The sky had just begun to brighten. Shang Jianyao, who had just finished his shift and lain down for an hour, jumped up, pushed open the car door, and started stretching his body.

"Gotta prepare breakfast, gotta prepare breakfast..." he muttered as he turned towards the trunk, looking as if he wanted to eat quickly and leave the campsite.

"Can't you let people sleep!" Jiang Baimian leaned out from the passenger seat.

Last night, worried about other anomalies, she had taken a brief nap before letting Long Yuehong and Bai Chen rest. She had pulled Shang Jianyao up to stand guard, and when the time had passed smoothly to near dawn, she had woken her teammates and gone to the car to catch up on sleep.

Shang Jianyao explained earnestly,

"This is not a place to linger!"

Just as Jiang Baimian was about to ask why it wasn't a place to linger, Bai Chen led Davis and the others around the front of the car and arrived on this side.

"Is there anything you need?" Jiang Baimian asked with a start, smiling.

Davis touched his hair, looking slightly awkward, and tried to make himself seem as hearty and natural as usual:

"After a night's sleep, I realized I was too nervous last night and forgot to thank you.

"If it weren't for your help, my companions and I might have become 'Heartless.'"

"We were just saving ourselves." Jiang Baimian didn't take the credit.

"Regardless, we have to express our sincere gratitude. Is there anything we can help with?" Davis's attitude was very proper.

He had thought it over. The other party might not care about being thanked, but he and his companions did, and moreover, building a good relationship with such an experienced and powerful team might have benefits in the future.

This was his survival philosophy as a ruin hunter, allowing him to survive in the wilderness until now.

What we need, you definitely can't provide... Jiang Baimian completely forgot that she had been worried about insufficient funds due to the Alpha mech issue.

She smiled, intending to find a relatively graceful reason to refuse.

Just then, Shang Jianyao interjected,

"If you really want to thank us, you can give us the trench coat you're wearing."

Davis was nearly 1.8 meters tall, only five centimeters shorter than him.

"Huh?" Davis was clearly stunned.

He couldn't have imagined that the other party would make such a request.

Instinctively, he turned his gaze to Jiang Baimian.

Jiang Baimian could only respond with a smile.

She couldn't possibly tell a stranger, "Sorry, my teammate has mental problems," could she?

Davis came back to his senses, weighed it slightly, and smiled as he took off the black trench coat he was wearing.

He didn't take out the items in the pockets and handed it to Shang Jianyao just like that.

"Not bad, not bad." Shang Jianyao wasn't polite at all.

However, he took the initiative to take out the items in the trench coat pockets and return them to Davis, including several banknotes, multiple coins, a lighter, and a magazine full of bullets.

"We've received your thanks. You don't have to feel bad anymore. Anyway, nothing happened to anyone." Jiang Baimian smoothed things over for Shang Jianyao.

Davis secretly breathed a sigh of relief and asked with a smile:

"May I know how to address you?"

"You don't need to know that. Knowing might not be a good thing." Jiang Baimian smiled.

As wanted criminals with a high price on their heads from "First City," it was best not to have too much contact with the ruin hunter team based in First City. Otherwise, how would the latter handle themselves after discovering the truth?

If they arrested them, putting aside things like conscience, they probably couldn't win anyway; if they didn't arrest them and were seen by others, how would they explain it to the "Orderly Hand" when they returned to First City?

So mysterious... Davis muttered silently.

He didn't ask any further questions and took his leave with a good sense of propriety.

Disturbed by him and his companions, Jiang Baimian completely lost her sleepiness and ordered Shang Jianyao to prepare breakfast in a fit of revenge.

Shang Jianyao put on the trench coat with a triumphant look, found his sunglasses, put them on, and then went to the trunk to select two cans of vegetables, two cans of braised beef, and a few loaves of bread, busily preparing them by the bonfire.

After they were full and satisfied, under the gazes of those who might or might not have recognized the "Old Task Force" wanted criminals, Bai Chen drove the jeep out of the parking lot campsite.

They headed northeast all the way, quickly entering the wilderness, traveling on the dilapidated roads that appeared intermittently.

After bypassing an abandoned mine, Jiang Baimian saw that there were no people coming and going, and even few animals appeared. Only then did she have Bai Chen slow down and find a hidden place to stop.

"Gehrman Sparrow will try to repair the phone and extract the data. We'll put on the bionic smart armor and military exoskeleton device to guard against accidents." Jiang Baimian issued the order.

After the teammates were ready, Gehrman Sparrow began to work.

After a while, he raised his metal head and said in a slightly synthesized voice:

"Only a portion can be recovered."

Being able to recover a portion was already a blessing... Long Yuehong muttered in his heart.

Under normal circumstances, it was very likely that no data could be recovered.

Jiang Baimian, who was always vigilant, nodded:

"What do you have? Give us a brief explanation."

Red light flashed in Gehrman Sparrow's eyes:

"First, the phone's owner made a call two hours before the Old World's destruction. The number was labeled 'Courier Company';

"Second, forty-five minutes earlier, he received an international long-distance call. The number didn't have a corresponding label, but it was determined to be from 'Xin Yuan'..."

"Xin Yuan"... Jiang Baimian's heart stirred upon hearing this.

Children born inside "Pangu Biology" had a certain understanding of the continental pattern before the Old World's destruction, knowing that the country "Xin Yuan" was mainly inhabited by Ashlanders and was located in the northeastern direction of this land.

Its territory roughly encompassed the northern part of today's "Salvation Army," including a portion of the current ice plains.

The reason Jiang Baimian had a subtle feeling was that "Xin Yuan" was one of the few countries in the northernmost part of the Ashlands continent.

This naturally made her think of a certain place in the north, a certain hospital in the north, a northern company, and even Icefield City.

Gehrman Sparrow continued:

"Third, there is an address information stored in the phone's memo:

"Xin Yuan, Pu Lan Province, Icefield City, Renhui Hospital..."

"Icefield City? Renhui Hospital?" Long Yuehong blurted out.

He was too familiar with these two names!

Icefield City was the "Old Task Force's" next destination. The First High School there was one of the five holy grounds of Buddhism, and the hospital where Fan Weinisi and Li Jinlong's vegetative son had been sent to participate in new treatment was very likely called Renhui!

--The latter stemmed from some data recovered from Fan Weinisi and Li Jinlong's phones. The couple had most likely rented a place in Harbor Home near Renhui Hospital at the time, wanting to take care of their son nearby.

"So, that Renhui Hospital is in Icefield City..." Bai Chen realized that things were connected.

Regardless of whether it was the Changhe City United Steel Factory where Fan Weinisi and Li Jinlong lived, or Icefield City, both were one of the five holy grounds of Buddhism.

Shang Jianyao stroked his chin:

"But why is the Buddhist holy ground in Icefield City the First High School instead of Renhui Hospital?"

"There might be some secrets in between..." Jiang Baimian replied simply, looking at Gehrman Sparrow with an excited expression, "Is there anything after the address information?"

"There should be, but that part of the data is completely damaged. Currently, it can only be determined that the address information was written after receiving that international long-distance call." Gehrman Sparrow said truthfully.

Jiang Baimian analyzed to herself:

"After receiving the international long-distance call, he wrote down such an address. A few tens of minutes later, he called the courier company...

"The international long-distance call was to have the phone's owner take a certain item, um, find it, and send it to Renhui Hospital, Icefield City, Pu Lan Province, Xin Yuan?"

The reason she added "find it" was because the phone's owner had waited forty-five minutes before calling the courier company.

"What item could it be?" Long Yuehong wondered to himself.

As soon as he finished speaking, Shang Jianyao and Jiang Baimian said in unison:

"That cross pendant?"

That item was placed in front of the phone owner's bones!

"Very likely." Bai Chen nodded in agreement.

Her judgment was based on the fact that the item was quite strange and seemed to be connected to the "New World." If this could be linked to the Buddhist holy ground, then it could be understood.

Shang Jianyao became excited:

"Bring back that cross pendant?"

Jiang Baimian slapped his shoulder with her right hand:

"Do you think you're not dying fast enough?"

She paused and said seriously:

"Today's harvest is mainly to find another direction for our actions in Icefield City.

"All the clues point to the past."

"Mm-hm." Long Yuehong nodded first and then asked, "Before going to the ice plains, should we go to Ruin No. 9 for a spin to see if we can find anything else in that room?"

Jiang Baimian pondered for a while and said:

"Not for the time being. Ruin No. 9 is definitely also very dangerous, and Davis and the others should have taken out the items of value to us."

Huff, Long Yuehong quietly breathed a sigh of relief.

He had used advancing as a means of retreating just now.

Then, Gehrman Sparrow explained the rest of the recovered data one by one, but there was nothing else that caught the eye or made one shudder.

--As an artificial intelligence, he naturally knew to mention the important points first.

After finishing the data recovery, Shang Jianyao couldn't wait to take the "Six Senses Beads" and the "Life Angel" necklace and entered slumber.

First, he brought the aura of the two items into the "Corridor of the Mind," and then, following the previous example, he transferred his limbs and grew new ones, entering Room "912" in a rather strange posture.

Last time, he had returned to the first day of boarding the cruise ship. This time, the time naturally jumped to the night, when the vast majority of passengers and crew members were in a state of chaos and madness.

Wearing the "Life Angel" necklace and holding the "Six Senses Beads," Shang Jianyao immersed his consciousness in the latter.

A "darkness" different from the night suddenly stood out before his eyes.

It was close to nothingness, swaying gently, as if silently contracting and expanding.

Clap clap clap, Shang Jianyao applauded himself.

There really was a "New World" node on this cruise ship!

He immediately left the room and began searching in the direction where the "darkness" was becoming more and more intense.

Along the way, he occasionally encountered aggressive chaos individuals, but he avoided them in advance by relying on his perception of human consciousness and his agile skills.

After several failures, Shang Jianyao finally came to a door.

Behind the door was "darkness" so dense that it seemed like ink.

Shang Jianyao carefully distinguished it and laughed out loud:

"The captain's cabin..."

As he spoke, he raised his non-paralyzed left foot and kicked the door open with a bang.

Inside the door, the captain was "as always" kneeling on one knee, looking at the ceiling, begging for love in an aria, with no "abnormality."

But in Shang Jianyao's "eyes," all the "darkness" was pouring out of his body.

Inside his body!

ps: Asking for monthly tickets at the beginning of the month~