The entrance to the Earth's Core Crucible was resealed behind them by a boulder moved by Ling Feng's telekinesis.
This time, they felt no reluctance to leave.
"Where are we going?" Shi Lei asked in a low voice, following behind Ling Feng with a backpack full of the highest-purity energy lattices. There was an irrepressible excitement in his voice. Ling Feng's transformative strength had given him boundless confidence.
"Hunting."
Ling Feng's reply was concise and cold.
He didn't travel deep underground for long. The top priority was to grasp the Cleaners' latest movements. He led Shi Lei along a hidden route and silently returned to the shallow underground layers of the Rust Belt's residential area.
He found an abandoned pipe relay station and stopped.
"Here," he said.
He sat down cross-legged, his eyes lightly closed.
After advancing to the "Second-Tier," the range of his spiritual perception had expanded several times over. More importantly, his ability to analyze energy signals had also undergone a qualitative leap.
If before, he could only "feel" a few vague signal points, now, he could clearly "read" the strength and properties of each signal point, and even roughly judge their emotional state through their dissipated spiritual energy fluctuations.
His spiritual energy, like a huge, invisible spider web, with him at the center, quickly spread out and enveloped the surface of the Rust Belt.
Everything in the Rust Belt was rendered in his mind with perfect clarity.
He "saw" scavengers fighting each other by a garbage heap over the resource blockade.
He "saw" members of the Iron Fist Gang arrogantly whipping a thin young man who couldn't pay his protection fee.
He also "saw" the ordinary residents mixed in the crowd, their eyes numb and full of resentment from hunger.
All of this was like needles pricking his heart.
But he forcibly suppressed these emotions. He knew that before he had absolute power, pointless anger was the cheapest of emotions.
His spiritual energy continued to extend, like the most efficient hound, searching for those few cold, professional signal sources that were so out of place in the Rust Belt.
Soon, he found them.
"...Three," Ling Feng whispered to himself.
After losing two members, the remaining three of the original five-man team had not regrouped. Instead, they had dispersed, each occupying a high point, forming a triangular formation that could support each other and monitor the entire core area of the Rust Belt.
They were smart, and very cautious.
After witnessing Ling Feng use the environment to set traps, they no longer easily entered the complex underground terrain, but chose this most stable, reactive monitoring strategy.
They were waiting.
Waiting for Ling Feng and Shi Lei to run out of supplies, or to lose their patience and expose a flaw.
"Shi Lei," Ling Feng opened his eyes and looked at his friend. "The top platform of the No. 3 blast furnace at the 'Heart of Steel' refinery. Do you know a safe route to get near there?"
Shi Lei was taken aback and quickly found the location on the map.
"That's one of the highest points in the Rust Belt! The terrain is treacherous, there's only one way up, and it's surrounded by open ground, easy to get spotted!" After he finished, he added, "But... because that blast furnace is in such disrepair, its internal structure is very unstable. Even the Iron Fist Gang's men rarely go near it."
"Good."
Ling Feng stood up.
"Then we'll choose him as our first 'return gift' for the 'Cleaners'."
...
Night fell again.
In the shadows of the 'Heart of Steel' refinery, which looked like the skeleton of a steel behemoth, two figures arrived like ghosts.
"He's up there," Ling Feng looked up at the giant, extinguished blast furnace, nearly a hundred meters high. "Heartbeat is steady, breathing is long, and he's highly focused. A top-tier sniper."
"How do we get up?" Shi Lei asked in a low voice. "The only path is definitely within his line of sight."
"We're not going up."
A cold smile appeared on Ling Feng's lips.
He turned his head and looked at a giant crane next to the blast furnace, also towering, used for lifting scrap. A massive electromagnet, weighing dozens of tons and filled with compressed metal blocks, was still hanging from the crane's arm.
"Shi Lei," Ling Feng's voice sounded directly in Shi Lei's mind. "See that main power control box for the crane arm? When I make my move, you go and pull... its main switch with all your speed."
"...What are you going to do?" Shi Lei's heart leaped.
Ling Feng didn't answer.
He took a deep breath and highly condensed his spiritual energy, which was now like a rushing river.
His target was not the sniper.
It was... the hundred-meter-high platform made of countless steel supports where the sniper was located!
He was going to do something a hundred times more precise, and a hundred times crazier than causing the scrap mountain to collapse!
He was going to... dismantle that tower, while the sniper was still on it!
His invisible telekinetic force, like countless of the most nimble hands, silently spread up the steel frame of the platform.
He didn't touch the thick, main load-bearing structures.
He just... slowly, from the inside... loosened the dozens of long-rusted, giant bolts that were the most critical for connecting and securing the structure, one by one...