a pass?" one of the soldiers asked in an arrogant and impatient tone. His voice, muffled by the gas mask, was somewhat dull, but the condescending meaning was completely undisguised. His eyes roamed back and forth over Elara's group and their reasonably decent-looking vehicles, a look of undisguised scrutiny and… greed in them.
Elara resisted the urge to frown, putting on a perfectly calibrated, somewhat fawning smile. She replied politely, "Hello, sir. We're not with any squad. We're survivors who came all the way from the west side of the city. We heard… we heard there was a military base here, so we wanted to try our luck…"
"Shut up!" Before Elara could finish, the soldier rudely cut her off. "Coming from the west side at this time… and you 'heard' about it? I don't buy it! You people look shady, not like good people! Get lost, get lost! If you don't leave now, I'm calling for backup!"
As he spoke, the soldier tightened his grip on his gun vigilantly and even waved it threateningly at Elara's group. He only saw women, children, and a few frail-looking "scholars" in the car, and didn't take them seriously at all. As for the tall figures in the cars behind, he saw them as more of a… diversion.
"Brother, brother, please calm down," Elara said, still smiling, but her heart had turned to ice. She took a good-quality crystal core, one that emitted a faint glow of energy, from her pocket and, when no one was looking, quickly slipped it into the soldier's hand.
The warm, smooth feel and the powerful energy it contained made the soldier's body visibly stiffen. He silently clenched his fist around the crystal core. The look of vigilance and impatience on his face twitched at the corners of his mouth, and his tone, finally, softened considerably.
"Hmph, you're a smart girl," he said, lowering his voice to Elara. "You look decent enough, not like a troublemaker. Since you're so… 'sensible,' I'll… give you a little tip."
As he spoke, he pointed upwards with his finger, a subtle gesture.
"Around here… in the city, the 'heavens have changed' recently," he said, his voice full of meaningful implication. "Get it?"
"The new 'King' who just arrived isn't in a very good mood. For a rogue squad of unknown origin like yours, without a reference, getting in is harder than climbing to heaven."
He glanced at Elara's large convoy, shook his head, and said, "For the sake… ahem, for the sake of you being so sensible, I'll point you in the right direction. Follow this road east. About twenty kilometers from here, it seems… someone has also pulled together a team and built a new base. I don't know if it's any good there, but at least… the entry barrier is lower than here."
"As for our place… I'm afraid you won't be able to get in."
After speaking, the soldier said no more, just waved his hand, signaling them to leave quickly.
Elara gave him another "grateful" smile, nodded, then turned and got back into the car.
But the moment she turned around, the smile on her face completely vanished, replaced by a look of gravity and… coldness.
Back in the car, she briefly relayed the soldier's words to Cassian and the others.
The entire convoy fell into a heavy silence.
In a suppressed silence, the convoy slowly drove away from the heavily guarded yet decaying temporary base.
After driving a safe enough distance, they found a relatively intact, abandoned luxury villa complex nearby and stopped.
Working together, they quickly cleared a safe area within the villa complex, using several adjacent villas as a temporary foothold.
The atmosphere in the villa's living room was exceptionally grim.
Kane's face was a frightening shade of green. He sat silently in a corner, his usually sharp eyes now filled with anger and… a hint of incredulous frustration. He still gripped the military communicator, which had completely lost its signal, his knuckles white from the force.
Elara sat on the sofa, carefully replaying the situation at the base entrance and the ambiguous information revealed by the soldier in her mind.
Finally, she looked up, breaking the suffocating silence, and slowly, voiced her speculation:
"From the time we left the forest to our arrival here, it's been about a week, give or take. In such a short time, a well-defended temporary base established by the military… just 'changed heavens' so easily?"
"That's almost impossible. Unless…" A cold glint flashed in Elara's eyes. "…there's only one possibility. Before our reinforcements arrived, another… or a group of, exceptionally powerful ability users came here. Powerful enough to use absolute force to suppress, or rather… take over the entire base in a very short time."
That's right. Everyone present had witnessed the power of ability users. A top-tier ability user like the Zombie King, or like Cassian and Zephyr, could indeed conquer a poorly defended base if they were determined.
"But," Seraph raised a key point, frowning, "if the base was really forcibly taken over by outside ability users, then why… were the ones we saw at the gate still soldiers in military uniforms? Logically, they should have replaced them with their own people."
The moment she raised this question, a terrible thought, like a bolt of lightning, flashed through her mind!
She snapped her head up and met Elara's eyes, which were also glinting with understanding!
Almost in unison, they both uttered a single phrase:
"A covert replacement!"
"What? What covert replacement?" Jorah was still completely baffled, not understanding the riddle they were speaking.
But Kane and the other two conscious soldiers, the moment they heard that phrase, their faces turned even uglier.
Even Aurelia, who had always appeared gentle and unfazed by anything, knitted her delicate eyebrows tightly, a clear look of… worry and anger appearing in her eyes for the first time.